Chapter 7 – Clear Blue Sky #4
He didn’t so much as twitch. Ophele bit her lip.
“Master Wen,” she said loudly. “Excuse me!”
“What, what, what what what?!” He went off like a volcano. “Your Grace, I am stirring.”
“I—I just wondered if you had some apples or carrots to spare,” she stammered. “If you point to where they are, I won’t trouble you—”
“You are not setting foot in me kitchen,” he said, pointing at her as if he were a Vallethi sorcerer about to level her with a curse. “What d’ye need them for?”
“A donkey.” This answer did not impress him, and she hurriedly explained.
“They gave me a donkey to help at the wall. He’s old and he’s just been living on scrub brush and he’s going to be hauling water for everyone all day.
So I want to give him something good to eat.
Like carrots? Even old ones. Please.” The words tumbled out in a cluster of fits and starts and Master Wen looked more incredulous with every syllable, but she had to try. “His name is Eugene.”
“The donkey’s name is Eugene.”
She nodded, petrified.
“What a coincidence, me sainted mother’s name was Eugene,” Wen said, hands on his vast hips.
“Well, I suppose if it’s for Master fu—bloody Eugene, of course, of course.
” It was a soaring fit of sarcasm, but he still abandoned his stirring and reached into a cupboard to produce a small bundle of ancient carrots.
“Not one foot in me kitchen,” he warned, and tossed them.
Ophele clung to the doorframe with one hand and snatched them out of the air.
“Thank you!” She said breathlessly. “Thank you, Master Wen!”
“You’re a blooming duchess, me name’s just Wen!” He roared after her as she escaped, clutching her prize.
“You actually managed to wheedle it out of him?” Sir Miche looked impressed.
“Carrots for Master Eugene,” she said, tickled by the title, and broke off a bit of one to present it victoriously to the donkey.
They spent the day getting used to each other.
It was a different routine, only a little less arduous even with the barrel.
It was a relief not to have to haul buckets up and down the hill, but her hands were blistered from the windlass after she filled the barrel for the third time, and Ophele tore up her handkerchief to bandage her palms, hoping no one would notice.
The cart and barrel were also just short enough for her to reach on tiptoe, and she didn’t dare to climb on the cart.
In the first place, it might fall to pieces, and in the second, Eugene sometimes took it in his head to start walking while she was busy with the buckets.
“No, no, not yet,” she admonished, hurrying to grab his lead rope.
He might be elderly and small, but he was still surprisingly strong; when she tried tying the lead rope around her waist to keep him from wandering while she refilled buckets, she found herself being dragged along with the cart for a dozen paces, to the amusement of the watching masons.
“Need help, m’lady?” called one, as she snatched at a passing gorse bush.
“No, thank you!”
But she didn’t hold it against him. Master Eugene was learning his new job, he was bound to make a few mistakes. And he was such a sweet and grandfatherly little fellow, a little absent-minded perhaps, but he never shied once from the racket on the wall.
The smiths also approved of this new arrangement.
At the noon meal they sent a delegation to propose that Eugene haul their own water barrels to and from the well, and in exchange they would spell her on the windlass.
As Ophele was working assiduously to hide her blistered hands from the eagle-eyed Sir Miche, she happily agreed to this arrangement.
“That was wise,” he said approvingly from behind her, where he was lazing against a tree. “Never give away anything for free, my lady, or the next thing you know these swindlers will have you begging for an hour of the donkey’s time.”
“Never,” Ophele vowed, feeding Master Eugene another carrot.
She bathed and brushed him before she bathed and brushed herself that night, and only left after the stableboys had promised to look after him as respectfully as the big war horses.
It had still been a hard day. She would almost have preferred to skip dinner rather than leave the steaming comfort of her cauldron, where the boiling water was the only thing that soothed her aching legs.
She had done the math as she walked endlessly back and forth at the foot of the wall, and she reckoned she had walked nearly fifteen miles that day.
Only the thought of Sir Miche having to fish her out of her cauldron kept her from falling asleep in the water.
She was almost asleep later that night when her remaining trouble popped into her mind, and she jerked instantly back to wakefulness. Turning over, she faced the wall behind her bed.
“Dol?”
There was a moment of silence, and then… “Yes, m’lady?”
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Might do,” he said cautiously.
“Could you wake me up a little before dawn?” she asked. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I don’t wake up on my own, and I don’t want to be late. Could you bang your sword and shield together or something?”
“Folk in the cots next door would hang me if I did that, lady,” he said.
He sounded like he was trying not to laugh, but at least he hadn’t refused.
And he was right; she didn’t want to trouble the neighbors.
But she could hardly let him come into the cottage, the duke could have his head for such an outrage.
“Just call, as loud as you dare,” she said finally. “And maybe have one of the other guards knock on the door? Who else is out there?”
“Yvain,” said a new voice from the wall at the foot of her bed, startling her. “Sorry, lady. Walls are thin.”
“Oh. Nice to meet you,” she said, glancing from one wall to the other. “Would you mind knocking, Yvain?”
“Don’t mind. I’m a heavy sleeper myself.”
“Thank you both.” She burrowed back under her covers with a lighter heart. “Good night. I hope it’s not too boring, just sitting out there.”
“We like boring,” Dol assured her.
“Good night, lady,” said Yvain.
* * *
They met Bram a few miles outside Ferrede five days later, and Remin was impressed again by the sheer size of his own duchy.
“No wagons in or out of town,” Bram reported as they sat together at dusk, forgoing campfires to avoid arousing suspicion in the nearby town.
It was better if the townspeople didn’t know they were being watched.
“My Meinhem scouts reported back yesterday, no movement on their side, either. These towns are just too far apart to communicate regularly, Rem.”
He agreed. These were small towns, backwaters.
There was only one road in Ferrede. Forty-some cottages spread across the countryside surrounded by acres of planting, a windmill creaked on a lonely hilltop, and eight houses clustered together in a hollow and were likely considered “the town.” It was an isolated place that had survived a century of armies tramping by mostly because it wasn’t near anything of tactical value and the people were too stubborn to leave.
He wondered how they’d been coping with the ghouls.
“What do you think?” asked Huber. There was a glint of copper in his eyes in the sunlight, the legacy of a Noreveni ancestor. In the distance, they could see a single horse and wagon trundling from the town toward the mill.
“I don’t think the whole town was behind it,” Remin said slowly.
“If they were, then we would’ve seen more contact between them and the bandits.
I’m betting there’s an old man and a girl somewhere in town.
Might be someone’s sister or sweetheart that just wanted to help the deserters.
We’re far enough from the border that they’re more Vallethi than Empire up here. ”
“Rem,” said Huber. “If it’s a girl and an old man—”
“I offered them amnesty.” And if the girl had been helping her sweetheart, or her brother, she would have done better to tell him to build a hut and start farming. The deserters could have settled anywhere in the valley, and Remin would have looked the other way, as long as they were peaceful.
But they hadn’t done that.
“I need to talk to them first,” he decided.
“As their lord, I’m worried about the bandits that have been harassing other villages in the area.
I also want to help them prepare for what’ll be coming out of the mountains in a few months.
We’ll see how they respond, and keep our eyes open for an old man and a teenage girl.
Juste, you go to the mill while we’re making our greetings in town. See who’s in charge of the grain.”
He suspected that that was where they would find the pair in question. And the behavior of the townspeople would determine whether he took the betrayers away quietly or hanged them from the larger of the two trees in the town square.
There was no hint of trouble from the village elder, a very elderly man named Yewen Brodrim who was a little hard of hearing, but seemed in full possession of his wits otherwise.
“The Duke of Andelin?” he said loudly, looking automatically toward Remin, who had a nobleman’s bearing even when he was in the middle of dismounting his horse. “Himself? Well, well, we must be honored, honored indeed! We will be pleased to offer whatever we have, Your Grace.”
He bowed, hands together in the Vallethi style.
“We heard there were bandits operating in the area,” Remin said, equally loudly.
He wanted friendly relationships with even his smallest villages; Duke Ereguil was always saying that happy people were productive people.
“We won’t strain your hospitality, elder, but would you mind calling your folk together tonight?
We also want to see how you’re coping with the new Andelin wildlife. ”
“Bastard devils,” Elder Brodrim declared loudly. “It’s good of you to trouble yourself, Your Grace. Folk are busy with the planting, but I reckon I can gather a few together.”