Page 81 of Into the West

But at least she didn’t have to work in the snow. And while she didn’t exactly have the afternoons free, she wasn’t doing the boring job of hauling grass balls out and spreading them with a rake.

She worked diligently all morning, which brought an end to the grass cutting; at this point the horses and cattle within the walls were moved to the mowed meadow to graze, because they could be depended on not to eat what was left down to the roots, unlike the goats and sheep. In the afternoon, the green mages would take over in the field that the herds had been moved out of, and grow the grass to mowing-high, fueled by the dung that the herds had left behind.

But for now, everyone went to luncheon.

Being on mowing duty was the first that Delia had spent any amount of time among actual farm folk. The Squire didn’t really count; he didn’t work the land or tend the pigs himself, his farm workers did. These were the people who actually grew the food, and to be honest, they were all pretty relieved that the convoy had landed in such a good place. They were happy. Ecstatic, really. They were taking the quality of the soil in the meadows and gardens here as a token of what it was like outside the walls, under the snow, and were thrilled.

Since everyone was generally so tired at morning’s end that they just wanted to sit, the mowing crew all ate lunch together: pickles and sometimes something from the gardens, cheese from the stores, bread baked fresh that morning. And every other day, butter, also from stores.

And—oh treasure—brandy and cider. Cider was brought out to them in clean milk pails—there was no need for milk pails right now, since it wasn’t calf season—by Dolls who had mugs festooned around their middles like a strange garland. Down in the hertasi tunnels was a vast store of barrels of slightly alcoholic cider, as well as the brandy. The cider was about as strong as good beer. The brandy could lift the hair on your head and leave it standing on its own.

“Hey, Delia,” said one of the mowing lads, as a Doll handed him a mug of cider. “Y’know why them Hawkbrothers left behind this sweet gold?” He gulped down a mouthful and smacked his lips.

“Well, Jelavan showed me on the map where there’s an apple orchard out there,” she replied, waving her hands vaguely westward. “He reckons it’s easily over five hundred years old. Anyway, the Hawkbrothers didn’t like the apples to go to waste; they always stored everything they could, in case they might get besieged into the Vale, so they gathered them up every year. Cider and brandy’s a good way to keep apple-stuff for a long, long time. They’ve been making and storing far more than they could ever use since they got here. They didn’t want to take it with them, and thought we might like it, so—” She shrugged.

“And we can make more!” The lad’s eyes sparkled with glee. “Me Da is going to be right happy to hear that. Anything else good down in them tunnels?”

“Not that I saw. The hertasi cleaned out almost everything except the forges and a few things built in or too heavy to move. Don’t go down there without a map or a guide, though,” she warned. “We might have to send dogs to find you.”

The Dolls came around to gather up the mugs—there was never so much as a crumb left of the food—and the crew dispersed off to their afternoon jobs. Everyone had one, or at least, something like a job.

What Delia had was time to practice. Target practice, and following that, fighting practice with Briada. She wasn’t the only one taking fighting lessons now. Briada held four lessons every day for anyone who wanted to sign up and potentially become one of the Guard. Delia shared her lesson now with six lads and three lasses, as young as fourteen but no older than nineteen. Some of these “new recruits” were farmers, one was a blacksmith’s son, four were children of some of Kordas’s nobles, and the rest were a mix of craftspeople and merchants.

She wasn’t nearly as good at this as some of the others were, but she was quite pleased she was at least competent enough to avoid getting hurt and do pretty well at defending herself and others. Briada and her cousins seemed reasonably satisfied with their progress. Today’s target practice went really well. When she went to join the others at hand-to-hand drill, she was wondering if she ought to switch to another weapon, like a longbow instead of a crossbow, because she could not miss now unless she planned to.

“Sword and shield today, my lovelies,” Briada greeted them when they arrived at the little stretch of grass next to the manor that was too small to use for grazing. Some of them groaned, and Delia didn’t blame them. The wooden practice shields were ridiculously heavy, but that was entirely on purpose, to get them used to the weight, so the actual fighting shields would seem light and easy to move in comparison. She was not looking forward to this, either. She wasn’t at all good at it, and Briada had told her not to use her preferred form of defense, which was to trip her opponent with her Gift, or Fetch his sword right out of his hands and out of reach.

And, in fact, Briada looked her right in the face and added, “And no magic shenanigans, girl. We know you can defend yourself with them already, you need to practice how to defend yourself with—”

The rest of her speech was drowned out by the sound of a horn blowing at the main gate in the wall. It wasn’t the alarm call, though the sound certainly sent a shock entirely through Delia’s body, and she struggled to remember which call it was.

Visitors? No . . .

But they were all interrupted again by the Dolls streaming past them, heading for the gate. And they weren’t armed. That settled her; practice could wait. She abandoned the group and followed the Dolls.

Kordas felt the change in magic energy in the ley-lines centered on the former Heartstone before the alarm sounded.

He had been on the threshold of the pavilion that the Six used as the spot where they were accessible to anyone. And then, out of nowhere, a surge of power flashed through the line nearest him, and away again. Then another. And another. As if something large and very magical was sending power down the line with every heartbeat.

He froze—and inside the pavilion, all six of the elder mages froze as well. Even Sydney-You-Asshole, sitting in a shallow box, turned into an inky statue.

The gate guards trumpeted the call that meant: strange thing at the gate, not yet hostile.

Then the Dolls, which had been passing by in the course of errands, or puttering around the Old Men tidying up, stopped everything they were doing for the briefest of moments, then straightened, turned, and began trotting for the main gate. Instinctively, Kordas followed them, pausing just long enough to snatch up a random coat left in the pile at the pavilion entrance. Whatever it was that had alerted the Guard was obviously on the other side of the gate. Beyond the Veil.

In the snow.

So he was going to need a coat. Because whatever it was, he was not letting it inside the Veil until he knew it was harmless.

The Dolls were moving faster than he was, so by the time he got to the gate, there were about a hundred of them waiting, impatience written in their body language, while the Guard stared down at them with a puzzled frown.

“Open it!” he called up to the Guard.

The Guard snapped to attention, but didn’t move. “But Baron, there’s—something uncanny out there!”

“Has it attacked the herds? The herdsmen?” he countered.

“No—”