Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (28 page)

Was Free walled all the way around?

Williams stopped to hand one of the guards a piece of paper — his tax receipt, maybe? The guard disappeared into the gatehouse, and Williams reined back to speak to the others. Kevin pulled out a map and showed him something.

After a few minutes, the guard emerged from the gatehouse and signaled the others to open the heavy wooden gate for us.

As it started to move, Williams put us in formation: he’d ride first, with Terry on his left flank and Mizzy a bit farther back on the right. I would come next. I was to stay nearly abreast of Mizzy. Kevin would ride half a length back from me and to the left, with Ida bringing up the rear.

“Stay grouped, but stay clear of each other,” Williams said. “Eyes to the sides and back. Pay attention. Don’t forget to look up.”

We got ourselves in order and rode through.

On the other side, the land had been cleared of trees and brush for a hundred yards. Then began the world I’d expected to see when I rode through the strait — Earth as it might’ve looked if the last great extinction never happened.

Trees towered on either side of the road. They were far more varied than the spare conifers of Octoworld. Some were slender. With others, four men couldn’t have joined hands around them. Thick vines climbed the trunks and laced the canopy, and everything was covered with strange flowers. Some were tiny, but others were so big they reminded me of those saucers you can use for sledding. They seemed to grow on every available surface. Some trees were so covered I could barely see any bark. They looked like those bendy things you use to clean a pipe — pale and fuzzy with a million blossoms. It wasn’t raining, but everything was damp. The air was hot and humid and sugary-sweet. There was birdsong all around us.

The Cretaceous, plus sixty-five million years of evolutionary refinement. It was beautiful, magical. And creepy.

A half-mile out from the walls, the cobblestone street gave way to dirt. It seemed to be a well made road — hard packed and gently sloped, so water would drain into a ditch on the low side. Nevertheless, I could see mud and standing water in a low spot up ahead.

Oh well. I’d known the journey wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Unfortunately, my mount made it even less pleasant than it might’ve been. Copper’s nights in the rental stable had convinced him that was home. Every time I relaxed my attention, he tried to wheel around and head back to Free. Thank god for all those lessons with Patricia.

Once he actually managed to get a few body lengths down the road before I regained control. As I brought him back up to his place in line, Mizzy tsked in disapproval.

“The spots are cute, but he’s a pain in the ass.”

I nodded. “He’s the one I’ve been riding at home, but he’s not good for this.”

“Why’d you bring him?”

“Not my choice.”

She raised one eyebrow and shot a glance toward Williams.

Huh
. I’d been wondering why Patricia had inflicted Copper on me for this trip. Maybe she didn’t have a say.

Copper jigged under me, sensing my distraction.

“Calm down,” Mizzy said in a soothing voice. “Walk nicely.”

He quieted suddenly. I could feel his mouth soften as he lowered his head.

“Can he understand what you’re saying?”

“No. He gets the feeling that goes with the words, not their meaning. I could just hum or say nonsense sounds, but saying exactly what I mean helps me focus the emotion better.”

I opened my mouth to ask another question, but Terry spoke up. “We should focus on the forest. Predators tend to hang around the town. We must smell pretty tasty, packed inside those walls.”

The idea of
smelling tasty
gave me a little shudder. I looked back to the trees.

Even when the forest was still dark, it had been alive with birdsong. Now that the light was filtering down through the canopy, I could see birds everywhere. Many were tiny — no bigger than large bugs. Some were much more substantial. Most seemed to be brightly colored. They looked like jewels — flitting through the branches, clinging to the trunks, swarming around us and the horses as though we might have food to offer.

The farther we rode, the more of them I saw.

Sometimes a flock of tiny ones would focus on a particular horse in a way that seemed aggressive, but swishing tails and shaken manes deterred them. Some of the larger ones would land on the packhorses and hop around investigating the cargo. The horses’ fodder was stored in canvas bags too tough for their beaks to tear through, but they were quite adept at loosening the ties on the sacks and making off with a few kernels — even though it took several birds working together to undo a knot.

There seemed to be many flightless species, as well. Sometimes a whole bevy of them would run right under the horses’ feet, somehow managing to avoid being crushed as they darted to and fro. Occasionally a family of really big ones would pound past us at a run, using the road as a quick route through the forest. Copper didn’t like those one bit. Too bad Patricia hadn’t grazed ostriches alongside Cordus’s horses, so he could’ve gotten used to such creatures.

The flighted birds also took advantage of the road. Given the density of the trees, I guess open airspace was a hot commodity. Every few minutes, the narrow strip of sky above us would darken as a great flock passed overhead.

Birds of prey seemed to have noticed the way the road concentrated their food source. I saw several successful hunts, just in the first hour.

At one point, a truly massive bird — far bigger than a bald eagle — burst out of a tree into the midst of a passing flock, then flapped down to the road in front of us, a wriggling mass of bright blue and green feathers clutched in its talons.

It stood there atop its prey and shrieked at us.

It didn’t sound like the hawks I remembered from Wisconsin. Instead of a single piercing cry, the shriek had different tones.

Almost like words
.

I shivered.

Williams stopped a good ways back from the bird and waited. Eventually it shrieked again, crouched, and sprang into the air, winging heavily up into a nearby tree with its meal. It alternated between gulping chunks of meat and staring at us as we rode by.

There’d probably be dinosaurs in this stratum as well, but I didn’t know what kind.

Yellin always reacted dismissively to my questions about S-Em animal life. Especially the dinosaurs. Every time I asked, he’d get all sniffy — like a tourist who’s just gotten back from Paris and finds his friends want to hear about the city’s cockroaches, not its history and culture.

I thought that was stupid. Humans were a new species, over here. The dinos had had more than 200 million years to create strata and colonize those created by other species. Surely they were still a significant factor.

I glanced around at the other members of the party. They were all scanning the trees. Distracting one of them with a question didn’t seem wise. Later.

As it turned out, we weren’t the only people on the road. We passed several parties going the opposite way, and around midday two travelers caught up with us from behind.

But we passed no signs of human habitation. I wondered if we would have to camp by the side of the road.

I was relieved when, in the late afternoon, we came to a large triangular stockade built at a crossroads. It was made of tall logs driven into the ground and reinforced inside with wooden crosspieces. The tops of the logs were sharpened, and raised guard platforms had been added inside the walls at the three corners. The forest all around the stockade had been cleared, leaving an ugly expanse of mud and stumps.

There was a lot of mud inside the fort as well. A roofed wooden platform at the center provided some space for bedrolls, but the horses would have to stand in the slop all night long.

Ten other travelers were sharing the stockade with us. Two were the people who’d passed us on the road earlier. The rest were a trading party. They had a lot of packhorses, and the place already smelled strongly of horse pee.

We unpacked what we needed, then fed the horses and got them settled for the night.

Ida settled on the edge of the platform and made food for us — a stew of dried meat, grain, and vegetables.

We gathered ’round, and she handed each of us some hard crackers. The others began dipping stew out of the pot with their crackers. I did the same. It was edible.

Williams had taken the spot beside me, and I itched to move away. Being exposed to him almost nonstop for four days had dulled the flashbacks, but I still got antsy if he came close enough to touch me.

I tried to edge away unobtrusively, but Mizzy was right there.

Williams’s head came up. One of the traders was approaching.

“Peace, friends,” said the trader in Baasha. “Would one of you beautiful ladies be willing to help us? We have no women to prepare our meat.”

He was looking at Ida.

“No I will not help,” she said exasperatedly. “You are fools to hunt on this road.”

The trader’s expression darkened. “If we do not hunt, we will not eat.”

“You should have packed food,” Ida said.

The trader pointedly turned away from her and toward Mizzy.

“I would poison you if I tried,” she said sweetly. “I cannot cook.”

The trader turned to me, smiling through his annoyance.

I was tempted to say yes, just to get away from Williams for an hour. My brother loved hunting, so I’d butchered plenty of ducks and pheasants in my day. Even a few turkeys.

But in my mind’s eye, I saw Gwen shaking her head and saying something annoyingly sensible, like,
Don’t alienate the people you’re relying on
, or,
Choose your allies carefully
.

I followed the others’ lead and declined.

The trader stomped off, muttering under his breath.

Within half an hour, the smell of roasted meat wafted over. I guess they’d figured out how to do women’s work once they got hungry enough.

After we’d cleaned up and laid out our bedrolls, Mizzy brought out a small stringed instrument and began to sing songs. Her voice was wonderful — low and rich and full of emotion. It only took a few minutes for the traders to drift over. They sat among us, listening raptly. It was a song of lost love. I was transfixed by the depth of sadness. I couldn’t help crying.

Mizzy played on for a good half-hour, mixing rollicking, bawdy tunes with ballads. By the time she set her instrument down, the tension between us and the traders had melted away, and the groups separated amiably.

Watch shifts were divided up. I didn’t get one. That was okay with me. I wouldn’t have known what to watch for.

Nothing attacked us that night, but the wooden platform was hard and the deep silence of the forest made me nervous. I slept poorly. In the middle of the night I woke from a nightmare — I’d been sitting with Cordus in his office, staring worshipfully at him, while deep inside, the real me screamed and raged, caged and helpless. It took a long while to get back to sleep.

Mizzy woke me before dawn. The packhorses had already been fed and loaded up, so all I had to do was get myself and Copper ready to go.

That turned out to be a tall order. After his night in the mud, the little horse was in an especially foul mood. Every time I turned away from his head, he tried to bite me; if I got too close to his rear, he cocked a hind leg threateningly. Eventually, I put a halter on over his bridle and tied his head closely to one of the sleeping platform’s heavy wooden pillars. That kept his teeth out of the equation, but he still eyed me balefully, pinning his ears and swishing his tail as I tacked him up and loaded my saddlebags.

By the time I was finally ready, the sun was up, and the party was standing at the stockade’s gate, ready to leave. I led Copper over to them, only to find I was too stiff to get my foot in the stirrup. I might’ve been a lot fitter than I used to be, but riding ten hours a day was going to take some getting used to.

Terry dismounted and gave me a leg up. That was embarrassing, especially when I saw my boot had muddied his sleeve. He just smiled and shrugged.

Once we were on our way, the morning passed much the way the last day had: plodding through thick, flower-covered forest. The narrow strip of sky showing through the canopy was cloudy, and mist clung to the tops of the trees. The air smelled wet and syrupy.