The Windsingers by Megan Lindholm Read Free Book Online

wish to hire a team to pull a heavy load,' were Vandien's opening words.
    'My team will do so. Humans seldom use skeel. You may judge them poor beasts to look at, accustomed as you are to your long-legged horses. No doubt you find my skeel ugly beasts.' The T'cherian paused in his lisping, clicking sales pitch to allow Vandien to disagree. Vandien knew that many Humans were reluctant to do business with T'cheria, claiming that their strong accents made their Common barely intelligible. But Vandien had developed an ear for the way they turned and sharpened the consonants of Common, and found dealing with them no task. Now he strove to match the creature in courtesy.
    'I would not propose to judge a beast by its appearance. If you tell me they can pull, I am sure that they can, however foreign they may be to me. May I ask if they drive in the same manner as horses, or is a special skill involved?'
    'A special skill to driving such as these? You honor and flatter a poor farmer like myself. No, they are the mildest creatures, so easy to control that one of your egglings would find it as play. With a driver behind them with my turns of experience, you will find that there is little we cannot do. Even the heaviest of loads will yield to our tenacity. Would you have a field freed of rocks? Pull logs down from a hillside? They are equal to the task. And no thrifty person could hope for a better team. Having fed three days ago, they will not hunger for two more spans of days.'
    Vandien worked the math swiftly in his head. The beasts went for nineteen days between feedings, a particularly useful trait in his situation. Delicately, he broached the touchy part of his bargaining.
    'I doubt not that your years of experience make your team the fine one that they are. But for the task I face, I would be the driver, and must be assured that they would obey a stranger. For ten days you must trust them to my care. Would you agree to such a bargain?'
    The T'cherian's eye stalks moved slowly from side to side in a learned pantomime of the Human gesture for 'no.'
    'I regret that I must refuse. My team are my children to me, and the sole means of my livelihood in these days of dry weather and Windsinger animosity. I dare not entrust them to a stranger, no matter how sincere of countenance and noble of carapace. Yet happy would I be to join you in any task you might propose. You, too, would be gladdened to see how the difficulty of any labor would be dissipated by my experienced handling of the team. Beasts always pull better for the master they know and trust. Cannot we still find a bargain here?'
    Vandien heaved a tremendous sigh. He let his hands rise to shoulder height, and then fall away in a mimicry of a T'cherian's drooping eye stalks when saddened. 'I must respect your reservations. My respect honors the one who feels the responsibilities ownership puts upon one. I understand the concern of the wise master for his beasts. Sure I am that no coin could dissuade you from your views. For no amount of coin would you entrust these worthy creatures to a stranger.'
    'No coin could buy my honor,' the T'cherian repeated. He and Vandien both knew that the stage was being set for the bargain. The T'cherian waited.
    'Nor would I demean your sensibilities by even offering such coins to you. What do you know of me? How can I gain the trust and thus the service I seek from you? These questions I have asked myself as we have stood here, in this unpleasantly noisy place, seeking to make a bargain like civilized folk in the midst of this most uncivilized din, in this whorl of disruptive movement and unharmonized noises. In this blatting of beasts, this heat, this caking of dust upon our countenances, in these body smells of those who pass disrespectfully close to us, how can I prove myself to you? How can I show you that I, though a Human and not endowed with those superior sensitivities that are the racial treasure of the T'cheria, am not totally without