She drew a thread from the ragged hem of a sleeve and wound it around her finger so that she would remember to have the common room readied after the soup was simmering. There’d be no dancing in the open square thisnight-not for long, at least. The ache in her bones told her that this would bethe kind of storm her long-dead husband had called a giant killer.

An interesting name, she thought. Why it was called that, however… She didn’t know for sure. Probably because it described a truefury of a storm, a storm that hit just short of midnight and pulverized the senses with forks of lightning and sent thunder to set the dogs howling and make the elders glad their ears no longer worked so well.

After a full day under that hot, muggy sky, most of the harvesters would be exhausted, only the young still willing to dance. With luck, the worst of the storm wouldn’t hit until the children were sound asleep.

She’d best remember to tell Yerik to make sure a few of thevillagers had enough energy to patrol the fields. Lightning-fires could devastate what few grazing lands they had.

She shoved the braid over her shoulders. Storm weather was making her feel broody and old, but there was work to do. She glanced toward the sunrise one last time before setting to her tasks. The sun had cleared the distant peaks and now seemed merely a little too bright. West, the mountains were still a dark mass, smothered in black towering cloud.

Out in the fields, the harvest went on as the sun rose tomidday and fell toward the ever-thickening cloud in the west. Women and men, bent nearly in half, worked their way efficiently backward down the ranks of dry plants, grabbing a fat handful of stems and scything them right at the dirt before dropping them in place and moving on to the next handful. Behind them, others came to free a single stalk and use it as a binding cord around the rest. Boys and young women followed, gathering up the bundles and carrying them to the two handcarts, while children picked up whatever had fallen and tossed it into baskets.