Cart and Cwidder (18 page)

“I suppose I did,” Moril said, in some surprise.

“Can I drive this next stretch?” Kialan asked.

Neither Brid nor Moril objected. Letting Kialan drive Olob seemed the best way to show he was a full member of the company now and not a passenger any longer. So Kialan held the reins, and Olob clopped onward through the lonely Upland. Moril sat beside him, still strumming the cwidder, looking dreamily round at the hills, the flocks of sheep, and the occasional shepherd in the distance.

They came to a steep rise to the third and last Upland. It was the highest and also the most beautiful of the three climbs, because it was clothed in trees the whole way up. The road, though it was the main road, dwindled to a rutty lane, damp and stony, boring its way upward through the woods. The sunlight fell in gay splashes through the bright leaves of springtime. All three of them looked upward and grinned at the way their faces became speckled and greenish.

But Olob, whether he objected to Kialan's holding the reins or to having to climb two steep hills in one day, became steadily more restive. At first it was simply tossing his head and stopping. Kialan persuaded him to move again, each time with more difficulty. But, as they went on upward, Olob took to trampling this way and that, so that the cart wheels caught in the hawthorns at the side of the road. Kialan grew exasperated. The fourth time Olob did it, Kialan lost his temper and swore at Olob. Olob promptly turned right across the road and seemed to be trying to climb the sheer bank into the woods. Moril thought the cart would overturn. The wine jar fell over and knocked Brid sideways, with a dreadful twanging of cwidders.

“Let me take him,” said Moril.

Kialan crossly handed him the reins. Moril propped the cwidder across his knees and worked with both hands and some shouting to persuade Olob back onto the road again. Olob refused to come out of the bushes.

“What's got into him?” said Kialan.

“No idea,” said Moril. As he said it, two memories came to him. One was of almost exactly the same conversation, between himself and Lenina, just before Tholian came out of the wood and killed Clennen. The other was of Olob behaving like a colt in Neathdale, just before Dagner was arrested. “Quick!” he said to Kialan. “There are enemies near, and Olob knows. Get out and go through the woods until we've passed them.”

“How
can
he know?” said Kialan, with his most fedup look.

“I don't know, but he does. Father always said he wouldn't part with Olob for an earldom, and I think that's why. Get
out
, I said!” Moril said urgently.

“Do as you're told, Kialan!” said Brid from the tilted bottom of the cart.

Kialan, entirely unconvinced, swung himself grudgingly down from the cart. As Olob was halfway through a bush, up the right bank of the road, Kialan went up beside him by the space he had cleared, and vanished among the trees higher up. Moril could hear his cross footsteps swishing along the steep hillside.

“Go quietly!” he said, but he could tell Kialan took no notice. Moril dumped the cwidder in the canted cart and went to Olob's head. Olob was most unwilling to leave the bush. “I know, old fellow, but we've got to go on and look innocent,” Moril said. “
Come
on, now!”

It took some time to get Olob back on the road. When he did consent to come, Brid had to lean on the cart to keep it upright. Then she climbed in and tried to set the wine jar and the instruments to rights. Olob reluctantly climbed onward. Above them in the woods, Kialan's feet kept pace with the cart, swishing loudly and cracking twigs. Moril wished he would not make so much noise.

Olob toiled round three corners and Brid still seemed to be busy in the cart. “What are you doing?” Moril asked.

“Putting my boots on,” said Brid. “If there
are
enemies near, I'm going to look respectable. And I'm putting the sharp knife down the right boot.” She joined him shortly, looking flushed and determined, firmly booted. “I'll drive,” she said.

Moril gave her the reins and hung the cwidder round his neck by its strap, which, he supposed, was his way of looking respectable. His boots, by this time, were nothing like as new and smart as Brid's. Brid was better at managing Olob. Olob put on a great act of this being the most difficult climb of his life and did everything in his power to suggest that they turn back, but Brid kept him going. Beyond the protesting clatter of his hooves, Moril listened for Kialan, but he could not hear him any longer. By this time they were near the top of the climb. They rounded what must have been the last corner, and Olob shied.

“Clever Olob,” Brid remarked.

There was a stout wooden trestle in the road. It did not fill the road, but it was placed so that there was no room for a cart to pass on either side. There were a number of men with it, one of them sitting on the trestle. To Moril's dismay, they were all in full war gear. Each of them wore a steel cap and a steel breastplate with a pointed front—which gave them all chests like pigeons—over jackets and trousers of tough leather. They wore great black boots and long swords in black leather scabbards.

Brid drew the alarmed Olob up. “Would you mind moving the trestle? We need to get by,” she said haughtily. She was frightened and daunted, but there were enough soldiers to make her feel as if she had an audience.

Three of the men strolled forward. None of them made any effort to move the trestle. “What's your business?” said one. The other two strolled on and looked over the sides of the cart to see what was in it.

“Drunkards, by the look of this wine,” one said, and both of them sniggered a little.

“We're singers,” said Brid. “Can't you see?”

“In that case, let's see your license,” said the first man, and held out his hand for it. Brid, after a moment's hesitation, fetched the license out of the locker under the seat and handed it to him. He looked at it casually. “Which of you is Clennen?”

“That's my father,” said Brid. “He was killed four days ago.”

“Then you haven't got a license,” said the man. “Have you?”

“Yes, we have,” said Brid. “We're entitled to sing under that license for six months. That's the law, and you can't tell me it isn't.”

“That may be the law in the other earldoms, but not in the South Dales,” the man said, grinning. “You haven't read the small print.” He unrolled the parchment and pointed vaguely to the bottom of it. When Brid leaned over to look, he took it out of reach and let it roll up again. “Too bad,” he said. “You'd better come and explain yourselves.”

“It doesn't say that at all!” Brid said furiously. “You're just using it as an excuse. That license is perfectly in order, and you know it!”

The man stopped grinning. “You'll do as you're told,” he said. He nodded to one of the other men, who took hold of Olob's bridle. The rest moved the trestle aside. The one holding Olob hauled on him and Olob, passively resisting for all he was worth, was forced to move reluctantly on. Brid and Moril were towed after him, feeling quite helpless. It was clear that someone—Tholian, probably—had given orders that all travelers were to be stopped. Moril looked back to see the soldiers putting the trestle across the road again and sitting on it to wait for any other comers. He wondered about jumping off the cart and running. But there was a soldier walking on either side of it and it did not seem worth trying. Their only hope seemed to be to use Clennen's method and appear as open and innocent as they knew how.

They went fifty yards or so—a difficult jerky fifty yards, because Olob was extremely frightened and did not want to move, in spite of the names the soldier called him—and came to a steep road branching to the right. The soldier dragged Olob into it. Moril had forgotten this road. It worried him that Kialan would have to cross it on his way to the last Upland.

“Where does this road go?” he asked Brid.

“To a sort of extra valley at one side,” Brid said. “We camped here the year before last. Don't you remember? Moril, they will let us go, won't they?”

Moril glanced down at the soldiers. “We haven't done anything wrong,” he said carefully. But the wine jar came into his mind as he said it, and he wondered why on earth he had not left it behind somewhere.

A twig snapped in the wood up to the right. Moril looked up. And looked away quickly, in case the soldiers noticed. He had a very clear sight of Kialan staring down at the cart, alarmed and rather puzzled, as if he had not gathered what was going on. Moril stared at the steep road ahead and tried to will Kialan to cross the road while he had the chance and go on North. But he was very much afraid Kialan intended to follow the cart.

The trees opened like the end of a tunnel, and they came out into the valley. Brid gave a little moan. Beyond two groups of soldiers, evidently on guard, were tents, weapons, horses, and many more soldiers, as far as they could see. It was a long, thin valley, and winding, so that half of it was out of sight. But they had no doubt that the part of it they could not see was also full of soldiers and weapons and tents.

The nearest tent was a very large one. There was a chair outside it, and in that chair sat Tholian. His head turned as the cart came out from among the trees. As far as he could tell from this distance, Moril thought Tholian smiled. And he saw that Clennen's method was not going to help them here. In fact, he doubted if any method was going to be much use.

“Get down,” one of the soldiers said to Brid and Moril.

They climbed down, Brid a little awkward in her boots, Moril clutching the cwidder, and stood where they had a lower and even busier view of the teeming valley ahead. Moril dimly remembered that the year before last there had been fields and crops growing here. There was no sign of them now. As they were taken toward Tholian, he saw nothing but men drilling and training, all down the valley. It was filled with orders and curses, and the thick warm smell of many people and horses. The grass, and any crops there might have been, were trampled to earth, except for a green stretch round the large tent where Tholian sat.

Tholian signaled to the soldiers to make Brid and Moril stand to one side of the patch of grass, and turned his pale eyes from them to the soldiers. “Just these two in the cart?” he asked.

Moril seized the opportunity to look over his shoulder to see what had become of Olob and the cart. He was glad to find one of the soldiers struggling to tie the unwilling Olob to a tree beside the road.

“Could I have your attention, cousin?” he heard Tholian say, and he turned back hurriedly. Tholian sounded irritated. But when Moril looked at him, he was smiling. He could have been friendly in spite of his queer, shallow eyes. “We are related, aren't we?” he said.

Moril thought about it. “I suppose so. But it's Mother who's your cousin.”

“Once removed,” said Tholian. “Which makes us twice removed, I believe.”

“I'm surprised you acknowledge it at all,” said Brid. “Considering—”

“Why not?” said Tholian. “It doesn't hurt you. But don't deceive yourselves into thinking your mother's going to get a penny of dowry out of me. I'm content to do as my grandfather wanted. Ganner's a fool if he thinks I'm going to make him rich on Lenina's account.”

This seemed a very odd thing for Tholian to start talking about. Moril wondered if he was a trifle mad. “I shouldn't think Ganner does think that,” he said.

“He's fond of Mother, you see,” explained Brid.

Tholian laughed. “Fool, isn't he?” He was so contemptuous that Brid all but sprang to Ganner's defense. “But I stayed for the wedding,” Tholian said, before Brid could speak, “which was more than you did. You threw Ganner into a fine old fuss by leaving like that, you know. Your mother took it much more calmly. So I promised them I'd look out for you on the road and send you back to Markind when I found you.”

“That was kind of you,” Brid said coldly. Nevertheless, both she and Moril were beginning to feel distinctly easier. If Tholian were regarding them simply as silly young relations and himself as doing Ganner a favor, then the position was nothing like as bad as they had feared. It would be exasperating to be sent back to Markind, but at least Kialan, with luck, could get North on foot from here.

“Didn't Mother recognize you?” Moril said slowly, rather puzzled at the way Tholian was now being a friend of the family.

“Of course,” Tholian said, not at all disconcerted. “But as I'm Ganner's overlord, there wasn't much she could say. Not that she would. She has a way of saying things in silence, your mother. By the way, what became of your brothers?”

They saw he had just been showing them how much he knew. It gave them both a jolt. Moril reacted best, because he was able to rely on his habitual sleepy look. He went on staring at Tholian in a vague, friendly way, though he had never felt less vague or less friendly in his life. But Brid was so shaken that she had to put on an act.

“Funny you should ask,” she said, with artificial brightness. “We don't quite know—”

“Yes, we do, Brid,” Moril said, fearing she was going to babble herself into trouble. “Dagner went back to Markind.” It was a risky thing to say, but Moril knew that if Tholian already knew that Dagner had been arrested and why, it did not matter what he said anyway.