Fortress of Owls by C. J. Cherryh

rang not at all off memory, neither the village of Levey, nor Padys Spring… though he was sure there should be water where Crissand described a spring being.
    But, also, to his vague thought, the name of the place was not quite Padys.
    â€œBathurys,” he said suddenly, pleased to have caught it.
    â€œM’lord?”
    â€œBathurys,” he said. It seemed increasingly sure to him that that was the proper name of the spring, as sometimes the very old names came to him. There was a shrine, Crissand had already said; but he was less sure of that fact.
    But there at least should be a spring at a place called Bathurys, and when he set a right name to it, he far better recalled the lay of the land… thought of a village of gray stone, and flocks of sheep.
    It was not so far a ride, then. He felt happy both in Gery’s free and cheerful movement and in the increasing good temper of the company around him. He even heard laughter among the soldiers behind, and beside him, Uwen, who habitually was shy of lords’ company, was not shy in Crissand’s presence, and bantered somewhat with Crissand’s captain, riding near them.
    The two guard companies, the Dragons and the men of Meiden, had fought each other with bloody determination the night of his arrival; but the Dragons had also rescued Crissand and his men from execution, so with this particular Guelen regiment, the tally sheet of good and bad was mixed. Besides, the Dragons were a Guelen company the Amefin held in higher regard than they had ever held for the Guelen Guard, even before Parsynan’s rule here: the Dragons, better disciplined, had never been hard-handed with the townsfolk, never stolen, never done any of the things the Guelens had done, so he had it reported. So, warily, cautiously, goodwill grew, in the amity of the officers and the lords, so in the ranks.
    And, truth, by the time they had passed the first rest and ridden over the icy bridge, Uwen and the captain of Meiden’s house guard were cheerfully comparing winters they had known, and arguing about the merits of sheep, while the men in the ranks had proceeded to local autumn, local ale, the taverns in Guelemara and those in Amefel, and the women they knew.
    The men found their ways of talking. But Tristen labored in his converse with Crissand as if they were strangers, for all their prior dealings had been policy and statecraft. Now they talked idly, as common men did, about the autumn, the land, the flocks, and the apples. Uwen, who had been a farmer before he was a soldier, knew far more about any of these things, Tristen was sure, but Crissand knew everything there was to know about apples, their type, and their value. All Tristen found to do was ask question and question and question. Crissand did know his people’s trade, down to the tending of apple orchards and sheep, which he had done with his own hands, and had no hesitation in the answers.
    â€œThe flocks are most of my people’s living,” Crissand said, “more so than the orchards in the last five years, since the blight. Lord Drumman’s district is all orchards of one kind and another. So is Azant’s. But we fared well enough in Meiden, since we have both sheep and apples: the barley never does well, to speak of: that comes from the east and from Imor and Llymaryn.”
    And again, after a time, Crissand said, “Lewenbrook was hardest on Levey of all Meiden’s villages. Fourteen dead is a heavy toll for a village of two hundred, six more wounded, seven lost with my guard, a fortnight gone. That’s a quarter of all the village, and every man they had between sixteen and thirty.”
    Tristen had not reckoned the dead in those terms, but it came clear to him, such a hardship.
    â€œA great many widows for a small village,” Crissand said, “and them to do the spring plowing, except I gift younger sons from some of my other villages to go and plant for the widows