Authors: Marjorie B. Kellogg
“Oh. Oh, dear.”
N’Doch looked her over dubiously. “You holding up okay? Wherever we’re headed, they sure don’t want to make getting there easy, do they?”
“I’m fine.” Erde thought of Tor Alte, a thick-walled stone fortress perched high on a mountain pinnacle. At several points along that upward road, visitors must walk their horses single-file. And these points, of course, were heavily monitored, and vulnerable to a well-placed rain of arrows or a deluge of boiling oil from above. She was familiar with the advantages of building in a secure location. But if there were so few people left around, what were Stoksie and his “crew” protecting themselves against? He was obviously more uneasy here than he’d been on the river. Every step of the trail, he and the girls stayed on the alert. Perhaps he would prefer to move along faster, but she couldn’t imagine how, with all that he was carrying. “Am I holding anyone up?”
“No way.” N’Doch tipped his head sideways. “’Cept maybe his lordship.”
Baron Köthen stood with his back to the rock, impassively observing the view. He had again positioned himself at the rear, so that no one was ever behind him and the path of retreat was under his control. He did not look worried, or even particularly concerned. He merely looked . . . careful.
The girls Senda and Mari were up and ready to be off again long before Erde was. They scampered straight along the face of the rock wall just long enough to raise her hopes that the climbing was over. Then they turned sideways and vanished from view as the path hooked a sharp right and crawled nearly vertically up the side of the ledge. At the turn, N’Doch leaned back to give Erde a hand up the first seemingly impossible step. Ahead, the taller girl called out and threw an eager wave upward. Behind, Stoksie let out a sigh of relief, then a long warble, three descending notes, two ascending, like a birdcall. An answering whistle echoed down among the rocks. Erde craned her neck this way and that. Finally, on a sharp jut high over the path, a slim figure moved into view, silhouetted against the amber sky. It carried a slim, dark object, like a broomstick with a handle, which it now slung over its shoulder to free one hand up for a wave.
A gun. The long kind. Erde recognized it, from her recent and all-too-vivid acquaintance with such objects. N’Doch saw it, too, and dropped back suddenly under the pretense of a stone in his sandal to confer with Baron Köthen in the rear. A
gun.
Erde was again haunted by the images of N’Doch’s body being torn to pieces by the last guns she’d seen. Her hands were wet, and her boots not the best for climbing. Distracted, she slipped, nearly lost her grip, then slipped again. She froze in terror.
DRAGON! I CANNOT MOVE! WILL YOU CATCH ME WHEN I FALL?
YOU WILL NOT FALL. THERE’LL BE NO TALK OF FALLING
.
He was right of course. It would surely panic their guides if the dragon was forced to reveal himself precipitously. She must control her weakness. She must forget about guns and falling, and blank her mind of everything but the effort of hauling herself safely upward. She imagined the rocks as the dragon’s plated back, hospitable to her grip, and was able to move forward. Gaining the top, she was breathless and weak, incapable of another forward step. Humiliated, she collapsed onto a nearby ledge, and was uncharitably gratified when Stoksie struggled up over the edge, as much the worse for wear as she was.
He resettled his load to ease the burden on his bad hip
and mopped his dark brow. The little girls had run off ahead already, their cries and childish chattering growing fainter with distance. “’Ard un, dat las’.”
Erde nodded wanly, forcing a smile, then realized it wasn’t an effort at all. She quite liked the man. Their shared plight somehow transformed him in her mind from a dark and forbidding stranger to an odd little man with a cheerful look. She didn’t need to know his language to get the sense of his words. Without N’Doch to translate, she had no words to say back to him, but this didn’t bother Stoksie one bit. So they sat catching their breath in easy silence, waiting for the others. When she could breathe more freely, Erde became aware of a subtle difference in the air—it was cooler here, even in the sun, perhaps due to the added elevation, but lighter and sweeter as well, with a promised hint of moisture.
Stoksie grinned when he saw her sniffing like a pack hound. He said something incomprehensible, bobbing his head fervently as if nods alone could make his words intelligible. Then N’Doch levered his tall frame over the edge. He stood panting for a moment, responding to their silence with a listening readiness of his own. Suddenly, he broke into a smile. “Aww, listen to that! Music to my ears!”
Erde had noticed it, too, a soft background sighing, like high-country breezes. Listening more carefully, she wondered how she could have mistaken running water for mere wind. And not just running, from the sound of it, but falling, as if from a great height. Stoksie, watching them inhale with such relish, nodded and grinned like a proud parent.
Baron Köthen finally joined them, dripping and scowling. “Seems we’ve paid our toll after all,” he remarked when he had breath enough. “As the good merchant’s beasts of burden.”
“You know it,” agreed N’Doch.
“All heah?” Stoksie bent, eagerly loading himself up again. “Quick, na.”
Putting weight on her feet again was painful. Erde repressed a groan, thinking that she’d happily trade the nausea and disorientation of dragon transport for this physical torture. But the path here was better trimmed and wider, and the rise was gentler. She thought perhaps the foliage had a healthier tinge, and that the dwarfish trees might be
gaining some height. Soon they broke out of the scrub entirely, where the path intersected a gravel-strewn cut through a grove of taller trees, some sort of pine. The heat was making the blood pound in her ears, and Erde was grateful when Stoksie turned right and led them into this sweeter-smelling shade.
“Used to be a road, this.” N’Doch kicked at shards of rubble poking through the mat of needles, raising dust. “Not a real big one, though.”
Erde hoped that if it had been a road, its end was nearby. Would it only lead to more ruin? She was eager to be somewhere, to arrive, rather than to be ceaselessly pushing on with no particular goal or direction. There seemed to be no real place left to go in this destroyed future. Simple movements, like walking, were becoming a struggle, but another dose of dragon encouragement and the music of flowing water drew her onward.
Deeper into the grove, they rounded a bend screened by a thicket of broad-leafed shrubs to discover a trio of armed men ahead in the road, watching their approach. No, Erde noted, two women and a young man, with scowls and threatening postures and the long sorts of gun slung easily into the crooks of their elbows, guns almost as tall as they were.
N’Doch pulled up sharply and eased Erde behind his back, but Stoksie greeted them cheerfully by name.
“Wha’s dis?” one of the women snarled, shoving out ahead of the rest with her gun leveled.
“Easy, na.” Stoksie put up his palms.
“Doan tell me easy! Whachu tinkin’, bringin’ straingeas up heah? Yu sumkinda fool?”
“Whoa,” murmured N’Doch. “Heavy language.”
But Stoksie rolled his eyes at his guests over his shoulder. “She mean, bring yu heah w’out askin’ huh. Y’know?”
“Betcha,” N’Doch replied with his usual bravado, which Erde was beginning to see the purpose of.
“Dis heah Brenda Chu,” Stoksie offered. “Call her Pitbull, ’cuz she chews hard!” He grinned, but thrust his narrow jaw forward just a bit. “Dees heah gud ole bizmen, Brenda. An’ dey’s fine ’n healt’y, lookit ’em. Back off, na.”
The woman had a shiny dark cap of short hair, a flattish face with eyes shaped like almonds. Her skin was the same
color as the smaller of the little girls, and she wore a ragged scar like a fighting man’s from the tip of her right eyebrow to the corner of her mouth. Her tough stance reminded Erde of Lily and Margit, Deep Moor’s scouts. But the resemblance ended with this woman’s reflex hostility, as she shifted her gun to her shoulder and stood up taller, as if proud to be named after a vicious animal.
N’Doch stepped forward to offer his hand. “N’Doch heah.” Brenda just stared at him. He shrugged. “Das cool.”
“Das Charlie ’n das Punk,” Stoksie continued, as if nothing had happened. “Dis heah all Water Dragon Crew, frum up nort’.”
Charlie was a bronze-skinned blonde woman with a patchy complexion and paler skin showing at her cuffs and neckline. Even in the heavy heat, she was as covered up with clothing as anyone could possibly bear to be. She looked like she might be willing to smile, if only Brenda’s scowl was not so discouraging. Punk was an alarmingly skinny, dark youth—about Erde’s own age, she guessed, surely no more than fifteen. All three wore the same sort of mismatched assortment of garments as Stoksie and the girls. Erde saw Punk measuring N’Doch’s height and ebony sheen with interest, maybe with envy. She had never known until today that human beings came in so many different colors, almost all of them darker than her own.
“Dees two is Lady ’n Doff,” Stoksie concluded, with a wave in her direction. “Frum Urop. Got good trade.”
“Urop?” Brenda was skeptical.
“Bad deah now, huh?” Charlie’s casual remark earned her a nasty look from Brenda, but the business end of her gun sank slowly toward the ground.
“Real bad,” N’Doch agreed, giving Charlie his “special” smile. Erde hoped he knew what he was talking about. She noticed he didn’t try the smile on Brenda. There was a bit more arguing and hand waving, and another brief gun-pointing, which brought Köthen lunging forward only to run into N’Doch’s swiftly outstretched arm. But finally Brenda was overruled by Stoksie’s bluff good nature and the obvious curiosity of the others.
“Dey’s healt’y-lookin, alrite.” Punk shrugged and slung his gun over his thin shoulder. “Weah yu bin, Stokes? We wuz worried boutchu.”
“Lookin’ fer trade, wachu tink? Tellyu, Albin’s a ghost town! We dun picked it dry. ’bout ta come home near empty. Li’l stuff, y’know? Den I find dees uns.” Stoksie showed all his bad teeth in a victory grin.
“Dju frisk ’em?” Brenda demanded, her final display of disapproval.
Their guide nodded, though he hadn’t. “Cupla blades. Nuttin’ much.”
“Frum Urop wit a cupla blades ’n des still walkin’?” Brenda’s eyes raked their bodies and their packs for signs of hidden weapons.
“Tellyu one ting . . .” Stoksie jerked his chin faintly in Baron Köthen’s direction. “Da reel whitefella? Fas’. Real fas’. Watch ’im.”
Erde sensed this was merely a sop. True as it was, Stoksie wasn’t worried about Köthen. But Pitbull Brenda’s honor was satisfied, now that she had an assignment: keep an eye on the grim-faced soldier. Clever Stoksie. At last the expedition moved forward, deeper into the shade, delayed only if one cared to observe the surreptitious dance between Köthen and Brenda as they skirmished over who would bring up the rear. Erde was unamazed when Köthen won.
A larger but less threatening delegation awaited them at the mouth of the clearing. This group was more cheerfully suspicious. They crowded around—men, women and a few wide-eyed small children—greeting Stoksie gladly, demanding reasons for his delay, staring openly at the strangers while helpfully relieving them of their extra burdens. Mostly small and dark-skinned like Stoksie and the girls, they didn’t look like they could put up much of a fight. But they had no problem verbalizing their curiosity. Erde was glad when Stoksie demanded silence and said the questions had to wait until the visitors were refreshed and settled. Immediately, the crowd pulled back, and a child was urged out from among them. A blue ceramic pitcher was put in his thin little hands. He presented it to Stoksie, who tipped a few drops of water onto his fingers, then touched them to his forehead. Erde heard a few indistinct but reverent murmurs from the crowd. Next Stoksie poured out a little on the ground, then he grinned, tilted the pitcher to his mouth and took a long, long drink. The crowd cheered,
and the pitcher was offered in turn to each visitor until it came back to the child’s hands empty. The water was sweet and cold. Erde would gladly have drunk more of it, but the child beamed and ran off with the jug, giggling.
“Gud, na! Blin’ Rachel Crew say welcome!” Stoksie gathered up his guests and led them on into the clearing. The chattering crowd fell right in behind.
The once-road opened on an expanse of space and bustle and noise, bare dirt with patches of grass and a few trees, tall enough to provide a bit of real shade for the busy maze of structures spread out beneath them: a motley assortment of tents and lean-tos and high-wheeled wagons with oft-patched canopies, and conical shapes of canvas and lower-slung carts built up with windows and chimneys like tiny rolling huts. The leftover nooks and crannies were crammed with livestock pens and awninged market booths. Even the odors were lively. A thin goat wandered forlornly and, everywhere, chickens clucked and scratched in the dust. A pair of lop-eared hounds ran up to greet Stoksie effusively, until he had had enough of their eager tongues and paws, and sent them bounding off again.
Over the din of people and animals, the sigh of the water was gentle and welcome music. But past the unkempt line of tent poles and rough-built roof peaks rose the most astonishing structure Erde had ever laid eyes on. Stoksie stopped them out in the open where they could take a good long look.
It was a building seeming to vanish right into the precipitous rock face looming behind it. It was both tall and yet vastly horizontal: layers of stone terraces coiling around the central green like the apse of a cathedral and rising one after the other, four, five, six, seven stories, each curved plane set off from the one below it, either forward or back, like the natural contours of the layered rock she had just climbed through. But for the sturdy central staircase, Erde could not always tell where the hand of man laid off and that of nature began again. It was like a palace built with the help of magic.
“Fuckin’ A!” breathed N’Doch beside her.
“This is some great lord’s castle, surely,” said Baron Köthen, joining them at last.