Bastion

Vale, trust me, you’d know about it.”
    He looked over at Lita, who had been watching all this with her mouth open in astonishment. “Did you hear all that?”
    “I heard it, but I can scarcely believe it,” she said. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d suspect you of tale spinning.”
    “It’s no tale, Jermayan agrees,” the Herald told her smugly. “Well, you always wanted to see a Vale. Now you can.”
    :Guess I won’t be the only one digging through this place,: Mags told Dallen.
    :By the look on her face, she’s likely to be digging more than you,: the Companion replied.
    •   •   •
    The caravan fit very nicely into the side of the entrance to what they were already coming to think of as the “living quarters.” It would definitely be out of the way of wind and snow; that kettleful of coals would heat it up nicely for sleeping, and Lena and Bear were already acting as if it were their own little cottage. Not that he blamed them; it was the one place here where they could be guaranteed absolute privacy without leaving the comfort of the group cave.
    So far as Mags was concerned, they could have it. A heap of straw, one of the canvas bow tents atop that, and the featherbed from the lower cupboard bed atop that, plus his and Amily’s bedrolls made a place just as cozy. There were a lot of little side caves, like private rooms, with hollows in them that were just bed-size. They were all off the main cave, tucked into the wall in such a way as to give a great deal of privacy. He reckoned if there was a way to fit a curtain across the entrance, he’d have almost as good a situation as a room with a door. If this had been a natural cave, he would have regarded this configuration as wildly unlikely, and would have assumed that something was drastically amiss—most likely, that this place got flooded on a regular basis and the hollows were water-worn. But if this had been a Hawkbrother Vale, any number of things became a possibility.
    Really, the fact that it had been a Hawkbrother Vale explained everything that had seemed far too convenient. The chimney area . . . the well . . . the storage caves that were so bone-dry it was safe to store fodder in them . . . it all made perfect sense. Someone had been living here for a very long time, and the Hawkbrothers had shaped the place to suit them.
    As they all settled in—the Guardsmen temporarily, the rest of them more-or-less permanently—he asked Lita who those “someones” would have been.
    “...because I thought Hawkbrothers lived in trees,” he concluded, helping her move all of her instruments and personal things to areas cut into the side of her chosen side cave that were so flat and even they could only have been shelves or open cupboards for the previous occupant.
    “You thought correctly,” the Bard said. “What would have been living here were the hertasi. Gentle, manlike lizards, about so tall.” She measured the height of her breastbone. “They were—are—the servants to the Hawkbrothers, and they prefer to live in caves or tunnels underground. All this—” she waved her hand at the cave around them, now brilliantly lit by lanterns placed in niches that clearly had been made explicitly to hold lanterns “—is just what they would have had when everyone first moved in here. Before they left, they’d have made themselves all manner of structures and comforts. It would have been every bit as nice as the Collegia down here. I’m serious. The hertasi like their little comforts.”
    “It’s not bad now,” he observed. She laughed.
    “It’s a blessed sight better than what I thought we’d find. Jak promised me once he’d take me to a Vale.” She made a face. “Well, this is as close as I’m like to get, so I’ll enjoy what I have.”
    With the Guards’ help, Jakyr had already set up a kitchen, and there was a good dinner cooking away. He was making flatbreads, grilled on a griddle, while a good rabbit stew bubbled in a pot. The vanners had been tethered outside while it was light, but just to be safe, Mags had moved them in and tied them to the caravan when it got dark. The Guards had brought their mounts in as well. Now the little herd stood, hipshot, dozing, with the remains of their hay and grain within easy reach.
    The Companions had inspected every hollow and settled on one each. Mags had filled the chosen spots with straw, and they had settled in, too. It had been a long day for all of the