Travellers #2 (10 page)

Thrown at the feet of the big Salt Man, breath knocked out again, I saw who had caught me. A slave had gone further out of the firelight to piss and, picking his way back, saw me spying. Knees first he jumped on my back, winding me. Later, when I could think of it, I realised again how limited is a slave’s mind. I might have helped him escape, but all the wretch could think of was to please his cruel masters.

Gasping, dazzled by painful tears, I looked up at a circle of faces. The big man kicked me. “This is the one Squint-face really wanted. No sign of the dolphin on him, though.” He called another slave who ran and stood beside the one who had caught me. “Tie him tight,” the big man said. “Let him escape, you’ll both die.”

I cursed my curiosity, cursed leaving behind the green stone dolphin – my good luck with it. The slaves tied my arms behind my back, a rope from ankles to wrists as well. Every part of my face itched. Hands and feet ached – the tight ropes. Each time I moved, the slaves examined their knots again. The one who had captured me was called Cark, the other Otnip. When I tried to speak to them, using their names, they cuffed me brutally.

I slept at last and dreamed of Tara. “Bury the green stone dolphin under the red tree,” she said again. But it was in my pack with the dogs. Taur would have it now. What was he doing? I tried to stretch my cramped legs. Feeling me move, the slaves woke, too, checked the ropes, shoved me on to my face, kicked me when they had done.

In the morning they jerked me to my feet. Salt Men stood by with spears, but I collapsed. The Big Man himself loosened
the ropes, looked at my wrists and ankles. “Do you want to kill him before Squint-face has a chance to get his hands on him?”

He ordered the slaves to rub my arms and legs, made them walk me around until the pain went out of my feet and hands. I was lashed between Cark and Otnip and led south. I could do nothing but follow. When I asked Cark to go slower he clouted my face. The Big Man saw and knocked him down.

“If anyone’s going to torture him, Squint-face is the one to do it.” The big man laughed, and everyone laughed dutifully with him, Cark loudest of all.

Two more days and nights of torture, stumbling, keeping up in the column of slaves, arms tied, only my legs freed to walk. Unable to balance, I kept falling until my face was bruised and raw. The slaves’ food was rough but sufficient. Warned against hitting me, Cark and Otnip turned away indifferent when I tried to speak. Had they hated me, it would have been easier. I wanted to shout at them that I was a captive like them, that we were brothers in suffering.

I woke one night to feel tugging at the rope. Otnip did not wake. Cark stirred, said something in a thick voice, and slept again. More tugs, and a coarse rasping so loud it must wake the guards.

The rope fell away. My hands were free! I stretched my fingers, waggled my wrists, feeling the blood course. One of the Salt Men had taken off his knife belt to sleep easier. I reached over Cark’s body, eased the knife out of its sheath, and cut through the rope around my ankles. Again, the coarse rasp.

So slowly I seemed not to be moving, I slithered away, knife naked in my hand. Neither of my guards woke – as well for them. Then I was sliding, crawling, scuttling on all fours, slipping half-upright between the ferns and into the trees, standing, and – at last – running after Taur who had
crawled silently between the sleepers to free me. I hugged him as we stumbled through the dark, giggling now we were far enough away to feel safe.

Jak and Jess waited with our packs. Unable to stop myself laughing now, I hugged all three. My laughter turned to shudders, and I sat to calm myself, hung the green stone dolphin around my neck, felt it warm at once against my skin. Taur was busy, bent over his pack, but I knew he did not want to see the carving.

That same night we followed up a spur on to high ground, retreated towards the row of snow-headed giants at the head of a valley. The cold struck up from the ground as we climbed. We dared not cross into the icy land beyond, but we could traverse the ridges and rivers down their enormous sides, travelling parallel to the coast track. It would be such difficult going, the Salt Men would not suspect us of going that way.

In the first light next morning Taur pointed. Down towards the coast three smoke signals ascended vertical, trembled on the air, and rising wind scattered them.

It took much longer, travelling against the grain of the country. In one river we found a leaning rock, swept out the dirt, dried deer pellets and a few animal bones. By the ancient scorch marks up the stone walls, others had lit fires there, too.

“Urgsh,” said Taur, and I saw ancient grooves cut into the rock, a pattern of straight and round marks, rows of them, done deliberately, as if they meant something. I thought of the Painted Cave at the Hawk Cliffs, of the pictures which told the story of the Travellers, and drew our escape from the Salt Men. As always, Taur watched fascinated and drew some pictures himself, but his were clumsy things without meaning. His inability to draw was curious when I compared it to the beauty of anything else he made with his hands, his arrowheads, the materials he wove on a loom.

We ate trout and deer meat. Occasionally we found rolled fern heads I knew were tasty. A couple of times there was watercress. We ate it greedily, and pissed green the rest of the day, laughing, pointing at each other, holding our noses. Jak and Jess watched and thought we were silly.

One evening we came down a long scree into yet another river, fast, cold, clear, where something flashed. “Hurrgh, Urgsh!” said Taur. He hoped it was a great fish we had seen before, bigger and stronger than trout. He had managed to spear only one, and we had to leap into the water and struggle it ashore. A muscular fighter, its pink flesh delicious, especially smoked. Taur rolled his eyes, took his spear and crept towards the river.

But I could see the flashes came from white rocks under the water, crystalline stone that gleamed and looked just like a fish turning. There! The flash again. As Taur knelt to crawl around a boulder I grinned. And just then Jess nudged me with her head. I almost lost my balance, went to growl at her, but Jak murmured deep in his throat. I froze.

Both dogs stared at the curve of the boulder Taur was about to round. There was a clink. I ran and leapt up the back of the boulder, its stone warm against my feet. Below me, just out of sight of Taur, a Salt Man, a rock in his hand, raising it again to hit a round dark rock.

“Found a good lump here,” he grunted, as my spear crunched through the back of his neck. I spun, looking for the man he had spoken to. By the tracks in the sand, someone else had turned and climbed left. I swung to Jak and Jess, to check what they were smelling and hearing, and something flickered across the air. Light glinted off an arrow’s spinning point as I flung myself sideways, heard it ring and glance off the stone.

Taur ran pointing up the hillside. Jak and Jess leapt past and tore out the other Salt Man’s throat. Taur dragged him down. The rock between the first man’s knees was now
drenched with his blood. I washed it off, knowing already what the dead man had found. The boulder was heavy, dark, rubbed dull by the river, but there was enough of the colour to be sure.

I had wanted to discover the source of the green stone, and here it was. Suddenly, it seemed meaningless. I wanted nothing more of it, the cruelty and bloodshed.

Tara had died because of the green stone dolphin. Het and the other dogs, the animals and how many Salt Men? And now, because we had found the source of the green stone, two more were dead. I could not throw away the dolphin, but we would hide the great rock of green stone from Squint-face.

Taur plaited a flax net about it. We lashed both bodies to the net, and shoved the rock into the deep pool. It sank, dragging the bodies out of sight. We washed away all sign of blood and kicked sand over our tracks, especially the dogs’.

“They must have a camp somewhere,” I whispered to Taur. Upstream of the pool where the dead men lay, we stepped down across rocks, avoiding the sand between them, carrying Jak and Jess so they left no tracks. I hitched up my pack, linked arms with Taur for the crossing, glanced down and saw a footprint in the wet sand beside the water. Unthinking, I went to kick water over it, to wash it away, then stopped. It was small, perfect, so fresh the edges were crisp, as if cut with a knife. Whoever had made the footprint had crossed just ahead of us.

“It’s the same footprint,” I said to Taur. “The one we saw in the river coming up from the coast, after we abandoned the raft. Look how small and slim it is.”

“Gaw!” Taur kicked water over the footprint. Took my arm, pulled so I had to link mine through his. We waded out through the fast water.

“But you saw it!”

“Gaw!” said Taur, half-dragging me through the river.

We climbed out the other side and took a spur to a terrace finishing in bluffs above. Darkness came on as we searched for a way up. The terrace continued downstream a long way, cliffs dropping below as well as rising above. I whispered we had to follow it now, and Taur nodded. With his hands he shaped trees and shrubs, patches of flax. He meant we would find a place where we could pull ourselves up the bluffs. The dogs would find a way for themselves. As we worked along the terrace to what looked a promising spur, light sprang directly below us.

We slithered along a stone gutter. At the cliff edge I lifted my head, looked straight down into a camp between the base of the cliff and the river. Thatched with fronds from the palms we had seen on the coast, several huts surrounded a fire whose heat and smoke lifted past our faces. Salt Men were arriving back at the huts. Some sat on logs in the warmth. To one side, slaves were lighting and building up a second fire. I could not see Squint-face and crawled back from the edge before anyone looking up saw my face lit by the glow.

The way we had come was now lit by the firelight. We must lie quiet until the Salt Men slept, but they seemed to be waiting for something. I heard the Big Man’s voice and took a hasty glance. Into the second fire, slaves were now rolling a number of smooth stones.

The two fires lit even more of the terrace. We edged our packs and gear into ferns at the foot of the spur and found a safer place to spy from.

Commotion. Two slaves, screaming, being dragged to the edge of the river. Cark and Otnip, my guards. Grovelling, crawling, begging. As Squint-face shambled out of the dark, they abased themselves at his feet. Squint-face took a curved club from his waist, raised it above Cark’s head, shouted – it sounded like, “Galug!” – and smashed the side of his skull, twisting the blade of the club so it wrenched the roof off his
brain. I lay paralysed, unable to turn away. “Galug!” he shouted and slew Otnip.

When I dared look down again, two slaves were bleeding and gutting the men’s corpses as if they were animals, taking off the arms and legs, butchering what had been living humans.

Other slaves prodded white-hot rocks from the second fire into a hole. They threw joints and pieces of flesh on to the hot stones so smoke and the smell of roasting meat rose to our nostrils. To my horror, my mouth watered: the human flesh smelled like any other meat that cooks. I retched and remembered the reek of Tayamoot and the Metal People’s village.

The slaves threw leaves and ferns to cover the meat, sprinkled water, and spread soil over them. The Salt Men settled around the fire, telling stories. Laughter rose. There was something terrible about the way the scene appeared so ordinary: people relaxing after a day’s work. Two of the Salt Men wrestled. One tripped the other with a clever side-step; the others applauded and jeered. Taur and I often played the same tricks on each other. Jak trembled against me. He would like to jump down and join in the fun. I laid my hand on his back. For a moment, the sight of the men wrestling, the others watching, was so ordinary, but a slave went over to where steam rose from the mound and flung soil on to keep in the heat.

This was what Taur had been unable to describe to me, I realised: the cooking and eating of the slave Squint-face had killed years before. The one who had boasted of eating the white core of the palm, and was betrayed by a fellow slave. I could not watch the cannibal feast, but lay clutching the carved dolphin. Why I had ever wanted to know the source of a bit of coloured stone?

A couple of Salt Men went to the edge of the light below and shouted up the valley. Calling the two we had killed
earlier. The rest of the men below looked into the dark, expecting to hear their companions shouting back. We slithered to the rear of the terrace, felt for our packs and gear in the dark. There was light only from the one fire.

We crawled, found a spur, climbed silently. When the moon came up we were still climbing, able to move faster now. We kept going next morning until the sun became too dangerous. That afternoon, as soon as it dropped and lost its power, we continued.

Squint-face would scour the valley for the missing Salt Men. We had been careful, but might have left tracks somewhere. And now we knew the source of the green stone, he would hate us all the more. We came down shattered scree, bruising, tearing our feet, and camped, still afraid to make a fire. I was beginning to fear Squint-face as if he had powers greater than human.

Many days later we turned and followed a long ridge towards the coast. Although the sun’s ferocity dried up the rivers lower down, it was easier travelling there. We searched several beaches and found neither tracks nor ashes of old fireplaces. The Green Stone Valley was as far south as Squint-face and his men would come, we decided. “Grarff!” Taur said and pointed. “Keep going south.”

And I told Jak and Jess. “That’s our best chance.”

“You were right,” I said to Taur. “I wanted to find where the green stone came from. I wish now we hadn’t found it.” But I did not throw away the carved dolphin, and I wondered about the footprint we had seen in the Green Stone Valley.

Bank to bank, a dry river poured shingle, its far side sand packed smooth. Taur and I cast about for sign.

Neither smoke signals behind, nor tracks ahead. I thought of the murdered slaves, Cark and Otnip. “Perhaps Squint-face will forget us now,” I said aloud to Jak, scuffing the sand back to where we had left our packs. Taur returned shaking his head. “Gaw!”

I bent to swing up my pack. Beside it was one small, perfect footprint.

“Taur!”

“Gahr?”

“Someone ahead of us.”

“Gaw!”

“Look!”

Taur bunted me aside. As it had done earlier, his splayed foot with wide-set toes obliterated the strange footprint.

He pointed ahead. Keep going. Behind in the Green Stone River, Squint-face and his Salt Men searched for us. Keep going. Before they thought we might be heading south and followed. Taur looked at my face, nodded at my pack. “Gawk! Garph!” he called. Jak and Jess leapt up.

I followed them, climbing on to safe, hard ground. “It’s because it’s a woman’s footprint, isn’t it?” I asked. “Why you don’t want to know about it.” Looking ahead Taur ignored me.

Cliffs and defiles made it impossible to follow the coast. We swung inland, the sun defeated by steep-walled valleys. One morning we lowered ourselves and the dogs with flax ropes down bluffs to the bottom of a mist-layered valley
where we crossed a cold milky river. Its water felt mealy, tasted gritty. Curious, we turned up it. The dogs hung back. The air inert. Tatters of mist. Few trees. The valley a sheer-walled trench, as if a giant finger had scooped it out.

For a while I pretended it wasn’t there, tried to ignore it, then was forced to accept the fact: from side to side the valley ahead was filled by an enormous, protruding, green snout which climbed and disappeared into cloud. The brute stirred. I grabbed Taur’s arm as he grabbed mine. The air clanged coldness. Slowly, my eyes resolved the monster into one of the rivers of ice Hagar had never seen but described to me all those years ago. As a girl, she had been told stories about them by old people who themselves had never seen one. Now we stood before one of the frozen dragons of their fables.

From its ice-fanged mouth, pans of ice cracked away and jobbled down the river. Ominous, the milky water knocked hidden boulders. A crash of air slammed from wall to wall of the valley. What I had taken for the stirring of a giant had been the toppling of a tower of ice at the frozen river’s end, its green-blue cliffs.

The glacier’s irresistible grind had carved the vertical walls of the valley. It must once have reached all the way to the coast, perhaps into the sea itself – before the sun turned insane.

Its cold was evil, yet we could not turn away. The tumble of undercut ice, the jar of water-buried stones jammed the air with roar, rumble, yet all seemed still, silent. The colossal prod of ice sliding off mountains out of sight: how high, at what remoteness to resist the sun! We backed away down the river, afraid to take our eyes off the monster.

For days my thoughts were of the ice-ogre, of the mountain that ate the sun, as we kept south, crossing more milky rivers, and catching sight of another glacier between dark ridges, white as the glimpse of a thigh.

I heard Taur tell the dogs the glacier was just a river of ice whose waters knocked, ran milky with ice and ground stone, and smoked with cold. But there was a threat implicit in the titanic landscape. “What’s the other side of the mountains?” I asked, but Taur just rubbed Jess’s ears, examined Jak’s feet, and bellowed, “Grarff!” We must keep on south.

We came out near the coast again, the sun rocking up the sky, an intensity like the Whykatto’s. Trees sparse. The snow mountains retreated east until, upon the evening skyline, they were distant daggers, gold, pink. Storms clashed and boomed inland, but no rain fell near the coast. We crossed dry shingle washes, trudged for ever, it seemed, down that western coast. And each day Taur and I looked behind.

It happened early one morning, skirting a pool in a sun-dwindled river-bed, I was astonished once more to see the print of a naked foot. The same foot: narrow, instep high, toes slender. Taur stared south, refusing to look. The dogs showed no interest while I searched for more marks. But there was exactly the print of one foot only – toes, heel, and every part. A woman’s foot, shapely, narrow.

There was a wind that morning. The sand dry. Yet the edges of the footprint were sharp-cut, so I was all the more astonished at the dogs’ indifference. The print had just been made yet carried no scent to them…

West the sea, oily, sullen. East the dry river-bed disappeared between desiccated ridges. South stretched desert. A heat haze trembled so boulders in the distance wavered, detached themselves, floated above the shimmer of sand.

“We can’t keep on south without water.” I knelt and examined the footprint again. Whoever had made it was heading straight into the desert.

Taur dropped his pack and sat in the shade of a tall rock above the pool. By the way he shovelled the sand about with his feet, I could tell he was upset. It was the footprint had
made him angry. How like a child! I turned back to it.

“Urgsh!”

On his knees, brushing sand aside with both hands, Taur pulled at something rounded, shapely as a woman’s shoulder. I dropped beside him and dug, too. The side and neck of a gourd emerged. Another. And another. A stack of empty gourds, each with a wood stopper. Whoever left the footprint must have used gourds the way Hagar and I had once used cooking pots to save our lives, that last journey across the Whykatto plain.

So much of those grasslands had become desert, we almost died of thirst. We filled the cooking pots with water – something Hagar remembered from one of her stories – tied skins over their mouths, and carried them out by night into the Whykatto desert, building up a cache. We sheltered under our tent during the day, watered the animals, drank what was left ourselves, and crossed the rest of the plain during the next night. When we passed the old campsite of the Travellers, the closed-up door to the Cave where we used to see the Animals’ Dance, Hagar stumbled past, ignoring it. I pulled her arm, and she had croaked, “Get to the Narrower Ford.” That was all.

I explained to Taur how we had crossed the Whykatto. “Ugrawh, Urgsh,” he nodded. It would take many days and nights. We would have to carry enough gourds into the desert to make at least two caches. Taur looked back the way we had come. “We could always go back north,” he said and grinned at my face. “Garugh! Or climb the mountains.”

I spat on the sand. “Gurgh!” Taur shouted laughter and patted the gourds with his huge hands so they shuffled and roared like drums. Delighted, he rapped and rattled his knuckles along their sides. The dogs barked, Taur jumping, whirling amongst them, stamping, drumming till the desert itself seemed to shake. I watched and laughed and fell silent as I saw what he was doing.

As Taur danced and leapt, he became both of us crouching tiny beneath the ice-ogre, the glacier. I recognised the way I walked, the slight limp of my game leg, how I stopped and looked around. I hadn’t known I looked like that, not until Taur danced it.

With the dogs, he retreated before the glacier’s threatening snout, backing away. His drum now echoed the jar of rocks in the milky river. I stood open-mouthed, and Taur laughed and flung his drum down beside the others, a gourd again. “Gurgh!” he shouted at my stare.

We slept that day in the bank’s shade. The sun seared orange down a dazzled blue sky as we filled eight large gourds, rammed home the stoppers, and put four each in our packs, with the dried meat we carried. Four smaller gourds we filled and slung one each side of Jak and Jess. As the air cooled, I took my knife and carved across the burnt-clay bank: the ice-ogre of the glacier, and two men and two dogs tiny beneath its icicled jaws.

“Gaur!” Taur said, pointing at his image.

Sand, grit, black pebbles. Rounded hills of rocks we avoided. Crossed depressions glittering with salt, a crust which bore the dogs but cracked and lacerated our ankles. With the darkness, insects crawled everywhere on the sand, so many I was astonished there was food for them in that bare desert.

The air felt warmer about our heads than near the ground. We travelled through a clear night until chill succeeded the day’s flame. Stars as large as the tent lamps of the Travellers hung and flickered just above our heads. We kept looking back to a mountain we had crossed to reach the great river-bed. Keeping it behind us, I knew, would hold us on the right line.

Lights appeared ahead and vanished. I shook myself and laughed. “It can’t be the Salt Men!” Jess whimpered. I touched her head, and a ball of light ran down my arm and
along her back. A little shock, and it had gone.

Taur touched me. Light ran along his arm and I felt as if an invisible stick had tapped me hard. “I don’t know what it was, but it didn’t hurt us.” I shook myself again and laughed for the dogs’ sake. They looked confused.

Taur stopped and piddled, and the light ran down his piss, disappearing into the ground. He jumped and laughed. “Gurgh!” His voice vanished into the desert night.

We rested and travelled on, the sky choked with more stars than I had seen before, so many their twinkles jostled, and I thought I could hear their sound, a musical rustle.

“Desert travellers make great star-gazers.” It was something Hagar once said when I asked about a large star above the Whykatto. I shivered, walked closer to Taur, and the dogs pressed against us.

Our steps and the dogs’ trot over gravel beat rhythmic until we struggled on through sand again. By the time grey smudged the east, the insects had disappeared leaving only fine tracks. Some looked as if they had been made by mice.

Taur pointed to a pimple on the skyline. We walked and walked until it turned into a hillock. Closer it reared a jumble of ancient walls lapped by sand.

We buried the eight large gourds of water in their shade, and ate. At every move we sweated. Jack and Jess panted. All day, pestered by flies, we moved as the shade shifted. I found myself blaming Taur and the dogs for bringing the flies, sat apart to show my annoyance. It didn’t help when I looked at Taur and saw he was grinning.

Except for the mountain, now a tiny triangle on the northern skyline, there was no other landmark. The afternoon burnt away. The air cooled. I climbed the walls. Twin peaks showed in the south, further away than the mountain behind, perhaps another two days’ travel. I looked down. There between my feet was the clear print of the strange foot, pointing towards the twin peaks. I took it as a good
sign and pressed my own foot into the sand. My print so broad and square beside that other, I laughed. Below, the dogs looked up and grinned. Taur looked up, too. I said nothing.

We ate, shared the water from one of the smaller gourds, all four of us, left some gear at the cache, and began our return as night rushed on. By dawn we had emptied the remaining three small gourds and were in sight of our starting point.

Next night we added another eight large gourds to our cache. By the third trip we had twenty-four large gourds of sweet water there and all our gear.

We carried the first eight gourds of water another march into the desert. A sharp wind cut through our cloaks. The dogs huddled close when we rested. We were all pleased to continue. There was no landmark where we finished at dawn, but the twin peaks loomed high. Another day should get us there. Taur marked this cache with our spears, lashing them together, driving them upright in the sand, our foot bindings fluttering pennants from the tip.

That night we returned to the first cache. A rising moon would show us the hillock of walls, especially once we could see the mountain in the north, but dawn came and no hillock. It was only after a low mist burned off that Taur saw the hillock away to our right. We reached the walls, but not before the sun was high. It was hard, trying to explain to the dogs they could not drink all they wanted.

Next night was easier. The moon lit the twin peaks. In first light, the pennants flapped from the spears.

I scratched a picture in the sand, two men and two dogs, all laden, before we set off deeper into the desert, on what we hoped was the last leg. Seven of the large gourds still full; another distributed between the dogs. Our loads were lighter. I said to Taur things were working out, but he just grunted, trudged on. When we stopped for a rest, all the dogs’ gourds were empty.

Taur found hair cracks that had opened up, he thought, through the movement of the gourds against the dogs’ sides. He had noticed them licking themselves, he said, but had thought nothing of it.

“Why didn’t you say something?” I demanded, and Taur rolled his big eyes. I knew it was not his fault. Whatever the cause, we could not go back, had barely enough water to carry us to the peaks which now seemed as far off as ever. They swam out of the mist, retreating, disappearing whenever we seemed to be getting near. I saw trees, grass, and water, heard music – a tinkling fountain, the winding of pipe music. Then we were back trudging across a pebble mosaic, the air heating. I thought of Hagar’s story about a man who perished in a desert, chasing a thing she called a mirage. When I asked Taur, he had seen nothing. He carried a pebble in his mouth, urged me to do so. “Gurgh. It keeps your mouth moist.” I thought it was a stupid idea.

We had to shelter on the southern wall of a dune as the sun bounded up, brassy, clanging with heat. I said to myself the sun could not make a noise, but heard its sneer of metallic triumph.

In the side of the dune we dug a hole, airless, a living grave soon abandoned. We rigged our cloaks between spears and bows, the ends pegged to arrows in the sand and, under that, lay as far apart as possible. But the shelter was too small to avoid touching. Again, I grumbled and blamed Taur and the dogs for my discomfort.

When I was a small boy, Rose, my sister, said I was bad-tempered. I thought I had grown out of it. Certainly I had never been bad-tempered with the animals. I remembered that now, felt bad at blaming Jak and Jess for what was not their fault. And tried to think of all the good things about Taur, how he had risked his life for mine. How even now he was grinning and rolling his great bull’s eyes at me, trying to make me laugh.