Nobody ran out to take Iskren’s reins when they reached the gravel square between the willow huts, because there were no reins to take.
Iskren unhooked the two horn-glass lanterns from Bracken’s antlers, slid down off the wool pad with a grunt, and slapped the stag lightly on the shoulder. The deer shook its whole long body from ears to tail, walked past the cooking shelter without looking back, and waded knee-deep into the middle warm pool to chew watercress alongside three other stags and a mud-plastered bog-ox.
“They call us the Unbound down in the toll towns,” Iskren said, hanging the lanterns on a forked cedar post beside a long timber rack. “Mostly because the guild saddlers can’t sell us curb-chains or iron nose-loops. In truth, most of us travel with the same beast for ten or twelve winters—until one of us gets old or wants a different valley.”
Chaska stood beside Lilt, her eyes shining in the firelight as she looked around the terrace. On a broad limestone shelf above the upper spring, four mountain courier-hawks the size of sheepdogs were preening their flight feathers without jesses on their legs or hoods over their eyes. Near the rush-weaving shed, two young women were fitting a padded chest-strap onto a broad-backed rock-badger while the animal licked salt from a wooden block, free to walk out from under the strap whenever it chose.
