The next morning, he set off again. He passed the cluster of stones marking the Andressat–Cilwan boundary just as the sun rose. Toward noon, he came out of the woods on a bare hillside with sheep spread out on its slope. He reined in and glanced around for any sign of people. He spotted two typical sheepdogs and then the shepherd, sprawled facedown on the short grass. Taking a midday nap, no doubt. Below the pasture, Filis saw the deserted farmstead he remembered, relic of Siniava’s War: several roofless huts and a barn mostly whole. Sometimes he stopped for lunch there; once, in a storm, he had spent the night. The old well held good water.

To the north, a thunderstorm towered high, rumbling steadily as growing storms did. Already wispy veils of rain fell across the valley, thickening even as he watched, moving nearer. That shepherd was due a drenching, if he didn’t wake up.

Thunder rumbled louder; a breeze lifted his hair. Filis grinned. Race or wet, that was the choice. He sent his horse down the slope at a hand gallop, certain the hoofbeats would wake the shepherd if the thunder didn’t.

Chill air met him ahead of the rain, and rain lashed his face in the last few strides to the barn. Inside, most of the roof remained; he led his mount to the driest corner, loosened the girth, and opened a saddlebag for the sausage, cheese, and bread he would eat for lunch.

Not long after, he heard the clatter of hooves and baaing of sheep outside. Then they poured in, a wet, gray, sheep-smelling mass of woolly backs, black ears and faces. His mount whinnied and stamped; the sheep scuttered back, only to be chivvied in by the dogs. The dogs shook themselves, then growled at him. Filis kept a firm hand on his mount’s bridle. Finally the shepherd came in, a boy now wrapped in a ragged cloak. He called the dogs to heel.

“Sorry, surr,” the boy said, in the accent of the region. “I see you go in, but t’dogs don’t.” He stared at Filis in the gloom of the storm-darkened barn. “Who yurr be? Where be goin’?”

Filis had come this way before but had not seen this boy; it spoke well of the child that he asked, given the times. “I’m from Andressat,” he said. “On my way to Cortes Cilwan to visit relatives there.”

The boy nodded. “It come rain,” he said. “Won’t clear afore dark, maybe. Share bread?”

“Yes,” Filis said, though he had no desire for the coarse hard bread the boy would have. “I have cheese.”