While morning mist still clung to the mountain peaks, the ringing of bronze bells had already filled Doro Valley.
In Doro Town outside Doro Valley, the morning prayer bell atop the central church of the Earth Mother Goddess swung incessantly. As its peals rang out, herders emerged from every direction, leading bellowing cattle and neighing horses toward the square in a dense, dark throng.
The newly arrived priestess of the Earth Mother Goddess had set up an oak lectern beside the earth fountain. The brass on the parchment-bound Mother Goddess Gospel gleamed with a dangerous, oily sheen in the morning light.
At the edge of the square, Rob stroked Heidi's neck with his chilblain-covered hand. His troubled white eyebrows were reflected in the eight-year-old cow's amber eyes, and he hesitated, afraid to step forward.
His young grandson, Tofer, crouched at the old herder's feet, tugging at his grandfather's ragged robe in innocent bewilderment.
"Grandpa, why aren't we going in?"
"The lord's raising taxes again. The tax collector he sent wants another five kilograms of cheese."
Rob sighed. He looked toward the tax collector standing beneath the oak lectern. What the man demanded did not seem like much-just five kilograms.
But those five kilograms of cheese were an additional tax, not the original prayer tax. The original prayer tax was ten kilograms of cheese. In other words, the lord had increased the existing tax by half.
And producing one kilogram of cheese took a herding family several months and twenty kilograms of milk.
Fifteen kilograms of cheese every month was truly a crushing tax burden for an old cattle herder like Rob.
Yet the weekly morning prayers were an important occasion for the herders of Doro Town. They gathered in the town square and followed the church's priest in reciting praises