The stranger's horse was light and agile, but it must have been running hard too long. Brumbar closed rapidly. Only the passing of a tree between them kept Sturm from reaching out to grab the other man's lashing cape.
"Wait!" Sturm shouted. "Stop, I want to talk to you!"
The stranger's horse went hard to the left, circling around Sturm. The man drew up and stopped thirty yards away.
Brumbar shuddered to a halt. The wind was up and blowing rain into Sturm's face, so he turned his horse around. The stranger was waiting for him.
"I didn't mean to chase you," Sturm called out, "but -"
He never heard the stroke of lightning that hit the ground between him and the stranger. Nor did he feel it. In one instant, he was talking and in the next, he was lying on the muddy grass with rain pattering on his face. His arms and legs were leaden and weak.
A dark form loomed over him. For a second, he was afraid. Lying there, helpless, Sturm was easy prey for a thief or assassin.
The stranger, still horsed, towered over him. Against the gray sky, with the rain in his eyes, all Sturm could see of him was dark hair, high forehead and drooping mustache. The cape was close about the man's shoulders, which were wide and powerful.
The stranger sat in the saddle, looking down at Sturm and saying nothing. Sturm managed to gasp, "Who are you?"
The man parted the cape, revealing the hilt of a large sword. Sturm made out the shape of the pommel and some of the filigree work. With a start, he realized that he knew that sword. It was his father's.
"Beware of Merinsaard," said the man, in a voice Sturm didn't recognize.
With tremendous effort, Sturm got to his knees. "Who are you?" He reached out a muddy hand to the stranger.
Where he should have touched the leg of the man's horse, he met nothing. Horse and rider vanished, silently and completely.
Sturm staggered to his feet. The rain was over. Already the sun was poking through the tattered clouds. Brumbar was several yards away, drinking from a puddle. Nearby, a pine tree had been blasted to smoking splinters by lightning.
Sturm put his face in his hands. Had he seen what he thought he'd seen? Who was the phantom rider? And what was Merinsaard? A person, a place?
Wearily he mounted Brumbar. The big horse shifted under Sturm's weight, and his broad hooves squelched in the mud. Sturm looked around. There were no other hoof prints in sight besides Brumbar's.
* * * * *
Though described as a plain, the country of Solamnia was not perfectly flat, as were, say, the Plains of Dust. There were ridges and gullies, dry creek beds and small stands of trees that grew like islands in the midst of the grassy steppe land. Sturm rode north at an easy pace, eating wild pears off the trees and filling his water bottle from the herders' wells.
He soon found himself moving among small herds of cattle, tended and guarded by hard-looking peasants with mauls and bows. They watched him closely as he rode by.
Raiders were common, and in their eyes he might have been a scout for a larger band of rustlers. Also, Sturm wore the mustache and horned helmet of a Solamnic Knight - items not calculated to make him popular among the people who had overthrown the Order. Sturm didn't care. He rode proudly, sword turned out to show that he was ready for trouble. At night, he took special care with polishing his helmet, boots, and sword, to make them shine.
He decided to avoid the city of Solanthus. After the overthrow, Solanthus had proclaimed itself a free city, not sub-ordinate to anyone but its own Guildmasters. Sturm had heard of several knights, friends and compatriots of his father, who had been imprisoned and executed in Solanthus. While he was willing to proclaim his heritage in open country, he saw no reason to walk into the city and put his head into a noose.
The country beyond Solanthus sloped gently down to the Vingaard River. It was rich land. The clods turned up by Brumbar's iron-shod hooves were black and fertile.
The herds were thicker the closer to the river he got. He spent an entire day guiding Brumbar through ranks of rusty brown cows and calves. The heat and dust were so bad that he traded his helmet for a cloth bandanna, like the herd riders wore.
The herds converged on the Ford of Kerdu, an artificial shallows created centuries before by the Solamnic Knights (another benefit that the common folk had forgotten).
Thousands of small stones were dumped into the Vingaard River to make a fording place. As the river slowly scoured the stones away, each new generation on the river banks had to renew the ford with its own gathering of stones. A sort of winter festival had developed around the collecting and dumping of rocks in the river.
It soon became too congested for Sturm to ride, so he got off Brumbar and led the horse by his bridle. Here, by the river, the day's heat rapidly dispersed after sunset. Sturm walked down to the river bank where a hundred campfires blazed. The herders were settling for the night.
A half-dozen sun-browned faces turned up as Sturm approached the nearest camp.He raised his palm and said,
"My hands are open," the traditional herders' greeting.
"Sit," said the herd leader, identified by the carved steer horn that he wore on a thong around his neck, Sturm tied Brumbar to a small tree and joined the men.
"Sturm," he said, sitting.
"Onthar," said the leader. He pointed to the other men in turn. "Rorin, Frijje, Ostimar, and Belingen." Sturm nodded to each one.
"Share the pot?" said Onthar. A black kettle hung over the fire. Each man had to provide some ingredient in order to share the common meal. Herder's stew - an expression known throughout Krynn as meaning a little bit of everything.'
Sturm lifted the flap of his pack and saw the last of his provisions: an inch-thick slab of salt pork, two carrots, and a stoppered gourd half full of rye flour. He squatted by the kettle, took out his knife, and started slicing the meat.
"Been a good season?" he asked politely.
"Dry," said Onthar. "Too dry. Fodder on the lower plain is blowing away."
"No sickness, though," observed Frijje, whose straw-colored hair hung in two long braids. "We haven't lost a single calf to screwfoot or blue blister."
Shoving wispy red hair from his eyes, Rorin said, "Lot of raiders." He whetted a wicked-looking axe on a smooth gray stone. "Men and goblins together, in the same gang."
"I've seen that, too," Sturm said. "Farther south in Caergoth and Garnet."
Onthar regarded him with one thin brown eyebrow raised. "You're not from around here, are you?"
Sturm finished the salt pork and started slicing the carrots. "I was born in Solamnia, but grew up in Solace."
"Raise a lot of pigs down there, I hear," Ostimar said. His voice was deep and resonant, seemingly at odds with his small height and skinny body.
"Yes, quite a lot."
"Where you headed, Sturm?" asked Onthar.
"North."
"Looking for work?"
He stopped cutting. Why not? "If I can get some," he said.
"Ever drive cattle before?"
"No. But I can ride."
Ostimar and Belingen snorted derisively, but Onthar said, "We lost a man to goblin raiders two weeks ago, and that left us with a hole in our drag line. All you have to do is keep the beasts going ahead. Well be crossing the Vingaard tomorrow, heading for the keep."
"The keep? But it's been deserted for years," Sturm said.
"Buyer there."
"Sounds fine. What's the pay?"
"Four coppers a day, payable when you leave us."
Sturm knew he was supposed to haggle, so he said, "I couldn't do it for less than eight coppers a day."
"Eight!" exclaimed Frijje. "And him a show rider!"
"Five might be possible," said Onthar.
Sturm shook the gourd to break up the lumps of flour.
"Six?"
Onthar grinned, showing several missing teeth. "Six it is.
Not too much flour now - we're cooking stew, not baking bread." Sturm stirred in a handful of gray rye fl
our. Rorin gave him a copper bowl and spoon. The stew was dished up, and the men ate quickly and silently. Then they passed a skin around. Sturm took a swig. He almost choked; the bag held a potent, fermented cider. He swallowed and passed the skin on.
"Who's buying cattle at the keep?" he said, after everyone had eaten and drunk.
"Don't know," Onthar admitted. "Men have been coming back from Vingaard Keep for weeks with tales of gold, saying there is a buyer up there paying top coin for good beasts.
So the keep is where we're going."
The fire died down. Frijje produced a hand-whittled flute and began to blow lonely, lilting notes. The herders curled up on their single blankets and went to sleep. Sturm unsaddled Brumbar and curried him. He led the horse to the river for a drink and returned him to the sapling. That done, he made a bed with his blanket and the saddle.
The sky was clear. The silver moon was low in the south, while Lunitari was climbing toward its zenith. Sturm gazed at the distant red globe.
Had he really trod its crimson soil? Had he really fought tree-men, seen (and ridden) giant ants, and freed a chatter-box dragon from an obelisk of red marble? Here, on Krynn, among the simple, direct herdsmen, such memories were like a mad dream, fevered images now banished by the more practical concerns of Sturm's life.
The young knight slept, and dreamed that he was gallop-ing through Solace, pursuing a caped man who carried his father's sword. He never gained on the stranger. The vallenwood trees were bathed in a red glow, and all around Sturm felt the cold air echo with the sound of a woman's laughter.
Chapter 37
The Ford of Kerdu
Sturm was roughly shaken awake before the sun was up. All along the river's south bank the herders were stirring, packing their meager possessions on their horses, and preparing for another day's move. Sturm had no time for anything other than a brief cup of water. Frijje thrust some jerky in his hand and told him to mount up.
Belingen galloped to him and tossed him a light wooden pole with a bronze leaf-shaped head. This was his herd goad. When the cows were balky or wanted to wander in the wrong direction, he was to poke them with the goad to set them straight.
"And woe to you if you cut the hide," Belingen said.
"Onthar prides himself on his herd not being scarred." With an arrogant toss of his head, Belingen spurred his horse back to the front of the herd.
The cattle, more than nine hundred head, sensed the rise in activity and surged from side to side against the fringe riders, Two other herds had right-of-way over Onthar's, so the men had to bide their time as the other two swarms of cattle forded the river ahead of them. The Kerdu passage was a quarter-mile wide and more than half a mile across to the other bank. The ford's edges fell away sharply, and Ostimar warned Sturm not to stray off the stones.
"I've seen men and horses drop off the edge and never come up," he cautioned. "Nothing ever found but their goads and bandannas, floating on the water."
"I'll keep that in mind," Sturm replied.
The herd settled into a standard oval formation. Sturm couched his goad under his left arm. The bar was eight feet long, and he could easily touch the ground with it, even from as high a perch as Brumbar's back. Indeed, Sturm's own height, placed on the broad back of the Garnet horse, made him taller than any other rider in the group. He could see far across the tight mass of cows, their dusty coats and long horns always shifting, always moving, even when the herd itself was not in forward motion.
A horn blasted from the far shore, signaling that the previous herd had cleared the ford. Onthar stood in his stirrups and whipped his goad back and forth (there was a black pennant fixed to the tip). The riders whistled and shouted to stir the beasts forward. A wall of beef surged toward Sturm, but he yelled and waved the goad before the cows' faces.
The animals turned away to follow those in front.
The track down to the river was a morass. Thousands of cattle and horses had churned it up, and under the rising sun the mud stank. Onthar and the front riders splashed into the Vingaard with the herd bulls. The steers and cows came after, and the rear riders were last of all. The stench and bit-ing flies over the river were ferocious.
Brumbar put his heavy feet into the water. His iron shoes, suited to paved roads, did not provide a very sure grip on the round, wet rocks. Despite the uncertain footing, Brumbar went on, unperturbed. And then, perhaps twenty yards into the river, Sturm's horse slid sideways off the rocky ford.
Water rushed over Sturm's head. He immediately kicked free of the stirrups and thrust up for the surface. His head burst into the air, and he took a deep breath. Brumbar was out in the stream, swimming steadily for the south shore.
Frijje reined up and shouted, "You all right, Sturm?"
"Yes, the stupid horse slid off the ford!," He swam a few strokes toward the herdsman. Frijje extended the butt of this goad for Sturm to grab and hauled the soaked knight to the ford's sloping edge. Sturm stood up. Atop the stones, the water was only knee-deep.
"Can you ride me across, Frijje?" he asked.
"Can't leave the herd," was the reply. "You'll just have to catch up." Frijje rode on, long braids bouncing on his back.
Sturm slogged through the muddy water back to the south bank, where Brumbar had climbed out and was drying off in the morning sun.
"Come here, you ignorant brute," Sturm said, then smiled. An ignorant brute Brumbar might be, but the horse stood quietly after his watery ordeal, calmly awaiting his rider's pleasure. Sturm swung into the saddle and twisted Brumbar's head. Onthar's herd was almost to the other shore. Sturm had lost his goad, and his pride had taken a beating, too, but he wasn't finished.
"Heyah!" he cried, snapping the reins on Brumbar's neck.
The horse took off, big feet pounding down the bank and into the river. Straight down the center of the ford they went, Brumbar kicking up an impressive froth as he galloped. They gained the north side just as the last herder, Rorin, was leaving the water.
"Have a good swim?" Rorin asked, grinning.
"Not too bad," Sturm responded sheepishly. "Lend me a goad, will you? I've got to get back to my place." Rorin yanked an extra pole from a boot on his horse's neck and tossed it to Sturm. Sturm caught it neatly.
The cattle churned over the sandy flood plain on the Vingaard's north side. Here, at last, Brumbar's shoes proved their worth. While the herders' unshod ponies floundered in the loose sand, Sturm and Brumbar headed off a dangerous side movement by the rear third of the herd. Like some huge living tapestry, the herd and its riders climbed the bank to the drier, grass-covered plain of northern Solamnia. Once they were well clear of the river crossing, Onthar led them into a wide gully and halted the herd.
"Keep your place," he said as he rode up to Sturm. Onthar scanned the river for stragglers. "I hear you fell in," he added.
"Iron horseshoes and wet rocks don't make for a firm grip," Sturm said.
"Uh-huh. You lose the goad I gave you?"
"Yes, Onthar," Sturm said. "Rorin lent me another."
"Lost goad costs two coppers. I'll deduct it from your pay." Onthar swung around and rode on to speak with Rorin.
The more Sturm thought about it, the angrier he got with Onthar. To charge for the lost goad seemed downright petty.
Then the teachings of the Measure reminded Sturm to see the situation from Onthar's point of view. Maybe they hadn't known Brumbar was shod. Ostimar did advise him to stay away from the ford's edge. Onthar had originally paid for the goad he'd lost. Given the scarcity of hard money in a life like herding, charging two coppers for a lost stick wasn't petty. It was absolutely necessary.
Sturm pulled off his bandanna and wrung it out. His clothes would dry rapidly in the sun, and there was a long day's ride still to go. He straightened in the saddle and thought of himself as being on a war foray. Alert yet relaxed. That's the way his old friend, Soren, had practiced soldiering, as sergeant of the castle guard for Sturm's father.
A braver, more devot
ed man had never lived.
Onthar circumnavigated the herd, and when he was satisfied that all was in order, he returned to the head and signaled to resume the drive. The bawling calves and cows slowly came about as Onthar led them north and east toward Vingaard Keep, some sixty miles away.
* * * * *
It was a long, hard day, and the herders spent every minute of it in the saddle. Sturm had always thought of himself as an accomplished long-distance rider, but compared to Onthar's men, he was a tenderfoot after all. Except that it wasn't his feet that grew tender.
The herders rotated positions, moving slowly counter-clockwise around the herd. The midday meal, such as it was, was eaten when a man reached the front. Then there were no cows to watch, only the lay of the land ahead. Saddle food was jerky and cheese and raw onions, all washed down with bitter cider.
The sun was still well up when Onthar called a halt.
Sturm estimated that they'd covered twenty-five miles since crossing the river. Frijje, Belingen, and Rorin pushed the herd into a shallow ravine in the middle of the grassland.
Judging by the trampled grass and scoured ground, this pit had been used by previous herds on their way north. Ostimar and Onthar took Sturm on a circuit of the pit and showed him how to set up the fence that would keep the animals from wandering in the night.
"Fence?" Sturm said. He hadn't seen anyone carrying anything as bulky as a fence.
Onthar pulled a wooden stake about two feet long with a fork at the top from a canvas satchel and stuck it in the ground. He tied the end of a length of rope to the fork and stretched it out eight or ten feet, where Ostimar set another stake. On and on this went, until the whole herd was surrounded by a single thickness of rope.
"And this flimsy barrier will keep them in?" asked Sturm.
"Cows and steers aren't real wise," Ostimar explained.
"They'll think they can't push through the rope, so they won't try. 'Course, if a real panic set in, a stone wall wouldn't stop 'em."
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