Watson, Ian - Black Current 01 (21 page)

 
          
"I
know. I'll dive into the nearest bush."

 
          
"That
might look furtive. Just keep your trap shut. Glance demurely at the
ground."

 
          
We
did soon pass a curious contrivance: a cart loaded with packages, drawn by two
huge hairy hounds, the like of which I'd never seen before. A skinny man
trotted behind, clad in doublet and breeches, cocked hat and wooden clogs,
flicking the air with a whip. He paid us scant heed, beyond a nod and a raking
glance across me. Averting his gaze from my companions' machetes, he stepped up
his pace and lashed the hounds.

 
          
"He
didn't seem any too curious," I said when he'd passed.

 
          
Jothan
grunted. "He couldn't be fool enough to fancy we'd rob him on the high
road. I've no wish for a gibbet."

 
          
"What's
that?"

 
          
"Gallows, girl, gallows!
Hung up high
to rot.
God's Peace guards the high road. Sons of Adam hunt you down, if
you transgress it."

 
          
"The way they hunt witches down?
How many women
do
disobey?"

 
          
"Not
many.
A few.
Those as get seduced to
the river, as if it sings 'em a song.
Enough for
entertainment once or twice a year, most places."

 
          
"You
call the burning of women
entertainment?”

 
          
"I
don't, specially. Mobs do. We're all bloody ignorant savages compared with you,
clever cocky superior Yaleen. 'Cept on certain matters such as Andri mentioned.
Such as why we're here at all; and how."

 
          
An
hour later we approached a laden barrow, pushed by a stout, black-cloaked
woman. Her man strolled along with a single parcel tucked under his jerkined
arm. Presumably it had bounced off the barrow and couldn't be fitted back on.
The woman eyed me venomously, no doubt on account of my male attire.

 
          
"Ho,"
said the man, halting. He wore a bronze medal round his neck, with a circle and
arrow design. In his belt was tucked a hollow tube of metal with a handle,
which I assumed must be some sort of cudgel.
"God's
Peace, save you from Satan!"

 
          
"Save
you," replied Andri with a smile.

 
          
"Who's
she?
Brotherhood business?"

 
          
"No,
no. No problem, Brother." Andri made to move on.

 
          
"Wait
a bit. I asked who."

 
          
"Oh,
we're prospectors, Brother. We took her with us to cook, carry and comfort.
Piranha-mice got her clothes.
Had to lend her some."
Andri had already told me that's what they called those ravenous little beasts.

 
          
"Piranha-mice?
Close by?" The man looked dubious.

 
          
"Close
enough. Better push on. Getting dark soon, isn't it?"

 
          
"I'm
safe enough."

 
          
"Not
from mice."

 
          
The
man scrutinized me. Remembering advice, I glanced briefly at the ground.
"What kind of cook is a skinny wretch without an ounce of fat? What
comfort's she?"

 
          
Andri
grinned wickedly.
"Thieving cook.
Had to teach her a lesson."

 
          
"Thieving
cooks wax plump."

 
          
"Not
if they're fasted."

 
          
"Doesn't figure.
You cook the meals yourself, keep her
tethered?"

 
          
"Oh,
he's a bom joker, this one." Jothan nudged Andri aside. Suddenly he looked
alarmed, and cocked an ear. "Hark . . . Thought I heard a rustling."

 
          
"Mice, this far north?"

 
          
"First time for everything, Brother!"
Jothan
shoved me. "Get along, hussy, while there's still flesh on those bones.
God speed," he called over his shoulder. And on we walked; though the man
stood watching us till we rounded the next corner.

 
          
"Busybody,"
muttered Andri, once we were out of sight. "At least there ain't nothing
like your mirror and lantern signals over here. Though one thing the Sons do
have,
is pistols."

 
          
I
repeated, "Pistols?"

 
          
He
stuck a finger in his belt, where the man had stowed his tube, pulled it out
and said, "Bang. Kill you at a hundred paces.
Hopefully.
Cost a bit, take weeks to craft."

 
          
"Oh."

 
          
"I'd
trust myself to throw a knife first.
Pompous things, pistols.
As soon explode your hand, as kill your enemy.
In my
opinion."
His eyes narrowed. "Don't know about pistols, hmm?
Mentioned none in your account of the east."

 
          
"You
never asked," said I quickly.
"Can't mention
everything."

 
          
He
caught and shook me. "Don't tell any lies, Yaleen! Lies catch you
out!"

 
          
Soon,
at dusk, we arrived on the outskirts of Pleasegod. I stayed in hiding with
Jothan while Andri sallied into the town, returning after half an hour with a
bundle for me: a ghastly ankle-length frock, with cowl, wrapped around a pair
of rope sandals. It was pretty dark by now but I could still tell how hideous
the costume was. Surrendering my own well-made serviceable boots and breeches
from behind a bush, I watched them disappear into Andri's backpack. I never saw
them again.

 
          
Being
now in disguise as a penitent, slavish female, I attracted no attention in
Pleasegod, where we spent that night at the Gladfare Inn. The size of this
institution puzzled me at first, till I realized that over here men must be on
the hoof constantly. Our own eastern inns were simply places where you
caroused. Most eastern travellers had their own floating homes along with them.
Those women and girls who hadn't, rented private rooms chosen from the town
register.

 
          
The
Gladfare Inn was boisterous with boozers, in its long hall and out in its
colonnaded courtyard. Above the hall rose two storeys of shabby bedchambers
equipped with straw mattresses on trestles, ewers of water,
soap
like chunks of yellow rock. That evening I stayed in my room with the door
barred, occasionally peeping down at the lantem-lit courtyard where Andri and
Jothan had repaired to amuse themselves. Down below was a jollity in which I
could not join. Apparently "a certain type" of woman drank in
taverns. Subsequently I heard thumping and crashing on the stairways and
corridors, shrieks, and giggles.

 
          
In
the morning Jothan confessed that there was a more salubrious inn located
behind the Donjon, where respectable men with respectable wives would stay.
But we weren't seeking the company of pillars of society, were we?

 
          
Pleasegod
in the morning was a sprawling, tatty, smelly place, with rubbish lying around
in the streets, disconcerting nobody but me. Yet from early on it was bustling
with barrows, porters, carts, costermongers—all the more bustling, I suppose, because
of the low level of technical aids. In other circumstances I might have
accounted the enormous marketplace as picturesque, but for me it was
overshadowed by two of the buildings flanking it: the great brick prayerhall,
and yes, the stem stone Brotherhood Donjon, before which lay a patch of ashes
where no one trod.

 
          
The
heart had quite gone out of travelling, for me. I, who had wanted to see the
whole
world
! Never would I desire to add Pleasegod to
the roll-call of other towns I'd visited—blessed names like Aladalia and
Ajelobo. Even dirty Guineamoy and neglected Port Barbra seemed paradises by
comparison.

 
          
I
felt the same about the succeeding towns along our route: Dominy, and
Adamopolis, each of them spaced apart by half a dozen intervening hovel
villages. Life went on there, true; but it wasn't my idea of living.

 
          
North
of Pleasegod we met an increasing volume of traffic on the high road; and
travellers tended to gang up in bands of six to ten folk to while away the
trudge convivially with songs and tales. But company was the last thing we
wanted. We shrugged off invitations to join a party and attempts to tag along
with us.

 
          
It
had been ages since I had caught sight of the river even distantly. Once we
left Adamopolis behind, though, the high road climbed up through hills verging
on mountains. The jungle dwindled; and I thought I knew where we were now, for
when I'd been sailing north of Spanglestream I had spied peaks inland to the
west.

 
          
The
highest point of our climb afforded a grand view east across leagues of land.

 
          
How
could anyone enjoy the view? A grisly monument marked it. Boulders were piled
together. From their midst
rose
a pole which supported
a rusty cage in the shape of a human body: an iron suit, with a padlock
fastening it.
Within, a skeleton.
This death-cage
creaked and grated in the wind.
But had the condemned person
been dead before their body was locked in—or not?
I didn't ask. A group
of travellers had stopped to mumble and make signs, and glance furtively at the
vast perspective. . . .

 
          
Far
away, sunlight glinted from a long strip of water, thin and insignificant at
such a distance. Even further to the north-east I noted
a
vague
grey fuzz, like a blur in my eye. Could it be the smoke of
Guineamoy?

 
          
"So
here's Lookout Gibbet," Andri muttered sourly. "Don't stare at the
river, Yaleen."

 
          
We
hastened by.

 
          
Soon
we were descending, somewhat riverwards, into forested terrain where I could
see our destination nestling in the foothills.

 
          
* * *

 
          
Manhome
South was a substantial town lying in the cup of a valley, fronting a thin
crescent-shaped lake. From above, it almost looked civilized. Broad streets of
two- and three-storey timber houses were set out in a grid pattern. These
residences petered out into a mass of humbler dwellings built with mudbricks
and roofed with reeds— though the grid persisted throughout. By the lakeside
rose several large edifices of stone and proper brick.

 
          
Jothan
pointed. "There's the Tithe Exchequer . . . That's the Brotherhood Donjon,
and the Theodral nearby. . .

 
          
"Theodral?"

 
          
"The Deotheorist HQ.
And over there's the Academy of
Techniques."

 
          
Quite
a centre of administration and learning! On such matters as how to build
death-cages, or bore metal tubes which could kill people from afar. . . .

 
          
Once
down in the outskirts of Manhome South, we loitered in a scrofulous public park
till nightfall. Then we made our way through the blacked-out streets—lit only
by whatever glow escaped from houses, plus starlight—till we arrived at a
three-storey dwelling surrounded by bushes and a fence.

 
          
Jothan
and I stayed outside while Andri slipped in through the gate. He was
immediately greeted by the savage raving of a hound— which he must have known
well, since it shut up quickly. Presently he reappeared, to conduct us round in
the darkness to the back stoop where a door stood ajar, spilling dirty amber
light. We entered a kitchen. A tall, freckle-faced man awaited us, dressed in a
loose grey linen robe. Bunches of gingery hair like thin rusty wire sprouted from
the sides and back of an otherwise balding, spotted cranium. On his upper lip
grew an incongruously neat little ginger brush of a moustache. Standing there
with his big hairy knuckles loosely clenched, he looked as tough as a plank.
But he wore spectacles, too, glassy windows behind which his watery eyes were
thoughtful.