Page 24 of Into the West

“And we’ll have herds and flocks coming through here to add to that dung. And it’s all yours. Now, do you see what my people are doing up there? Raking it to the side so it doesn’t get trampled and made useless, then one of my mages will come along and make it as dry as if it had been baking in the hot summer sun for a seven-day. Easy for you to gather, easy to move, light as cured hay, and easier to stack.” The farmer nodded. He got the idea, and fast. “Dried out like that, you can break it up quick, manure your fields with it now without burning them, and plow it under to mellow over the winter.”

Now the other two got it. The blacksmith stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Aye, but—how many on ye are there? Ye’ll be a-breakin’ down yon bank, be ye ever so careful, yer flocks will be eatin’ the verge bare, an’ how ye gonna make up for that?”

“That’s what you and I are here to decide, without every man of your village wanting to put in his own opinion,” Kordas replied, which got a snort from the farmer and a dry laugh from the blacksmith. “We have cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. We’re prepared to part with some. So, what do you reckon that damage is worth? Remember, these are all stock of breeding lines you’ve never seen before. You’re going to get a great bargain out of this. It’ll renew your herds with one breeding season.”

The blacksmith looked to the farmer. “Well,” the farmer said, grounding his pitchfork. “As to that—you’ll know that every family in the village is going to want a bit of that new blood—”

The price they settled on was perfectly reasonable by Kordas’s opinion, and he had the Doll relay the numbers, the kinds, and whose herds they were to come from. Mostly his, which seemed fair, from the herds of his manor farms. The time would probably come when they’d have to bargain like this again, and when it did, he wanted people to remember that he had been the one to part with his stock before anyone else did.

The important items in this trade were, as he had expected, males. One female could only produce so much in a season, but one male could and would happily service every female of his kind in the village, producing a new crop of beasts with half new blood in them. The third man ran back to the village to bring herders. And when the first boar, ram, billy, bull, and stallion came through the Gate, they were greeted, for the first time, with the admiration and approval of the native villagers who came to accept them. It was literally the first time Kordas had seen any of them smile. There was a pause while Dole took the spell off that kept them tied to the boats, and then Kordas turned them over with a flourish.

All of the animals except the stallion were young. The boar was out of one of the Empress’s litters, and was two years old. Like all of the Squire’s male shoats that didn’t get castrated with an eventual end as bacon, he had been raised not unlike a dog. So, like a dog, he obeyed the instructions of his handlers, including “Stay.” At some point in his family’s history, the Squire’s pig-raising forbears had gotten tired of charging, rage-filled boars and decided to try training them. And it had worked.

Kordas could not help but wonder how much of this lesson the villagers would take in.

The natives looked at the boar and his handler as if they were both mages. This was a greater wonder to them than Rose the Doll was.

The ram and goat were not so amenable, which troubled the shepherds not at all; they had brought their dogs. The stallion was a five-year-old cobby bay fellow that had been one of the “failed” False Golds—not gold, and not the size of a Tow-Beast. But he was a beefy lad, with broad feet and broader shoulders, perfect size for plowing. Of course he was mannerly, but that was not the marvel a boar that obeyed directions was.

There was some time while the handler mastered words in the speech of the Empire that he’d need to make the boar obey. But plenty of directions were just a sound and a gesture, including “Follow,” so Kordas was pretty certain they’d get the pig to the village and into a sty without issue. Especially since the villager evidently knew his pigs, and had brought a sugar beet with him. The boar probably had not seen one of those since he’d left the Duchy, and it was very clear from his body language he would have learned to sit up and beg if that was what it took to get that beet.

It took most of the daylight for all this to be agreed on (and meanwhile, the barges kept coming through), and through all of it, Kordas could not keep himself from thinking of those Poomers and Spitters in their barges at the end of the tail, and how much easier it all would have been if he settled things “Imperial fashion.” And he allowed himself those indulgent and dangerous thoughts, just to purge them out of his head. All he needed to do to make them fade away was to remind himself that “Imperial fashion” always ended in people dying. Always. Force never bred anything but force, and bullying never bred anything but resentment. And he’d had more than enough of all of that.

Now, let’s hope I don’t back us away from fights we should take on.

Finally the last of the locals left, the last of the sunlight left, and that was an end to the expedition movement for the day. Everyone up the line stopped, moored their strings to the bank, unharnessed the towing animals, and staked them to graze. Flocks of chickens and geese were bribed into the “coops” with grain, flocks and herds settled to eat and sleep. And Kordas went back through the Gate, leaving Rose to keep track of what was going on. Amethyst was with the scouts, Rose would stay at the Gate, there was Pansy on the first barge through the Gate, and other Dolls with other barges on either side of the Gate, either as night watchers or night herders. Ivy would keep him informed of what any of them observed.

Kordas was tired, chilled, and hungry, and if he got back soon enough, his dinner would be warm. He reached the middle of the lake just as the last light faded in the west.

Isla was watching for him from the prow of the barge, and offered her hand up to the deck. “What happened out there?” she asked. “I got bits of it from Ivy, but she was doing most of her talking to Dagger, the Doll with your guards on this side. They wanted to raid the armaments barges, and Dagger had to keep talking them down.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What we would do without the Dolls, I do not know. That could have been a disaster. They’d have had good intentions, but they probably would have come through ready to attack, just as I was making the passage deal. Which went well, really.” He followed her into the barge, where a plate of sausage-stuffed rolls and a hot cup of tea waited for him. Ivy was just shutting the door to the boys’ room.

“Good work, Ivy!” he said, as he sat wearily and reached for a roll. “I was just telling Isla that I don’t know what we’d do without you. But—” he added hastily, lest she think that meant he was thinking better of his pledge to free them, “—we’ll have to learn to do without you eventually. Maybe I should start a concerted effort to find the folk with Mindspeech. There have to be some of those among our folk . . .”

“That is a brilliant idea!” Isla exclaimed. “I’ll get to work on that. We’ll pair them with Dolls for redundancy, and practice on their part.”

He took a bite from the still-warm sausage roll and sighed. One potential problem derailed. Millions more to go. There would probably be no more than a handful of people with useful Mindspeech, but as long as they were spaced out along the convoy, the problem of getting messages around without the Dolls was solved. He was already dissatisfied with the necessity of the tow animals working along an unprepared bank. In old Valdemar, the towline courses were well prepared, with paved ground or hard clay pack. Now, their beasts were putting themselves at risk with every step into the mud, or foothold of a root. Only the guidance of their handlers gave them an advantage.

“You may do that, Lord Baron,” Ivy said placidly. “But we will not leave you until you have a home, regardless of when you learn how to free us.”

He had absolutely no doubt that Ivy spoke for all of the Dolls. Bless them. “Then thank you, Ivy,” he said. “It’ll be a good idea to have two ways to send word up and down the line; what if something comes along and—I don’t know—drains you of magic?” His temple throbbed. “The Healers will be able to tell who has Mind-magic; they probably already know.”

“And Doll Panacea is asking them about it now,” Ivy replied. “She says to tell you that your Healers will have the names by morning, and we’ll have some of us talk to the people in question to explain it all to them. We assume—” and by her body language, “we assume” meant “we expect or you’ll regret it,” “—that those with the Gift you require will be kept secret to avoid exploitation, and will be compensated well.”

Did Ivy just get—crafty? Was I just intimidated? I suppose if anyone would be conscientious about exploitation, it would be the Dolls.

“You see?” Isla said to Kordas while retrieving their butter jar. “It’s not all on your back.” She patted his hand. “Remember back on the estate; you were never the sort to try to manage every little thing in the Duchy. You knew who to trust to do their jobs, you told them what we needed, and you left them to it. Just do the things no one else among us can do. Like negotiating with potentially hostile people. That was a very shrewd move of yours, to wait to offer livestock until just before they might have turned on you.”

Well, that wasn’t quite how things had gone, but—near enough, he supposed.

“Meanwhile I’ve enlisted the boys into what they are calling the ‘Page Army.’ I don’t suppose you remember a retired Imperial Army lieutenant named Sol Adrescu? He’s organizing all the children into groups to run errands and forage, with a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old in charge of each group, and a Doll to keep track of what they are doing. He recruited our lot. He’s running them off their feet, in a good way. It means they are tired and happy and willing to go straight to bed once supper is over.” Isla gave him a sharp glance. “Speaking of which, please eat.”

“Oh. Right.” He finished the now-not-quite-so-warm rolls, and his tea. “I have concerns about them being too easily accessible as hostages for somebody desperate, but I should trust you all to be watchful. As for the river, I’m just glad I thought to put the Poomers and Spitters and their ammunition at the end of the convoy. That way, they won’t be the first thing anyone thinks of when we run into trouble. And hopefully, most people will forget they exist. And if we end up losing a few boats at the tail, it will be something we don’t need, and hopefully, something no one else knows how to use. I’d sink all of them right now, but . . .”

“But we might encounter something that nothing else will work on.” She picked up his cup and plate, wiped them off and put them away, and took his wrist. “Tomorrow will be another long day.”

“It’s all going to be long days, for quite a while,” he agreed, and followed her to their bed, while Ivy went out to take a watchful position on the roof of the barge, serenely gazing up at the stars from time to time.