Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [72]
Well, he might as well make a start.
Behind him, leaning against the wall, he found a shovel and a manure fork, and before he began, he paused for a moment. To his right, he heard shuffling, growling, and grunting; to his left, sighing. Face the dangerous side first?
Well, a deaf-mute wouldn’t hear any of that.
All right, then, he thought, steeled himself, and went to the right.
The first two stalls were empty. The second contained the largest Wolf he had ever seen in his life. A great, grey, grizzled thing, it was so large that it could easily look him straight in the eyes without trying. It was obviously a Wise Beast, able to reason and communicate.
It did just that, looking over its shoulder, yellow eyes narrowing in speculation. “So,” the Wolf said, red tongue lolling out, “the old crone sends my dinner in alive now, does she?” It flattened its ears back along its skull and grinned at him rapaciously.
“I think, sir,” said Sasha carefully, giving up his pretense and hoping they wouldn’t tell the Baba, “that eating me would be a mistake. You might upset the witch who hired me to clean her stables, you would certainly upset my betrothed, who is the Sea King’s daughter, and you would still be standing in filth when you were done eating me.”
The Wolf tilted his head to the side, ears going up. “Good arguments, all of them,” he admitted. “Very well, I will not eat you.”
“If you don’t mind, I should like to move you while I clean your home,” Sasha replied, making a little gesture toward the chain holding the wolf to the watering trough, which had a scum of green algae in one corner.
The Wolf yawned hugely, showing white teeth as long as Sasha’s fingers. “It is all one to me,” said the Wolf. “Until the old witch needs me to track down an enemy and turns me loose, one place in this stable is much like another. I am bound to her with the enchantment on the collar.”
Sasha moved into the stall, bowed once to the Wolf as if to a boyar, then unchained the beast. Its shoulders were on a level with his, and it was easily big enough to ride, if it would allow such a thing.
“If you are hungry, I have some bread,” Sasha said, as he led the Wolf to the next stall.
“Bread! It is long since I tasted bread! Yes, I will have some,” the Wolf replied, its ears up, and its tail wagging ever so slightly. Sasha went to get one of his remaining loaves of bread from his belongings, and also fetched a pail of clean, cold water from the well.
“Here you are, my lord Wolf,” Sasha said, unwrapping the bread for him and putting down the water. “I shall have your home cleaned in as little time as may be.”
Big as he was, fierce as he was, the Wolf began nibbling daintily at the loaf. “A kindly woman baked this bread, and she thought well of you,” he said, yellow eyes softening and losing some of their fierceness.
Sasha said nothing, only went to work with shovel and fork and barrow to clean out the stall, then returned with armfuls of sweet straw mixed with rushes to make a thick bed. There were some bones that he thought were not human, stacked ready to repair the fence perhaps. He took some of them and left them in one corner for the Wolf to chew on to ease its boredom, then filled the clean stone watering trough with sweet water. He returned to the Wolf, mane comb and brushes he had found in hand.
“If you don’t mind, sir, I think it is long since you had a brushing,” he said diffidently.
The Wolf looked at him down its long nose. “I think that you are right,” it replied, “and I would not say you nay.”
So before he returned the Wolf to its stall and chained it up again, he worked hard with brush and comb until the Wolf’s pelt was as soft and shining as a lady’s lapdog, and free of clumps of winter’s underfur. He then took a broom and swept all the fur out the door for the birds to take to line their nests.
That was all that there was on the right-hand side of the stables, but Sasha cleaned up the stalls anyway, and moved in fresh bedding. Then