Страница 55 из 156
Aylward gri
"Where's Edain?" he asked Tamar, when the first draught of the dark brew had gone down his throat; school was only four days a week this time of year, with the farming calendar starting to creak into motion. His eldest son wouldn't be willingly inside.
Tamar gave an evil chuckle. "Helping Mom. She roped him into minding Fand and Dick and Mrs. Smith's kids while they turn the cheeses," she said.
Aylward smiled back, and the other two men laughed; for an active seven-year-old boy on a fine spring day child-minding would be purgatorial.
Miguel looked out over the field as he stretched and worked his shoulders. "Not so bad," he said with satisfaction in his voice.
"Not 'alf bad," Aywlard agreed.
Nothing skimped or shirked, he thought to himself, nodding. They'd put honest sweat into the effort, and hard-won skill, and it showed. The disked field looked as smooth and rich as a cup of chocolate.
"You know what I like about farming?" Miguel went on.
"The lying about late in the morning?" Aylward asked, mock-solemn. "The freedom from worry and care?"
All three men and the girl laughed, but Miguel went on: "It is, what's the word, straightforward. My children, I will never have to explain to them what it is their father does far away in some office. With the help of God"-he crossed himself-"we grow the food we eat. This is simple."
Then he shrugged a little self-consciously, though nobody was disagreeing, and scooped up a mug of the beer. "So, patron, what do we do next?"
Aylward wiped his mouth with the napkin and tossed it back into the basket. "I'll take the team over to the Oak Field and give it a going-over with the spring-tooth cultivator while you two are finishing up the harrowing 'ere," he said. "Folding the sheep on it last autumn was an easy way to dung the land, but there were too many weed seeds in it for comfort. That's the price of keeping them on rough grazing."
"Didn't we do that field already?" Miguel asked.
"I want to make certain and sure. It'll be a right cockup if that couch grass comes back on us. Then tomorrow we can get the compost out on the rest of the truck plot and disk it in, and some muck from that old stack by the field-byres. The rootstock on the new cherry orchard looks good, so we can start grafting on the scions in a week or-"
The dark man nodded, listening carefully, frowning in concentration. Good, Aylward thought. Miguel wasn't just hard-working and willing; he was an eager learner on the thinking part of ru
His voice cut off abruptly at the sound of galloping hooves, and everyone reached for the weapons that were always within reach, buckling on their sword belts. He and Hurin strung their longbows and slung their quivers over their backs; Miguel picked up the spear he carried instead, since he had trouble hitting a barn as yet unless he was inside it and the doors were closed. Tamar looked startled, but she readied her own light child's bow and drifted backward a little, ready to jump to any direction her stepfather might give.
"One rider," Hurin said, cocking his head and using his keen youngster's hearing.
Despite the sobering bite of caution, Aylward gri
Harry-Hurin had blushed every time he saw Sam for weeks after.
Not that I'm one to point a finger, he thought generously.
Back when he was Hurin's age he'd dyed his hair blond because a girl told him it would make him look like Michael Caine, who he'd admired tremendously anyway, having seen the film Zulu -often-at an impressionable age. The color had come out more like a bright carrot orange, the girl had dropped him like a hot brick, which was more than she'd ever done with her knickers, and his father had hooted himself red-faced every breakfast for months as the botched mop grew out. Eighteen was the right age to make a proper burke of yourself, and there were worse ways than playing make-believe with your friends.
"Coming fast up the main road from the west," Hurin went on; there was no nonsense in him when serious matters were at stake.
The rider trotted into view, reined in and around when he saw them in the field, backing up a few yards and then putting his mount at the fence. It cleared ditch and boards and spreading, white-flowered hawthorn and landed with a spurt of damp clods under ironshod hooves, a goodish jump and fine riding. In the saddle was a nondescript young man with long, dark brown hair done in a queue through a silver ring, not a Mackenzie or at least not wearing a kilt; he was dressed instead in jacket and pants of plain green homespun linsey-woolsey, mottled with streaks of brown. A horn-and-sinew horseman's recurve bow rode in a case at his left knee with a round shield slung over it, a quiver over his back was stuffed with gray-fletched arrows, and a good, practical straight sword hung at his broad, brass-studded belt.
"Mae gova
"That's me," Sam Aylward said, and got the expecting someone taller look he often did from those who knew him by reputation only. "Sorry if I don't live up to the stories. And who are you?"
"I'm called Pilimor, sir."
Or Pillock for short, Aylward didn't say aloud. The young man didn't smile as he leaned over and took Aylward's hand; he looked tired and a little frightened.
"I've got a message for the First Armsman from the Hiril Astrid."
He pulled an envelope out of one saddlebag. It was a brown office type, with the little folding split tin thing for closing it through a hole in the flap, in this case covered with a blob of off-white candle-wax stamped with the Dunedain seal. That was a starry thing of ancient majesty dreamed up by Eilir about six months ago and set in rings for her and Astrid by a metalworker in Corvallis.
He flicked the wax off with his thumb and carefully bent back the metal wings rather than ripping the paper; nobody was going to make any more of these anytime soon. Inside was a hand-drawn map of the Waldo Hills just east and north of the ruins of Salem; he recognized it at once, mainly because he'd been studying the Willamette Valley with professional thoroughness since that vacation in the Cascades just before the Change, and also because he'd taught
Astrid and Eilir and many another how to sketch a field map. Arrows and notes were drawn across it in a close, neat hand. The message with it was short and to the point, despite the opening flourishes:
From Astrid Hiril Dunedain, suila