Serpent's Blood

by Brian Stableford

  "Shall we pass close to the city of Khalorn tomorrow?" Lucrezia asked.

  "Not very close," said Hyry.

  "I wish I dared send a message to Fraxinus, but it's too dangerous. He might not have arrived yet, and the king's men will be prying into everything.

  He'll be worried when he finds I'm not there, but he'll proceed as planned.

  We might be able to meet him in the fringes of the forest, but if we're to be certain that we don't miss him we'll probably have to go deep into the heart of it. There's a river which flows out of the Dragomite Hills away to the east, and then curves to run westwards. It has to be crossed . . .

  there's a ford we both know about. He's bound to make for that. We'll do the same."

  Lucrezia asked no more for a while, as they made their meal. She was anxious to make further progress in cementing their friendship now that Hyry had finally begun to thaw out, but she knew that there'd be time enough in the days to come. She was

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  glad of the opportunity to lie down and stretch

  her limbs, although the saddle-soreness which had blighted her every waking hour during the first three days of the journey had eased considerably. Hyry saw to the horses and the donkeys, then prowled around for a little while.

  She was ostensibly looking for food, although there was unlikely to be any to be found.

  "We'll need fresh supplies very soon," Lucrezia observed, staring down at the last discarded morsel of her loaf. She had devoured the rest eagerly enough, even though it had definitely not been a meal fit for a princess.

  "Perhaps we ought to buy some food from one of the farms, while we still can."

  "They have fresh food in the dark lands the trader assured her.

  "The heartland of the forest's unearthly, but it's almost as easy to live off the land there as it is hereabouts. The pigs and the deer are free to anyone who can catch them- and if we can't, we'll just have to eat what they eat.

  If we can find friendly dark landers we'll be fine, but even if we can't we won't starve."

  Lucrezia saw Hyry start slightly as she spoke the last few words, and immediately turned to see what it was that the trader had glimpsed.

  The region through which they were passing was not under intensive cultivation in spite of the fact that they were less than twenty kirns from the city. It {was mostly grazing land for woolly sheep, but there were plenty of people about, in scattered small holdings They had frequently been seen by others during the last few days, and always closely watched as they passed by, but that normally caused Hyry no concern.

  This time, she seemed anxious.

  Lucrezia followed the direction of her gaze- a little south of east and caught sight of a small group of men on horseback. They were visible for less than half a minute before disappearing into a small wood. They did not seem to be in a hurry.

  "Checuti's men?" Lucrezia said uncertainly.

  "Are they still with us?"

  "I doubt that they're Checuti's men," Hyry replied.

  "I think they turned back some time ago. Not militiamen or farmers, though.

  I don't think they've had a clear sight of us, although the horses and donkeys were in plain view. With luck, they'll assume that we're as many as our animals."

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  "Why with luck^ Lucrezia asked.

  "Because four mounted men would be more difficult to rob, and rather less rewarding, than two mounted women with two pack- animals. If they're thieves, better they should think us a target too difficult to try. Better still if they fear that we might be thieves too, as likely to seize their possessions as they would be to seize ours. In that case they might go home and bar their doors."

  "Are there thieves everywhere?" Lucrezia asked.

  "How is it possible for traders to make profits at all?"

  "Yes, there are thieves everywhere," Hyry told her philosophically.

  "But almost all of them are discreet. Trade is the lifeblood of all communities, not just the crowded towns and cities, and no community can afford to deter traders by playing host to robbers. Prudent predators conserve their prey; wise predators do their utmost to make sure that their prey prospers- what's good for the sheep is good for the wolves, as they say hereabouts. Under normal circumstances we'd be fairly safe in this region, but we're a long way from the main road. A passing wolf might judge that we were offering our bare throats to his teeth."

  "We may be two and not four," Lucrezia said, 'but we have sharp claws. "

  "Perhaps we have," the trader said pensively.

  "But it might not seem so to them if they come close enough to count us, all the more especially if they see that we're women. It's always better not to have to test the sharpness of one's claws."

  Hyry had already begun packing away the remains of their meal.

  Lucrezia went to check that the horses had finished theirs, but didn't make any move to help with the packs until the time came to lift them on to the donkeys' backs. There was a considerable skill in bundling and tying, which she had not yet mastered.

  They moved off into the twilight. The western sky had faded now from crimson to purple, and the barely visible forest rim was black even at its western edge. Elsewhere in the great vault of the sky the stars shone brightly- more brightly, it seemed, than they usually did, although Lucrezia knew that must be an illusion. According to the lore of the Arts Astronomical, Lucrezia knew, the light of the nearest stars took half a year to travel across the intervening void, while the light of the furthest took centuries. i79

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  Sometimes, stars exploded and grew temporarily brighter, but for the most part theySvere perfectly steady, their intensity never varying at all. Only the world's air varied, by virtue of cloud or dust or smoke. . and the air here was certainly no clearer than the air above Xandria, which was perennially swept by sea-breezes. Lucrezia was well aware, of course, that there were some in civilised Xandria who said that the Arts Astronomical were even less worthy of the name than the Arts Geographical, claiming knowledge of things which no man could ever have had the means to find out. The stars were too far away, such rigorous sceptics said, for their distances to be calculated by an imaginable method.

  Lucrezia had some sympathy with this kind of logic- having found the lore wanting in more than one respect she was no longer given to blind faith but she was inclined even so to put a certain amount of trust in the astronomers.

  If men really had come to the world in a ship which sailed the dark between the stars, they must have been in a position to know exactly what the stars were, and how they were distributed about the wilderness of infinity.

  Ours is only one of many cradles of life and civilisation, Lucrezia told herself wonderingly. Although we shall never see our myriad kinsmen, we are notialone. How could it be otherwise, given that the universe is so much vaster than we can imagined Whatever the sceptics say. Such knowledge ought to make a difference. It makes a difference to what we think we are, and what we may aspire to become. I have been a princess, but now I am something else. I have Serpent's blood in my veins as well as human, and whatever that might mean I believe that it makes a real difference to the way I am and the way I. think.

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  a ndris sat with his back against the trunk of the gnarly tree and watched the rain falling into the dammer-pool. The rain had slackened now, but had earlier been heavy enough to churn up the shallows into grey, viscous soup.

  The dammers had taken shelter in their lodge and were nowhere to be seen, but away to Andris's right, below the dam whe
re the rain had threatened to send the mud-cliffs sliding down into the narrow channel- a dredger was working patiently away, shovelling din up the slope with its massive forepaws and compacting it with slaps of its oar like tail.

  It can't be fun being a dredger, Andris thought, as he teased one of his upper incisors with a tentative finger. Even at the best of times, when every other creature can revel in the sun's warmth, a dredger has to live in the silt, forever hauling it out of the river's bed, knowing full well if dredgers have brain enough to know anything at all- that the rain will bring the greater part of it tumbling back down. Why do they do it's.

  It was obvious that this particular dredger couldn't even expect a reasonable ration of fish as a reward for maintaining the watercourse --the dammers had seen to that. There would be frogs, of course, and insect eggs- dammers, being aristocrats of the animal kingdom, wouldn't soil their shiny teeth with anything humbler than fish and wouldn't bother to compete for lesser prey but mostly there'd be waterweed, waterweed and more water- weed.

  The loose incisor began to move more freely back and forth, but Andris didn't try to tear it away too soon. It would come out in its own good time.

  If it weren't for the dredgers, of course, he mused, there wouldn't be a river here at all, just a swamp. Because there are 181

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  dredgers to

  excavafe^a river there are also dammers, whose lives must seem to the dredgers to be entirely dedicated to screwing things up for dredgers. Much the same argument, he supposed, could be applied to the farmers, whose drainage ditches must be just as much of an inconvenience- from the dredger point of view- as the dammers' dams. On the other hand, the dammers probably thought they had a rotten time too, because the fur coats that made it possible for them to chase fish in their dammed-up pools were also useful for making waterproof coats for the farmers. Then again, the farmers undoubtedly thought that they had a rough deal because they broke their backs raising huge crops which they then had to sell to factors and carters, who knew very well that what wasn't sold instantly would rot, and thus held all the cards when it came to haggling. Except, of course, that the factors and carters had exactly the same problem when they sold the goods on . All in all, Andris decided, as the tooth finally came away, the world was a very complicated place, where everyone and everything faced a desperate struggle to survive: a race against the ravages of corruption in which few could win prizes and most ran themselves into the ground trying unsuccessfully to keep up.

  What keeps us all going? Andris wondered. Why do we keep on running, when there's nowhere to go? Or dredging away, knowing that there'll never be an end to dredging?

  He caught sight of Mere) then, making her steady way across the field. The sight seemed to provide an answer of sorts. People kept going until they found their other halves: partners they could settle down with, and form an atom of community. That was what it was all about. That was the be all and end all of human existence. Except, of course, that so many people seemed to find that not long after they'd got what they'd been looking for, it turned out not to be what they'd been looking for at all. Would that happen to him too? For the moment, it seemed inconceivable.

  "Here's yours," said Merel, breaking into his reverie. She'd gone on foot to the nearest farmhouse to buy food. It wasn't really safe for her to go alone, being so slim and lightly armed, but it certainly wasn't safe for her to be seen with an oversized amber or a top quality horse, given that news of what had happened in Xandria had overtaken them several days ago.

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  He showed her the tooth.

  "It'll take weeks to grow a new one," he said dolefully.

  "It always does. This one isn't even rotted through.

  Are your new teeth always in such a tearing hurry to get through that they push the old ones out while they're still strong? "

  "No such luck," she said bitterly.

  "I always have to get someone to pull the rotten ones out with pliers, and the new ones take months to grow. Be grateful."

  The food didn't look very appetising which was hardly surprising, given that they were almost out of money. For the first couple of days the contents of Merel's purse had easily extended to the purchase of meat, eggs and cheese as well as bread, and they had been able to help themselves to fruit from unguarded orchards, but now they were getting by on bread and pickled vegetables, plus whatever fresh vegetables they could root out in passing.

  There were very few orchards in this part of the province.

  "The horses are eating better than we are," Andris observed gloomily.

  The missing tooth made it slightly awkward for him to bite the bread, although it hadn't been a chewing tooth.

  "Don't turn your nose up at this," Merel advised him.

  "It could be worse. Khalorn readily soaks up the surplus from these farms even at the best of times. Now, they say, the town's crowded and prices are rising sky-high. Anyway, if the horses weren't eating better than we are, we'd soon be carrying them."

  "The king can't have sent that many men south chasing Checuti,"

  Andris said sourly.

  "How can a city the size of Khalorn get overcrowded because of a couple of army. units and a few dozen not-so-secret agents?"

  "It's not just in comers from the north. There's a considerable drift from the south too. The forest-dwellers are usually self-sufficient but the farmer's wife says there's been a sharp increase in trade lately, with dark landers coming north by the thousand. She probably exaggerated in the interests of driving a harder bargain, but there must be some truth in it.

  She says there's some sort of trouble in the far south- she doesn't know what. She seemed rather ungrateful, but she's obviously worried about the rain spoiling their chance of getting the maximum advantage out of the higher prices."

  "That's farmers," Andris observed.

  "Complain when the rain doesn't come, complain when it does. How long before we get to Khalorn?" 183

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  "Depends wheth^the rain keeps up. Tomorrow if we're lucky, or the day after. It won't be easy to get to Phar, with all the militiamen in the province looking out for you. Going into the city will be like walking into a drago mites nest."

  "What exactly is a drago mice Andris asked.

  Merel shrugged.

  "I don't really know," she said.

  "According to rumour they're big, nasty and dangerous. Unearthly, of course

  . . . like giant insects, I think, only not exactly. Nobody I ever met claimed to have actually seen one. I doubt if there's anyone in Xandria who has. A few traders go into the forest, but there's no reason at all to go all the way through and out the other side- or never has been, until now."

  "We ought to find out more about them," Andris said, 'if we're really going to join up with Fraxinus's expedition. We might be seeing far more drago mites than any sane person could ever wish to. " " What alternative do we have? " Merel asked flatly.

  "There's no place for us in the empire. It's either south through the Forest of Absolute Night, west to the Grey Waste or east to the Spangled Desert --

  all of which are as bad as one another, if you believe travellers' tales." '

  "Perhaps we should have gone north- back across the Slithery Sea."

  i "We'd never have got a ship. The harbour's in the citadel's backyard

  --Checuti couldn't get a sackful of fresh coins out by sea. A huge yellow monster like you wouldn't have stood a chance if we'd tried to hide in Xandria;' ' " Maybe not," said Andris gloomily, 'but you could have gone that way, or even stayed in Xandria. No one knew you were involved no one saw you, except that poor basta
rd with a broken leg, and he hadn't the faintest idea who you were. There's no need for you to come into any drago mites nest with me, real or metaphorical."

  "Don't start all that again," she told him tiredly.

  "I decided, right?

  Not for love, or family loyalty, or good bright coin, but because it suited me. It still does. You don't have to spend the rest of your life worrying about it. We're together now, wherever we go- unless and until you want to be rid of me. Are you tired of me already? Is my skin too dark for your delicate tastes? "

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  "You know it's nothing like that!" he said- but not angrily. She did know, and he knew she knew.

  "If we're lucky," she told him, 'we'll find out what drago mites look like soon enough- after we've made the acquaintance of night cloaks and flower worms and all the other forest nasties. I saw a night cloak pelt once, made up into an actual cloak. It looked beautiful. The live ones have claws and teeth, of course. Mind you, if we're not lucky, we'll never get that far.

  When I see my first drago mite I'll be delighted, no matter how ugly and vicious it is, simply because it will mean that I've got past the militia and the constabulary, not to mention assorted wild boars, crocolids and whip snakes . . . nor the dark landers who are said to have some pretty nasty habits themselves while they're on home ground, although they seem meek enough when they're in the big city. You'll have to do all the dickering once we're in the forest the savages will probably think that you're a long-lost brother who's finally found his way home. "

  Andris finished the last of his bread.

  "We could do with a couple of cloaks ourselves," he observed.

  "Dammer-hide, that is, not genuine night cloak Just to keep us dry."

  "Dry! Easy to tell that you're a rotting prince, expecting to keep dry when it rains. People like me just get wet and keep going."

  "Just like the dredger," Andris said, pointing to the beast, which was wholly out of the water at present. It looked like a huge heap of grey mud which had been magically brought to life.