They traveled along a main road with most of their armor in their bags, but their swords and weapons displayed clearly at their waists. There was a small village a few miles ahead that Marcus had spotted when they’d crested a particularly high hill. It was a warm day, and there was a pleasant breeze that would occasionally push Michael’s long hair out of his face. He was well due for a trim, but at this point it didn’t seem like he’d have the time for one any time soon.
The buildings were primarily a-frames with a wattle and daub construction and thatched roofs. They were all tucked fairly close to one another and sat at the base of several large hills that sat only a little higher than their buildings. There were small gardens near all of the houses, and in the distance they could see a number of smaller outbuildings and large fenced off fields filled with what Michael believed were sheep or goats, but couldn’t quite tell from where he was standing.
Michael started to notice that he was feeling a pull, the same one he’d felt the last few times Godseeker had activated. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the herds in the distance, but he couldn’t make out anything that it could be drawing him towards.
There was a kind of whistle as they started to get closer to the homes and a number of people went from milling about to going inside and grabbing things before standing and waiting at the entrance to the village. Michael saw men and women clutching hooked staffs, pitchforks, and a few with actual spears and axes. They were wearing mostly simple brown clothes, but they seemed to be of very fine construction with no pilling or threads out of place.
Michael had snuck ahead with Marcus earlier and taken the time to divine as many of them as he could, but hadn’t been able to mark any of them as a diviner. That meant that they should be in the clear when it came to them being discovered as takers. From what they understood, takers were killed on sight. Francesca had hidden her face with a hood after caking some dirt over her tattoos to hide her taker marks.
A man stood in front of the rest of them, a large dog with motley fur at his side and a long shepherd's hook in his right hand. He was bald except for a crown of dark gray and had a beard of a matching color and small, dark eyes.
“Who are you and what’s your business here?” asked a man that Michael was able to divine as being the villages leader, not that he really needed to given the context around him.
“We are deserters from Stent, on our way to Swandia. We want no trouble, and have a small amount of coin we’d be willing to trade for supplies and a roof for the night.”
“We have no need of coin,” replied the man.
“Well, do you have anyone that needs healing?” asked Marcus. “My friend here is a healer, and may be able to help.” Marcus gestured to Michael.
The village elder stroked his beard for a few moments, looking them over.
“Can he heal animals as well?”
“Yes,” replied Michael. He hadn’t healed any animals aside from a horse or two, but he didn’t imagine that a sheep or whatever it was he’d seen in the distance would prove much more difficult.
The Elder nodded to himself and stamped his staff on the ground. “If he heals all in the village that need it, as well as the sheep then you are welcome to stay the night. Do not touch our women, do not take anything you do not barter for, and know that you are being watched. Understood?”
The man held out a fist.
Marcus raised an eyebrow, but bumped his own fist against the elder’s.
The Elder nodded one more time and looked behind himself.
“Ezra, take their healer to Tholomew, then over to the herds. Bede and Nict, show them to the winter sheep hold.”
Michael smiled his friendliest smile at Ezra who regarded him with a blank and empty expression of his own. Ezra was nearly as tall as the village elder, but broader at the chest with a flat nose and muddy brown hair.
Michael nodded and fell in behind him until they reached a small house. He knocked on the door, and there was a sound of movement inside until a man pushed the door open, nearly falling through it as he balanced on a rough crutch.
“Ezra, I told you three times already, I can’t go out into the field today like thi-”. He stopped and looked at Michael. “Oh, is he what the whistle was about?”
Ezra nodded and pointed at Michael. “Healer.”
Tholomew raised his eyebrows and looked at Michael. “Well what are you waiting for?”
Michael chuckled a bit at that and raised a hand that began to glow with golden light. He placed it on the man’s shoulder and focused for a few moments. Not only did the man have a broken leg, but his hip had some severe damage, and he had multiple slipped discs. The pain should’ve kept him from being able to stand, but clearly he was made of tough stuff.
Michael took his hand off the man and he stood up straight, stretching out his healed leg a bit and twisting around a little.
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“Huh. That’s better. Normally I ask the divine to turn a blind eye to me, but I’m glad they had a bit of a peek my way today.”
Ezra gestured his head toward the nearby field on which Michael could see a number of herds of brown sheep. As they approached them, Michael realized that while they were very much sheep, there were a few key differences between them and what he’d seen on Earth. To start with, they all had horns, most of them small and slightly curling, but a few had horns like rams. Secondly, they were all about three times the size of what he’d seen on Earth. One of them that he was surprised he hadn’t noticed sooner, actually towered over the others looking more like an oddly shaped ox than a sheep.
Ezra noticed him staring and pointed at that one. “That’s boss. He’s titled.”
Michael nodded and took a second to divine the massive ram.
Patriarch of the Plains
Father of one hundred
Michael nodded, impressed by the creature, and fell back in behind Ezra who took him to a shepherd sitting on a nearby stone outcropping and watching the herd.
The Shepherd looked at them both curiously and Ezra pointed at Michael.
“Oh, you can heal sheep?”
“Just take me to them, and I’ll make it happen.”
The Shepherd nodded and started taking him amongst the herd. Some of the sheep seemed cautious of him, but Michael didn’t mind having a bit of distance between them and himself. They smelled like all of the petting zoos he’d taken his kids to multiplied by a factor of every horse he’d smelled at the academy.
The Shepherd went over to one of them, seemingly at random and wrangled it over to him, showing surprising strength and nodded at it.
“This is Curly, she has a bit of a cut from a Roc trying to carry her off.”
Michael nodded and placed a hand on her soft fur, finding it surprisingly pleasant to the touch for raw wool, and channelled his healing. His hand glowed gold and he was able to find the cut on one of her haunches and seal it. She’d been struggling a bit, but the healing seemed to calm her and when he was done she actually butted her horns lightly against his leg, as if thanking him.
“She’s more grateful than most people would be,” said Michael, smiling.
“Sheep are better than people,” said Ezra, and the Shepherd nodded in agreement.
After Curly, Michael was taken to heal around twenty more of the large herd. The Shepherd seemed to know exactly where each of them were, and Michael guessed he was probably using some kind of marking or tracking spell to keep track of them, though he wouldn’t have been surprised if the man was simply that good at his job. Almost all of the sheep gave Michael some kind of grateful gesture after he was done healing them, and he was finding himself to be very fond of them in spite of their smell. After fixing a particularly bad skull fracture on a male that had picked the wrong mate, he looked to see the Shepherd frowning.
“I just… well, Boss has been a little slow lately. I didn't’ see him get hurt or anything, but he hasn’t seemed right. Could you take a look at him?”
Michael looked over toward the towering ram who he could see clearly even at the far end of the herd. The idea of getting closer to it was not something he relished, but he didn’t like the idea of such an animal being in pain if he could prevent it.
The Shepherd nodded, smiling, and started to gently push his way through the sheep and toward Boss.
When they reached him, the Shepherd went over to him and gave him a few firm pats on his neck while whispering something soothing in his ear.
Michael approached him carefully, and Boss actually bowed his head toward him, closing his eyes. He was surprised, but he placed a glowing hand in the center of his head and began channeling healing energy into him. Unfortunately, the beast wasn’t injured, he was just old. Still, Michael did what he could, fixing some tearing in the muscles at his hip, fixing some broken teeth and torn gums, restoring some of its eye that had been scarred at some point, and even sealing some very minor skull fractures from what he guessed was a duel with a younger male. It wasn’t a lot, but the beast seemed grateful, leaning its head hard into Michael for a few moments before returning to his work looking after the rest of the herd.
“Did you fix him?” asked the Shepherd.
“I did what I could, but unfortunately I can’t heal aging. How old is Boss?”
“I think he’s seen nearly forty years. I guess it’s not surprising, but I like to think the old man will be around forever.”
Forty? Michael didn’t know anything about sheep, but that seemed very old.
Michael could hear the voices of the divine start to grow louder.
~Pilgrim~near~shrine~worship~god~altar~traveller~
Michael looked around, but didn’t see anything. He looked at Ezra and the Shepherd.
“Do you have any old shrines nearby? Like, for worshipping the divine?”
The Shepherd scratched his face. “I think there’s a bit of white stone over yonder that has some writing on it. Why?”
“I worship the divine. I’m trying to find out more about them. Particularly their names.”
The Shepherd frowned. “Well, I say it’s a bad idea to turn the divine’s attention your way, but you’ve done the herd a lot of good today, so if you want to go check out the stones we won’t stop you.”
“Why do you think that their attention is bad?”
“The divine’s just as likely to give you bad as good. Rather keep things neutral.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have ever heard any of their names, or descriptions, or anything like that?”
“Can’t say I have. The diviner we take the newborns to up in town up north may know something, but I don’t remember him ever saying any names aside from the divine.”
Michael sighed, it was a long shot, but it never hurt to ask. He had theorized for some time that their names were intentionally repressed. Not sure how something like that would be managed, but in a world of magic he supposed it was a possibility.
He pointed, “They’re just over there, I think.”
Michael looked in that direction and could see small strings of golden lettering in that direction. He nodded to his escorts and walked that way, cresting a small hill to see what looked like the remains of an old statue.
The statue was white, and seemed to have maintained that color in spite of how old it had been. Pieces of it had broken off, but there was still a single leg on it. The odd thing was that the foot on that leg seemed to be facing away from the village. In fact, it seemed very odd to him that the statue was this far from the village in general. All of the other altars and statues he’d found had been close to village or city centers except for the ones to Seras he’d found deep in the woods and in the cave. There must’ve been some reason for the odd positioning, but he couldn’t figure it out.
He moved to the front of the statue and dug up a bit of the dirt in front of it to see if he could make out any writing, and was excited when he saw what looked like completely clear lettering.
He dug more quickly, and wiped the dirt on the writing aside with the side of his hand.
Michael placed a hand against his face and shook his head, letting out a laugh. There had clearly been one word on either side of the ‘the’, but while that word was perfectly clear the others were completely gone.
He supposed it wasn’t the worst thing that the gods had a sense of humor.