"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 every thing.'
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 sin gle 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 car rots. "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 flour. 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, say ing 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 unsad dled 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 vallen wood 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
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 Osti mar 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 pre vious 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, Brum bar 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.