Until this moment it had never occurred to him to question where all the firewood came from for all the buildings within that wall. Now he knew. It looked as if an entire forest had been brought here and stacked up. There were three men in heavy clothing with iron bars on the top of each stack of logs, carefully levering logs away so that they tumbled down the side of the stack to land on the snow. Once a log was down, a Companion and Trainee, or a Companion alone, or a regular horse led by a stablehand, went up to the log. Chains were hitched around it, the chains from the harness fastened to it, and off they went, heading for the Palace.

When it was Dallen’s turn, Mags, who had watched the procedure carefully, jumped off and did his own chaining-up, much to the approval of the log tenders. He didn’t bother getting back on; Dallen couldn’t go fast with that heavy log behind him, and he didn’t want to burden his Companion any more than he had to.

Already there was a sense of urgency in the air that Mags entirely approved of. No one who hadn’t tended a fire himself had any idea of how much wood was going to be consumed over the next three days. In a way, he hoped that there were snowdrifts up to the rooftops. Those drifts would seal off the wind and insulate against some of the worst of the cold.

:I have approval to take our logs to Bear, Chosen.: Dallen’s muscles rippled as he pulled the dead weight forward. Mags wished he could take some of that burden himself. :Bear was right. Some of those medicinal plants are absolutely without price, and we cannot risk them freezing. That was good forethought on his part.:

:I’ll tell him ye said so.: Mags raced ahead to pull a fallen branch out of the way, then returned to Dallen’s side. He watched the log as it plowed a furrow through the snow to make sure it didn’t get hung up on anything, and ran ahead to get obstacles out of Dallen’s way.

After that, they both saved their breath for work. Despite the unspoken feeling of urgency, there was no outward sign of a reason for that urgency. Overhead, the sky was blue and mostly cloudless. But Mags remembered very well that first blizzard of the year, the one that he and Jakyr had barely beaten. It, too, had begun with cloudless skies, and had churned up over the horizon like some terrible monster.