Masteress Meenore flew laboriously above the southern slope of Zertrum. Without sleep last night and with little sleep the night before, IT feared nodding off and falling out of the sky.
Below lay farmland such as IT hadn’t seen before on Lahnt, which seemed impoverished everywhere else: neat fields fenced into squares, orchards, and a house, a large structure of stone and wood, surrounded by barns, sheds, and several wattle-and-daub cottages. A drift of pigs, dozens of them, wandered among the buildings, rooting through the snow. This must be Master Uwald’s Nockess Farm.
Curious, IT circled high enough not to be heard. At this height and with the sun near the horizon, ITs shadow became near invisible.
Supervised by a plump man with a pronounced limp, laborers brought goods out of the house and loaded two sledges that were hitched to oxen. What idiocy! The people should have been saving themselves. The limping man should already have ridden an ox or a horse out of danger.
Who was he, to be giving orders when the master and his steward were away?
On the mountain above the house, a dozen shepherds were driving flocks of geese, sheep, and goats slowly through the snow. More fools.
IT heard a deep groan. The entire slope undulated, then returned to solidity, but altered. A cottage collapsed. The pigs galloped here and there, squealing. A jagged crack divided the field that the herders had been crossing. Several sheep disappeared into the crack. The beasts ran in all directions. A goatherd lay trapped, his legs hidden beneath a boulder.
Zertrum’s peak glowed red as if it were the mouth of a fellow dragon.
IT stopped circling and flew south toward the Oase and Elodie and the villain Tuomo.
But the trapped man plagued IT. The other herders wouldn’t be able to lift the boulder. To dig him out would take time, if they’d stay to do it, and, meanwhile, there might be more tremors.
IT thought, I am no fairy god-dragon. The idiot herder should have fled at the first sign of the volcano. Elodie needs me.
But IT would blame ITself if the man died. IT turned and beat ITs way back to the mountain.