Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  She swung on her rain cape and slipped her feet into her clogs, heading straight out the door. Alys followed, her brow creased anxiously.

  “How are we going to get them dry and warm?” she asked. “They’re soaked to the skin!”

  Keisha stopped in the doorway and made a mental inventory of the Fellowship buildings, and realized Alys was right, there was no way to get the sheep under cover on Fellowship property. But there was the village threshing barn, empty and unused at this time of year, and with the favors the Fellowship had done the village, they were certainly owed a favor from the village in return.

  “Get your dogs and herders and bring all the sheep up to the threshing barn,” she ordered. “We’ll use that until the rain is over. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it’s right. I’ll meet you there.”

  Alys took her word as good, and trotted off through the puddles toward the Fellowship holding. Keisha stopped just long enough at the Mayor’s house to confirm the right of the Fellowship to use the octagonal barn until the rains were done - so long as they supplied fodder for the sheep and cleaned up after them.

  Keisha hurried to the barn and let down the oiled canvas interior sides that shut out the wind and rain when need be. The canvas hadn’t come cheap, but in the rush of prosperity following the sale of the barbarians’ looted goods, it had been a sound investment. Now the barn could be used for many purposes in all weathers, even in the dead of winter - it became a tight, weatherproof and windproof tent with a fine shingled roof and seven external supporting walls of wood. It was a tight squeeze, but you could even hold a Faire in there.

  The eighth wall, the one opposite the door, was of stone and did not have a canvas cover, but that was the very last thing it needed.

  By the time she’d done lacing all the canvas panels together, the poor, sodden sheep showed up, bleating and coughing pathetically. No doubt about that cough; Keisha had heard it before, and the illness “felt” the same as soon as she touched her hands to one of the sheep.

  “Bring them in, then start squeezing the water out of their fleeces,” she ordered, as Alys and four more Fellowship shepherds hustled their charges into the barn. “When you’ve got them all as dry as you can, bring clean straw in here for them to bed down in. I know it’ll seem like a waste, but trust me, I want it belly-deep for the sheep in here. They have to get warm and stay warm, or you might start losing lambs.”

  Nods all around, neither questions, nor arguments. Keisha went outside to start a fire in the big oven built into the eighth - stone - side of the barn.

  The door of the oven faced the outside; inconvenient to say the least, but entirely necessary when you realized that the floor of the barn would be covered in flammable things like straw whenever the barn was in use. There was always a huge pile of wood under a cover next to the oven; it would be a while before the stone wall heated up enough for the warmth to build up in the barn, but that was all right. This would solve the problem of getting the delicate sheep warmed clear through.

  And if any other animals start looking seedy, they can be brought here, too. She reminded herself to tell the Mayor that on her way back to her workshop. Once the fire was going well, Keisha stacked logs all around it, and went back into the barn.

  With the only light coming from a couple of storm lanterns the shepherds had thoughtfully brought with them, it was pretty dim, but Keisha knew the contents of her basket well. Before very long, she had the water skins she generally used to dose animals full, and had the concentrated cough potion mixing with the water inside. As each poor sheep was squeezed relatively dry, she took it from the hands of its helper over to the stone wall where one of the lanterns hung.

  There, she looked deeply into its confused, frightened, eyes, and told it without words that it was safe, that she would be helping it, and that if it drank what she gave it, the nasty cough would stop. Then she promised that there would be warmth, dry straw to lie in, and peace for as long as the rain fell. She filled her mind with those images of warmth and safety, until she felt the sheep relax under her hands and saw the eyes lose their fear.

  Then she eased the sheep’s mouth open, and slipped the neck of the water skin past the back of the tongue. How she could tell that she’d gotten enough of a dose into each sheep, she couldn’t have said in words; she only knew that something told her when she’d poured exactly the right amount down its throat.

  That was when she let the sheep go; it would wander off and join the rest of the dosed flock making beds in the straw that more of the Fellowship folk were spreading”on the floor.

  This was tedious work - not hard, except for those drying off the sheep, but tedious. “Talking” to the sheep without words was tiring, too - Keisha wasn’t sure why, but it took something out of her. The good part was that about the time she was half through, the stone wall began radiating warmth, so the second half of her task was accomplished in relative comfort.

  When she turned the last of the sheep loose - and now none of them was coughing - she stood up with a little groan and put the now-flat water skins back in her basket. Alys waited patiently to hear what other orders she had.

  “You’ll have to keep the oven stoked, and if anyone wants to bake something in it, or put in a casserole or something, let them, that’s part of the bargain,” Keisha told her. “Mayor said you’ll have to supply your own fodder.” She already knew she didn’t have to tell them to clean up after themselves; when the sheep left this barn, you’d be able to eat off the floor. “Now, what your little beauties have got isn’t exactly a sickness, not yet, anyway.”

  “It’s not?” Alys said, puzzled.

  Keisha shook her head. “It’s some Pelagirfungus, like ergot, but it grows on sheep-sorrel instead of wheat, down near the roots. Heat and freezing kill it, that’s why you won’t see it in summer or winter, and it needs a warm spring with a lot of rain to start. Which we’ve had.”

  Alys nodded. “But we’ve had warm springs with lots of rain before.”

  “You’re still all right so long as the ground stays dry, not soaked like it’s been. Then what it needs to spread is a cold rain in the middle of the warm spring.” She shrugged. “Here’s where I don’t know why, it just does. Otherwise, it just sits down at the roots of the sheep-sorrel and your sheep will crop right over the top of it and never come to harm. Since this is a lung sickness, maybe they have to breathe something in. All I know for certain is that if you don’t have the fungus in your fields, your sheep will be all right, and if you don’t have a cold, steady rain, your sheep will be all right - and if you bring your sheep off the fields where the fungus is until after it’s been raining for a day or so, you’ll be all right. Our sheep got it a time or two, and it knocked them down hard; I’m afraid yours would be in trouble if I hadn’t got the stuff into them that kills the rot that they breathe in. Now, though, with heat and good food and the medicine, they’ll be strong enough to fight it off and come out fine.”

  Alys looked relieved, and nodded. “The chirms all went into their barn and wouldn’t come out as soon as the rain started, and the goats are in their shelter - and none of them are coughing. It was just the sheep that kept grazing in the rain.”

  “Then the chirras and goats won’t have any trouble from this, but mind what I told you from now on; either get rid of the sheep-sorrel or the fungus, or keep animals out of those fields as soon as it starts to rain in the spring.” Keisha stretched, easing cramped arm and back muscles.

  Alys looked around the barn at her contentedly drowsing charges, and sighed. “I suppose if there’s anybody else that needs the space here, we’re to make room for them?”

  “I won’t allow an animal in that has something yours can catch,” Keisha assured her. “It might happen that we need the room, but this place is big enough that you won’t have to vacate.”

  Alys and the other shepherds looked satisfied with that. Alys had something of her own to offer. “If someone gets flooded out, remember we have extra beds
at the Fellowship, all right? It’s only fair, with us getting to use the barn and all.”

  “I’ll tell the Mayor, and thanks in advance,” Keisha replied. “You won’t need me anymore, so I’d better get back to where people can find me.”

  She waved good-bye to the other shepherds, as they settled themselves in for as long as the rain lasted, the dogs making nests in the straw around the flock of sheep. It could be worse for them, Keisha thought, as she faced the storm, bowing her head under the frigid deluge. They could have to watch the sheep out in this mess. At least they’ll be warm and dry, even if they do have to feed the oven and haul over fodder and straw.

  And in the long run, it was a good thing that the sheep were here and not in the field; only about a quarter of the ewes had lambs at their side, the rest were still all heavily pregnant. Sheep always picked the worst time to lamb, and it was even odds that they’d decide to drop in the middle of the storm. If there were any problems, there wouldn’t be any hunting about on storm-drenched hillsides to find the missing ewe!

  They might not lose any this year, if they all decide to drop while they’re in the barn; that would be a blessing.

  When she got back to her workshop, there was a patient waiting for her, huddled in the chair by the fire. And it was Piel, one of Shandi’s most romantic and least-sensible suitors, who was, if possible, the very last person she wanted to see. She tried not to let her resignation show.

  No need to ask what brought him; his red nose and swollen eyes, steady sneezing and rasping cough told the whole story. “Oh, Piel,” she sighed, putting her hands on her hips and shaking her head. “You are a right mess, aren’t you?”

  “I subbose id’s by own fault,” he wheezed miserably, blowing his nose on his handkerchief. “I wad oud on our hill, and when id starded do rain, I wad thinging so hard aboud her thad I didn’ nodise - ”

  “I promise you that it’s all your own fault,” she said severely. “You are more than old enough to know better than to play a fool’s trick like that, and Shandi wouldn’t thank you for catching pneumonia and dying! Only idiots in ballads get sick and pine gracefully and painlessly away for love, Piel. I can guarantee that pneumonia takes longer and hurts a lot.”

  “Bud - somedimes I thig id wouldn’ be a bad thig - ” he said forlornly, his voice trailing off, as she turned away and got some of her stronger medicines.

  “Oh, you don’t, do you?” She was not going to let him wallow in self-indulgent misery, not in her workshop. “And just how would your parents feel about that? How would Shandi, may I ask? Just how do you think I’d explain that to her, that I let you die of a stupid chill? Idiot! It isn’t as if she left you for another suitor! And it isn’t as if she flew off to the moon!”

  “Bud she mid as well be on da moon!” he cried plaintively. “Why wadn id you thad wad Chosen instead ob her? Why couldn id hab been you? Nobody’s in lob wid you!”

  “I will have none of that nonsense here!” she told him briskly, turning around with a particularly nasty-tasting potion in her hand. She was in no mood for any of this, and he had, by the Havens, earned a good scold. “First off, if I had been Chosen, who would be taking care of you this minute? Second, it’s none of your business, and nobody asked you who should and should not be Chosen; you leave that to the Companions. Third, if you’re so desperately in love with Shandi, you’d do far better by spending your time thinking of a way to make a good livelihood in Haven where she is, than sitting around on hills moping! Showing up in Haven in a good suit of clothing with the money in your pocket to take her to a fine inn for supper would charm her and finally impress my father. Dying stupidly would not, and moon-calfing about on hills in the rain when other folk are working doesnotl”

  Not that I expect him to exert himself that much, she thought scornfully, for she shared her father’s opinion of Piel. The fellow was in love with the idea of being in love, and with Bardic notions of romance, not really in love with Shandi. It’s easy to lie around on hills and weep. And it impresses other fools with how deep your feelings are. One month from now, he ‘ll be desperately in love with one of Shandi’s friends, or one of Lord Breon’s maids at the keep.

  “Here,” she said abruptly, thrusting the mug at him. “Drink this. All of it. Now.”

  He looked from the mug to her face, saw no hope of reprieve, and gagged it down. It was truly awful, and she’d made no effort to sweeten it.

  “Now go home, get into bed, and sleep,” she ordered. “When your mother gives you soup and tea, don’t play with them, drink them - I know she’s already got the medicine she needs for you, she came to get it last night.”

  Piel gave a long-suffering sigh, and draped himself with his rain cape as if it were his shroud. She saw him to the door, and nobly refrained from slamming it behind him.

  The rest of the day was spent in dosing similar illnesses - and in listening to the complaints of the sufferers. Most of the complaints were actually more fretful and pathetic than anything else; neighbor Tansy pretty well summed them up when she came for cough syrup.

  “I wish young Darian would get back here and set himself up like he’s supposed to,” she grumbled. “Even if he couldn’t have sent this storm elsewhere, he’d at least have been able to warn us about it, and he’d be able to tell us how long it’s likely to last!”

  When darkness fell, she finally made a dinner for herself - a good one, not just the soup but a nice slice of fried ham and some scrambled eggs and toast. The only thing she’d had all day was those seedcakes and a couple of bites of soup in between patients, and she was so hungry she was close to being nauseated.

  She didn’t let her irritation with Piel spoil her meal either, though she’d been damned annoyed with his self-indulgent bleating. The sheep didn’t make that much of a complaint, she told herself, as she took careful sips of the hot soup. And as for that business of “why weren’t you Chosen, nobody is in love with you - ” Ooh, I could have strangled him if I weren’t so tolerant, and he weren’t a patient!

  The rain still hadn’t let up, though it had lessened a bit. A storm this big will probably get Haven, too. I wonder how Shandi is doing? It was too soon for a letter, but Keisha couldn’t help wishing one would come.

  I wish I had someone else I could talk to. She sighed and took her dishes to the sink to wash. If I’d been Chosen, I’d have my Companion -

  Fantasy, foolishness. There was never a chance that she’ d have been Chosen; any hesitation on the part of the Companion had been her imagination. Why would any

  Companion Choose me ? she thought sourly. Not only is nobody in love with me, nobody even likes me. There wasn’t a chance that Companion would have Chosen me; Mum and Da named me right. “Keisha,” that’s me, the tree all over thorns and no fruit worth anybody’s effort. If people didn’t need me so badly, they’d never come near me.

  Uncomfortable thoughts, uncomfortable feelings, and she knew if she didn’t get her mind off them she’d sink into a well of self-pity as deep as Piel’s.

  So she picked up one of her Healing texts and put her mind into study, until she was so tired and sore of eye that she practically crawled up the ladder to her bed.

  After four days, the rain finally stopped; the sun put in a brilliant appearance in cloudless skies, and a dry, warm breeze made colds - or at least, complaints of colds - disappear. It never failed to amaze and amuse Keisha that a couple of sunny, warm days in spring or fall could make everyone forget about feeling ill. Unless, of course, they were very ill indeed.

  Piel did not put in a second appearance, nor was he anywhere in the village when Keisha was about, which either meant he had taken Keisha’s lecture to heart and was actively seeking a way to make his living in the greater world (not likely) or that he so feared another tongue-lashing that he wasn’t going to come anywhere near her (far more likely). The sheep got over their illness, and there were many more to herd out of the barn than went in, for many of the pregnant ewes took the opportunity to
drop lambs. The folk from the Fellowship took such good care of the threshing barn that the Mayor declared they could make free use of it whenever they had another such emergency.

  In short, everything was back to normal.

  Everything but Keisha herself, that is.

  Since the onset of the storm, she’d felt edgy most of the time. Whenever she treated a patient, she’d start to reflect the emotional state of that patient herself, and it wasn’t pleasant. The only reason she’d even known that she was being influenced in that way was because she’d been perfectly calm and contented on the third morning of the storm, and had her mood utterly reversed by the first patient to enter the door. Once someone left, she was fine, but while they were in the same area she had to keep a steady head and remind herself that she was not the one feeling rotten. It was worse if she had to touch the patient; that opened her up to all manner of things she didn’t understand and did not in the least like.

  This was making things unexpectedly uncomfortable at home. Rain made the trip to and from the farm pure misery, made chores at the farm a burden, and kept all the boys in the house when they weren’t at the farm. Cooped up like that, for lack of any other amusement, they picked fights with each other. When the boys argued, she found herself getting angry for no reason at all; when her mother got upset, her eyes threatened to overflow. She discovered that beneath her father’s calm exterior, he often suffered from a tensely knotted, aching gut, by experiencing these things herself. That, at least, was useful; she took him aside and convinced him he needed her help unless he wanted to start spitting up blood one day. At least he stopped suffering and felt immensely calmer after following her prescriptions, even if she didn’t.

  Four days after the storm ended, Lord Breon’s Healer Gil arrived for his monthly visit. He was late by a day, but she’d expected that; he’d probably had the same sorts of patients that she’d had - maybe more serious, since Lord Breon’s men were duty-bound to be outside no matter the weather - and to rescue any of Lord Breon’s folk who’d gotten themselves into difficulties.