The Luck Of The Wheels (7 page)

'And if you're smart, you won't eat them either.' Willow pushed, her voice cold. Her sudden anger grew. 'Nor sleep too careless around him. Because while you're dreaming, he'll sneak and steal ...'

'That's not true, Willow!' Goat flared. But his voice was more scared than threatening.

'Isn't it?' Her words cut savagely. 'I know better. But they don't, do they, little sneak-thief? I didn't think Brin would admit what cargo he'd given them.'

'Enough!' Vandien's low voice cut through the argument. 'I don't know what grudge you two share. But whatever it is, leave it behind, or keep it private.'

Willow stared at him, her eyes as wide as if he'd slapped her. 'Vandien's right,' Ki cut in before she could speak. 'We four will be travelling together for a while. If you two have old differences, forget them. Or ignore them and be civil to one another. The wagon is too small a place for bickering.'

'But you don't understand,' Willow began earnestly.

'Nor do I want to,' Ki interjected firmly. 'I don't want to hear charges of thief or liar thrown about. It matters little enough in the short time we shall be together. If something of yours is stolen on this trip, Willow, I shall make good its value for you. And that is all I wish to say about it.'

Ki felt her heart hammering. Gods, how she hated a scene like this. This was why she and Vandien moved alone and apart from others. The bickering and quarrels, the useless anger, and always, always, people seeking someone to blame.

Willow stared at her. Her cheeks were reddened with more than the fire's heat, her eyes bright. The girl was either very angry, or on the verge of tears. Both, Ki suspected. She did not look as if she were accustomed to not getting her own way. When she spoke again, her voice was tight. 'Very well, Ki the teamster. Had I any other way to Kellich, I would have taken it, as you well know. I had thought you would wish to know what all the village knows about Goat. But as you do not, I will say no more about it. But I shall not sleep at night. And you will regret, very soon, that you did not let me say what I know is true.'

'Goat. Time for us to check the horses.' Vandien rose hastily, threatened by the possibility of Willow's tears.

'I don't want to ...' Goat began, obviously fascinated and unsettled by the scene between Ki and Willow.

'Time to check the horses,' Vandien repeated firmly, catching the boy by the collar and tugging him to his feet. They disappeared into the darkness. Ki smiled at his use of the Romni euphemism. Going to check the horses meant a man was going to relieve himself, or wanted a little privacy. Goat would soon learn it, she supposed. At any rate, Vandien had decided the boy was worth an effort. Leaving her with Willow.

Ki cast a sideways glance at her. Her checks still glowed. 'Well, we'd better tidy up for the night,' Ki suggested in a neutral voice. Willow met Ki's look with a sullen stare, but began gathering the dishes. She pointedly ignored Goat's bowl. With a sigh, Ki picked it up herself.

The awkward silence held as the dishes were cleaned and packed away. When Willow broke it, it was with another dilemma. 'Where am I supposed to rest tonight?' she asked coldly.

'Wherever you wish,' Ki replied politely. She would not rise to the girl's avoidance of the word 'sleep'.

'Where's Goat going to sleep?' she demanded next.

Ki sighed. 'I hadn't thought about it. By the fire, I suppose.'

'Then I'll sleep in the wagon.'

'Vandien and I usually sleep in the wagon,' Ki pointed out. She could feel her control slip and wondered with a sudden anger just where the hell Vandien was. Let him come back and manage his wonderfully charming young girl.

'I don't mind,' Willow said smoothly.

'Did you ever consider that I might?' Ki asked, dropping all pretense of civility.

'No. I didn't. You couldn't possibly expect me to sleep near Goat, even if he weren't ... what he is. Among my people that isn't done,' she added primly.

Ki closed her eyes for an instant, got a grip on her rising anger. 'I see.' She gave a sigh, tried to breathe her irritation away. 'Then why don't you sleep in the wagon, and Vandien and I will sleep outside? That should keep everyone's propriety intact.'

'Near Goat? You're going to sleep near Goat?' The distaste in the girl's voice was not feigned. For whatever reason she disliked Goat, it was not a pretense.

'Vandien will protect my virtue,' Ki assured her with heavy sarcasm, but the girl considered her words gravely. Her eyes were wide as she met Ki's gaze.

'I do not think even he could protect you from one such as Goat. Are you sure you wouldn't rather sleep in the wagon also?'

'Quite sure,' Ki assured her. Willow's eyes darted to a rustling in the thicket that presaged Vandien and Goat's return.

'I'm going to bed now. Good night. And take care!'

The last she whispered as she turned and fled to the shelter of the wagon.

When Goat and Vandien appeared, their arms were laden with dead branches for firewood. Ki nodded her approval. Already the night was cool, denying the heat of the day. 'Where's Willow?' Goat demanded of her.

'Gone to bed,' Ki told him smoothly. As we all should, if we are to get an early start tomorrow.'

'Where?' he repeated.

'Where what?' she asked, feigning puzzlement.

'Where is Willow sleeping?' Goat demanded. Vandien winced at the boy's unconcealed interest.

'In the wagon.' Ki kept her voice unconcerned. 'Where the night insects will not bother her.'

'We're all going to sleep in the wagon?' Goat asked eagerly. Without waiting for an answer, he started toward the steps.

'No, it would be far too crowded and stuffy. Ki and I will sleep under the wagon, and you can sleep by the fire.'

'But...' Goat began, and then caught Vandien's look. Ki could not imagine what he had said to the boy, but Goat suddenly closed his lips. He kept his words in check, but not the sulky look that claimed his face. Snatching up a good portion of the scattered quilts and blankets, he began to make up a bed by the fire.

Vandien refused to acknowledge his pique. 'Good night, Goat,' he told the boy affably. He gathered the remaining quilts and cushions and made up their bed beneath the wagon while Ki belatedly washed the road dust from her face and smoothed her tangled hair. He was already settled when she came to join him.

'Why under the wagon instead of next to the fire?' she demanded as she crawled in beside him. She knew the answer, and he knew it, but he spoke anyway. His voice was sleepy. 'Feeling of shelter, keeps the rain off. And makes it harder for anyone to attack while we're sleeping.'

'Like sleeping in a coffin,' Ki grumbled. She dragged off her boots, blouse and trousers so that she was clad in loose cotton drawers and chemise. Shivering, she burrowed into the quilts and settled against Vandien. He was warm. She curled her body around his, her belly to his back. She could smell his hair and the warm skin of his neck.

'These children,' he said softly, 'make me feel old.'

'Um,' Ki agreed. She kissed the nape of his neck experimentally.

He sighed. 'Very old. Ki, did you hear me earlier? Dictating, chastising, directing, warning. I sounded just like my uncle when I was a child.'

'Your guardian?' she asked. With the tip of one finger, she wrote her name on the warm skin of his back.

'Yes. He was always directing me, never letting me do anything on my own. Not even choose which women I'd bed.' Vandien's voice trailed off as his mind went back to those painful times, to his futile efforts to sire an heir for his line. He moved slightly apart from Ki, and she, knowing his old pain, let him. He wouldn't want to be touched just now. Damn. Well, that's how it was, then. She closed her eyes, sought sleep. 'I'd hate to think I had grown to be just like him,' Vandien said suddenly. 'Ki, did you hear what Willow said earlier? That she didn't think any one as old as I am could understand why she'd run away to her lover? Do I look that old to you? Old enough to be her father?'

'Depends on how young you started,' Ki replied sleepily. Then, 'Sorry. Not to me, Vandien. Only to someone as young as Willow.'

He rolled onto his back and stared up at the bottom of the wagon. 'How old do I look to you?' he asked quietly.

The weariness of the day had suddenly found Ki. 'I don't know,' she sighed. She opened her eyes a slit, stared at him. He was serious. Traces of lines at the corners of his mouth. A few hints of grey in the dark curls, mostly from old scars. Weathered skin that was more the work of sun and wind than years. She thought, as she had the first time she saw him, that it was not a bad way for a man to look. She'd rather die than tell him that. 'Old enough to be smarter than you act most of the time. Young enough to worry about foolish things.'

'Mph.' He rolled to face her, dragging her covers away. 'That's not a very satisfactory answer.'

She tugged at the covers, opened her eyes. His face was inches from her own, his hand on the curve of her waist. 'Not a satisfactory answer?'

He shook his head, the curve of his smile beneath his moustache barely visible in the dwindling light from the fire.

'Then let me put it another way.' She seized the curls at the nape of his neck and pulled his face to hers.

FOUR

I
n the coolness before dawn, Ki's strangely vivid dreams broke and dragged against her like cobwebs. Gently she drew away from Vandien and pulled on her clothes. The camp was silent; Gotheris slumbered deeply by the dead ashes of the fire, his arms flung wide in sleep. Ki took the kettle and water bucket and headed for the spring. She considered waking Vandien to share the quiet with her but decided against it. She needed this solitude; the rest of the day would offer her little enough.

On her way back to camp she passed Vandien. His hair was tousled, his eyes vague with sleep. He greeted her silently and moved on toward the spring. In camp, she found a few embers buried in the ash and coaxed them into blossom. She set the dripping kettle atop the small fire and mounted the wagon step.

The door was jammed. She tugged at it futilely several times before she realized that Willow had latched it. Suddenly irritated that anyone could lock her out of her own wagon, she pounded on the door. There was no response. 'Willow!' she shouted. 'Unlock this door!' Goat rolled over and opened his eyes.

There was a muffled reply, but Ki fumed on the step for several moments longer before a yawning Willow slid the door open. 'What's the matter?' she asked sleepily.

'Why didn't you open the door?' Ki demanded, pushing in past her. 'And why was it locked at all?'

'I wasn't dressed.' Willow sat down on the tousled bedding. And you know why I locked it. Because he's out there.'

Ki glared at the girl, who sulked back at her. The silence was thick as Ki shrugged into a fresh tunic. Ki gathered up travelling bread and cheese from the food bins. Willow was still pouting on the bed when Ki left the wagon. The door slammed and latched behind her. Almost she turned back; but she set her teeth and let it pass. Foolish, to make a fuss over a latched door. But she hated its assumption, that the wagon space was Willow's, and Ki could be locked out of it. Forget it. Ki made a conscious effort to loosen the muscles in her shoulders and set her irritation aside.

She set the bread and cheese on a wooden platter from the dish-chest, and had just found the tea when an arm fell across her shoulders. 'I'm hungry!' Gotheris announced in her ear. The sack of tea leaped from her hand as she startled.

'You spilled it all over!' he exclaimed, pushing forward to gaze at the wrinkled balls of leaves and herbs littered across the jumbled dishes.

Ki's hands were fists at her sides. She spoke each word separately. 'Don't creep up behind me and grab me like that.'

'I didn't!' Goat protested. 'I only ...'

A thudding of many hooves interrupted him. Ki held up a hand for silence while her eyes grew wide. Stepping around the tail of the wagon, she stared up the long flat road. Her heart leaped painfully, then began to hammer in her chest so that she could hear nothing else. Rousters.

There were six — no, seven - Brurjans, and two stout, ugly Humans, all mounted on great black horses with scarlet hooves. She gripped the corner of her wagon, watching them come, knowing there was no place to flee to, no place to hide. Childhood memories flooded her mind, of wagons set ablaze in the dark night, of Romni women fleeing with their children caught up in their arms, of men struck down by flying hooves as they stood, not in hopes of defending their lives, but only to buy their families time to escape. Rousters, come by nightfall or in the bright day, to put the Romni trash on the road again, to steal their bits of things and drive them away.

The Brurjans rode high and catlike on their peculiar saddles. Their huge jaws were wide with their hissing laughter, and their myriad pointed teeth flashed in the new sun that stroked their glossy hides. Their quilled crests were high. They did not pull up as they approached the camp, but rode full tilt into it, great hooves tramping Goat's bedding and the small fire, and sending the hissing kettle flying. Vandien emerged from the trees, a strangely small figure before the tall horses with their massive riders. The riders milled through the camp. Ki could not speak. Goat was plastered up against the wagon, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open. The world tilted around Ki. One of the Humans rode close to her, sneered down at her disdainfully. Let Willow remain silent within the wagon, she begged the Moon. Her beauty was too fresh for one such as that to resist bruising.

One of the Brurjans snarled something, and the sea of rousters and horses was suddenly still. All eyes went to him, a great black-pelted creature with deep-set black eyes. His battle harness was scarlet and black leather, broken by threads of silver. A red cloak spilled down his furred back. His black-nailed hands gripped his mount's reins lightly. His horse had wicked eyes, and its ears were tilted back toward its master, waiting for a command to lash out with hooves or teeth.

Like a stray cat strolling insolently into a strange butcher shop came Vandien. He slipped between two great horses fully as large as plow beasts, unmindful of their restive scarlet hooves. Ki wondered what magic kept him safe as he moved boldly through the rousters to confront their leader. He took up his stance, arms crossed on his chest, slightly to the left of the horse's head. He looked up, raising his chin as he struck eyes with the Brurjan. His brow was unlined as he said, 'Good morning.'