one instant, he was talking and in the next, he was lying on the muddy grass with rain pattering on his face. His arms and legs were leaden and weak.
A dark form loomed over him. For a second, he was afraid. Lying there, helpless, Sturm was easy prey for a thief or assassin.
The stranger, still horsed, towered over him. Against the gray sky, with the rain in his eyes, all Sturm could see of him was dark hair, high forehead and drooping mustache. The cape was close about the man's shoulders, which were wide and powerful.
The stranger sat in the saddle, looking down at Sturm and saying nothing. Sturm managed to gasp, 'Who are you?'
The man parted the cape, revealing the hilt of a large sword. Sturm made out the shape of the pommel and some of the filigree work. With a start, he realized that he knew that sword. It was his father's.
'Beware of Merinsaard,' said the man, in a voice Sturm didn't recognize.
With tremendous effort, Sturm got to his knees. 'Who are you?' He reached out a muddy hand to the stranger.
Where he should have touched the leg of the man's horse, he met nothing. Horse and rider vanished, silently and com pletely.
Sturm staggered to his feet. The rain was over. Already the sun was poking through the tattered clouds. Brumbar was several yards away, drinking from a puddle. Nearby, a pine tree had been blasted to smoking splinters by lightning.
Sturm put his face in his hands. Had he seen what he thought he'd seen? Who was the phantom rider? And what was Merinsaard? A person, a place?
Wearily he mounted Brumbar. The big horse shifted under Sturm's weight, and his broad hooves squelched in the mud. Sturm looked around. There were no other hoof prints in sight besides Brumbar's.
Though described as a plain, the country of Solamnia was not perfectly flat, as were, say, the Plains of Dust. There were ridges and gullies, dry creek beds and small stands of trees that grew like islands in the midst of the grassy steppe land. Sturm rode north at an easy pace, eating wild pears off the trees and filling his water bottle from the herders' wells.
He soon found himself moving among small herds of cat tle, tended and guarded by hard-looking peasants with mauls and bows. They watched him closely as he rode by.
Raiders were common, and in their eyes he might have been a scout for a larger band of rustlers. Also, Sturm wore the mustache and horned helmet of a Solamnic Knight — items not calculated to make him popular among the people who had overthrown the Order. Sturm didn't care. He rode proudly, sword turned out to show that he was ready for trouble. At night, he took special care with polishing his hel met, boots, and sword, to make them shine.
He decided to avoid the city of Solanthus. After the over throw, Solanthus had proclaimed itself a free city, not sub ordinate to anyone but its own Guildmasters. Sturm had heard of several knights, friends and compatriots of his father, who had been imprisoned and executed in Solan thus. While he was willing to proclaim his heritage in open country, he saw no reason to walk into the city and put his head into a noose.
The country beyond Solanthus sloped gently down to the
Vingaard River. It was rich land. The clods turned up by
Brumbar's iron-shod hooves were black and fertile.
The herds were thicker the closer to the river he got. He spent an entire day guiding Brumbar through ranks of rusty brown cows and calves. The heat and dust were so bad that he traded his helmet for a cloth bandanna, like the herd riders wore.
The herds converged on the Ford of Kerdu, an artificial shallows created centuries before by the Solamnic Knights
(another benefit that the common folk had forgotten).
Thousands of small stones were dumped into the Vingaard
River to make a fording place. As the river slowly scoured the stones away, each new generation on the river banks had to renew the ford with its own gathering of stones. A sort of winter festival had developed around the collecting and dumping of rocks in the river.
It soon became too congested for Sturm to ride, so he got off Brumbar and led the horse by his bridle. Here, by the river, the day's heat rapidly dispersed after sunset. Sturm walked down to the river bank where a hundred campfires blazed. The herders were settling for the night.
A half-dozen sun-browned faces turned up as Sturm approached the nearest camp.He raised his palm and said,
'My hands are open,' the traditional herders' greeting.
'Sit,' said the herd leader, identified by the carved steer horn that he wore on a thong around his neck, Sturm tied
Brumbar to a small tree and joined the men.
'Sturm,' he said, sitting.
'Onthar,' said the leader. He pointed to the other men in turn. 'Rorin, Frijje, Ostimar, and Belingen.' Sturm nodded to each one.
'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!'
