Travellers #2 (9 page)

Watching Jak and Jess, I realised we were followed. Looking back was useless. I learned more by watching the dogs. Several times, when a draught carried up from behind us, I saw them taste the air and knew they were scenting our pursuers. By watching the set of their ears I could tell the dogs were even hearing them.

Taur once spotted some tiny dots crossing a huge shingle field we had already passed. We rested and watched, knowing the Salt Men were struggling through the same loose sand and stones which had slowed us the whole of a morning. They had the advantage of not having to hide their tracks. Jak and Jess listened to us talk, looked at us pointing, but did not seem to see the specks which followed to kill.

Ahead the river would shrink to a creek, a stream, and a trickle. Before then, I thought, we should have shaken off the chase, but the dogs kept scenting the wind. I became angry with myself. There were just the four of us. We should be able to deceive Squint-face, leave marks to show we were heading on up the river. In fact we could return over our tracks and veer in another direction. Taur agreed. “Grarff!” he said, “South!” pointing into the snow-striped gullies of the mountain range on our left. We went ahead some distance, leaving enough sign to encourage the Salt Men, turned and worked our way back downstream, keeping to the water, turning and wading up one of the cold streams that came down off the southern range.

“Urgsh!” said Taur.

We climbed out of the creek, up a rocky slope, crawled
to the edge, looked over its parapet and down the valley. Far, far below, a column of ants struggled up the main river, spreading across the sandbanks, searching for sign. I grinned, put my finger to my lips as if they might hear Taur laugh, and we continued up the cold creek. By dark, our feet frozen, we had sunk ourselves deep into the slopes of the mountains.

Our plan was to make a great circle: cross the range, drop down its other side, and pick up the river again, only this time we would be the hunters. Once we knew the Salt Men were well ahead of us, had not doubled back to pick up our tracks again, we could then decide which way to go.

Taur shot a deer that night. I lit a fire of bony wood and dried thistle stalks in an enclosed gully well below the skyline. The air cut sharp. We grilled slices of heart and liver, roasted the kidneys on sticks. Despite the dried deerskins we carried and the fire, we both found it too cold to sleep easily and got going early next morning.

Before first light the creek got steeper, finished in a waterfall, and we climbed out, helping each other across a face of polished rock. Jak and Jess ran back downstream, disappeared, and rejoined us later. They were always able to find their own way around difficult places. Taur laid his hand against the rock and shivered. Cold struck out of the stone, as if the mountain was made of ice.

There was now light enough to see where our river finished, the one we had followed up. Its last big branch ran off into the south. We had two glimpses of water, lakes, to the west. By the lay of the hills, they seemed to drain into another valley which enlarged and ran the opposite way – west.

“With any luck,” I said, “Squint-face and his men will cross the watershed, follow down that other river.”

“Quee!” said Taur. “Quee!” I lifted my eyes, followed his pointing arm. Dim, blue, and distant, a dark line seemed a
fold across the sky, a sort of hinge, and I realised we were looking at the sea the western side of the South Land. “Quee!” said Taur. He shifted his feet, stamped, and complained about the frigid stone we stood upon. It seemed much colder than yesterday. As if the insane sun had lost its force up here. I thought again of my father’s story of the mountain that ate the sun.

Two days later we completed our descent from the range, dropped back into the river downstream of where we had left it. Even though we knew the sun would soon be raging in the sky, we were both pleased to leave that icy-feeling mountainside. Squint-face and his Salt Men should be several days ahead of us now. That morning, before looking for shelter from the sun, we searched the river bed, found signs of a large party following our earlier tracks.

“Squint-face and his men.” Taur nodded.

“Shelter now. Tonight we’ll travel after them, see where they’re heading. We’ll be hunting them!”

We found shade, ate, and slept through the harsh day of sunshine. I woke to shouts and growls. Taur had got out his bull mask and was stitching a spear rip in the dewlapped neck. Jak always hated the mask. He snarled now, got his teeth into it, and tugged. Taur pulled the mask over his head and chased Jak, bellowing, hooking at him with the horns. Jess joined Jak and they barked and growled, jumping backwards, dodging in between Taur’s lunges, snapping and swinging from the long cape of the mask, tumbling Taur to the ground. The three of them kicked and struggled, Taur roaring, heaving, the excited dogs holding him down.

While they mimicked rage, I searched the sandbank again, counted fourteen or fifteen different sets of tracks. There may have been more. The Salt Men were several days ahead of us, the edges of their footprints decayed. Another day or two, a wind to shift the sand, and there would be little sign.

Cutting across the back of the sandbank, I saw a strange footprint. Older than the Salt Men’s. Much smaller than Taur’s or mine. Protected from the sun by the sharp curve of the bank above, the outline was clear. A narrow foot. With a high instep. Its owner must have been lightly-built, cannot have carried a load. For a moment I thought of Tara’s footprint.

“Taur!” He came running, the dogs frolicking about him, skidded down the bank.

“Gawurgh!” At the moment his own foot obliterated it, he had glimpsed the footprint, knew at once it was older than the others we were following. But whose could it be? Taur shook his head again. “Gaw!” was all he could say.

We searched further. Taur found some old tracks across what had been a muddy spot. Sun-baked. Our feet fitted them exact. And there were Jak’s, too. I could tell them by the missing dew-claw on his left front foot, one I had to cut off when it was torn in scrub near Lake Top. Those were our tracks, all right, the way we had gone. Squint-face’s party had taken a direct line up the river bed, straight across the middle of the sandbank. But the owner of the small footprint had kept close to the river.

We struck off, keeping to the far side of the sandbank, travelling across shingle wherever possible. And as we walked Taur shouted, “Urgsh!” and struck my back with his palm. I held myself up on my spear.

“What?”

We were on the track to the west coast of the South Land, Taur shouted. The track to where the Salt Men found the green stone and their slaves carried it back to the North Land. “Squint-face might be going for green stone. Some of the men with him are slaves. And that footprint, the light one…”

I saw his point. “You mean there may be other parties on their way to look for green stone.”

“Grawgh!”

“And others behind us?”

Taur nodded again. The Salt Men came only rarely to search for green stone, he reminded me. They travelled in small parties. Separate. Years ago, Taur had learned that from the slaves. Large groups were too slow, they told him.

“Then we’ve got to keep a lookout behind as well as ahead?”

“Gahr!”

“Let’s go on. Maybe we’ll find where the green stone comes from.”

Taur shuddered. “Gaw, Urgsh!” I could see he didn’t want to follow Squint-face, but I felt impelled to keep on. We could swing north, away from the Salt Men’s track, but something inside me wanted to find the source of the green stone. Without understanding it, I wondered at the strength of the feeling.

We crossed the watershed of the land from east to west, followed the Salt Men’s tracks west down a stream which grew to a large, dangerous river. In places a track was clear above its southern side. There were others where we swam, the river a wide, deep peril. We tied huge bundles of flax sticks and, lying prone across them, paddled down long easy stretches. At last the river dwindled beneath the mad sun to a meandering dribble across black sand, disappeared into a wild sea that roared without cease.

This western coast, once hilly country buried beneath forest, was now a desolation of charred stumps. The heat was reducing it to desert, like the Whykatto in the North Land.

We travelled south, crossed sluggish seeps, once fast and dangerous rivers. Inland, at the head of the great valleys, perpetually cloud-wreathed by day and unaffected by the sun, a row of snow-covered giants marched, a white spine to the country. I shuddered at the thought of their coldness.

One dark night we leaned against a rock overhang before a fire. “Somewhere,” I said, “there must be a place where we can be Gardeners and Farmers again.”

Taur lowered his huge head. “Gahr,” he muttered. His large white teeth flashed in the firelight as he laughed. “Urgsh, forget the green stone. Throw away the dolphin. We’ll find a valley somewhere, with cows for me, and donkeys, sheep, and goats for you.”

“And a garden, and fruit trees,” I said. “Would you be happy, Taur?”

“Happy?” He scowled dark in the firelight, shadows coming and going across his face. “A farm, a garden, and an orchard.” He paused. “Urgsh, I can’t have children because of what Squint-face did to me. But you can. Somewhere safe from the Salt Men we’ll find other people and animals. We’ll find a place to have a family.”

I nodded. I shared Taur’s dream of a family, but I did not throw away the dolphin, and I said nothing more about finding the source of the green stone.

Following south in Squint-face’s tracks, we clattered across shingle beds, dry ghosts of rivers. A few stagnant pools were discoloured black and brown. Near one we camped under an outcrop of black rock, lustrous, cracked. Taur tried to draw on a cliff, but the black stuff was too brittle. He looked up, caught me grinning when it shattered. I lit a fire, and the outcrop itself caught alight and burned hotter than any wood. It made our cooking pot dirty with soot which got all over my hands. I looked quickly at Taur, but he was gazing up the cliff.

“I know you’re laughing.”

“Gaw!” said Taur, but looked at my face and guffawed. The angrier I got, the louder he laughed. In the end, I knelt by a pool of water and looked at my reflection. A black smudge coated my nose, another my forehead and cheek. I glanced up to our camp and saw Taur doubled over, pointing at me, telling Jak and Jess.

“Dumb Bull Monster!” I shouted, but he roared until tears ran from his bulging eyes.

When we moved on in the dark of early morning, the black rock was still burning. We pissed and flung discoloured water over it, not wanting to leave so clear a signal to anyone behind.

For long stretches we walked black sand beaches between the passionate sea and the silent land. At night the long breakers were combed with blue lights and, running up the beach to our feet, tongues of water were fretted blue tassels. In the morning we found pale pink mounds heaped along the high tide mark, the numerous bodies of tiny creatures.
Taur said the blue light came from those specks of life, that he used to see it as a child on the coast of the North Land. Jess nosed at the heaps, and Jak wolfed a mouthful which he vomited up before it had gone halfway down.

“Serves you right,” I told him, but he wasn’t worried. Dogs have different stomachs to ours.

Along the coast we climbed flat rocks stacked thin upon each other, with blow-holes that turned the force of the waves into waterspouts. Nearby was a gorge, good water running between linked pools, and comfortable caves under cliffs, cool and remote from the sun. But there was no open valley where we could keep animals. Besides, we must find people as well. We journeyed on. I thought of the source of the green stone and dreamed my old dream of planting trees against the sun. The cold of the strait, the ice island, the never-ending sea fog, it was as if they had never been.

Then one dark night I dreamed of Tara saying something. I took little notice of her words, but tried to wake, calling her name, thinking I might rise out of sleep holding her hands, draw her into the light where she would be safe with me again. Her hands in mine, their cold touch slipped away. Desolated I woke beside Taur and the dogs on the cold hill-side. As Tara’s face faded, I wondered if the time would come when I no longer remembered how she looked. Would I even forget her name?

I slept again, dreamt her face, her great eyes. “Bury the dolphin,” she was saying. “Under the tree with red flowers.” This time I woke still hearing her voice, remembered her words. Was she, like Taur, warning me, telling me to throw away the green stone dolphin? I lay trying to dream of Tara again, then the dogs stirred, and Taur. Time to be moving before the day.

Each early morning’s march we kept a check before and behind until the sun rose fiery, and we sheltered. Each night before camping, we checked before and behind again. I
felt we were watched. One morning, something moved behind at the northern end of a beach we had just left. The figures trembled and dissolved in haze. Perhaps heat rising off the black sand in shaking waves of light, a trick of vision to do with the tall rocks. Perhaps logs upright, half-buried in the sand. So I told Taur, but we had the uneasy feeling we were too close to Salt Men ahead and others behind.

Taur could now splash along in the water, but still lacked confidence. In one river gorge, Jak was swept away down rapids while I was supporting Taur to the far side. Three days we searched, and camped two more at the foot of a series of waterfalls, just in case. We moved on, only three of us, our world closed in.

That third evening I thrust my spear at a sudden rustle in the ferns, and out burst Jak, yapping, whining with excitement, delighted to have found us. We tussled, rolled him over, and tickled him, but he yelped, sore from his beating in the river. We fed and rested him a couple of days and marched on, four again.

Returning to the coast, we found tracks of men, at least twelve, probably more, about a day ahead. Several nights later we were trudging through soft sand, looking for a place to camp, when Jak growled. He and Jess stared, ears forward. Taur and I dropped and gazed where they were looking but saw nothing, listened for what they were hearing but heard nothing. Both dogs stepping high in front, we inched forward.

When they froze, sniffing the air, I held them back. Taur climbed a boulder and covered me with his bow, an arrow on the string. I slid between two rocks, spear ahead, ready to thrust. Knife loose in its sheath, bow and arrows slung over my shoulder. I glanced at the dogs, and they looked back uneasy but not afraid. Their hackles had gone down; their bodies showed no tension. Jak even flicked one ear. He sniffed and looked around the rock and back at me.
Nothing there! Taur slipped to join me.

Halfway along the beach a post stood in the sand. Something flapped against it, kelp or seaweed. But there was no wind. Lashed to the post was what remained of one of the Salt People’s slaves, his lighter-coloured skin puffed, blistered red and white from the sun, shoulders and face charred raw. If the sun did not kill him, the incoming tide would drown him. The Salt Men could only be one set of tides, half a day ahead.

Taur spread his cloak on the sand as I slashed the ropes. Soundless the man screamed as we took his weight. Gentle as possible, we still broke several of the huge blisters so they ran a clear fluid down his body. We lowered him, wincing when his blackened lips cracked to show red flesh, his sunburnt tongue lolled swollen, and he tried to scream.

I had seen dead flesh grilled by the sun’s hatred, but never such burns on the living. The tide swirled around the foot of the post. Despite his terrible silent cries we gathered him up in the cloak. I was relieved when he slumped unconscious as we staggered through the dragging sand.

We laid the ruined body on the smoothest place we could find. I ran down the beach, for our packs and weapons before the tide swallowed them, and Taur lit a fire.

I knelt, said to the man, “We’re going to make you comfortable.” Put my ear to the swollen bubbles, the ruined flesh that had been his mouth, but he was unconscious still.

I searched the high-tide line for wood, brought it to Taur. He had dried fish simmering in the cooking pot. “Gwoar?” he asked. How were we going to feed the gruel between the man’s blistered lips, past his sun-swollen tongue? There was a sort of rustle. If we held the pot to his mouth, would it hurt him? And wouldn’t the hot food hurt his damaged tongue?

“Let it cool.”

Taur nodded. I turned back. Eyes wide open, jaw slack,
the slave lay. The rustle had been the sound of his dying.

As the moon came up, we scraped a hole in the beach. The slave had been left behind to die by the Salt Men just as, years ago, I had been left behind by Karly Campy. I tore a wisp from my cloak and buried it and a mussel shell of the cooked food beside the man, for his lonely journey.

Several nights later, we squirmed through thick fern and counted five Salt Men lying around a fire. Nine slaves with them. We watched long enough to be sure they had no sentries. Fourteen altogether. No sign of Squint-face. He must be with another party – ahead or behind, we did not know.

Several days we shadowed this group. At the beginning of a long beach or clear stretch of country, they crept to a vantage point and scanned every step of the way ahead, shading their eyes. We watched and smiled at each other, Taur and I.

The lighter-skinned slaves trudged with large flax baskets on their backs. Their owners strolled, carrying only weapons. At one camp we watched the slaves fell a large-fronded tree. Where the fronds sprang from the trunk, they chopped open the swollen bulb, unpeeled it to its creamy core. The Salt Men gorged themselves on this but, although they had too much, gave none to their slaves.

When they moved on we tried a piece. Like crunching cream, rich in my mouth. I remembered Taur describing the palm tree, how a rash slave had boasted about eating it and died for his rashness. Looking at Taur, his mouth full, eyes closed, I remembered how back in his valley he had broken down, after describing how Squint-face killed the slave. What they did next to his corpse, Taur could not bring himself to tell me. I wondered again what could be more terrible than murder.

Surely we must be near the source of the green stone. I put my hand to the neck of my tunic. Taur saw what I was touching and looked away.

“Why,” I asked him, “why do they value it so much? Why is Squint-face ready to lose so many men for it? It’s only stone.”

“One fine piece of carved green stone will buy many slaves,” Taur nodded. “Gorurgh!” He gulped and tried again. “Gorugh!” It was what he had said before. “It is their god. Throw it away, Ish. It will only bring us trouble.”

But it was my only link with Tara. Besides, it brought us luck, I told myself. It was no use saying that to Taur.

That night, having caught up on the party ahead, I hid the green stone dolphin in my pack, told Jak and Jess to guard it and wormed my way down to the Salt Men’s camp with Taur.

“Urgsh…” Taur muttered, swung his head and stared away. He would have been happier to avoid the Salt Men altogether. He would rather not know anything about the green stone. As we crawled together towards the firelight, I knew he was uneasy, but he would not leave me to risk it alone.

The Salt Men sprawled comfortable around a fire, laughing, telling stories, joking at each other’s expense. It looked good fun, and I thought of Taur’s words about a family.

In the shadows behind the Salt Men, out of the warmth of the fire, the slaves had chopped down a palm tree and were preparing its flesh. Some were cooking fish for the Salt Men, dragging in firewood, heaping fern for their beds. I would like to belong to a group but didn’t want to be a slave.

They were nine, the Salt Men only five. Why didn’t the slaves overthrow them? I thought of the way Taur had stayed in the valley of the cows. Perhaps just being a slave made it impossible to rise against their owners. Perhaps that inability to act was what it meant to be a slave.

Taur tapped my ankle in warning, but I kicked at his hand, crawled closer through ferns. The slaves had a mean,
rank smell, probably the food they ate. I knew birds and animals tasted according to what they were eating.

By the way the biggest Salt Man ordered the others around, he was their leader. I wriggled through the leaves of a fallen branch. Taur disapproved, but I must see and hear. The big man was telling a story. A slave knelt, rubbing his legs. I was close enough to see how the slave separated the muscles, lifting each away from the others, working it, and letting it fall back into place. He took oil from a pot and rubbed it on the skin so it gleamed brown in the firelight. The big man groaned with pleasure, turned over for the slave to work on his back, then kicked him aside.

Impassive, the slave corked the pot of oil, returned to his fellows. Again, I wondered at the way the slaves suffered their owners’ cruelties, as if indifferent to pain. And what makes a man so cruel, I asked myself, he can see another’s pain, not feel it himself?

The Salt Men arranged themselves on their comfortable beds of fern. Several, owners and slaves alike, had wandered off into the dark. His back to the firelight, one pissed not far from where I lay and returned to the others without seeing me.

A twig cracked. A fern rustled behind me. Taur must be crawling up. Something fell upon my back and knocked out my breath.