Moongather (23 page)

“Mmmm.” Serroi smoothed her tunic down then began rolling her blankets into a compact cylinder. Humming a burring tune, she dealt with Dinafar's blankets, then crawled from under the groundsheet, glanced up at the sky and gasped with dismay—half the morning was spent. “Dina, why'd you let me sleep so long? You know.…”

Dinafar sniffed. “I know you were making yourself sick. You needed that sleep.” She tossed the last of the tabard into the fire. “I don't see any virtue in rushing to get killed.”

“Dammit, Dina.…” Scowling, Serroi ran her weapon-belt through her fingers, opened the pocket she was searching for and took out a small enamel case. “Quit trying to run my life.” She dipped fingertips into pale cream and started stroking it on her face. “You want to help, make sure I cover all of my face with this goo.”

The water started bubbling in the cha pot. Its small lid bounced rapidly, letting out puffs of steam. Dinafar snatched the lid back, dumped in a handful of cha leaves; her hand protected by a fold of her skirt, she pulled the pot off the fire and set it on a flat stone beside her. “The macain have gone off somewhere.”

“Just as well. As long as you're coming with me, we can't use them any more. Too conspicuous.” She sighed, began working the cream into the skin of her forehead, cursing softly as she tried to keep her tumbling tangled curls out of it. Holding her hair up, she scowled at Dinafar. “You really shouldn't have let me sleep so long. Have I got it on smooth?”

Dinafar's green-brown eyes twinkled.

“Stop grinning, girl, this is serious.”

“Yes, meie, of course, meie.” Dinafar's lips twitched again. She swallowed, smoothed her fingers along her throat. “You forgot your nose, meie.”

“Hunh!” She dabbed hastily at her nose.

All the spare gear cached high in one of the brellim, blankets and groundsheets tied onto rucksacks, rucksacks settled as comfortably as possible on their backs, Serroi and Dinafar stepped from the grove and started downhill to the Highroad. Serroi grimaced. “Crowded already.”

Dinafar stumbled, caught herself. “I've never seen anything like that. How did they ever build it?”

The Highroad ran straight as a knife slash from the Biserica in the south to Oras in the north. It was a twenty-foot-high embankment with the top smoothed flat and covered with a thick rubbery surface, a dull black tarlike substance. The top was perfectly level and wide enough for two farm carts to pass without crowding.

Serroi tugged at the chin strap of the cap. She was rested and relaxed for the first time since she'd left Oras; no nightmares, not even any dreams she could remember to disturb a deep, deep sleep. The cap fit close to her head and was a minor irritation. She'd never liked wearing anything that covered her ears, but it was necessary as part of her disguise. She glanced at Dinafar. The girl was walking easily, looking down at the grass under her feet, a small satisfied smile quivering on her lips. “Cream-licker,” she murmured.

Dinafar grinned, then she nodded at the Highroad. “How
did
that get built?”

“The Domnor's grandfather got tired of bad weather and muddy roads delaying his tax gatherers. He hired a second-rank Norit to build him a road that wouldn't fall apart under the first storm. The sorcerer did it in a day and a night and old Kleorn paid him well. And squeezed the land to replace the money he'd laid out.” She waved a small gloved hand at the slope. “One used to pay tolls to use the road. Domnor Hern stopped that about ten years ago when his father died. Said the road's paid for a dozen times over. No use forcing a lot of folk to spend coin for what they already owned. Irritated the hell out of Floarin and Lybor.”

Dinafar smiled shyly at her, reminding Serroi how young she was. She felt a surge of affection for the girl, a gladness that she was out of that village trap.

They climbed up the steep side of the embankment and eased unnoticed into the stream of humanity ambling along the black ribbon, most of the travelers heading north to Oras and the Moongather. The families traveling on foot moved steadily along, enjoying the day and the walk. At times macai riders came clawing through the mass, ignoring the protests of the walkers. Some of them were Plaz guards, their faces gaunt and weary, their green and black tabards thick with dust and stained with sweat. Others were Stenda, blond and arrogant, the men on high-bred macain of uncertain temper, women and girls in curtained wagons with huge iron-tired wheels. The Stenda pushed all walkers off the sides, paying no attention to curses and complaints, ignoring the men and women on foot as if they didn't exist. Some were wealthy merchants on placid malekanim whose gold-plated horns stretched three feet on either side, winning their riders room without need for asking; their veiled wives sitting in open carts followed with less fuss but just as much arrogance. Now and then Sleykyn assassins rode by, swishing their velater hide whips on armored thighs. No one cursed or complained when they passed, only moved quickly out of the way.

Serroi stared at the road when the guards rode past, knowing that the changed color of her skin was her best disguise, that they weren't interested in a dusty boy. She began to relax, trusting to her misleading appearance. Then a Nor rode slowly past on a jittery macai.

Dinafar caught her hand and held it tight when Serroi flinched away from the dark rider. Her warm fingers gave Serroi the steadying she needed. She kept the girl between her and the Nor, watched him with a fear and an old hunger she thought she'd forgotten. This Nor was an ascetic minarka with the olive-tinged gold skin of his race; his russet hair, straight as corn floss, rippled in the wind of his passage; he wore the tight-laced black cloak, the narrow black tunic and loincloth, the Nor's riding garb. She squeezed her fingers tight around Dinafar's, watched the Norit ride unheeding past her. As the black figure melted into the crowd ahead, she drew a long breath and exploded it out. She was on foot and invisible. She grinned at Dinafar. “He didn't even see us.”

Dinafar pulled her hand loose, giggling. She danced in front of Serroi, began walking backward. “We fooled him. We'll fool them all.” A man ahead of her growled as the girl bumped into him. Subsiding, she dropped back to walk beside Serroi. “Meie, no, what am I going to call you? We haven't talked about that.” Her green-brown eyes were suddenly wide and serious.

Serroi rubbed at her nose. “Right A name. Jern. My next oldest brother, a good enough name. Jern.” She examined Dinafar as they walked along. “Neither of us looks much like mountain stock.” She sighed. “I'm not much good at this kind of thing.” She shook her head. “Trained in all kinds of weapons, trained until I can't even move naturally any more. I know how to sew a wound and kill a fever, how to tame anything on four legs, and dammit nothing much about putting together a good believable lie.” She chuckled. “When I get back to the Biserica I'll have to suggest some courses in underhandedness to Yael-mri.” She fell silent, frowning down at the black springy surface moving past under her boots, Dinafar humming and skipping beside her.

Pilgrims moved around them, peasants and landless farm-workers by the hundreds, cobblers, mountebanks, minstrels, acrobats, tinkers, beggars, children, some scowling Sons of the Flame with clustering Followers—a selection of all the trades and types from all corners of the Mijloc moving noisily along the Highroad. Only the sick or those too old or too weak to stand the journey, or those forced to stay behind as caretakers were left out of the great flood of humanity traveling north. Tiny motes in that flood, Serroi and Dinafar walked safe and unnoticed, Serroi more relaxed, even content, now that she accepted her practical invisibility. She watched Dinafar, relishing the change in her.

The once sullen, angry girl was blooming. Her eyes shone more green than brown, shone with interest and delight—though sometimes she edged closer to Serroi, brushing against her with tiny touches. Serroi felt these and was gently amused, a little sad, seeing her own need for reassurance reflected in Dinafar.
She's really attractive when she's happy
, Serroi thought.

Dinafar's skin was olive, browning to a deep fawn, unprotected in the sun. Her black-brown hair was straight and long; she wore it unconfined with a kind of defiant pleasure. It blew about on the breeze, fine and silky and very thick. Her mouth was wide and mobile, alternating this morning between quivering smiles and broad grins. She wasn't pretty but had a charm of spirit that gave her an illusion of beauty when she was happy, when her eyes shone, her skin gleamed bright gold, her cheeks turned a delicate pink. She was broad-shouldered and would be heavy bosomed like her mother's people, but her bones were fine, her wrists and ankles as narrow as Serroi's though both hands and feet were generously made. Young as she was, she was already a head taller than Serroi and apt to keep growing a while longer. Serroi quieted her uneasiness about where she was taking Dinafar by contemplating these changes, telling herself anything was better for the girl than her soul-destroying existence in the fisher village.

More Norim and Sleykyn assassins rode past. Though she shivered and felt a tremble in her stomach with each of them, she no longer succumbed to that mindless panic that had driven her into equally mindless flight. The memory of her betrayal darkened the day for her. She brooded until Dinafar slipped a hand into hers. She looked up into anxious green-brown eyes. “Maybe she
is
still alive, J-Jern.” Dinafar bit her lip when she stumbled over the name.

“That doesn't change what I did.” Serroi smiled at Dinafar, lifted her hand and lightly kissed the back of it. Dinafar blushed and trembled. When Serroi felt her withdrawal, she dropped the girl's hand. “I don't want to talk of that.”

The ambling horde thinned around noon. Many of the travelers climbed down from the Highroad to eat and rest on the grassy slopes before continuing their pilgrimage. Serroi and Dinafar kept walking with the rest, the more impatient ones. Chewing on handfuls of dried fruit, sipping from canteens, they kept moving. Far ahead there was a darkening on the horizon like smoke against the sky. Serroi felt excitement begin to build in her. Oras. Another day and she was there, back in the trap. She turned to the girl beside her. “Dina, tired yet?” She scratched at her palms; they were sticky from the fruit. She wiped them down the sides of her vest, forgetting it was red thick cloth not the treated leather of her meian tunic. She looked down at herself and wrinkled her nose with disgust.

Dinafar giggled, then shook her head. “I'm all right.”

Serroi heard the splat-scrape of macai feet coming up behind them and moved hastily to the edge of the road. She risked a glance over her shoulder, stumbled and stopped walking as her eyes met the casual glance of a Nor, a tall thin man with blue-black hair braided into fantastic coils, skin the color of syrup over coal, and eyes a brilliant indigo with flecks of azure that caught the light like small sapphires. The eyes grew and grew as she stood frozen, unable to turn away. Then two Sleykynin rode past, the claws of their mounts throwing up bits of the black surface against her, tiny stings that she brushed at absently as she watched the Norit ride past no longer interested in her.

Her breathing labored, her heart thudding in her throat, Serroi looked back along the Highroad. As far as she could see, until the road was lost in the blue mists of the southern horizon, there were no walkers left on the road, only clumps of riders. Stenda and merchants, Sleykynin and Norim. She looked up. Traxim in groups of five were circling idly over the plain, moving toward the city lost in dark smoke ahead of them. She began walking again, lost in thought.

Dinafar touched her arm. “Should we stop?” She gestured at the groups of walkers resting on the grass, laughing, sleeping, eating, or simply sitting and talking as they waited for the noon heat to pass. “We're the only ones still walking.”

Serroi shook her head. “I'd like to get on as far as we can before nightfall. Unless you're tired.”

“No, not really.”

They moved steadily along the side of the road, keeping on the verge to avoid the trampling feet of the various beasts and the clumsy wheels of the carts. Several more Norim rode past, ignoring them, to Serroi's vast satisfaction. The road began to fill again as the walkers climbed back up the embankment.

A boy who couldn't have been more than four years old raced ahead of his family, scrambling up the grassy slope, agile as a mimkin. At the edge of the blacktop, he teetered a minute, looking back at his people, laughing and waving. Without bothering to check behind him, he skipped onto the roadway.

Dinafar giggled as he caught his heel and went down on his buttocks, then gasped with horror as a Sleykyn rode past her, eyes half shut, within half a step of trampling the small form frozen on the blacktop.

Without stopping to think, Serroi dived under the clawed pads of the macai, making him shy wildly. She snatched up the terrified boy and rolled away with him, feeling a slash of blinding pain, then she was tumbling over and over down the steep embankment, her body cushioned by the grass, unable to stop until she jarred against the bottom of the slope.

Stifling a cry of pain, she sat up and set the wailing boy on his feet. She touched her arm. The tips of her fingers came away covered with blood. She twisted her head around. A long straight line cut across the material of her sleeve and a ragged cut bit into her muscle. Blood was oozing from the wound and dripping down her arm.
The whip
, she thought.
That bastard used his whip on me
.

“J-Jern.” Dinafar was stumbling down the embankment. Serroi looked past her to see the boy's family pouring toward her also. Dinafar fell to her knees beside her. “He used his whip!” The girl's voice shook with indignation. “His whip!”

Serroi rubbed her thumb across the blood on her fingertips then wiped her hand on the grass beside her. “Sleykyn. They're like that.” Dinafar scowled and parted her lips to speak. “Hush, Dina. Later.”