For a moment after Bastian made his plea the hall went quiet and even the crackling of the fires in the great hall's hearths and the tapping of rain and hail against the windows felt loud while the Marquis contemplated Bastian's request.
Next to the young Hanrahan lord, Liam Dunn fumed quietly. The Dunns had already made their tithe for the autumn but if his father was right, the losses to their herds of sheep and cattle would be extraordinary. Men were still scouring the countryside in the wake of the storm, but early estimates were that they had lost more than three hundred head of livestock.
To the whole of the barony, it might sound small, but for the individual hamlets, the losses were devastating. Replenishing the sheep that produced so much of the march's wool would take at least a year, and the cattle would take between two and four years to replace, so while the most recent tithe had been met, when the next ones came due it would be much more difficult.
