Page 84 of Into the West

“The Hawkbrothers would be gobsmacked if they could see this,” Jonaton muttered to Kordas.

“Pebble, every bit of help you can give us will be wonderful,” Kordas said carefully. “But you must be careful. You must not hurt yourself, or make yourself sick or weak. And tell us if you need something. Do you understand?”

“Pebble understand.” There was the sense of a yawn. “Pebble go far. Pebble tired. Pebble sleep. Sun, dark, wake with sun.”

“Yes, please do that, Pebble,” Kordas told it, and stood up. “We will speak more when you are awake.”

“Yessssssss,” Pebble agreed.

And then, silence.

The next morning saw Pebble awake, and charmingly eager to help. So eager, in fact, that it humped up on its stubby legs, trundled itself down to the gate, and waited politely for the guards to let it out, like an eight-legged stone puppy. The guards sent for Kordas, of course, who told them to open the gate for it. He assumed that now that Pebble had politely said its thanks, it was going to go back to its mother. He’d brought a coat just so he could see Pebble off.

I don’t want Pebble to go, he realized, as the gate opened, and he followed the “young” Elemental out into the snow. The connection . . . it’s a lot more powerful than I thought. We both suffered at the hands of the Empire. And we both are responsible for the Emperor’s downfall.

But no, Pebble apparently had no such ideas. No, it proceeded to push and melt its way down to the fields where the rest of the stock was being kept, as if it knew it was making a nice, clear road for them, while Kordas followed it, bemused.

The stock were kept in their fields by virtue of those same charms that kept them close to the barges of their owners. Each charm had been firmly attached to a rock in the center of each field, so the animals would stay within the confines of their designated area.

Pebble stopped at the edge of the field furthest from the Vale, as if it sensed where the invisible boundary was. “Pebble go in?” it asked politely. It was already much better at human speech than it had been last night.

Kordas had a moment of alarm. Did it want to eat the stock?

“Pebble melt snow.” As if it had read his mind, the Earth Elemental supplied the answer to his unspoken question.

That’s—not a bad idea. There’s still plenty of edible grass and weeds under that snow. “Yes, please, Pebble. Go in and melt the snow. The animals in there will be very happy if you do.”

A quick wave of warmth flushed over him from the Elemental; it felt awfully good out here in the freezing air. “Good! Good! Make animals happy!” And having been given permission, it trundled into the first field.

There were no fences or actual boundaries yet, because as long as the animals were all being held in their respective groups by the charms they were still wearing and the ones in the center of each field, there really was no need. There was a little mingling of creatures at the edges of each field, but cattle, horses, sheep, and goats generally had no problem sharing a field with each other.

Pebble seemed to sense exactly where the boundaries of the charms were, however. It started right at the edge, and simply walked back and forth, like a plow, leaving matted-down, brown-green grass in its wake. It must have increased the heat it was giving off, because the snow melted very rapidly. And the horses in this first field, while shying off away from the moving rock at first, were quickly tempted by the uncovered grass, and when Pebble made no aggressive movements toward them, slowly edged their way over to the cleared sections. They still kept their eyes on Pebble, but when all the Elemental did was continue to melt snow, they gradually began to eat.

Within a mark, Pebble had cleared the first field and moved on to the next one, this one with cattle in it. The cattle could not possibly have cared less, perhaps because they had already watched Pebble clear the horse field, and had seen nothing to alarm them. The herdsmen drifted over to watch along with Kordas, clearly bemused at their new helper.

Then Grim frowned, shaded his eyes with his hand for a better view, then stepped gingerly into the field. He looked around for some time, as Kordas wondered what on earth he was looking for. He returned to Kordas’s side, now wearing a puzzled expression on his weathered, bearded face.

“M’lord Baron,” the Horsemaster said. “Would that thing be eatin’ the dung?”

Kordas blinked. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Maybe? Is that a problem?”

Grim snorted. “The opposite. Means no dung for the mages to dry up and us to collect, and nothin’ to burn the grass. Until we get these beasts spread out into their owners’ fields, I druther yon rock eats it than the boys shovel it.”

One of the junior mages had just come down from the Vale in time to overhear this, and his whole face lit up. “Does this mean we aren’t on drying duty now?”

Kordas could only shrug. “I suppose it does, at least down here. We’ll have to see if Pebble wants to clean up in the Vale as well.”

Pebble was still at work—if, indeed, this constituted “work” for an Earth Elemental—when Kordas left to get his breakfast. Maybe it wasn’t work. Maybe it was the equivalent of grazing.

When it came close to the watchers, Kordas called to it. “Pebble?” he said. “Are you eating?”

“Yessssssss,” the Elemental said, with what sounded like great satisfaction. “Eating. Very good. Is more?”

“In every field with animals, and you should eat as much as you want,” he told it. There was that sound like tumbling pebbles again.

“Thank Saver! Is good!” it said with great glee, and proceeded on its slow and careful way.

I guess I can leave it to work unsupervised, he decided at last. Though how on earth I would stop it, I have no idea.