The Incompleat Nifft (68 page)

"Well," I said, heaving a sigh, "I'll send down a warning, if the sunlight starts melting me." I stepped into the bucket, and Barnar winked at me, and slid the hatch closed. Down came the counterweight.

The clank and rattle of the climbing bucket put me in mind of a windlass weighing a heavy anchor. I fancied I was some stubborn, millenial root that could only with great mechanical force be pulled free of the earth.

And my will
clung
to the earth, to the dark. The smell of stone was like a home-scent to me; my heart rebelled at leaving it. I prayed it would be night above; that the stars, like distant demon eyes, might greet me with their gentler scrutiny—anything but the great fiery eye of the sun!

The sun! When I did step out into it at last, flinging back the hatchway with a desperate abandon, like one who steps off some high brink, my sick hesitations were in an instant burnt and purged away. For one heartbeat, light was pain—and then it was pure joy, was itself my heart.

I had emerged into early morning, and this first sunlight that I saw came in golden spears, piercing the rafters of the main building's vast roof.

I stepped out onto the rampway; the smell of open air overwhelmed me. A breeze, scented faintly with sun-warmed stone and skorse trees, moved through the building. Then tears of happiness sprang to my eyes. Tears of relief. I ran down the ramp, ran a beeline to the gaping bay doors nearest me, ran out and stood under the open sky again.

I climbed a half mile up the mountain side, and stood gazing for a long time at the sweep of the mountain ridges, their canyons and crevices brimming with velvety purple shadows, and their high ground all burnished with the young sun's slanting gold. Above them all the big blue bell of the sky rang its soundless peal, its reverberant azure note of boundlessness.

For a while I was wrenched out of time by the raw beauty of it all; I utterly forgot where I had just come from, and where I meant to go next. I wholly forgot that I possessed wealth to awe kings. I was filled with a floating freedom, newborn into a new world.

Faint music reached me, and I collected myself. It was a frail thread of melody, a jump-up falteringly rendered on a pennywhistle. I went back down to the compound.

Out below the balcony of Costard's office, where Anhyldia had planted a little greensward, two men at arms lounged, one man's cape spread between them with loaves and cheese on it. Two hefty fellows they were, taking their ease, their pikes and bucklers laid by. They were men of only middling talent in the trade of arms, perhaps, since they appeared wholly oblivious to my approach. Still, we could use them on the road. They would have orders to stand to their posts, but then, I reflected, these men had been hired by miserly Costard. I smiled, and eased open one of the smaller pouches of my money-belt.

"Greetings, stout fellows!" I heartily cried. They jumped; the musician nearly swallowed his pennywhistle. "The ineffable Costard," I told them with a courtly salute, "sends me to you with the first installment of your augmented salary, and with your new instructions."

They stared at me, a bright-orange savage in a brutish nomad's kilts and bandoliers, and armed to a perhaps disturbing degree. I had Ready Jack's pommel at my left shoulder and Old Biter's haft at my right, four javelin butts sprouting from the quiver aslant on the small of my back. I had besides, on my belt, a poignard, a knout-and-knuckles for close work, and a sling and a poke of lead shot. Their eyes moved toward their weapons, and abandoned the thought. They looked relieved when I placed hefty stacks of lictors in their hands. "Costard sends you with our new instructions," one of them echoed, nodding hesitantly. I could see him almost ask me if Costard was down in the mine I had obviously just stepped out of. But he felt of the weight of the gold, and nodded more decisively.

This was Klaskat, the calmer of the pair. Both he and Klopp were tonsured in the severely barbered style of the young stockyard bloods down in Dry Hole, their hair sparingly confined to the crown of the head, like a treed, short-furred cat. Klaskat allowed that Master Costard had mentioned a couple of associates still down in the mine. "But he didn't mention, or rather I'm not sure he mentioned, ah, new orders. . . ."

"Banish your doubts. This additional stipend—Oh you're quite welcome!—is to remunerate you for the travel involved. We'll be taking a wagon of heavy freight down to KairnGate Harbor. You'll be riding escort—and it's wonderful weather for journeying, don't you think? So fresh! So bright!"

"The, ah, day is fine indeed. And what shall we call you, sir?"

"Nifft, call me Nifft. And you'll call my associate Barnar, for that is his name. Our first task is to send him down some baling canvas and cinching straps. He'll be sending us back up the bundles we'll be carrying. These contain a waxy exudate we have scraped off of larval hides. Exotic pomatums and perfumes are manufactured of the stuff." They nodded knowingly at this. I resumed, "I will tell you frankly our load is worth almost a hundredweight of gold—You see how I trust you?—and this is why we want a couple of stout men-at-arms with us."

"Well, Honor Nifft, Klopp and I have been twice or thrice around the corral," Klaskat modestly smiled, by which he meant, in Dry Hole's cattle-town parlance, that they'd had some taste of doughty deeds and peril.

"I knew it when I first clapped eyes on you," I said.

Gravely is old Dry Hole smitten:
Toppled, trampled, and beshitten.
 

KLASKAT AND KLOPP had many Dry Hole kin and acquaintance working for neighboring sap mines—whence, indeed, Costard had hired them. They went over to the Lucky Gasket Mine across the ridge and leased a dray team and some mounts; with their cattletown savvy they brought over nine skinnies, six for yoking to one of the Superior's freight wagons, three for mounts. These light-built plods are quick afoot, but big in the shoulders for heavy pulling.

Barnar and I knew the joys of a bath in fresh mountain water, and the intoxication of the sky and sun, which draped our bodies like royal garments whose splendor we could not get used to. Even after we'd set to loading the wagon with the bales Barnar had bucketed up from the mine, we could not stop interrupting ourselves to stop and gaze about us, wave our arms and exclaim at the glory of the morning. Klaskat and Klopp gave us an odd look or two, but proved both discreet and industrious. Though Barnar and I did all the loading, the massy bales of precious artefacts, wrought metals, gemstones, coin and bullion, were noisy in the handling; they knocked and rattled and chinked as we hefted them in place and tied them down. They sounded most unlike bales of larval skinwax. Klaskat and Klopp politely disattended, but acted a bit more impressed with their work thereafter.

By late afternoon we got rolling, Barnar at the reins, I riding point, Klasket and Klopp flanking behind. My fortune, my stupendous, fever-inducing wealth, now had wheels under it. Any child who could manage a team could possess it all in one opportune moment. Now I knew in full what it was to fear thieves. I felt more danger on this sunny, empty mountain highway than I had in any corner of the world of demons.

We'd hired two mediocre men-at-arms to help us guard a fortune that might buy an island chain: villages, fortresses, trading fleets and all; a fortune that—if not halved—could accomplish the wildest reachings of my imagination. The mediocrity of these hirelings of ours meant there was less to fear from them should they prove treacherous, of course, but it also meant less to hope for from their prowess if we should be attacked.

Ah to take wing with it all—what safety we'd felt in the air! But we grudged using any more of the precious Unguent for haulage—and as our combined loot's weight now exceeded the Unguent's lift, we must fly twice to the coast and back, leaving it in unguarded halves at either end of the transit. More than this, should we once be seen in flight, the report of it must fly as well. We could not thereafter come to ground with the anonymity we now enjoyed, and in this anonymity lay our best security.

The day declined. Big, black-winged krawks circled in the perfect blue, above canyons brimming with purple shadow. The sun's all-gilding, all-ennobling eye, for which great 'Omphalodon lies bound in stone, blazed gloriously, though I had scant attention for it now. Potential ambushes loomed everywhere along a highway that wound through so many ravines and defiles. I rode so tensed for action that I was slow to wonder at the highway's emptiness, but our Dry Holers were less so.

"Not one soul all afternoon!" cried Klaskat. "This is rare indeed, Honor Nifft."

"And do you know," Klopp added, "it's been a few days since we saw anyone passing up at the mine. The boys at the Lucky Gasket remarked on it too, I think."

We retired up a sandy wash to pass the night. I sat my watch under the stars, savoring the sight of them now and then, but more and more wondering at the unbroken emptiness of this broad, smooth, moonlit highway. If we once attained Dry Hole, we would be within a day and a half's dash of the coast, where four hundred lictors could buy us a slender carrack of Minuskulon make. But why came there no trafic
from
Dry Hole? That city thronged with mountain trade. The vacant highway grew ever more ominous.

Our wagon was rolling at first light, and before dawn we met, at last, another vehicle—a freight wagon of sap-barrels, returning with its load undelivered. We were sure now of trouble, even before speaking with the driver, a red-bearded lout in ill humor. "The causeway's collapsed! A league and more above the city! The span across Dead Plod Arroyo is fallen, and as far as I could see beyond it, all the stretches on pilings are fallen to rubble in the canyon-bottoms! They don't pay me enough to haul these barrels into town on my back, thank you!"

The incurious fellow had only a shrug for our anxious questions. Who knew the why of it? Not he. Full of his choler and his refusal of further responsibility, he geed up and sped on, rehearsing some choice things to say when his barrel-boss reproached him for his undelivered load.

Hurrying now to know the worst, we pushed on. A panicky notion took root in my mind that our huge wealth cried aloud through its canvas shrouds. The sheer mass of it called danger down upon us, summoned perils of commensurate size. Some grave disaster lay ahead and it seemed fitting, even inevitable that a prize such as ours must challenge Misfortune's mightiest manifestations. I almost cringed from this silent outcry I felt emanating from those canvas bundles, as though it would call something out of the sky any moment now.

Further enlightenment came just after sunrise, when there approached us a creaky wain of the high-gated style that hauls hay. This one was heaped with furniture, and textiles, and caged fowls squawking. There were even suckling pigs, in makeshift cages of house shutters, befouling one corner of the van. In hammocks strung between the heavier pieces of furniture, three tousled and haggard children snored the throaty sleep of infantile exhaustion. A compact little bald man with sinewy hands was driving. A mound of blankets in the box beside him was probably an exhausted wife. Hanging from the box at his right hand, a belt of joiner's tools had equal place with an old shortsword that looked long out of use.

Klaskat hailed him excitedly. "You're the Wainwright Brattle, down on Cloven Lane, are you not?"

"Aye, I was he!" So loud and brassy did the man shout, we wondered that none of his family was wakened. His face looked drained and fatigued, but his body was taut and trembly, and a kind of madness simmered in his eyes.

"What news of 'Hole, sir?" Klaskat urged him. "We've met a drayman says the highway down into 'Hole is all collapsed."

"Collapsed it is. Oh, yes indeedy! Not a span or a piling but is all collapsed!" Brattle smiled, his mad eyes almost merry. "It's in ruins full three miles up into the mountains from 'Hole. It was wiped out in the first great stampede, a week ago now! We left the next day. I've been five days dragging what's left of our livelihood up dry gulches and down narrow old prospector's trails. I just reached the highway last night! I mean to make time, now that I can, and put god-cursed Dry Hole, befouled past remedy, far far behind us! Somewhere a new life awaits me and my family, and by the Crack and all that crawls from it, we'll find it! Stand away!" He'd talked himself into a bellowing wrath. He stood up and made his whip crack like lightning; his quartet of plods, weary but strong, surged ahead—Barnar had to pull our wagon smartly aside.

We let Klaskat and Klopp ride foremost, more schooled in the roadway. They set a quick pace, fearing now for kinfolk and family property. I tried to imagine what disaster might produce a "god-cursed Dry Hole, befouled past remedy."

I became aware of a buzzing noise and a wafting stench; a moment after, we reached Dead Plod Arroyo. The bridge that had spanned it was now two stumps of stonework; the dry ravine yawning between them a hundred feet deep.

"What is that smell! Is it manure? Are those flies I hear?"

"He spoke of a stampede. . . ."

"What can we do as a packtrain through these last few miles?" Barnar asked Klaskat.

"We could do it. The terrain can be managed."

"We will pack the beasts," I told him. "You two scout our trail through this ravine and see what you can beyond it."

When they were well down into the arroyo we remade our bundles. Our string of nine beasts bore less than four hundredweight each, a heavy load, but not cruelly so. In the re-packing, our subworld loot flashed luridly; in sunlight it had a corrupt and somehow shameful brilliance. From the unseen terrain beyond the arroyo wafted the scent of shite and the noise of myriad flies, sensations mundane enough, yet sinister, that teased us as we worked. Just as we finished we heard the amazed cries of Klaskat and Klopp, who had ascended the arroyo's far wall, and now viewed beyond it.

"Key, Cauldron and Calipers!" Klopp distantly bellowed. "It's . . . it's a hornbow! It's as big as a whale!"

They came back and met us down in the arroyo to help us lead the packtrain across. They prepared us for what we would see, but this did not lessen the impact of it when we saw it for ourselves. Down in the next gulch, amid the tumbled arches of the viaduct, the stupendous ruminant lay rotting. Farther down the ravine another bovine colossus putrefied. Not this alone set the fog of flies dancing (thicker than the bees in the flowerfields of Dolmen!) but also little hills of bovine ordure beckoned them to their buzzing bacchanal.