54. Riders
Riders
The pull closed itself out.
Tomatoes off the vines into jars on the shelf.
The last of the onion crop pulled and laid on Jeremiah's screens until the skins thickened the way they were supposed to thicken.
The pumpkin held on the hill while the autumn cool came in through the mornings and went off again by mid-day.
The herbs hung in their bundles in the kitchen and gave the kitchen the smell of a kitchen meant to be lived in through the cold months.
The festival food took longer to put away than the food had any right to take.
Carol came down the lane two or three days a week and helped with the preserving.
Most of the gifts had been put up by hands that knew how to put a thing up, which was the only thing that kept the pile from going to waste.
The McGraths' sausages went into the smokehouse against Kain's ribs in the rafters, the jams went onto the high shelf above the stove, the pickles took the corner of the larder, and the breads got eaten or got cut for crumbs to bind a winter meatloaf the way Mark had once told him on the road out of Lathemtown, working a stub of pencil on the back of a roster sheet.
When the first cool morning came in and stayed, Kain took the bow off the wall.
A man had to think about winter. What was on hand.
What wasn't. What could be got. How long the not-having would last. Last winter's smoked fish had run thin but had run, and this winter he meant to have more, and to put more game in beside it.
He spent the cool mornings in the trees along the back of the property with the bow.
Deer. Rabbits. A pair of squirrels he'd turn into stew at the end of a long day.
The carcasses came back to the smokehouse and the bones went in the soup pot.
Carol didn't come along for the hunting. The fishing was different.
Into the back end of the cool season, the two of them sat at the river that ran past the south edge of the property. Kain had his line in the water. Carol was threading a worm onto her hook with the patience of a woman who had handled worse things on a farm and didn't mind worse things on a hook.
"I didn't go fishing much as a girl," she said. "My father finds it boring. We had the animals through the winter and we didn't need the river for it."
"Animal farm has the cold months covered most years."
"You'll get there."
"Will I?"
"You'll have horses one day."
Kain cast his line. The float settled on the slow water near the bend.
"A man can't eat a horse."
"A man eats the work a horse does for him.
A horse breaks ground a man can't break in a season.
A horse pulls a wagon a man can't pull at all.
A horse carries a man to a place a man can't walk to in the time the man has.
The eating of a horse is the eating a man does on the back of the work the horse did. "
Kain looked at her over the line. "You've thought on the matter."
"I've thought on the matter."
Her line jumped, and her eyes went where her eyes went when the line jumped, which was bright.
"Got one."
She brought a catfish up out of the river.
The cat thrashed at the end of the line, splashing the bank and twisting the line into the shape a catfish twisted a line into when the cat meant business.
Kain held the bucket. Carol dropped the cat in beside the two cats they had pulled from the bend earlier.
He worked the hook free of the cat's lip while she threaded a fresh worm, and they were back at the line within the minute.
Kain's line jerked. He hauled in another cat the size of his forearm and dropped it in the bucket.
"A man learns to fish on the road if he's on the road long enough," he said.
"There are only so many sources of food when you're moving with a company and the inn is two days off and the rations the company drew at the last town are thin.
A river is a river, and a fish is a fish, and a worm is a worm.
A man with patience can put a meal in a pot most evenings. "
"Sarah taught you fishing."
"Sarah taught me the woods. Fishing was the easy part of the woods. The deer were the hard part."
"The deer."
"There are more kinds of deer than a man would think.
They don't all walk the same ground. They don't all walk it at the same hour.
A man hunting deer needs to know which deer he's hunting before he picks the place he's going to wait.
Sarah could read a print and tell me which kind had made it and what the kind had been doing when it made the print.
There were stretches of country she hadn't walked in and she wouldn't guess on.
Sarah didn't guess on a thing she didn't know. "
Carol nodded. "Sarah sounds like she was a person worth the knowing."
"She was."
Kain reset his hook.
"Fish are easier. A worm on a hook and a line in the water gets you most fish. The river fish are mostly fit to eat. Some are bony enough that they aren't worth the work. Some taste like the bottom of the river. A man learns which is which by the eating."
"Sea fish."
"Sea fish I don't know. Never worked the coast."
"Then I won't pull a sea fish in the river to test you."
"Appreciate it."
Hoofbeats came in along the lane. Fast. Faster than a wagon. Faster than a man who didn't have a reason. The pace held all the way to the gate of Kain's farm and stopped at the rail.
Kain set his jaw. "That'll be for me."
Carol was already pulling her line in.
"I'll take the fish to Sasha. Go on."
"Appreciate it."
Kain reeled his line and stood up and took the bucket between them, and they walked up the bank.
At the gate of the farm a pony was tied at the rail. Oren stood beside it. The boy's eyes were wide and his cheeks were red from the ride.
"They're here. Sam sent me to tell you. They're here."
Kain set the bucket on the porch step. "Who?"
"The Guild riders. Three of them. At Sam's store right now."
Kain looked at Carol. She lifted the bucket. "I'll be at the Kettle." He nodded once and went to the rail and untied Roan.
Three war horses stood at the rail outside Sam's store.
Each was a half head taller than Roan at the withers, longer through the body, deeper in the chest. Two of them were the red of a horse bred to carry a man into work, and the third was black through the coat and the mane both.
Leather barding was rolled and lashed at the saddle skirts, not on the horses in the moment, but ready to come out at need.
The horses stamped at the boards of the boardwalk.
Kain hitched Roan to the post at the far end of the rail, away from the war horses, who wouldn't have welcomed a working farm horse in among them. He paused at the rail to look at the saddlebags.
Mana stones at the top of one bag, a dozen at least. Some read for ambient mana.
Some took the measure of a creature against the Guild's scale.
Some made marks on a slate when the mana around them shifted.
Tape lines. Rules. A folded surveyor's rod.
Small nets the size of a man's head, built to hold a thing alive long enough to draw a picture of it.
Lanterns. Rolls of paper. A thing he didn't recognize and didn't need to.
Kain set his shoulders and went inside.
Three Guild people stood at the counter of Sam's store.
The leader was a woman past forty with hair the color of pewter at the roots and not much grey through the rest. The crest of the Adventurer's Guild was set into the steel of her breastplate in red enamel and silver wire.
The shoulder patch sewn to her cloak was a B in heavy thread on the field of dark green the Guild used for survey rank.
The two younger men flanking her wore the same crest and the same field on their patches with a C where her B was.
Backup. Trainees on the run-up to their own jobs.
Sam was across the counter from them with the long face he wore when a thing had landed in his store that the store hadn't been built to handle.
The three of them turned to look at Kain when the door went shut behind him, and Kain stayed at the door a beat to let them look.
The leader read him. She took in the shoulders. The way the hands sat at the sides. The angle of the body in the door. She didn't take long. She had the answer before he came off the door.
"You'd be Kain Asheld."
"I would."
"I'm Hale."
She held out a hand. Kain took it. Her grip was the grip of a person who had been on the road for the better part of three weeks and meant to be back on the road by the end of the day. Short, level, no holding for any second longer than the work asked.
"Formerly with the Silver Hands."
"Formerly."
"I'm sorry for the company. Hard to lose a kit like that."
"It's a stretch behind me."
「New Contact: Hale」
「Class: Adventurer's Guild Surveyor (B-Rank)」
Hale looked him over one more time, and her eyes did a thing in passing across the patch of work-shirt and the dirt at the cuffs and the boots that had walked a hundred mornings of garden.
He could see she had a thought on it and wouldn't say the thought aloud. The thought wasn't one he cared about.
"You took the gryphon."
"I did."
"Solo."
"Solo."
"Impressive. The bounty came through your local contact."
"I had no claim that was Guild work," Kain said. "It threatened the village. No one in town could face it. I did what was in front of me to do. If I tread on a Guild toe in the doing of it I'd hear the matter raised."
"No toe was tread on. The country down to the gryphon range is open to a man who can hold it. You did the holding. The Guild will not raise the matter."
"Appreciated."
"You found the dungeon."