Harrowing Times

[Dove Brown]

15 Spring 516

Dove studied the harrow she'd been loaned. It was a wide grid of nine wooden bars, with rows of wooden fingers jutting down like a giant rake. Each finger was held to its bar by a tiny wooden peg that came in at the side and went through both bar and finger. She ran her hands along the bars, hit a peg that stuck out a bit, and winced. She shoved it back in, hard, so that she wouldn't lose any harrow fingers in the field itself. Well, with any luck, she wouldn't - but when had luck ever favoured her? Better to take care and make sure. She went over the harness too, not entirely sure of how it should look, but looking for any obvious flaws all the same. The hefty piebald horse twitched under her fingers as if they were annoying flies, and she patted its neck before she took up the driving reins and shook them gently. The horse plodded forward. This was at least smoother going than the ploughing had been but whether it would stay that way once they got into the field remained to be seen.

She walked steadily, navigating her way down the road between fields. The field she was looking for was two fields in, on the left, so she counted off the four fields on the left, turned into the fifth one, and negotiated her way along the headland, past another farmer working there, and on beyond it into her own assigned field. She stopped on the headland for a moment and looked around to figure out which way the field had been ploughed. From where she stood, the plough furrows ran straight ahead, veering a bit to avoid a battered scarecrow in the middle of the field, and then straightening up again. A pole stuck up above the scarecrow's head, and the shredded fabric haning from the pole whipped and snapped in the chilly breeze.

Dove turned the harrow, making sure it and the horse were at right angles to the existing plough furrows, and then urged the horse on. As it began to plod forward, the harrow bumped its way down off the headland and onto the turned soil. Then as they continued to move forward, and Dove braced herself to deal with the bumps and jolts of the rough ground, the raking wooden fingers of the harrow dragged soil off the high part of the furrow to cover the low part of the furrow, where the seeds had been sown. That actually made it a smoother walk than she'd expected, and certainly not as hard as ploughing had been. Then again, with the harrow, she only had one set of steering to manage rather than two. The harrow had no handles for her to hold, which made sense as it didn't need to dig as deep as a plough. Most of the soil moving was covered simply by her working across the existing plough furrows rather than along them.

Secret :

The scarecrow is the same one that Ball created here two years ago as a memorial, and used here with his knowledge.

[Dove Brown]

That meant that if she walked beside the harrow she had to deal with all the lumps, dips, and stones and it was as difficult as she had feared. However, if she walked behind the harrow, the ground was merely uneven. Uneven that she stumbled a few times, true, but the harrow in front of her removed the worst of the ruts just by doing its job. When she reached the end of the row, the horse stopped abruptly and put its head down to crop the grass growing on the headland. Dove didn't notice in time and walked into the back of the harrow, jarring and bruising her shins in the process.

"Shyke!" she muttered, and tugged on the reins. The horse ignored her and continued to eat until Dove droped the reins, stomped up beside the harrow, and grabbed the horse's head collar. She hauled, and only then, finally, its head came up, it gave her a disgusted look out of one rolling eye, and trudged round to start the next row. Dove swore at it again under her breath, let go, and dashed back to grab the reins before they caught and tangled up in the harrow fingers and brought the whole harrowing process to a messy halt - or worse, before they just snapped under the strain and left her nothing to steer with.

She lunged for them, bashing her fingers against the wooden bars of the harrow, but got enough of a grip to secure her hold with both hands a moment later. Then she was back to walking behind the harrow again, trying to avoid the worst dips and grateful to the sturdy boots that protected her from the stones. This time when she approached the headland, she flapped the reins and picked up a bit of speed, hoping to get round without a problem this time. Of course, the moment she sped up, the horse loftly ignored the headland, swung round - forcing Dove to jump out of the way of the lurching harrow - and set off up the field in a third, rather more uneven, row. Dove landed awkwardly, bit back a yelp as her foot twisted in a dip and staggered after the harrow as the reins and the hurrying horse pulled her arms after it, and the rest of her tried to keep up. She went most of the length of the field in that fashion, and then the horse reached its preferred headland and stopped to eat just as abruptly as before. Dove, still trying to keep up, found herself moving too fast to stop, tripped on the harrow and landed flat on top of it. This time, she hung onto the reins even though her hands and knees went through the holes in the grid. She lay for a moment, getting her breath back, then crawled to her feet, climbed off the harrow and grabbed the head collar again. The horse huffed grumpily and turned, but this time Dove didn't have to race back and grab the reins. She'd learned that much, at least.

[Dove Brown]

This fourth row took her closer to the battered scarecrow in the middle of the field. It had recently been restuffed, but flecks of blue remained on the sacking head where someone had once painted it. The blue matched the stained shreds of fabric flapping from a pole above the scarecrow's head. The horse laid its ears back as it came closer. If Dove had known horses better, she would have known it for a warning sign - that the horse was either unhappy at the noise, or worried by the random movement above and beside it - but she plodded onward without realising until the horse had had enough, and bolted a few paces. Dove clung to the reins and hauled, throwing her weight into it, but not before there was a crack that suggested something wooden had broken. Even with her weight leaned into the reins, Dove was still hauled a few paces more, until the horse was well past the scarecrow. Perhaps someone taller and heavier would have had more success, but she couldn't tel the difference between that, and more skill - or simply being a handler that the horse knew and trusted better. When the harrow and horse finally came to a juddering stop, Dove knelt beside the harrow and lifted it to examine it carefully. She reconstructed the earlier examination in her mind and compared it to what she was seeing and feeling on it now, trying to find what had made that cracking noise.

Apart from more mud on the harrow fingers, which Dove roughly swiped off to get a better look at the wood beneath, everything looked just as it had before they got into the field. None of the fingers were missing, none of the grid seemed to be cracked, not even the harness rings had pulled free. Dove frowned in puzzlement, and stood up, slapping her hands together to knock the mud off. Slowly, she set down the reins, retraced her steps to where she had been when she heard the crack and looked around. The scarecrow had wooden parts, perhaps, she thought, it had been a bit of scarecrow that broke? The blue flapping cloth might have been a banner once, but a rip went straight through the tree from top to bottom. The pole looked intact, and the arms didn't have any obviously broken ends or sagging areas. She circled it, one eye on the horse so that she could try and catch it if it decided to take off again, one eye on the ground for bits of wood. She started close to the pole, and moved outwards with each circle, stumbling on the unharrowed half of the circuit as she scrambled over the ridges and furrows. On the third circuit, she finally spotted a piece of weathered wood almost buried in the dirt and stooped to pull it out.

[Dove Brown]

She got a grip on one end of the thin piece of wood and pulled - and kept pulling. It was clearly much longer than it had first appeared to be. About a foot in it bent sharply and brighter splinters jutted out from the older, weathered grey, colour of the rest of it. This must be what had cracked and broken so loudly. She carefully avoided the splinters, drew the rest of the wood out of the encasing dirt, and examined it. It looked like it had once been some child's wooden toy sword, but now it lay warped and twisted by years of rain, grey with years of sun-bleaching, and worn thin by time until it broke underfoot like children's dreams broke against the stone walls of real life, and the demands of encroaching adulthood. Dove looked at it for a moment, then snapped it all the way and stuffed the pieces under the back of her belt. Wood was wood, it would burn on her hearth just as well, and the children weren't filling her house any more, so they wouldn't get sentimental over her burning a toy. As for her - well she'd had dreams, but none so simple as pretending with toy swords. Or any other kind of toy, as far back as she could remember. Her dreams had been - and still were - more of escape and survival. Safety, not adventure, not danger.

She walked back to the harrow and picked up the reins. "Come on," she told the horse, "walk on. It's all safe here now. Let's get back to work after that break." She realised belatedly that she'd made a pun, and grinned crookedly as she shook the reins. The horse flicked an ear back at the sound of her voice and Dove realised that this horse at least showed a lot of what it was feeling by moving its ears. Maybe all horses did, though she hadn't noticed anything similar from Gloss, only the noises that had sounded so much like laughter. She wasn't quite sure what all the movements meant, but she now knew to look for movement in a horse's ears and be aware of it. She kept talking nonsense and finally the horse began to walk forward. The harrow bumped along behind it, and Dove followed, trying to be aware of horse and harrow, noises and position, all at once. Quick glances sideways at the earlier rows, in between all the other things she had to take in, told her she'd weaved enough with the harrow that there were gaps left where the furrows hadn't been filled in. She would have to come back that way and kick the soil down into the dip with her foot, she decided. It was just that bit too far out of reach to do it as she went past to finish the row she was on now. At least, not and keep this row going straight enough that she wouldn't have the same problem on the next row.

[Dove Brown]

The horse and harrow drifted to a halt on the headland and Dove tugged on the rein to turn it. The horse wheeled and the harrow followed, with Dove keeping her bruised shins at a safe distance behind. Looking past the horse's ears, she realised they'd have to go past the scarecrow again, this time on its other side. The horse was already laying its ears back as the banner snapped and flapped in the wind and Dove hastily started talking again before it bolted with her once more. "Come on, you stupid pile of shkye," she told it in cheerful tones, "Just walk on. It's only a scarecrow and you're a horse not a bird. You ought to be more scared of me or the knights. We can have you sent off to make steaks and glue, you know, so you just walk on like a good horse and don't run off with me again, you know..."

The horse responded to her cheerful tone rather than the insulting words and the ears relaxed a bit, swivelling to her voice as it hauled the harrow on past the scarecrow and headed for the grass on its favourite headland. Dove sighed and tried not to flinch herself as the banner flapped in her direction as the torn and the faded emblem of the knighthood cracked loudly above her own head. As long as none of the knights got the idea into their heads that she'd had something to do with the mockery of the knighthood's banner being turned to nothing more than a scarecrow, she'd be ok. If they did and it came down to her word against theirs - well, she was only a farmer and the knighthood would almost certainly take the word of their own over her word. There wasn't anything she could do about that kind of dominance except keep her head down and try not to be noticed.

Which meant getting the work done on time and without problems. The headland was coming up and she saw the horse slow down in preparation for grabbing a mouthful of grass. She considered the options, but by the time she got through them, it was too late and the horse was eating again. Dove let out a long weary sigh, but managed not to trip over the harrow this time. She allowed the horse about two mouthfuls so that it wasn't going to fight her over the chance, then shook the reins encouragingly. The horse heaved a sigh as long and weary as Dove's had been, and plodded round once more for another row. "Come on," she told it, trying to put on an appearence of cheer and endurance that she didn't in the least feel. "Not much more of this and then we can move on. Won't that be nice?" The horse didn't answer, of course, but its ears flicked to catch her voice. Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought it too stepped out a little more cheerfully at the thought of finishing.

[Samuel Longwell]

Grading Complete Please edit your grade request thread so that it's obvious that it's been graded. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions/problems with your grade. Name: Dove XP Award: Horsemanship 2 Driving (Horse) 5 Mathematics 1 Agriculture 2 Farming 5 Observation 3 Planning 1 Lore: Agriculture: Harrow the soil Watching a horse's ears Notes: Enjoy your grades!