The Wild Road

by Jennifer Roberson

  As Rhuan headed into the grove, here and there he saw some folk donning weather garb, oiled clothing-weight canvas, seams sealed with wax. Rough trousers were cuffed at the hems with drawstrings to keep the mud out, and the upper body was clothed in coat-shaped, belted garments with hoods, and sleeve cuffs also pulled tight with drawstrings. While the weather gear rendered the rain less of a bother, it also rendered the karavaners into identical human shapes with no distinguishing characteristics. Children were obvious because of their size, but a tall woman could easily be mistaken for a man. Some womenfolk, however, had nothing but knitted shawls; the karavaners had not expected to be at the settlement during monsoon and hadn’t prepared for it. The majority of people Rhuan saw had nothing to ward their bodies against the rain. He reflected that the Sister of the Road had a sound idea in mind when she offered her hands and those of her fellow Sisters to make up weather garb.

  Striding through on his way to Jorda’s wagon, he was recognized. Some karavaners raised their hands in greeting, and a few asked him to blossoming fires for food and drink. It was nearing midday now and flatbread would be baked in treasured iron skillets, tea set to heat on the stone fire rings, and sweet beans flavored with molasses would go into pots that also sat on the stones. Each wagon carried in its gear a clay pot into which folk put coals and small dried twigs, kindling for when they stopped upon the road. Usually a child was designated to keep the coals alive by carefully adding twigs during the journey. Flint and steel might start a fire without need of the coal pot, but in the wet, no. The flat stones ringing cookfires, as had the coals, traveled with each wagon. One could never be certain of suitable rocks out on the plains, and yet setting a fire without them could be dangerous. So each time the ring was built, the fire-blackened stones were fitted together like masonry, lacking only mortar.

  Rhuan saw that children had already been sent out to gather up wood and bring it back beneath awnings to dry. While some complained, others foraged bravely without comment. Rhuan could clearly see the image of Ilona marching through rain, sleet, or snow to gather wood. When the rain stopped later in the day, the men would set up chopping blocks near the wagons and cut dying limbs into managable pieces. Wood was one thing they did not need to ration with the young grove down, but it was vital to dry the limbs.

  A pack of dogs ran through very close to him, yipping, barking, growling, and leaping joyously at one another in vociferous play-fighting. The smaller dogs hung off the ruffs or even the lip flews of larger dogs. In a matter of minutes they had taken their play-fight right into Rhuan, who stood still as the dogs leaped upon one another or rolled on the wet ground. His knees were slightly bent and legs were spread to hold his balance, which he very nearly lost when one of the larger dogs ducked between them.

  Rhuan swore, flailing to recover balance and decorum. Leather leggings were smeared with mud and whipping saliva. “All right,” he said. Then, raising his voice over the growling and barking, “All right, I said . . . I am not one of of your brethren! Can’t a man walk where he wishes without being inundated by canines?” He waded through the dogs, pushing some aside with his legs and hands as he sought footing. In a matter of moments the pack was off again, tearing madly through the grove. In its wake was raised a child’s high voice trying to call back one of the dogs. Rhuan grinned wryly; it would be hours before the dogs returned to their respective wagons, worn out but hungry.

  By the time he arrived at Jorda’s wagon, his boots were caked with mud, and he was wet from head to toe. The door stood open above the rough wooden steps that, as did Ilona’s, folded away when it was time to move on. The wagon sat on big axles and high wheels, and was large enough to house a family such as Audrun’s.

  The exterior of Jorda’s wagon was much plainer than Ilona’s with its yellow-painted wheels and the canopy bearing diviner runes. Jorda’s was as efficient, plain, and practical as its owner.

  Rhuan could hear the karavan-master moving around inside. The wagon creaked. He drew in a deep breath, held it a moment, then blew it out into the drizzling rain. It was time for truths and frankness, an explanation that would illuminate, not frighten. But Ilona had taken the truth quite well; perhaps Jorda would do the same.

  Like so many others, Jorda had put up an awning off the side of his big wagon. Though the rain fell steadily, the thick canopies of the elder grove offered a measure of shelter, keeping the worst of the rain off the awning. Jorda stood slightly bent in the doorway in stocking feet, gripping either side to avoid knocking his head against the roof-ribs. “Boots off.”

  Rhuan nodded. Removing footwear was usual during monsoon. He worked off his boots, set them side by side on the bottom step, next to Jorda’s. The karavan-master frowned. “Perhaps I should ask you to strip down—all of you is muddy.”

  “Yes, a pack of dogs decided to include me in their play, which was not my intent.” He slipped the curved horn fastener from a loop in his belt. “I’ll strip down, of course, if that’s what you want.” And he meant it. Nudity, public or otherwise, did not bother him. But he knew Jorda was different.

  And indeed, disgruntled, he waved the offer away. “Come in, then—but sit on the floor.”

  As Jorda moved back, Rhuan ducked down to avoid the canopy rib, brushing his head against a string of dangling charms. Another thong of charms depended from the Mother Rib. A third was strung around Jorda’s thick neck. The bedding arrangements were different than those in Davyn and Audrun’s wagon. Several planks ran the length of the wagon, covered by blankets, to form a man-sized bed. It was a very spare wagon with few possessions, as unlike Ilona’s as could be.

  The interior of the wagon, because of the rain, offered poor light that leeched through oiled canvas. A lantern hung from the front end of the wagon, but was as yet unlighted. Jorda resumed his seat on his bed; next to him lay the square plank he used as backing for numbering and supply lists. Rhuan could see marks on the rough paper pinned to the board, but not well enough to read them. He folded his legs and sat down in the aisle, atop a thin woven rug.

  Even seated, Jorda was a big man. His tunic sleeves were rolled back to display thick, red-fuzzed arms. Hands and forearms were scarred from the hardships of the road. His entire face Rhuan had never seen; Jorda wore a heavy, wiry beard that reached high on his cheekbones and inches below his chin. Russet hair streaked with silver was drawn back into a thick, doubled-over braid. Green eyes were fixed upon Rhuan. No patience lived in them, only a command for the truth. Now.

  To stall the inevitible Rhuan pulled the binding thong out of his hair and let the curtain of it fall in front of both shoulders, hanging to his waist. He raked fingers through it, splitting sections, so it would begin to dry. Perhaps that night he and Ilona might see to the braiding. Well, unless other tasks made it impossible. Or Jorda did.

  “Start at the beginning,” Jorda said, so calmly that it moved Rhuan to try for levity.

  “I don’t think we have the time to explain all of it before dinner.”

  “Then we’ll have none.” Jorda’s eyes were steady; no levity, there. “The beginning, if you please. Or even if you don’t please.”

  The beginning. The night he had died, only to awaken with a slim young woman bending over him in an alley behind Mikal’s tent. It was Ilona who had taken him to Jorda, saying the stranger who named himself Shoia was fit to take on a guide’s job, to replace a guide killed by Hecari. A man who had been Ilona’s lover.

  But that beginning was not what Jorda desired.

  “Well,” Rhuan said, diving into the conversational whitewater, “what would you say if I told you I wasn’t Shoia?”

  Jorda considered him darkly, brows lowered, and did not respond to the bait.

  Rhuan smiled crookedly. “I’m not Shoia.”

  After another long moment of contemplation, Jorda shrugged. “I’d never seen a Shoia before you and that courier came here. I belie
ved you when you explained your race and multiple lives. Why should I assume you were telling a falsehood? Ilona brought you to me—”

  Rhuan broke in hastily before Jorda might jump to the wrong conclusion. “She didn’t know, then, what I am. She made assumptions also. That was what I wished from you both. Assumptions. No questions asked, that way.”

  Jorda studied him again. Rhuan knew very well what kind of picture he presented: very humanlike, but when one looked hard, somehow a little . . . other.

  Jorda looked hard. Rhuan saw the faint shift in the eyes, the almost infinitessimal flicker of eyelids. Jorda looked. Jorda saw. He just didn’t know what to name it.

  Rhuan was careful to control the reddish scrim that, when dropped, sheltered his eyes against the ravages of the deepwood’s double suns. It also appeared when he was angry. But a stinging in his flesh was not so well controlled, and the faint warm flush intensified the hue of his skin. With effort, he maintained and displayed a wide and cheerful smile and put into it a certain amount of charm. His nature tended that way anyhow, but he also relied on the smile to draw attention away from that which was not like them. That which was not human.

  Rhuan could see the tension tightening the skin around the karavan-master’s eyes. “Very well. You’re not Shoia.” Jorda smoothed his mustache. “Then if you’re not Shoia, what in the Mother’s world are you? Some other legendary tribe no one knows much about?”

  And now it arrived, the time to confess all. To alter forever Jorda’s opinion of his guide.

  “Well, yes—as a matter of fact.” Rhuan drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. In a steady voice that did not give away how much Jorda’s opinion mattered, he said with great clarity, “And what if I told you I’m not fully human?”

  Chapter 12

  KARADATH WAS HIS name, Audrun recalled. Brother to the man who was Rhuan’s father; sire, he would call him. They were all of a piece, the primaries. So very similar in appearance. One could not tell that either Rhuan or his cousin, Brodhi, were half human. It was as if the primaries’ blood was prepotent. It simply overwhelmed any other influence.

  Karadath stood before her, blocking her children from view, save for Ellica. He had a fistful of her hair in his left hand, and Ellica pulled very close against his body. Audrun could not help but notice that his posture was one of ownership, of total domination.

  But now, abruptly, he released Ellica’s hair and with a hand across her back shoved her forward, toward her mother. Audrun half caught Ellica, feeling the infant tree between them. “You’ll be all right,” Audrun murmured, steadying her daughter with hands on her shoulders. “You will, Ellica. You’re strong.” Then she once again met Karadath’s eyes. It was easier, she thought, to withstand a man with impunity when what he wanted required her to live. She used that knowledge to her advantage, did not even now, after the horrific image he had put in her head, shy away from him or show submission.

  “If you want me,” she said, “you will see to it my children are not harmed. Not in any way, by you or your brethren.”

  He smiled. “Is that your price?”

  “We humans don’t assign prices to people. We are all worth the same.”

  “She’s not.” Karadath’s gaze settled on Ellica, who stood next to her mother. “She’s isn’t worth anything until she can bear a child.”

  It nearly took her breath, such a threat to her daughter. “If you want me,” Audrun repeated, squeezing the words through a constricted throat, “you will do nothing to harm my children. Do you understand? Inviolate.”

  Karadath inclined his head in agreement, though his tone was ironic. “For now.”

  “And,” she said firmly, “you will find my baby.”

  His brows rose. “Will I?”

  “If you want me, yes.”

  Karadath smiled. “Anything else?”

  Audrun drew in a careful breath. Saying what she intended might prove terrifying to the youngest children, but it was required. “You will see to it that we are not changed. That we remain human.”

  His expression froze. She didn’t know whether to feel triumphant that she had learned primaries had limitations, or more frightened than ever of the deepwood’s power and what might happen to them all.

  “You claim to be gods,” she said. “Gods can do anything.”

  Karadath stared at her. She saw the red in his eyes, saw the predator who lived behind the flesh.

  “Can’t they?” she asked.

  He did not answer. He stepped aside so that she had a clear view of the remaining three children. Gillan, as she’d hoped, held Meggie in his arms; Torvic was standing very close to Gillan but trying to appear brave. She saw the awkward stiffness in his face that betokened great effort to hold back tears. She opened her arms and knelt on one knee, dismissing the presence of the primary. Torvic, tears now allowed and falling, went to her at once, folding himself into her arms. Gillan brought Meggie close, bending to set her down, but the girl turned her face into his shoulder, clutched at his arms, and shrieked piercingly.

  It drove a stab of pain so deeply into Audrun’s chest that she thought she might die of it. “Meggie . . . Meggie.” She stood, keeping a hand as a cap on Torvic’s head. The other she stretched out toward the youngest of her brood. “Meggie, let me hold you.”

  Meggie screamed.

  Audrun’s tears prickled and spilled. She knew. She understood. Oh, Blessed Mother—she saw it, too, that vision. “Meggie, Meggie, I swear, all will be well. It was a bad dream, nothing more.” But she did not move to touch her daughter; to force the issue would upset Meggie even more. On the inside, Audrun felt like ice. Her thoughts were a litany of commingling hope and forced conviction. She’ll be fine, she’ll be fine, give her time, it will take time; just let her be. She’ll be fine. And to Gillan, she gave her thanks. He nodded, shifting Meggie in his arms. His own face, beneath the grime, was taut with strain. My poor children. Mother of Moons, keep them well. They need your strength. All of them do.

  “She’s old for the creche,” Karadath said of Megritte, somewhat distastefully, “but her behavior marks her younger than her age. She would do better there.”

  “No,” Audrun said sharply. “She remains with me. We remain together.”

  He lifted one brow. “Another price?”

  “There is no price! No price! It’s been impressed upon me that we go nowhere until the road is built, but you do not have dominion over my family. Is that understood?” Karadath grinned. And she saw, with a twitch of shock, a shadow of Rhuan’s dimples. “Is that understood?” she repeated with as much strength in her voice as she could wield. She was so tired, so very, very tired.

  And the primary saw it. He smiled again. “This unworthy one will escort you to your quarters.”

  Unworthy one? What unworthy one? And then she looked past Karadath and saw a man very similar in height and coloring, but there was something . . . faded about him. His spirit did not burn so brightly as Karadath’s.

  Karadath turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Audrun standing in the middle of the stone walkway, surrounded by her children, but no wiser about what might become of them all.

  She looked at the other man, the faded man. His eyes were downcast; his posture one of submission, not independence. “Come,” he said. His eyes briefly met Audrun’s, then hid behind lowered lids once more. Karadath had called him unworthy. The one so designated appeared to believe it. “Come,” he repeated. “It is a place where you can escape the suns.”

  And that more than anything prompted Audrun to move. The top of her head was burning. “We’ll go,” she said to her children. “But cover your heads in the meantime.”

  Tree fronds again were balanced atop skulls, hands holding them in place. Audrun followed the man, Torvic’s hand clasped in her own. His nose was already quite red. Hats. We must
make hats. Ellica was beside her, still hugging her tree. Gillan fell behind them, and she heard him speaking very softly to Megritte.

  Tears prickled once again in Audrun’s eyes. She blinked them away hastily, wanting her children to see none of them, to see no weakness. She was exhausted and close to collapsing, but refused to give in. Her children needed her. Please, Mother, please . . . let Meggie be well.

  JORDA’S BROWS JUMPED, then knit tightly. His body stiffened. He studied Rhuan with honed concentration, weighing this confession against the other, the first. The one considerably less stunning than this.

  As Rhuan waited for further reaction, he heard the rain bouncing off stretched canvas. His hearing, more acute than humans’, told him the storm was letting up.

  But not the burgeoning storm in Jorda’s wagon.

  “Not fully human,” the karavan-master echoed.

  “Half. My mother was human.”

  Jorda was incredulous. “Is this a jest? If so, it’s ill-timed! Rhuan—?”

  Rhuan shook his head decisively. “No portion of what I’ve just told you, and what I will tell you, is a jest.” He glanced up at the string of charms hanging from the Mother Rib over his head, swaying slightly. “I’ll swear it on whatever means the most to you.”

  The skin of Jorda’s face tightened again at the corners of his eyes where crows-feet had taken dominion. As a redhead, he could not tan as other folk did, could not escape the sun’s damage. It left him with a reddish tint to his face and forearms, and a seasoning of golden freckles. “Waste no more time in telling me all, then!”

  Rhuan drew in a deep breath. “I was born in Alisanos to a human mother and a father who isn’t.”

  Because of the beard, it was often difficult to see an expression on the karavan-master’s face. One needed to learn to look into his eyes, to note the movement of his brows, his eyelids, to read what his body said. Just now, he was completely still. He had briefly gone into himself, Rhuan saw, as if sorting through the words, but that moment passed. Now Jorda’s intense green eyes were fixed on his face. “And Brodhi?”