Dragon's Teeth (23 page)

Yes,
rom baro, I
will do
as
you advise,
she replied.

Although he did not mindspeak her in return, she knew he had heard everything she had told him perfectly well. She had so much
draban
that any human and most beasts could hear her when she chose. Petro could hear and understand her perfectly, for though his mindspeech was not as strong as hers, he would have heard her even had he been mind-deaf.

That he had no strong
dook
was not unusual; among the Rom, since the Evil Days, it was the women that tended to have more
draban
than the men. That was one reason why females had come to enjoy all the freedoms of a man since that time—when his wife could make a man feel every blow, he tended to be less inclined to beat her . . . when his own eyes burned with every tear his daughter shed, he was less inclined to sell her into a marriage with someone she feared or hated.

And when she could blast you with her own pain, she tended to be safe from rape.

As she skipped along beside Petro on the worn ruts that led out of the palisade gate and away from town, she was vaguely aware of every mind about her. She and everyone else in the
kumpania
had known for a very long time that her
dook
was growing stronger every year, perhaps to compensate for her muteness. Even the herd-guard horses, those wise old mares, had been impressed, and it took a great deal to impress
them!

Petro sighed, rubbing the back of his neck absently, and she could read his surface thoughts easily.
That was an evil day, when ill-luck led us to the settlement of the Chosen.
A
day that ended with poor Chali senseless
—
her brother dead, and Chali’s parents captured and burned as witches. And every other able-bodied, weapons-handy member of the
kumpania
either wounded or too busy making sure the rest got away alive to avenge the fallen.
She winced as guilt flooded him as always.

You gave your eye to save me, Elder Brother. That was more than enough.

“I could have done more. I could have sent others with your mama and papa. I could have taken everyone away from that sty of pigs, that nest of—I will
not
call them Chosen of God. Chosen of
o Beng
perhaps—”

And
o Beng
claims his own, Elder Brother. Are we not
o phral
? We have more patience than all the
Gaje
in the world. We will see the day when
o Beng
takes them.
Chali was as certain of that as she was of the sun overhead and the grass beside the track.

Petro’s only reply was another sigh. He had less faith than she. He changed the subject that was making him increasingly uncomfortable. “So, when you stopped being a frighted
tawnie juva,
did you touch the
qajo,
the Townsman’s heart? Should we sell him old Pika for his little son?”

I
think yes. He is
a
good one, for
Gaje.
Pika will like him; also, it is nearly fall, and another winter wandering would be hard on his bones.

They had made their camp up against a stand of tangled woodland, and a good long way off from the palisaded town. The camp itself could only be seen from the top of the walls, not from the ground. That was the way the Rom liked things—they preferred to be apart from the
Gaje.

The
tsera
was within shouting distance by now, and Petro sent her off with a pat to her backside. The
vurdon,
those neatly built wooden wagons, were arranged in a precise circle under the wilderness of trees at the edge of the grasslands, with the common fire neatly laid in a pit in the center. Seven wagons, seven families—Chali shared Petro’s. Some thirty seven Rom in all—and for all they knew, the last Rom in the world, the only Rom to have survived the Evil Days.

But then, not a great deal had survived the Evil Days. Those trees, for instance, showed signs of having once been a purposeful planting, but so many generations had passed since the Evil Days they were now as wild as any forest.

Chali headed, not for the camp, but for the unpicketed string of horses grazing beyond. She wanted to sound out Pika. If he was willing to stay here, this Mayor Kevin would have his gentle old pony for his son, and cheap at the price. Chali knew Pika would guard any child in his charge with all the care he would give one of his own foals. Pika was a stallion, but Chali would have trusted a tiny baby to his care.

Petro trusted her judgment in matters of finding their horses homes; a few months ago she had allowed him to sell one of their saddlebred stallions and a clutch of mares to mutual satisfaction on the part of horses, Rom, and buyers. Then it had been a series of sales of mules and donkeys to folk who wound up treating them with good sense and more consideration than they gave to their own well-being. And in Five Points she had similarly placed an aging mare Petro had raised from a filly, and when Chali had helped the
rom baro
strain his meager
dook
to bid her farewell, Lisa had been nearly incoherent with gratitude for the fine stable, the good feeding, the easy work.

Horses were bred into Chali’s blood, for like the rest of this
kumpania,
she was of the
Lowara natsiyi
—and the Lowara were the Horsedealers. Mostly, anyway, though there had been some Kalderash, or Coppersmiths, among them in the first years. By now the Kalderash blood was spread thinly through the whole
kumpania.
Once or twice in each generation there were artificers, but most of
rom baro
Petro’s people danced to Lowara music.

She called to Pika without even thinking his name, and the middle-aged pony separated himself from a knot of his friends and ambled to her side. He rubbed his chestnut nose against her vest and tickled her cheek with his whiskers. His thoughts were full of the hope of apples.

No apples, greedy pig! Do you like this place? Would you want to stay?

He stopped teasing her and stood considering, breeze blowing wisps of mane and forelock into his eyes and sunlight picking out the white hairs on his nose. She scratched behind his ears, letting him take his own time about it.

The grass is good,
he said, finally.
The
Gaje
horses are not ill-treated. And my bones ache on cold winter mornings, lately.
A
warm stable would be pleasant.

The blacksmith has
a
small son—
she let him see the picture she had stolen from the
qajo’s
mind, of a blond-haired, sturdily built bundle of energy.
The
gajo
seems kind.

The horses here like him,
came the surprising answer.
He fits the shoe to the hoof, not the hoof to the shoe. I think I will stay. Do not sell me cheaply.

If Chali could have laughed aloud, she would have. Pika had been Romano’s in the rearing—and he shared more than a little with that canny trader.
I will tell Romano—not that I need to. And don’t forget, prala, if you are unhappy—

Ha!
the pony snorted with contempt.
If I am unhappy, I shall not leave so much as a hair behind me!

Chali fished a breadcrust out of her pocket and gave it to him, then strolled in the direction of Romano’s
vurdon.
When this
kumpania
had found itself gifted with
dook,
with more
draban
than they ever dreamed existed, it had not surprised them that they could speak with their horses; Lowara Rom had practically been able to do that before. But
draban
had granted them advantages they had never
dared
hope for—

Lowara had been good at horsestealing; now only the Horseclans could better them at it. All they needed to do was to sell one of their four-legged brothers into the hands of the one they wished to . . . relieve of the burdens of wealth. All the Lowara horses knew how to lift latches, unbar gates, or find the weak spot in any fence. And Lowara horses were as glib at persuasion as any of their two-legged friends. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the Lowara would return to the
kumpania
trailing a string of converts.

And if the
kumpania
came across horses that
were
being mistreated . . .

Chali’s jaw tightened. That was what had set the Chosen at their throats.

She remembered that day and night, remembered it far too well. Remembered the pain of the galled beasts that had nearly driven her insane; remembered how she and Toby had gone to act as decoys while her mother and father freed the animals from their stifling barn.

Remembered the anger and fear, the terror in the night, and the madness of the poor horse that had been literally goaded into running her and Toby down.

It was just as well that she had been comatose when the “Chosen of God” had burned her parents at the stake
—that
might well have driven her completely mad.

That anger made her sight mist with red, and she fought it down, lest she broadcast it to the herd. When she had it under control again, she scuffed her way slowly through the dusty, flattened grass, willing it out of her and into the ground. She was so intent on controlling herself that it was not until she had come within touching distance of Romano’s brightly painted
vurdon
that she dared to look up from the earth.

Romano had an audience of children, all gathered about him where he sat on the tail of his wooden wagon. She tucked up against the worn side of it, and waited in the shade without drawing attention to herself, for he was telling them the story of the Evil Days.

“So old Simza, the
drabarni,
she spoke to the
rom baro
of her fear, and a little of what she had seen. Giorgi was her son, and he had
dook
enough that he believed her.”

“Why shouldn’t he have believed her?” tiny Ami wanted to know.

“Because in those days
draban
was weak, and even the
o phral
did not always believe in it. We were different, even among Rom. We were one of the smallest and least of
kumpania
then; one of the last to leave the old ways—perhaps that is why Simza saw what she saw. Perhaps the steel carriages the Rom had taken to, and the stone buildings they lived in, would not let
draban
through.”

“Steel carriages?
Rom chal,
how would such a thing move? What horse could pull it?” That was Tomy, skeptical as always.

“I do not know—I only know that the memories were passed from Simza to Yanni, to Tibo, to Melalo, and so on down to me. If you would see, look.”

As he had to Chali when she was small, as he did to every child, Romano the Storyteller opened his mind to the children, and they saw, with their
dook,
the dim visions of what had been. And wondered.

“Well, though there were those who laughed at him, and others of his own
kumpania
that left to join those who would keep to the cities of the
Gaje,
there were enough of them convinced to hold to the
kumpania.
They gave over their
Gaje
ways and returned to the old wooden
vurdon,
pulled by horses, practicing their old trades of horsebreeding and metal work, staying strictly away from the cities. And the irony is that it was the
Gaje
who made this possible, for they had become mad with fascination for the ancient days and had begun creating festivals that the Yanfi
kumpania
followed about.”

Again came the dim sights—half-remembered music, laughter, people in wilder garments than ever the Rom sported.

“Like now?” asked one of the girls. “Like markets and trade-days?”

“No, not like now; these were special things, just for amusement, not really for trade. I am not certain I understand it; they were all a little mad in those times. Well, then the Evil Days came . . .”

Fire, and red death; thunder and fear—more people than Chali had ever seen alive, fleeing mindlessly the wreckage of their cities and their lives.

“But the
kumpania
was safely traveling out in the countryside, with nothing needed that they could not make themselves. Some others of the Rom remembered us and lived to reach us; Kalderash, mostly.”

“And we were safe from
Gaje
and their mad ways?”

“When have the Rom ever been safe?” he scoffed. “No, if anything, we were in more danger yet. The
Gaje
wanted our horses, our
vurdon,
and
Gaje
law was not there to protect us. And there was disease, terrible disease that killed more folk than the Night of Fire had. One sickly
gajo
could have killed us all. No, we hid at first, traveling only by night and keeping off the roads, living where man had fled or died out.”

These memories were clearer, perhaps because they were so much closer to the way the
kumpania
lived now. Hard years, though, and fear-filled—until the Rom learned again the weapons they had forgotten. The bow. The knife. And learned to use weapons they had never known like the sharp hooves of their four-legged brothers.

“We lived that way until the old weapons were all exhausted. Then it was safe to travel openly, and to trade; we began traveling as we do now—and now life is easier. For true God made the
Gaje
to live so that we might borrow from them what we need. And that is the tale.”

Chali watched with her
dook
as Romano reached out with his mind to all the children seated about him; and found what he had been looking for. Chali felt his exultation; of all the children to whom Romano had given his memories and his stories, there was one in whose mind the memories were still as clear as they were when they had come from Romano’s. Tomy had the
draban
of the Storyteller; Romano had found his successor.

Chali decided that it was wiser not to disturb them for now, and slipped away so quietly that they never knew she had been there.

The scout for Clan Skaht slipped into the encampment with the evening breeze and went straight to the gathering about Chief’s fire. His prairiecat had long since reported their impending arrival, so the raidleaders had had ample time to gather to hear him.