Owlsight

snuggled into her bed, leaving them on the little table beside the bed for a quick bite if someone pulled her out in the middle of the night.

But that night, at least, her sleep was unbroken, and the cakes and cider made a perfectly good breakfast. It was an unexpected luxury to eat breakfast in bed, with the rain drumming down on the roof outside and the savory aroma of bean soup filling the workshop.

She didn’t linger long, though; she was up and washed and clothed quickly, dressing for the weather. No telling when she’d be called out again.

I could do myself a big favor by getting baskets ready to snatch up, she decided, and lined up four on the workbench. Into one went standard remedies for minor human ailments, and into the second the same sorts of things for animals. Into the other two went medicines for more serious complications. She didn’t think she’d have to use the one for people - but the Fellowship beasts were so sensitive -

She’d no sooner finished the fourth basket when someone knocked on the door, then came in without waiting for a reply.

It was Alys, from the Fellowship.

Keisha grabbed the fourth basket without waiting to hear what brought her. “It’s the sheep, right?”

Alys nodded. “Cough,” she said anxiously. “It’s odd, a dry, hacking sort of cough.”

“Hah!” Alys didn’t recognize it, that was clear, but Keisha did. Her own family flock had gotten the illness in a rainy spring like this one. She turned to get a different jar of heavy concentrate down off the top shelf and put it in her basket as well. “No worries, I’ve got what we’ll need; they’ll be fine as long as we get them warm and dry and get my stuff into them. Come on.”

She swung on her rain cape and slipped her feet into her clogs, heading straight out the door. Alys followed, her brow creased anxiously.

“How are we going to get them dry and warm?” she asked. “They’re soaked to the skin!”

Keisha stopped in the doorway and made a mental inventory of the Fellowship buildings, and realized Alys was right, there was no way to get the sheep under cover on Fellowship property. But there was the village threshing barn, empty and unused at this time of year, and with the favors the Fellowship had done the village, they were certainly owed a favor from the village in return.

“Get your dogs and herders and bring all the sheep up to the threshing barn,” she ordered. “We’ll use that until the rain is over. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it’s right. I’ll meet you there.”

Alys took her word as good, and trotted off through the puddles toward the Fellowship holding. Keisha stopped just long enough at the Mayor’s house to confirm the right of the Fellowship to use the octagonal barn until the rains were done - so long as they supplied fodder for the sheep and cleaned up after them.

Keisha hurried to the barn and let down the oiled canvas interior sides that shut out the wind and rain when need be. The canvas hadn’t come cheap, but in the rush of prosperity following the sale of the barbarians’ looted goods, it had been a sound investment. Now the barn could be used for many purposes in all weathers, even in the dead of winter - it became a tight, weatherproof and windproof tent with a fine shingled roof and seven external supporting walls of wood. It was a tight squeeze, but you could even hold a Faire in there.

The eighth wall, the one opposite the door, was of stone and did not have a canvas cover, but that was the very last thing it needed.

By the time she’d done lacing all the canvas panels together, the poor, sodden sheep showed up, bleating and coughing pathetically. No doubt about that cough; Keisha had heard it before, and the illness “felt” the same as soon as she touched her hands to one of the sheep.

“Bring them in, then start squeezing the water out of their fleeces,” she ordered, as Alys and four more Fellowship shepherds hustled their charges into the barn. “When you’ve got them all as dry as you can, bring clean straw in here for them to bed down in. I know it’ll seem like a waste, but trust me, I want it belly-deep for the sheep in here. They have to get warm and stay warm, or you might start losing lambs.”

Nods all around, neither questions, nor arguments. Keisha went outside to start a fire in the big oven built into the eighth - stone - side of the barn.

The door of the oven faced the outside; inconvenient to say the least, but entirely necessary when you realized that the floor of the barn would be covered in flammable things like straw whenever the barn was in use. There was always a huge pile of wood under a cover next to the oven; it would be a while before the stone wall heated up enough for the warmth to build up in the barn, but that was all right. This would solve the problem of getting the delicate sheep warmed clear through.

And if any other animals start looking seedy, they can be brought here, too. She reminded herself to tell the Mayor that on her way back to her workshop. Once the fire was going well, Keisha stacked logs all around it, and went back into the barn.