Sistian and Diera Beynom finished morning meal—both late this morning for their duties, but they were in charge of their respective orders at St. Sidryn’s, and no one begrudged their luxury of occasionally lingering at morning meal.
Abersford’s fighting men were organized into Thirds of fifty men each. Carnigan Puvey and Denes Vegga belonged to the one Third currently in Abersford. A second Third of the local levy was, “by chance,” on a scheduled patrol duty, this time farther north than usual. Eywellese riders had crossed several times into the northern districts, and Hetman Keelan had ordered increased patrols. Those fifty Abersford men were seventy miles away and a day out of semaphore or courier contact.
The final Third of the Abersford men spent the previous night thirty miles west at a Gwillamer Province coastal village that had spotted sea raider ships unloading men several miles farther west. No attack had yet occurred, but the local Gwillamer boyerman had invoked the Tri-Clan Alliance agreement, and Abersford, being the closest Keelan settlement, was obliged to respond. Denes Vegga, the local magistrate, the overall supervisor of the Thirds, and the direct commander of one of the three, vociferously objected to leaving the area with so few men. A rider carried Gwillamer’s request to Langnor Vorwich, the district boyerman, who reluctantly ruled the request had to be honored and promised to start additional men moving toward Abersford by that afternoon. The village and the abbey would only be short fighting men for a few hours the next morning.
Both Carnigan and Vegga were already at work—Carnigan helping a village smithy repair an iron railing at the abbey hospital, and Vegga at the local authority office, preparing to ride out accompanying the registrar to a farm delinquent in taxes. The farm itself was productive enough to pay the taxes, even in these times, yet the owner managed always to be late. The farmer was also a disagreeable character, and the registrar agent asked Vegga to accompany him.
Halla Bower had just walked her oldest child, Manwyn, to the village school. At six years old, he would attend the small local school for another three to four years before she and her husband decided whether to send him to the abbey school, where older children could further their education beyond that needed for most trades. Her husband worked in his father’s leather shop, and although he knew he would someday inherit the shop, he didn’t intend for his son to be obligated from birth to take over the business. Halla loved her husband for this attitude, for the consideration he always showed his family and other people, and just because … she loved him.
After returning home, Halla put down Manwyn’s sister. At eighteen months, the toddler was getting a little big for Halla to carry too long. As usual, it would be a busy day for Halla. Clothes to wash, clothes to mend, their vegetable garden to tend, turnips past ready to pull and store in their root cellar, a return trip to the school to collect Manwyn after the midday bell, and tending to the girl. The toddler was walking and running, sort of, and would soon start training to use the outhouse. If that training took hold in the next few months, then Halla would have a six-months’ respite; she hadn’t told her husband about another child on the way.
Yozef Kolsko had risen with only a slight hangover from the night’s pub session and had eaten a morning meal with Elian. Brak had eaten earlier and had been at work around the property before light. Yozef didn’t see the need for the elderly man to rise so early and work so hard, but his suggestions met with disapproving looks from the proud older man, and Yozef dropped the subject. Elian wasn’t as regimented as Brak. While she saw no need to rise as early as her husband, Yozef’s sleeping well past sunrise seemed decadent. However, since she wasn’t always hungry when she rose, and since she perceived that Yozef didn’t always wish to eat alone, many days she waited, and they ate together. Over the months, Yozef learned what he thought must be every detail of her life and Brak’s, the past and current lives of their four children, and the preferred methods of preserving local products and cooking the traditional Caedellium dishes. Despite his hearing most of it multiple times, somehow the gentle nature and kindness of the older woman and her pleasures at what seemed to Yozef a hard life never bored him. It was meditative and a lesson for finding life’s positives.
Today, Yozef was due to meet with Cadwulf to go over his total finances; then Filtin had another of his ideas about improving the petroleum distillation. Most of Filtin’s ideas proved impractical at the moment, others impractical now but perhaps someday implementable, and occasionally one was truly innovative, including several ideas that helped narrow the curve between kerosene production and demand.
After the morning meal, Yozef started off on the walk into Abersford. Brak thought he should ride, both because of his stature as a prominent citizen and because of his abysmal horsemanship. “How yuh expect to get better if yuh don’t do it?” Yozef declined most days, unless he had appointments. The walk didn’t take long, and he needed the exercise. It gave him a chance to think, and he still didn’t like horses or trust his horsemanship, even with Seabiscuit.
Yonkel Miron loved roaming the beaches near Abersford. Not every day, but often. By planning, he left home early for school, so he could detour half an hour along the shore. He bragged he had the best seashell collection in the district and occasionally found an intact and rare enough shell to sell for a few krun in the village. Then there was always the chance he would fine something mysterious washed up. After all, had it not been he who first found Yozef Kolsko—the strange man who washed up on their beach naked and within a year turned into an important figure and for whom Yonkel’s father and older brothers worked in the lantern-making shop, or factory, as Yozef called it?
His father kept telling Yonkel he should call Yozef by his formal title—Ser Kolsko. Yonkel always replied that Yozef himself had given permission to use his first name, and “You wouldn’t want to chance offending Yozef, would you?”
Yonkel attended the abbey school this year. Yozef had spoken with Yonkel’s father about how the boy was smart, and in the future there’d be many good-paying jobs and professions that required more education than was traditional on Caedellium. The father had been hesitant, but a family gathering decided that the pay from Kolsko’s various businesses had put the extended family in such a good financial position, and since Kolsko had taken a personal interest in Yonkel, that the boy could attend more schooling. Yonkel overheard Yozef telling one abbey brother that in a few years, Yonkel might be a candidate for a scholasticum—whatever that was.
He took off his shoes to walk in the surf without ruining them, something his otherwise tolerant mother would be angry about for months. The spent water running up the sand swirled around his feet as he moved along, eyes sweeping back and forth for signs of shells worth collecting. The morning mist still hung over the beach and the sea, just now lifting in patches. The gulls and the murvors flew back and forth, scolding him when he came upon a cluster of them on the sand.
He had just inspected a glitter in the sand, which turned out to be only a fragment and not a buried complete shell. He shifted his pack containing his shoes and schoolbooks, when he raised up and faced out to sea. There, through a break in the mist, he saw a line of sailing ships right offshore, the first one only a few hundred yards from the beach. As he watched, startled, he could see the first ship drop anchor and a frenzy of activity on a deck crowded with armed men. The first longboat started to be lowered, and the second vessel likewise dropped anchor. Shoes, schoolbooks, and papers forgotten as the pack dropped onto the surf, Yonkel Miron ran toward the abbey as fast as his eight-year-old legs would permit.