The Luck Of The Wheels (4 page)

He had been checking the harness straps as he pondered. He paused and leaned against Sigmund's wide back, watching Ki. She had tied back her long hair, but brown strands of it already dangled around her face. This southern sun had browned her face and arms until her green eyes stood out startlingly. He remembered buying the soft yellow shirt she was wearing tucked into her trousers. The bodice was embroidered with tiny green leaves and pale blue buds. She looked lovely in it. When she wasn't upset. Lines divided her brows. She took everything so seriously. He cleared his throat and she looked up. He grinned. She stared coolly at him for a moment, then turned her head to hide her answering smile. 'If you'd told me it made you feel warm and protective, I could have started acting snotty and rude a long time ago,' he offered, and saw her relax.

'Dung for brains,' she observed fondly. 'Let's get these wheels turning.'

Ki mounted the high seat at the front of the wagon. Vandien started to follow her up when the door of the cuddy popped open and Gotheris scrambled out onto the seat. He sat down squarely in the middle. 'I want to drive the team first,' he announced.

'Perhaps later,' Ki suggested. 'After you've watched for a while. It's not as easy as it looks, especially with all the foot traffic there is in a town.'

'You said I'd have to help. And my father promised me I'd be learning new things. So I want to drive.'

The whine in his voice grated on Vandien's nerves. But he could be tolerant. He'd engage Goat on an adult level. 'One thing about Ki: she always drives, unless she's sick, or bored with an arrow-straight flat road. So by the time she lets you take the reins, there's not much fun to it. With this team, there's not much challenge anyway. Sigurd and Sigmund pick their own pace and path. So relax and enjoy the ride.'

Goat cocked his head and looked down at Vandien, his eyes shining. 'Why do you let her say how everything will be? No woman would treat me so. But if the horses are so smart' - here he rounded on Ki – ‘Why can't I drive the wagon now?'

Ki looked away from the strain on Vandien's face and spoke directly to Goat. 'Because it's not what the team might do that I worry about. It's the fool that comes dashing out under their noses, or the horseman who thinks he must gallop, and takes the center of the road.'

'But my father said ...'

'And besides,' said Vandien, clambering up onto the seat, 'Ki said no. And I say no. Now move it over so we can get out of here.'

Goat stared up at him, his eyes more yellow than Vandien had yet seen them. 'For this treatment of me, my father paid good coin,' Goat commented bitterly, but he edged over on the seat. Ki settled herself and took up the reins. It rankled Vandien that Goat had usurped his seat beside Ki, but he refused to give it a word. He settled beside Goat.

'Let's go,' he suggested softly.

'Get up!' she called to the team, shaking the reins lightly. The greys were ready. They set their shoulders to their collars and the tall yellow wheels of the wagon began to turn. Their heavy, feathered hooves were near silent in the sandy streets. The town of Keddi drifted past them like trees on a riverbank.

'Is this as fast as they go?' Goat demanded petulantly.

'Mmm,' Ki nodded. 'But they go all day, and we get there just the same.'

'Don't you ever whip them to a gallop?'

'Never,' Ki lied, forestalling the conversation. Vandien was scarcely listening. His attention was focused on a street phenomenon. As Ki's wagon rolled leisurely down the street, all eyes were drawn to it. And as quickly pulled away. All marked Goat's passage, but no one called a genial farewell, or even a "Good riddance!'" They ignored him as diligently as they would a scabrous beggar. Not hatred, Vandien decided, nor loathing, nor anything easy to understand. More as if each one felt personally shamed by the boy. Yet that made no sense. Could they have done something to the lad that they all regretted? Some act of intolerance carried too far? Vandien had once passed through a town where a witless girl had been crippled by the idle cruelty of some older boys. She had sat enthroned by the fountain, clad in the softest of raiment, messily eating the delicacies sent anonymously out to her. The focus of the town's shame and penitence, but still untouchable. This thing with Goat was kin to that somehow. Vandien was sure of it.

'But they could gallop if they had to?' Goat pressed.

'I suppose so,' Ki replied, her tone already weary. Two more weeks of this, Vandien thought, and sighed.

The black mongrel came from nowhere. One moment the street was quiet, folk trading in the booths and tents of this market strip, all eyes carefully bowed away from Ki's wagon. The next instant, the little dog darted out of the crowd, yapping wildly at the team. Sigurd flicked his ears back and forth, but calm Sigmund continued to plod along. Why be worried by a beast not much bigger than a hoof, he seemed to say.

Then the dog darted under the very hooves of the team, to nip at Sigurd's heels. The big animal snorted and danced sideways in his harness. 'Easy!' Ki called. 'Go home, dog!'

The dog paid no mind to Ki, nor to a woman who hastened out from a sweetmeat booth to call, 'Here, Bits! Stop that at once! What's got into you? It's just a horse! Leave off that!'

Around and beneath the horses the feist leaped and snapped, yapping noisily and nipping at the feathers of the huge hooves. Sigurd danced sideways, shouldering his brother, who caught his agitation. The great grey heads tossed, manes flying, fighting their bits. Pedestrians cowered back and mothers snatched up small children as the team seesawed toward the booths. Vandien had never seen the stolid beasts so agitated by such a common occurrence. Nor had he ever seen a dog so intent on its own destruction. Ki stirred the team to a trot, hoping to get out of the dog's territory, but the feist continued to leap and snap, and the woman to run vainly behind the wagon calling for Bits.

'I'll pull them in and maybe she can call it off,' Ki growled irritatedly. She drew in the reins, but Sigurd fought the restraint, tucking his head to his chest and pulling his teammate on. Vandien was silent as Ki held steady on the reins, baffled by the greys' strange unruliness.

There was a moment when the dog seemed to be relenting. The trotting woman was almost abreast of them. Then it sprang up suddenly, to sink its teeth into Sigurd's thick fetlock. The big grey kicked out wildly at this suddenly sharp nuisance. His next surge against the harness spooked Sigmund, and suddenly the team sprang forward. Vandien saw the slip of reins and gripped the seat. The greys had their heads and knew it. Dust rose and the wagon jounced as they broke into a ragged gallop. Vandien heard a yelp and felt a sickening jolt and the dog was no more. Behind them the woman cried out in anguish. The team surged forward as if stung. 'Hang on!' he warned Goat, and tried to give Ki as much space as he could. She drew firmly in on the reins, striving for control. Tendons stood out in her wrists, and her fingers were white. Vandien caught a glimpse of her pinched mouth and angry eyes. Then Goat's face took his attention.

His sweet pink mouth was stretched wide to reveal his yellow teeth in an excited grin. His hands were fastened to the seat, but his eyes were full of excitement. He was not scared. No, he was enjoying this. The last of the huts of Keddi raced past them. Open road loomed ahead, straight and flat.

'Let them out, Ki!' Vandien suggested over the creak and rumble of the wagon. 'Let them run it off!'

She didn't look at him, but suddenly slacked the reins, and even added a shake to urge the greys on. Their legs stretched, their wide haunches rose and fell rhythmically as they stretched their necks and ran. Sweat began to stain them, soaking the dust on their coats. In the heat of the day they tired soon, and began blowing noisily even before they dropped to a trot, and then a walk. Their ears flicked back and forth, waiting for a sign. Sigmund tossed his big head, and then shook it as if he too were perplexed by his behavior. Silently Ki gathered up the reins, letting the horses feel her will. Control was hers again.

Vandien blew out a sigh of relief and leaned back. 'What did you make of that?' he asked Ki idly, casual now that it was over.

'Damn dog' was all Ki muttered.

'Well, it's dead now!' Goat exclaimed with immense satisfaction. He turned to Ki, his mouth wet with excitement. 'These horses can move, when you let them! Why must we plod along like this?'

'Because we'll get farther plodding like this all day than by racing the team to exhaustion and having to stop for the afternoon,' Vandien answered. He leaned around the boy to speak to Ki. 'Strange dog. Living right by the road like that, and barking at horses: I wonder what got into it.'

Ki shook her head. 'She probably just got the feist. She's just lucky it picked a steady team to yap at. Some horses would have been all over that road, people and tents notwithstanding.'

'It's always been a nasty dog,' Gotheris informed them. 'It even bit me, once, just for trying to pick it up.'

'Then you knew it?' Vandien asked idly.

'Oh, yes. Melui has had Bits for a long time. Her husband gave him to her, just before he got gored by their own bull.'

Vandien turned to Ki, heedless of whether Goat read his eyes or not.

'Want me to go back, talk to her, explain?' he offered.

Ki sighed. 'You'd never catch up with us on foot. And besides, what could you say besides we're sorry it happened? Maybe she'd just as soon have someone to blame and be angry with.' Ki rubbed her face with one hand and gave him a woeful smile. 'What a way to start a journey.'

'I think it's begun rather well, myself!' Goat announced cheerfully. 'Now that the road's flat and straight, can I drive? I'd like to take them for a gallop down it.'

Vandien groaned. Ki didn't reply. Eyes fixed on the horizon, she held the sweating team to their steady plod.

'Please!' Goat nagged whiningly.

It was going to be a very long journey.

THREE

K
i yearned for night. She had listened to Goat nagging to drive the team for what seemed a lifetime. When he got no response to his begging, he had tried to reach over and take the reins. She had slapped his hands away with a stern 'No!' as if he were a great baby instead of a young man. She had seen Vandien's tensing, and shot him a glance to warn him that she would handle this herself. But the man's eyes had a glint of amusement in them. The damn man was enjoying her having to deal with Goat. After a long and sulky silence, Goat had proclaimed that he was bored, that this whole trip was boring, and that he wished his father could have found him some witty companions instead of a couple of mute clods. Ki had not replied. Vandien had merely smiled, a smile that made Ki's spine cold. Handling Goat on this trip was going to be tricky; even trickier would be preventing Vandien from handling Goat. She wanted to deliver her cargo intact.

Now the sun was on the edge of the wide blue southern sky, the day had cooled to a tolerable level, and in the near distance she could see a grove of spiky trees and a spot of brighter green that meant water. Suddenly she dreaded stopping for the night. She wished she could just go on driving, day and night, until they reached Villena and unloaded the boy.

Ki glanced over at Goat. He was hunkered on the seat between her and Vandien, his bottom lip projecting, his peculiar eyes fixed on the featureless road. It was not the most scenic journey she had ever made. The hard-baked road cut its straight way through a plain dotted with brush and grazing animals. Most of the flocks were white sheep with black faces, but she had seen in the distance one herd of cattle with humped backs and wide-swept horns. The few dwellings they passed were huts of baked brick. Shepherds' huts, she guessed, and most of them appeared deserted. A lonely land.

Earlier in the day, several caravans had passed them. Most of them were no different from the folk they had seen in Keddi, but she had noticed Vandien perk up with interest as the last line of burdened horses and Humans had passed. The folk of this caravan were subtly different from the other travellers they had seen. The people were tall and swarthy, their narrow bodies and grace reminding Ki of plainsdeer. They were dressed in loose robes of cream or white or grey. Bits of color flashed in their bright scarves that sheltered their heads from the sun, and in the bracelets that clinked on ankles and wrists. Men and women alike wore their hair long and straight, and it was every shade of brown imaginable, but all sun-streaked with gold. Many of them were barefoot. The few small children with them wore brightly colored head scarves and little else. Animals and children were adorned with small silver bells on harnesses or head scarves, so there was a sweet ringing as the caravan passed. Most of their horses plodded listlessly beneath their burdens, but at the end of the entourage came a roan stallion and three tall white mares. A very small girl sat the stallion, her dusty bare heels bouncing against his shoulders, her hair flowing free as the animal's mane. A tall man walked at her side, but none of the animals were led, or wore a scrap of harness. The little girl grinned as she passed, teeth very white in her dark face, and Ki returned her smile. Vandien lifted a hand in greeting, and the man nodded gravely, but did not speak.

'I bet they've stories to tell. Wonder where they'll camp?' Vandien's dark eyes were bright with curiosity.

'Company would be nice,' Ki agreed, privately thinking that Goat might find boys of his own age to run with while she and Vandien made the camp and had a quiet moment or two.

'Camp near Tamshin?' Goat asked with disgust. 'Don't you know anything of those people? You're lucky I'm here to warn you. For one thing, they smell terrible, and all are infested with fleas and lice. All their children are thieves, taking anything they can get their dirty little hands on. And it is well known that their women have a disease that they pass to men, and it makes your eyes swell shut and your mouth break out with sores. They're filth! And it is rumored that they are the ones that supply the rebels with food and information, hoping to bring the Duke down so they may have the run of the land and take the business of honest merchants and traders.'