Old Runel was dead, he thought with a flash of regret. Old Runel and all the Ruathan begets as well as the bloodlines of runners back to the Crossing. He’d never thought he would rue the loss of that man.
Skinny trotted, its hocks well under it and with a fine forward extension. Too bad the creature was gelded. Ruatha had once had far better specimens to propagate. Alessan inhaled against the hope at ^e end of this track. He tried to keep from wondering which animals
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Dag had seen fit to take with him. If only Dag had included one breeding pair of the Lord Leef’s heavy carters … The records of animals destroyed that Norman had started to keep had been lost when the raceflats temporary hospital had been abandoned. Alessan wished futilely that he had made time to look in OK the beasthold that frantic morning before he had taken ill.
Alessan came to the fork in the track, each direction leading to nursery fields. Dag would have taken the less accessible one, he decided, but he paused long enough to see if there had been a message left at the division. Not a rag, a bone, or an unnatural formation of the pebbles. Nine days had passed since Dag left with Fergal. Fear burrowed from the trap in his mind to which Alessan had banished
it. He dug his heels into Skinny, and the beast responded instantly,
skittering at a good rate up the track, high breathing as it caught the excitement generated in its rider. Runners were considered stupid, had few ways to communicate with riders, and yet occasionally one seemed to know exactly what was going on in the human it bore. Alessan laid a soothing hand on Skinny’s arched neck and brought the animal to a more sensible pace.
Then they were at the rise that led to the pasture and, for a heart-breaking moment, Alessan could see nothing of man or beast in the rolling fields. But the barrier had been man-made, with prickly hedge and stone, high enough to contain docile beasts. He rose in his stir-rups, numb with the fear that Dag had brought the plague with him and died with all the animals. Then he saw the thin column of smoke to his right, saw the flapping of a shirt drying on a branch. He heard
a piercing whistle.
From the slope down to the stream, runners trooped obediently in answer to the summons. Alessan felt tears prick his eyes. He hauled Skinny smartly back down the road, turned, set his heels to the bony ribs, and Skinny charged the barrier, sailing nobly over it, clacking with surprise when they landed on the far side. Alessan hauled the delighted animal to a more sedate pace, remembering his mission. It was only then that he saw, among the beasts jogging up the slope, the wobbly-legged awkward infantile bodies, the waddling pace of the gravid. Alessan let out a whoop of jubilation and it reverberated from the hills. Had Dag taken all the pregnant mares with him? Alessan had bleakly had to assume that all the anticipated foals had
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died of the plague or been aborted, for all he found in the fields of the Hold proper had been gelded males and barren mares.
His whoop was answered from the rude shelter dug into the high side of the slope. The small figure standing at its entrance waved both arms. One small figure! Inadvertently Alessan checked Skinny and then urged it forward. One small black-haired figure, now with impudent arms cocked against ragged pants. Fergal!
“You took your time. Lord Alessan!” The boy’s expression was as impertinent as his words were resentful and unforgiving.
“Dag?” Alessan’s voice broke in consternation. He could not move from the saddle. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how much he had looked forward to seeing the old handler, how sorely he needed Dag’s knowledgeable advice if Ruathan runners were ever to regain their former prestige.
Annoyingly, Fergal shrugged and then cocked his head up at Alessan.
“I thought you’d forgotten us!” He stepped to one side and gestured toward the shelter. “He broke his leg. I took care of all the runners, even the ones who birthed. Didn’t I do a good job?”