‘Pace the climb!’ Klepsang called from his seat in the cart. ‘Don’t tire out the beasts!’
He and Ma were quite a load for any animal to haul, and Pema watched narrowly as he geed up the donkey. However, it seemed to be pulling comfortably, so he returned his attention to the grunts. He chirped questioningly at the matriarch, but she just waggled her ears and started up the first leg of the zigzagging road without hesitation.
‘Well, fair enough,’ said Pema. ‘Here goes!’
The grunts following her were not so calm, deafening everyone with their squeals and bellows.
‘What are they yelling about?’ Rose shouted. ‘They were all chirrupy and quiet on the boat!’
‘I don’t think they’ve ever climbed anything before,’ Pema yelled back. ‘They get noisy when something’s new.’
I hate grunts, thought Singay.
And it wasn’t just the noise. All those pointy feet stirred the fine dust that lay on the road until it rose up in a beige cloud. Soon the grunts, along with Singay, Pema, and Rose, were completely coated – skin, hair, hooves and clothes. Pema saw Singay disgustedly trying to rub the dirt off her face with her sleeve. She only managed to make it worse, but at least Rose didn’t need to keep topping up his makeup to look the same colour as everybody else.
It was a long climb. Singay and Pema had High Land legs, but the Driver was soon struggling. Pema took him up on his back.
‘You don’t weigh a thing!’ he reassured the little man.
There was a bit of a melee when the herd reached the top – not all of the grunts wanted to stop this new activity so soon – but the matriarch exerted her authority with some well-placed shoves and squeals. The herd moved forward relatively calmly along the plateau road – the Overland. There was no sign of Ma and Klepsang, who were staying well ahead of the grunt dust cloud. Their ‘family’ peered around, anxious to see what this new stage of the journey was going to look like.
Then a hot wind came out of the south, dispersing the obscuring, clogging cloud, and Pema, Rose and Singay were able to see the landscape that stretched before them.
It was a shock.
‘I hope it isn’t going to be too much for the animals,’ said Pema anxiously.
Singay tried to make a rude noise, but her mouth was too dry.
The plateau was unlike any place she or Pema had ever seen – a stony, dusty, thirsty landscape whose ribs showed. Stretching away into the distance, all they could see was a flat scene of tumbled rocks and scree, scrub plants with leathery-looking stems and grey, spiny excuses for leaves, sharp-edged gullies like cracked skin and, heading straight across it, the road.
‘No water,’ murmured Singay, licking her dry lips.
‘Like the desert,’ said Pema, ‘except . . .’ He was going to say, except the desert was beautiful, but what was the point? Whatever this place was like, they had to cross it. Starting now. ‘Let’s go.’
With every step, every sense relayed the same message: You don’t belong here. The broken surfaces of the road bruised hooves and feet; bitter-tasting grit got down everyone’s throats; the blaring glare of the sun hurt their eyes. In the emptiness, there were no familiar sounds – even the distant scream of a bird of prey, no more than a speck high up in the brassy sky, echoed weirdly. And if dryness could have a smell, the dust that rose up with every step reeked of it.
The herd and their keepers followed the Overland, hour after hour, in a kind of dreary dream. Then, as the sun finally began to set, the road dipped down into a broken valley, and the first Way Station – one of the hostels spaced out along the route, each a day’s march apart – came into view.
‘At last!’ croaked Rose wearily.
Holding pens with welcoming feed and water troughs immediately caught the attention of the herd, but the lead grunt and Pema managed to keep things orderly as they settled in.
As soon as the work was done, and not a moment before, Klepsang Zale and Ma Likpa appeared, carrying food and blankets.
‘Well, I expect you’ll be ready for a good night’s sleep, am I right?’ Klepsang beamed at them. They stared back, dusty and dishevelled.
‘We’ve brought you your suppers,’ said Ma. ‘Here you are.’
‘Wait! Aren’t we staying in there?’ exclaimed Pema, pointing at the Way Station.
‘No,’ said Ma, sounding surprised and affronted.
‘Rooms are very expensive, and we’re already doing you all quite a favour,’ said Klepsang.
‘Quite a favour,’ agreed Ma.
Pema, Singay and Rose looked at each other. What could they say?
They did their best to clear away stones and hard lumps from the ground by the pens, laid out their bedrolls and lit a fire.
‘I wonder if they have bath tubs at the Way Station?’ said Singay, looking longingly through the fading day at the building. Welcoming yellow lamplight was beginning to spill out of the windows. ‘Warm water . . . some soap . . . lavender oil . . .’
Pema caught his breath. His grandmother Dawa used to put lavender oil into his bath water at home whenever he was sad, or sore, or she just felt like mollycoddling him a little. For just a moment he thought he could remember the warm, purple scent, and how it made him feel . . . but then the dry smell of the dust and the sharp tang of the pens and the smoke from the campfire swept over him and the memory was gone.
Homesickness squeezed his heart so tight he nearly cried out. He got up. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
As he padded off into the darkness, Rose murmured to Singay, ‘More walking? Is he all right, do you think?’
Singay poked the fire. The temperature was dropping as the light faded. ‘I expect so,’ she said. ‘Sometimes you just have to be by yourself for a bit, you know?’
Night had fallen. At first, away from the fire, everything seemed uniformly dark. Then, as his eyes adjusted, Pema began to pick out the details in his surroundings. The darker humps became the shapes of spiny shrubs and outcroppings of rocks, and he could see the black slits of gullies eroded by streams and flash floods long dry. A part-moon came out from behind the clouds, and its light reflected off the paleness of dry soil and stone.
He found himself a rock to sit on and stared out across the plateau. Stealthily, the spell of desert lands washed over him. He became aware, as he had not been during the harsh glare of the day, that this place had its own surreal beauty. He let his mind empty until there was nothing of him that was separate. He became part of the night breeze, the moonlit shapes, the great empty distances of tumbled scree and broken rock, deep-shadowed rifts in the ground and sudden blank inclines and . . .
‘What is that?’ Pema muttered crossly.
So high-pitched it was practically not even a sound, there was an irritating, insistent vibration coming at him out of the wilderness. It was unlike any cry or call or communication he’d ever sensed before, and yet it was inescapably clear what message was being sent.
Someone, or something, was in serious trouble.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dasu and Ker
For a moment, Pema hesitated. I can’t just go off – it’s dangerous out there. I should go back to the others. Then the call intensified in a way he could feel in his bones.
He didn’t hesitate anymore. Slipping and stumbling, he blundered forward. Spiny bushes tried to catch hold of him, loose pebbles rolled out from under his feet, dry ditches and ankle-wrenching cracks appeared without warning in his path.
Where are you? Hold on – I’m coming!
Glancing up, he saw that clouds were lipping round the moon. He gritted his teeth and hurried on. If the light goes, I’m lost.
There was a new despairing note in the cry, then the clouds covered the moon and he put on a final burst of speed – and, without warning, the earth disappeared from under his feet.
‘SNOWS!’
An avalanche of sand and stones and sharp grit swept him down the side of a deep gully and half-covered him when he hit the bottom. He w
as scratched and bruised with the breath knocked out of him, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to get out again, but he had at last found the source of the cry.
There was just enough light to see a tail and two back paws sticking out from under the treacherous scree. Pema scrambled over and tried to clear the dirt away but more fell down around his hands. He realised to his horror that the distress call had gone silent. There was no time to be delicate. He grabbed hold of the motionless paws and heaved.
The entire side of the ravine began to collapse on top of him. Encumbered by the animal, he could only stagger backwards, and slammed into the opposite wall. Between the rising dust and the falling dirt it was hard to find breathable air, but at last the landslide trickled to a stop.
The treacherous moonlight reappeared. Pema spat dirt out of his mouth and looked to see what it was he had in his hands.
It was a small dugg, with a longish body and short legs and wiry, dirt-caked hair. It wasn’t moving.
Pema laid his ear to its side. He thought he could just hear the flutter of a heartbeat, but he couldn’t be sure. I need better light – I need to make a fire. But what with? He looked anxiously to the left, but that way seemed blocked. If I can just get out of this gully, he thought, turning to the right.
It was then that he realised he was no longer alone. Long, low shapes moved in the shadows. There was a rasping growl, an answering snarl.
He wasn’t the only one who had heard the cry for help.
Cold sweat trickled down his back. Moving with painstaking slowness, he shifted the dugg to one arm and stooped. His fingers closed around a sharp-edged stone. He stayed crouched, staring into the darkness, desperately trying to find a target.
There! A flicker of movement.
With a wordless yell, Pema straightened, and threw with all his strength. There was a yelp of pain, claws scrabbling, then silence. For moment, he stood frozen, every sense straining. Had it worked? Had he driven them – whatever they were – away?
No. The shapes flowed back, and in the moonlight Pema caught a glint of teeth. He groped for another stone . . .
. . . and a flaming angel leapt down the gully wall from behind him, right over his head like a shooting star. It flailed its wings, shrieking at the predators, thrashing a trail of fire back and forth, and Pema had a horrifyingly clear glimpse of the creatures that had been stalking him.
Their bodies were huge and lean and covered in rough hair, their feet were clawed, their hackles raised high over narrow shoulders, lips pulled back in snarls to show, impossibly, fangs – and then, suddenly, they were gone. It was as if they’d never been there.
The angel turned, and became a girl in a robe holding a torch.
‘What did you think you were doing!’ she said sharply, thrusting the light at him, and then gasped, ‘Dasu? Dasu!’
Suddenly, as if by magic, the limp little body in Pema’s arms squirmed into life and flung itself at the stranger.
‘Dasu, Dasu, you daft dugg, where did you go? I’ve been looking for you everywhere! Are you hurt? Are you all right?’ The girl hunkered down, doing her best to examine the wriggling animal, who was doing its best to lick any bit of her it could reach. ‘Don’t you know those wulfs would have you in shreds as soon as look at you?’
‘Those were wulfs?!’ Pema gasped. ‘But they were huge! And their teeth!’
‘Plateau wulfs. They’re venomous. Fire’s the only thing they’re afraid of. No one but a fool would walk in the wild at night without a torch prepared.’ She looked up at him, her eyes glittering strangely.
‘Here, hold Dasu while I make a fire,’ she said. ‘I need to check properly he’s all right.’
The girl moved about purposefully in the dimness, collecting and laying dry shrub branches and carefully applying the torch.
Who is she? Pema thought. What’s she doing out in the wild? He was uncomfortably aware of how alone he was. Nobody has any idea I’m here. He hugged the warm dugg closer for comfort and was rewarded by the rasp of a wet tongue across his chin.
‘Let me see him.’
In the light from the fire, she felt along the dugg’s legs and back, murmuring to him, checking there was no tenderness in belly or chest, nothing to make him flinch. Then she nodded and set him down.
‘He’ll be stiff in the morning, but no real harm done. He’s still just a pup, and a dim-witted one at that. He ran off after a rabbid, which is bad enough, but the wulfs would have had him in three bites if you hadn’t come by, so I guess we’re in your debt. My name is Kerkerbabu, but mostly I’m called Ker.’
Shesmiled. Her teeth were disconcertingly sharp-looking.
‘Um, I’m Pema.’ Then a bit of dry bush fuel caught and flared up and he saw the girl clearly for the first time. Saw the small build, the angular face. The tawny skin, and hair, and eyes.
‘You’re Jathang!’ he spluttered, scrambling awkwardly to his feet.
‘Pema. Strange name.’ Ker was ignoring his outburst. ‘So, tell me, Pema, how did you find my beast? How did you know he’d got himself into trouble?’
‘I heard him.’ Pema rubbed his face with one hand, smudging even more dirt over it. What’s she going to do to me?
‘You heard him,’ she said, lengthening out the words speculatively.
‘Yes. Well, I didn’t know it was him, specifically, but I heard something in trouble – not a grunt, they sound different. Actually, I’ve never heard any animal that sounded like yours before, but it was pretty obvious he was in some sort of distress. So I came to see what was wrong . . .’ He trailed off, unsure what the look on the girl’s face might mean.
‘That’s surprising,’ she said, ‘since Jathang duggs are mute.’
Pema stared at her. ‘But that can’t be right – I heard him.’
Ker shook her head. ‘No. Hearing him isn’t possible. We breed our duggs to be voiceless.’
‘Why?’
‘Why do you think? As you so astutely pointed out, we’re Jathang. We’re travellers, hiders, the people of the moonlit flit. We’re hunters of wary prey in a land short on cover. Just how useful do you think a dugg with a big yap is going to be to us? I thought even you people could figure out that much.’
‘Who people?’ said Pema, more offended than grammatical. ‘Those aren’t my people.’ He shrugged a shoulder in the general direction of the Way Station. ‘That is, I’m with them because I’m travelling with them – we met them on the barge, and I’m looking after the beasts. But I come from the Mountain. I—’ He stopped abruptly. Pema, you fool – shut your mouth! He was opening himself up to a whole host of questions it would be hard to answer.
But the question she did ask was, ‘How much are they paying you?’
‘What?’
‘For driving the beasts,’ Ker said impatiently. ‘That’s what you said you were doing. And I want to know, how much are they paying you for doing it?’
‘Er, nothing.’ What is she talking about? ‘But they knocked off half the fee for the trip.’
The girl raised her tawny eyebrows. ‘You’re joking, right?’
‘No . . .’
‘Boy, have you been conned!’ she snorted. ‘Whoever you’re travelling with should be paying you to herd their beasts for them. There’s an official hiring market in The Smoke, with set fees and contract-signing and everything.’ She paused and leaned back. ‘But you didn’t go into the town, did you?’
‘But they said . . . they said they were saving us . . . that we’d be picked up by the Protectors . . .’
She was shaking her head at him. ‘Protectors don’t come onto the Overland.’
‘Of course they do – why wouldn’t they?’ Pema knew he sounded sullen. He felt sullen.
Her grin was not very nice. ‘Jathang don’t like Protectors.’
‘Well, but, hang on, how would you know about rates of pay and stuff? Your people are banned by the towns – you’re not even allowed in!’
‘Says who? We don’t go into
towns because we can’t stand the smell, not because anybody’s tried to tell us not to! And I know what they should be paying you because my cousin did that route not two seasons ago, with just a small herd of beasts, and he made enough to get married on! Yes, they’ve conned you, boy, coming and going.’
‘All right, I get it.’ Pema stood up abruptly. ‘You don’t need to keep telling me.’
Immediately, Dasu the dugg started up his inaudible wailing again and, without thinking, Pema bent down to comfort him.
Ker bit her lip.
‘I apologise,’ she said, not sounding at all comfortable about it. She reminded him suddenly of Singay. ‘This is not how I should be thanking you for rescuing my Dasu, is it?’ She thought for a moment, and then nodded to herself, as if she’d come to a decision.
‘Are you stopping at Cliffton or going on?’
‘We’re going on.’
‘Right.’ And she began to search about on the ground. ‘There. That’ll do,’ she said, as if to herself, holding up a small, smooth, flat pebble and squinting at it in the firelight. Then she pulled a lethal-looking knife from her belt and began to scratch a pattern on the stone with it.
When it was done to her satisfaction, she held it out to him.
‘When you get to the pier below Cliffton, look for a boat with that marked on its bow. It won’t be obvious – it’s only meant to be seen by us – so you’ll need to look carefully. That’ll be a safe boat to take passage on, and if you show the captain this stone, she’ll give you berths.’
‘Why should she?’
‘Hm? Oh, she’s my auntie. And now,’ she said, leaning over to throw sand on the fire, ‘I’ll take you back.’ She stood up and tucked the dugg under one arm. ‘The moon’s set and we don’t want either of you getting into any more trouble!’
Pema wanted to say he didn’t need her help, but really he was just too tired to argue about anything anymore.
Sooner than he would have thought possible, they were back at his own camp. The fire had died down to the embers, and there was nothing of Rose and Singay to be seen except two blanketed humps on the ground.
Walking Mountain Page 11
