“Kaldwel, I haven’t thanked you for helping us get away from the Narthani cutter. Without your ability to harass their cannon crews and your contribution to the boarding action, I doubt we would have survived. Despite the casualties and damage to the Dancer, it’s been a profitable voyage for me, the crew, and the families of those who died. I feel your contributions should be acknowledged. Since you weren’t signed on as crew to begin the voyage, by our customs I can’t give you a share. However, what I can do is return what you paid me to carry you and your family. I confess I told you an outrageous price, figuring that would get rid of you. I didn’t know how my inclination to turn you away could have been disastrous for the Dancer. Thanks again. Before you leave, come to my cabin, and I’ll return your gold.”
Four hours after sunset, a line of six wagons pulled up to the end of the pier where the Dancer was moored. Gulgit alerted Mark that unloading was expected to begin, and they should prepare to leave. Maghen carried Alys and one bag. Mark followed with a second bag and the waterproof leather–wrapped rifles. While they waited in the shadows of an adjacent warehouse, he made two more trips for the rest of their belongings. He stopped at Partinel’s cabin to collect the promised return of their passage coin. The captain was busy with papers at a desk. He reached into a drawer for the same leather sack Mark had given him in Heliom, handed it to him, and waved him off.
Then they waited. They hadn’t seen much of Orano as they approached; the countryside was flat, and most of the city was hidden behind two-story structures encircling the harbor. Maghen sat on their bags, holding a sleeping Alys and using her cloak to shield them both from the mist not blocked by the warehouse.
Mark was anxious. Too much had happened already since they’d left Nurburt, and once again, they found themselves on foreign soil. After they left Orano, Gulgit would be the only person they could speak with because the common Rustalians had no reason to learn Suvalu. Then there was the Narthani. Despite Gulgit’s assurances, the city was controlled, even if loosely, by the Narthani. Mark kept his pistols and the two shotguns primed and protected from the weather.
When the wagons arrived, Mark had a brief thought that he should help load the muskets, the shot, and the powder from the ship. He quickly dismissed the idea, not wanting to leave Maghen and Alys alone with their belongings, weapons, and coin.
He didn’t see Partinel again. Men with the wagons and the Dancer’s crew worked feverishly to transfer the cargo to wagons. They worked hard enough to make Mark wonder whether the crewmen shared Gulgit’s assurances. When the last crate was tied down on the sixth wagon, Gulgit guided them to the fourth wagon, where space had been left for them to stack their bags and sit on them. The arrangement wasn’t comfortable, but Mark was too anxious to leave the vicinity of Narthani soldiers to care. They’d adjust once they got into open country.
Gulgit climbed into the driver’s box of the first wagon. Whispers moved up and down the caravan, and light flicks of the reins got the horses moving. The narrow city streets and limited light lent a foreboding sense to their slow movement from the wharf. The wagon passed more warehouses and what appeared to be tenements and businesses, then finally approached one-story dwellings.
At last, thought Mark, when they came to the first open lots between structures, indicating the outskirts of Orano. Christ, it’s taken us almost as long to get out this dumpy city as the time I’ve needed to drive across Los Angeles.
The caravan’s slow pace in the city proper’s paved streets had both kept the wagons’ noise down and minimized jolts. By the time the paved streets gave way to gravel, the ride became rougher. This jolting only increased as the wagons sped up the pace once structures became scattered.
Definitely going to arrange more cushioning, Mark thought. I just wish the idea of leaf springs had gotten to Rustal. The irony was not lost on Mark. Now he wished his innovation had spread farther, yet initially he’d worried that knowledge of the springs would spread before he’d made as much coin as possible from the introduction.
Constant jolts or not, they hadn’t slept since the night before docking. Mark and Maghen leaned on each other, Alys wedged between them, and the three of them dozed off and on until daybreak. Mark estimated they were ten miles outside Orano when the wagons pulled off the dirt road for a pit stop and a quick meal. They both used knives to harvest fronds from two- to three-foot fern-like plants similar to those common on Drilmar but heavier stemmed. They had laid a three-inch cushion of the fronds on top of their bags by the time the caravan started up again. It helped, though that was relative—Mark still wished he had leaf springs and cushions that didn’t occasionally poke you.
“We’ll make it thicker as soon as we can,” he said to Maghen, “and when we pass villages, maybe we can purchase something to serve as cushioning.”
With sunlight, they got their first views of the Rustal countryside. The same plant that they’d used for cushioning covered the ground and scattered conical-shaped plants that reminded Mark of short evergreens provided the only variation in flora. He estimated they were at the same approximate latitude as destrex-hunting territory in Frangel, but the base vegetation in Frangel was four- to six-feet high—providing ideal concealment for predators. Here, a destrex would be visible as soon as it raised itself off the ground. Mark wondered what the local predator was—not that he was eager to find out.
The mist in Orano had dissipated by the time they reached open country. By mid-day, though, a cloud bank had moved in from the south, and they passed through a series of snow flurries. Assuming the seasons were similar to those in Frangel, the weather should gradually get colder, with serious snows beginning within a few sixdays. Mark didn’t want to be in mid-Rustal when they left Gulgit and the caravan to make their way to Sulako and over the Gongalor Mountains during winter. Gulgit’s description of the mountain range separating Rustal from Sulako sounded too much like a combination of the Rockies and the Andes.
The light snow ended, and the skies broke to clear blue by late afternoon. They pushed on until dark to gain as much distance as possible from Orano. The flat land had turned into rolling hills, though the vegetation stayed the same. A cold meal was followed by sleep under the wagons. Mark cut more of the ferns, this time slicing away the branch of each frond, which made for softer cushioning. He spread the fronds under their wagon, then covered them with their two waterproof cloaks. With as little sleep as they’d had the previous day and the long hours on the road, they fell asleep immediately, Alys nestled between them.
“We’ll start making regular camp tomorrow,” Gulgit told them the next morning. “You’ve noticed we’ve hardly seen any signs of people the last five miles. It’ll be like this for another hundred miles. Right now, we’re on the edge of the tree line. Once we start angling more north, we’ll pass into ranch country. There, we’ll find an occasional village or town for supplies. As long as the weather cooperates, we should be at our destination in three sixdays.”
Gulgit had been uninformative about the “destination,” only that it was as far as he had committed to take them. The Rustalian ignored or deflected Mark’s few casual probes to gain a sense of whether they were headed for a city, an encampment of guerrilla fighters, or who knew what?
Rolling hill terrain continued for the next sixday as the road deteriorated, slowing their progress to 16 to 18 miles per day. The weather held, except for a half-hour snow squall that passed, heading east. Three times while cresting a hill, Mark saw herds of animals in the distance, but he couldn’t make out the details. When he called out to their driver for a description, the response was in Rustalian and left him as ignorant as before.
By the time they topped a hill, and Mark could see flat land ahead, instead of more hills, they had drifted far enough north that the conical trees had been joined by tall, fescue-like clumps six to ten feet high. These had a purple pigment, instead of chlorophyll or its Anyarian equivalent that lent most plants their green appearance. Another three days of tra
vel and an occasional conical-shaped tree up to thirty feet tall gave more evidence that they’d moved into friendlier environs for plants.
Even with the weather cooperating, the road had turned into little more than two parallel tracks. Wagon wheels from infrequent traffic had worn the ground bare or stunted the sparse vegetation. Some days they hardly made twelve miles; then they would hit a section of better ground and make double that distance.
Mark and Maghen settled quickly into the caravan’s routine. They stopped a half hour before sunset to camp, and the teamsters built fires and let the horses graze before being hobbled for the night.
When the grain for the horses ran out, they allowed their animals to graze an extra hour in the morning. The grazing slowed the caravan but gave Mark and Maghen time to refresh the fern cushioning and let Alys run.
Whether from the battle at sea, the offer to help them on their trek, or just their time together, Mark found himself trusting Gulgit, who had relaxed once they left Orano. The Rustalian was also the only man Mark could talk with. Maghen, however, didn’t speak Suvalu, so Mark was the only adult she could converse with. Half of the evenings, Gulgit spent time at the fire nearest the Kaldwels’ wagon, and they came to trade more personal information. The Rustalian smuggler was a grandfather five times over, with another child expected while he was away from wherever his home was. He never identified the location of that home. Eventually, Alys became accustomed to him enough to include Gulgit in whatever game she thought she was playing, and the rough, scarred man usually cooperated.
One evening, at the end of their second sixday from Orano, Gulgit and Mark had walked fifty yards from the camp to urinate. Mark imagined his wife on Earth calling it a bit of male bonding. When they had finished and were walking back toward the fires, Gulgit made an offer.
“You know, Mark, if you and Maghen wanted to walk a ways from the camp for a little privacy, I could watch Alys for you. Maybe when she’s asleep.”
Mark walked five steps before the meaning of the offer sank in. “Uh . . . well . . .”
“The two of you are young and healthy enough, you should spend a little time to take care of your needs. The other men are wondering why you haven’t done it before. They can’t understand why a man and wife wouldn’t take advantage when we camp.”
“Uh . . . it’s an idea. I’ll talk with Maghen about Alys.”
In fact, Mark had been thinking similar thoughts, though without concluding how to account for watching Alys. He’d considered their camping away from the others but discarded the idea because of uncertainty about local wildlife. Draping cloth around the wagon they slept under and certain vocalizations by Maghen would be too obvious—in Mark’s opinion but not Maghen’s. In addition, Alys was on the cusp of the age when Frangel couples no longer ignored a child’s presence while they engaged in sex.
Mark broached the subject when Alys was asleep and they were lying with her between them. Maghen rejected the idea. The next day he caught her looking at Gulgit several times with a pensive expression. Three nights later, Gulgit, Mark, and Maghen were the only figures left around the nearest fire, with Alys already asleep twenty feet away. Up until then, they had voided separately, while the other stayed with Alys.
“Mark, I need to relieve myself. I thought I saw a shadow of some small animal out at the edge of the firelight. Come with me to look out for whatever it was. I’m sure Ser Gulgit can watch Alys for a few minutes.”
Mark turned to Gulgit. “Uh . . . Maghen and I need to relieve ourselves. Could you keep an eye on Alys for a short time?”
Gulgit nodded, then grinned and made a rude hand gesture once Maghen turned away to pick up her cloak. Mark followed her to a set of six-foot shrubs whose opposite side was shielded from view of the camp.
A section of the fern-like plants was lower than average, and she began stomping on them.
“Well, help me!” she hissed as she shrugged off her cloak. “We need a place to put this for us to lie on. We also need to hurry. I don’t want to be away from Alys too long, in case she wakes up.”
Mark didn’t need more urging. He joined in the fern stomp, helped lay out the cloak, and only lagged behind Maghen slightly in disrobing. The air was chill, but neither one noticed. It had been almost three sixdays since their last coupling, and before that, it had been sporadic since before Mark left for Landylbury to sell the destrex hides.
Seven minutes later, their sweat mingling, they lay entwined, gasping. When Maghen caught her breath, she laughed.
“When I said we needed to be quick, I didn’t think it would be that quick.”
Mark smothered his laughter in her hair and against the nape of her neck.
“We can make it last longer if we do this more often, now that Gulgit will watch Alys,” said Mark.
“I’ll hold you to it, but let’s get back. I’m sure Alys is fine, but still . . . ”
She released her arms’ and legs’ grasp of him. They dressed quickly, picked up her cloak, and returned to the fire where Gulgit sat.
“Didn’t take you long to relieve yourselves,” he said with a questioning tone and expression.
Maghen just harrumphed and went to check on Alys. Mark felt his face get warm, then he smiled and shrugged.
“When the urge for relief is strong enough, it doesn’t take long.”
Gulgit chuckled and left for his bedding under the lead wagon. When Mark lay next to Alys and Maghen, he expressed a worry.
“If we’re going to this more often, we need to be careful you don’t get pregnant. It’s hard enough as is without adding that. I’m sorry, but I didn’t think to check where you are in your cycle.”
She snorted. “Women don’t count on men to think of such things, not if they have any brains. We’re safe for another two sixdays before we need to be more careful. But you’re right. I don’t want to be carrying a child when we don’t even know if we’ll live for it to be born.”
Three nights later, they set out for a repeat engagement. They were twenty feet from the fire when a teamster near an adjacent fire made a remark that elicited laughter. Mark glanced back to see two men engaging in mock intercourse. The man on the ground wore a scarf on his head close to the color of Maghen’s hair.
Mark dropped the cloak he was carrying and walked toward the two men.
Gulgit yelled something in Rustalian. The laughter choked off like a switch, and the pantomimers jumped to their feet. Most of the men backed away out of Mark’s path. The man who’d been lying on his back fingered the hilt of a knife in its sheath. The other man shifted his feet as if preparing to run. When Mark was ten feet away, Gulgit jumped in front of him.
“Wait, Mark! They’re just idiots. They don’t mean anything by it. It’s something they’d do to each other and not think about it. They don’t know you or what customs you follow. Trust me, they heard the story about you when we fought the Narthani cutter. At least half of the men are afraid of you, and none would do anything they thought would anger you. Let me talk to them, and I’m sure they’ll apologize to you and Maghen.”
Mark still fumed but clenched his fists against his legs. “Just tell them what they did could be taken as a deadly insult by my people and to beware.”
Gulgit translated, though it was probably unnecessary, given the menace in Mark’s tone and expression.
“Don’t mind them, Mark,” said Maghen. “It isn’t worth the trouble. They’re only jealous of what you’ll be doing in the next few minutes.”
She laughed, and he relaxed and chided himself to maintain better control. He didn’t know the consequences if he’d injured or killed one of the men. He had Maghen and Alys to think of first. All those thoughts were meant to cool him down, but part of him still imagined smashing both men into the ground.
The next two sixdays passed with the same travel and camp routine. Twice, more snow hit, once enough to leave two inches overnight but not enough to slow the caravan. They weren’t so fortunate when a warmer front mo
ved through, and heavy rain fell for two solid hours one mid-morning. They lost two days, waiting for a normally shallow stream to revert back from a raging river. Then they had to deal with deep mud on the road. When their pace picked up again, it took them four more days to reach an expansive settlement of thousands of people, covering a valley floor surrounded by hills and mesas.
“This is it,” said Gulgit. “People fleeing the Narthani occupation because they got into trouble or people wanting to fight the invaders. Every time I come here, the numbers grow, and this is not the only camp. If we had the weapons, we could arm a hundred thousand men. Maybe we couldn’t fight major battles against the Narthani because only a fool wouldn’t recognize their discipline and experience. But we could make their lives miserable and force them into the major cities.”
“Not exactly lush terrain,” Mark said.
“Which is why it was chosen. The region is sparsely populated, and the nearest Narthani outpost is almost two hundred miles away. It’s even farther from a garrison that would be a serious threat. We’d know they were coming in plenty of time to move or beat them back if there weren’t too many of them. So far, they haven’t rated us a high-enough priority to launch a major campaign. The signs are they won’t likely bother us here in the foreseeable future.”
“I don’t mean to sound pessimistic,” said Mark, “but is the resistance merely ruling over land no one wants and where no one lives? The Narthani might simply think it’s not worth their time and effort to worry about you.”
Gulgit grinned. “A thought that hasn’t gone unappreciated by me or most of our leaders. However, I wouldn’t go around voicing such negative opinions. Conditions here are hard, and when we carry out raids, there are always casualties. The hope is that we’re making a difference in keeping the resistance alive.”
Passages Page 47
