The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

Maybe the root shrugged up out of the ground and wrapped its tendrils around his foot and tripped him. Maybe his scattered thoughts skipped, jostled by these words, so that he stopped paying attention to the uneven trail.

He stumbled and went down hard on his knees, bruising his knees, his hands, and an elbow.

The child cried out. Treu barked, then came to lick him, and while he lay there half stunned and aching, he heard the laborer speak softly to the child.

“I’ve never seen Treu take to a man like that. Never.”

“And him such a wild beast!” whispered the child agreeably. “He stinks!”

“Hush, Brat.”

They did not want to touch him or get close enough for him to touch them. With a grunt, he sat back on his haunches, then rose, shaking himself as a dog shakes off water. He was indeed so filthy that dust and matter spattered onto the ground around him as water droplets might spray. They stepped away, and the laborer gestured awkwardly toward the trail and kept walking. It wasn’t difficult to keep up with them looking back every five steps, although he hurt all over. The fall had jarred him badly and his head throbbed; each step jarred more pain loose until he thought he was going to go blind.

The hamlet appeared where woodland ended in open ground striped with fields of rye and a trio of soggy gardens ringed by high fences to keep out deer, goats, and rabbits. Farther down, at the valley bottom, trees grew thickly along a small river’s winding banks. Three more dogs came running out to greet them; tails wagging and ears high, they swarmed around him and he patted them all.

“Where is this?” he asked, staring over the straggle of buildings.

“Shaden is what we call it. Just my father and his brother and sister and two cousins came out here thirty year back when they were young, with the permission of the count, and cut back the forest and tilled the high ground. I heard tell from the deacon, before the sickness took her, that the count—him who died just a few year back—had a new plow so strong it could cut through that good earth down at the bottom of the valley, but we’ve never heard tell of such since he died, God rest him. It’s said he meant to share out plows among the countryfolk, but the new lord hasn’t done so. That land would make good tillage. We had such a hard rain these past two year that the best soil got washed down to the river, and we got black rot in the rye stores, and it come up in the grain again this year.”

“It’s my job to pick it out,” said the Brat cheerfully, “but I don’t get it all.”

The hamlet boasted five houses and one common stable in addition to six lean-tos, a chicken coop, and a broken-down corral missing half its fence, with the inside grown to weeds.

Every soul in the village turned out to see the marvel: a visitor. Even the old one—the Brat’s grandmother—got up from the bench on which she sat in the sun and hobbled over to examine him with the expression of a woman who has seen too much not to be skeptical of a gold coin pressed into her hand.

“This beggar did me a good turn,” said the laborer, “and I’ve promised him a bit of bread and something to drink in recompense.”

He went over to the corral and sat on a listing log. He was so weary. A passel of tiny children stood at a safe distance and stared at him, with an older girl keeping watch to make sure they didn’t venture—too close. The dogs scratched at the dirt before settling down at his feet. The adults seemed to be conferring among themselves, out of earshot, but the Brat lugged over a big ceramic pot sealed with a lid and a wide basket tipped over her head like a hat. She settled down on the ground near him and gestured to the other girl.

“Won’t you come sit by me, Lindy?” She smirked when Lindy shook her head and took a step back.

After setting the basket down beside her, she took the wooden lid off the pot to reveal grain. “It’s not gone down to the miller yet, but that’s a two-day walk,” she said as she ran her hands through the grain. “Uncle goes tomorrow.” She began to pick through the grain, tossing black kernels onto the ground. The dogs snuffled at them but did not eat. “Whew! This is a bad one!”

“Here,” he said, “let me.” He slid off the log before she could say more than a startled protest, and the watching children shrieked and scuttled backward, but the Brat only scooted away, not running, as he crouched beside the wide-mouthed pot. The top layer of grain was indeed contaminated by monstrous black kernels grown to twice the size of the regular kernels. He sifted them through his hands into the basket, but the farther down he got, the cleaner the grain became until there wasn’t a trace of black rot.

“Look at that!” The Brat had slid closer by degrees and now she peered over his shoulder and whistled with awe. “Nary a bit wasted! That’ll be enough flour to get us through to harvest, after miller and lord take their tithe.”

“Brat!” Uncle called, and she hopped up, poured all the grain back into the pot, covered it, and hoisted it up to haul back to him.

Chickens came over, pecking for the discarded grain, but he shooed them away and swept dirt over the black grains. They looked evil to him, although he wasn’t sure why. He’d seen black rot before, just never so heavy. Indeed, staring through the hazy day toward the fields it seemed to him that the entire field was poisoned by black rot, as thick as flies on honey, and he heaved himself up and walked, weaving because he really was getting light-headed from hunger, out to the fields and down those long strips brushing his hands over the heads of rye. They tickled his skin. Black grains tumbled to the earth like rain.

Harvest tomorrow, or next week—wasn’t that what the girl had said? He couldn’t recall. The dogs followed him patiently down one strip and up the next and after a while he remembered that the villagers had promised to feed him and he wandered back through golden fields unstained by rot into the hamlet. Here he found a wooden platter waiting for him with a cup of sweetened vinegar that made his eyes open wide, a cup of onion soup, and an entire half a loaf of rye bread, very dry so probably some days old, but by soaking it piece by piece in the soup he softened it and gulped it down. It sat like a lead weight in his stomach, the vinegar fizzing and bubbling, the onion burning, and he was suddenly so tired that he had to lie down. He crawled over to the stables where he would feel more comfortable with the animals, but of course what animals the villagers kept were out grazing in the pastures, so he found a filthy pile of straw for his bed and slept.

2

THE griffins could take the cold, but they didn’t like the elevation, and despite the uncanny number of trees blocking the road and rockfalls whose shatter-trail had to be cleared before the wagons could pass, it was the griffins who slowed them down most.

“It were a warm, wet winter,” said their guide, an old Avarian man called Ucco who had crossed the pass at least fifteen times in the last twenty years, leading merchants out of Westfall and southern Avaria who had slaves, salt, and Ungrian steel to trade in northern Aosta. “That makes the avalanches worse, mind you. If it’s cold, it don’t melt. But it weren’t so bad earlier this year, for I crossed back in Quadrii with a Westfall merchant who’s been trading Ungrian slaves for Aostan spices and cloth. I don’t know where all this rockfall come from, or how these trees come to fall. It weren’t here two month ago.”

soul in the village turned out to see the marvel: a visitor. Even the old one—the Brat’s grandmother—got up from the bench on which she sat in the sun and hobbled over to examine him with the expression of a woman who has seen too much not to be skeptical of a gold coin pressed into her hand.

“This beggar did me a good turn,” said the laborer, “and I’ve promised him a bit of bread and something to drink in recompense.”

He went over to the corral and sat on a listing log. He was so weary. A passel of tiny children stood at a safe distance and stared at him, with an older girl keeping watch to make sure they didn’t venture—too close. The dogs scratched at the dirt before settling down at his feet. The adults seemed to be conferring among themselves, out of earshot, but the Brat lugged over a big ceramic pot sealed with a lid and a wide basket tipped over her head like a hat. She settled down on the ground near him and gestured to the other girl.

“Won’t you come sit by me, Lindy?” She smirked when Lindy shook her head and took a step back.

After setting the basket down beside her, she took the wooden lid off the pot to reveal grain. “It’s not gone down to the miller yet, but that’s a two-day walk,” she said as she ran her hands through the grain. “Uncle goes tomorrow.” She began to pick through the grain, tossing black kernels onto the ground. The dogs snuffled at them but did not eat. “Whew! This is a bad one!”