Bastion

didn’t have feathered feet, but they did have big blocky heads and heavy, almost furry, black and white coats. They were clearly all ready for winter. One of them finally bumped Mags’ shoulder with his nose and whuffled in his hair. He seemed gentle and intelligent. Well, intelligent for a horse.
    :They are intelligent for horses,: Dallen agreed. :They won’t give you any trouble. Rather like big dogs, really. Good-natured. I don’t know who chose them for you, but he or she did a good job.:
    They were tied up to the manger—being tied was necessary for horses, though the Companions could be left loose, of course. They’d already cleaned out their food to the last wisp of hay, though their water buckets were mostly full. And they looked longingly at the fresh hay and measure of grain that Mags was putting in the mangers for the Companions.
    :It’s cold, they could use the energy. It’ll be safe enough to give them another round of hay.:
    No reason not to trust Dallen’s judgment on this. Mags loaded up their mangers again, and the two horses gratefully buried their noses in it.
    “Dallen says Jak’s Companion asked for a warm mash,” he told Amily, as he grabbed a pitchfork to get rid of anything the horses had deposited. The Companions were fastidious about their lodgings and wouldn’t care to step in anything nasty any more than a human would. “Can you see if it’s done yet?”
    She ducked inside and came back out again with two wooden bowls of steaming bran mash. The Companions practically inhaled it, but they’d been putting on a lot of speed today, and they probably needed it. By the time Mags was done cleaning the stabling area, the bowls were licked clean and ready to store. Amily took them and stowed them in one of the outside boxes on the caravan.
    Finally they couldn’t put going back inside off any longer. They looked at each other, sighed a little, held hands and went inside.
    The atmosphere had at least warmed from “frosty” to “formal.” That might have had something to do with the fact that Jakyr was bent assiduously over a three-legged pot on the fire, and the lovely aroma told Mags that he was making that white bean dish again. It’s hard to be nasty to someone who is cooking you something that smells so good that you want to eat the steam coming off the pot.
    The little building was a bit crowded with six people in it, but it wasn’t bad. There was no furniture in here as such; just the two box beds built into the wall, some storage chests that could serve as seating, and storage cupboards. Someone had been doing a bit of arranging of the bedding while Mags and Amily had been outside. There were two sets of two bedrolls at the hearth now, one set on either side of where Jakyr was crouched, and Mags recognized his own bedroll as one of the two to Jakyr’s right.
    So . . . sleeping arrangements sorted. It looked as if Lita and Jak got the bedboxes—which was really only fair, since they were older and probably wouldn’t do as easily on the floor as the younger pairs—and the rest of them got the hearth. The beds weren’t really wide enough for two, anyway. They’d been filled with what looked like bracken, which would be a lot better than resting on hard planks.
    As for those on the floor—there in a pile, as far from the fire as possible, was more bracken. They’d have to be very careful about banking the fire when they went to bed so that random embers didn’t jump out and set fire to their bedding, but the hearth had been built to accommodate that.
    There wouldn’t be any “canoodling” with Amily with everyone practically on top of everyone else, but that was all right. Well, it wasn’t all right but . . . it wasn’t horrible either.
    And Bear and Lena would be in the same situation, so no reason to feel envious.
    “Anything else we can do?” he asked, looking at Lita.
    “Bear and Lena offered to clean up, and after that I think bed for all of us,” Jakyr said, still assiduously tending his pot and not looking up from it. “It’s been a long day for everyone.”
    “Where are we heading tomorrow?” Mags asked.
    “It’s three days to our Circuit, four to The Bastion, and that’s at a wagon’s pace,” Jakyr replied confidently. “Now that we are officially on our way to our Circuit, we can go back to being ourselves. We can safely stop at inns if you want. I can put us at either inns or Waystations as you prefer.”
    Lita smirked.