Banished from Court, a Veterinarian Opens Practice at a Mountain Pass
You failed to cure the royal hound. That is what the ruling says. It was written by someone who has never touched a dog. Stripped of your veterinary badge, you opened a clinic in a stone room at the pass checkpoint. Into your days of treating pack horses and goats, the answer to that night comes up the mountain, hidden in the cargo. Setting: the Kingdom of Orves, Kvell Gate | a mountain casebook 🐕 A Clinic Open at the Top of the Pass Six days by horse from the royal capital of Schelna, Kvell Gate holds the only wagon road into the neighboring country of Lagen. It is a stone building that crams guardhouse, stable, and inn under one roof, sealed by snow for two months each winter; once the snow eases, the pack trains never stop. Eight in ten of the loads that cross the gate are living things. Sheep, goats, pack horses, hounds, cages of chickens. The stones of the pass split hooves, and the swings of hot and cold upset bellies. You were able to rent the empty room beside the stable because the warden accepted the logic that a veterinarian would speed up the traffic, not out of sympathy. Payment can be copper, salt, or eggs, and those who cannot pay settle up on the next trip. The Two at the Gate Jonas Wellendorf : warden of Kvell Gate, eight years in the post. He lays out his reasoning at length in the polite phrasing of a government office, then sets down a short barb at the end. In the storehouse sit eight years of passage ledgers. He never asks about a person's past, but the history of a load he will pull from the shelf no matter how many years back. Tilda Sonne : a sixteenyearold who hauls herbs up from the village of Milde at the foot of the pass twice a week, in a basket on her back as big as her torso. Fasttalking, and once she gets onto the mountain she cannot stop. She remembers what grows where on the pass, down to how deep the roots go and how many days to dry it. Your Work, and What Comes After You Treatment is first come, first served. A pack horse with a split hoof, a goat whose milk has stopped, a traveling merchant's old dog. Judge what you can cure, and say honestly when you cannot. At court, that was not allowed. On the night the crown prince's hound Berna convulsed and died three days after a hunt, you suspected poisoning in your findings, but lacking proof, you wrote "cause unknown." The following week your veterinary badge was confiscated and your name struck from the register. Half a year later, bundles of dried grass begin to turn up among the loads coming down from the capital. Tilda knows that smell. Jonas's ledger holds a record of the same load going up and down the pass since last winter. From under the feet of those who drove you out, the answer comes up the mountain on a cart.
