Free A Time of Exile by Katharine Kerr

Hippogriff, with all their allies, kinsmen, supporters, and dependents, left Deverry to sail west and found their own throne and royal city. For years, the small colonies eked out a precarious existence along the seacoast, but in time the Hippogriff’s people flourished and spread up the great river valleys of the Dilbrae and the El, while the Dragon clan spread north from their town of Aberwyn up the Gwyn and the strangely named Delonderiel. In the year when Aderyn crossed the mountains of the Belaegyrys range into Eldidd, the kingdom boasted a respectable two hundred thousand people.
    Because he needed to gather more medicines, Aderyn avoided the sandy coast road and chose the easy northern pass through the mountains. On the western side, he reached rolling hills, brown and scruffy with frostbitten grass, and there he stumbled upon a tiny village in a secluded valley. The small square huts, roofed with dirty thatch, were made of rough-hewn wood packed with mud to keep out the chill. Grazing on the brown and stubbledgrass were goats and a few cows. The village belonged to some of the Old Ones, those unfortunate folk who’d lived in the land before the bloodthirsty Deverrians had ridden their way to seize it from them. Dark-haired, on the slender side, they had their own immensely complex language, or rather a mutually incomprehensible group of them, which in the settled parts of Deverry and Eldidd were forbidden by the laws of their conquerors but were kept alive by stealth. When Aderyn rode up to the huts, the folk came running out to stare at him and his fine horse and mule. In a group, the eight men of the village advanced upon him with their rough spears at the ready, but when Aderyn spoke in their language and explained that he was a herbman, they lowered the weapons. Dressed in a long brown tunic, a man of about forty stepped forward and introduced himself as Wargal, the headman.
    “You’ll forgive our greeting, but we have great reason to fear these days.”
    “Indeed? Are the men of Eldidd close by?”
    “The despicable blue-eyed ones are always too close by.”
    For a moment they contemplated each other in an uneasy silence. Wargal’s eyes flicked back and forth between his folk and the stranger. He had a secret, Aderyn supposed, and he could guess it: the village was sheltering a runaway bondsman.
    “Are there any sick in your village?” Aderyn said. “I have many herbs, and I’ll gladly help anyone who needs them in return for some fresh milk and a night’s shelter.”
    “Any stranger is welcome to milk from my flock. But if you can spare some medicine, one of our women has a bad case of boils.”
    The villagers tended Aderyn’s horse and mule while Wargal took him to his own home, which had no furniture except for three big pottery jars near the tiny hearth and the straw mattress he shared with his wife. Hanging on the wall were a few bronze pots, a couple of knives of the same metal, and some rough cloth sacks. Aderyn sat down next to Wargal in the place of honor by the hearth while villagers crowded in for a look at this amazing event, a stranger in their village. After some polite conversation over bowls of goat’s milk, the woman with boils was duly treated in themidst of the curious crowd. Other villagers came forward to look over the herbs and ask shy questions, but most were beyond his help, because the real plague in this village was malnutrition. Driven by fear of the Eldidd lords, they eked out a miserable living on land so poor that no one else wanted it.
    Although Aderyn would have preferred to eat his own food and spare theirs, Wargal insisted that he join him and his wife in their dinner of goat’s-milk cheese and thin cracker bread.
    “I’m surprised you don’t have your winter crops in yet,” Aderyn remarked.
    “Well, we won’t be here to harvest them. We had a long council a few days ago, and we’re going to move north. The cursed Blue-eyes get closer every day. What if one