Travellers #1 (11 page)

Next spring we travelled south and turned east from the Wunger River. Near where I had stolen Nip as a pup, I speared a trout in the creek. I heard barking and clambered up the bank. By Hagar, Bar and Mak were half-hidden under a swarm of yellow dogs. Nip and the others were defending the animals. Several sheep were down.

I speared two before they saw me. A third dragged itself off, spear in its side. I ran for my bow and killed two more. The rest retreated and howled out of bowshot.

I held him in my arms, tried to stop the red gush from the gape, but Bar’s life ran out between my fingers. Mak was torn in several places which I stitched. We camped while he recovered. I tracked and slew the wounded dog, trapped another two with deadfalls, and shot two more. The rest dispersed.

I wept hot tears and built a cairn over Bar, Bar who Rose sent back to save me those years ago when I was left behind, Bar who was one of the Travellers.

Mak limped and led the animals to the Hawk Cliffs. Although he was failing, he took them out to graze each day. On our last morning there, as summer ended, I found him where he and Bar had always guarded the animals under the leaning cliff, stiff and cold.

“He knew we were leaving, that he could not keep up,” said Hagar. “He would not be left behind so he has gone ahead on his own Journey. That is the nature of dogs, to keep us company only a few years, but their blood goes on in their pups.”

For many days I found myself calling the younger dogs
Bar and Mak. Jak and Jess, Nip’s first pups, guarded the animals now, helped by Trick and Het from a younger litter. Nip herself was greying. By the time I remembered to call them by their own names, my memories of their fathers were fading, like those of my father and sister, dim figures in some distant past. Hagar stooped more each day. “I shrink, and you grow taller,” she chuckled, but she insisted we keep on with the Journey.

I stole another hawk that summer, a female younker named Tor. I called her with Dragon’s whistle. She stood on his perch and pecked his picture just as he had done. When we moved on she rode in his cage on the donkey. I said she must be Dragon’s sister because I had taken her from the same nest. “His parents will be long dead,” Hagar laughed. And I was saddened again that creatures have so short a life.

“She learns quicker than Dragon.”

“Perhaps you’re better at teaching,” said Hagar.

To our delight Tara and Dinny waited for us at the Swapping Ground. They admired Tor. Again Dinny asked if we could produce more woven goods. “Our people need more,” he said in that voice I liked, which reminded me of another voice.

When I told him of the dryness of the last few summers in the Whykatto he shook his head. “We have a strong spring which has never failed,” he said. “It comes out of a hill covered in trees.”

He told me of the Salt People. “They come from the east, from beside a a great lake called the Sea. You cannot drink it for salt.

“They swap us dried fish, smoked birds, and salt for the metal tools we make on our forges. Their clothes are rough, of flax and leaves. They would swap anything for your woven material.”

“Have they animals?” I asked.

“None.”

“How do they carry things?”

“Slaves.”

“Slaves?”

“People they load like your donkeys.”

I shuddered at that. “Why did you speak to them?”

Dinny nodded. “The old people told me to talk to them. I do not trust the Salt People.” I listened to his voice as well as what he was saying. I liked its warmth, its friendly sound. Even if I looked away, I could hear that quality. “They say the heat is not so bad where they live beside the Sea,” said Dinny. “But inland there are hills with trees burning along their tops. West of the hills, they say there is a great plain.”

“The Whykatto!” I said. “They must live the other side of the hills to the east. We have seen the fires burning, too.” I felt even uneasier about the dryness awaiting us in the north.

That year Dinny and Tara brought us more vegetables and described the forges where they heated and hammered the metal to make their tools. They told us about their gardens and orchards, how they were watered from the strong spring.

“That is how we can stay in one place,” Dinny said. “We grow our food, and we have deer, too. Every year we tell our children our oldest story, about the trees and how we must look after them. We grow little trees in gardens and plant them out each year. Trees make the air better to breathe. Trees bring the rain.”

I already knew they hunted deer, but Tara told me how they enclosed a grassy valley and kept deer inside it, so they were almost as tame as our animals. I could have listened to Tara and Dinny for ever but, once again, Hagar said we must leave.

I walked north in a daze, thinking only of Tara, of her body. I thought of the softness of her – for I had touched her now – of the astonishing differences between us, and
Hagar chuckled. “You must remember we depend on the Metal People, and they depend on us,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“They want our things. We want theirs. Those Salt People, it’s the same with them. We trade for what we don’t make ourselves.”

“We need more Travellers,” I said. “To weave more things to swap.”

Hagar caught me looking back. “From the Traveller who looks back,” she said, “the Gods take one eye.” I ignored her.

Somehow I knew we were going to live together. Tara had said she knew it, too. I felt for her something like the feelings I remembered having for Rose, something like what I felt for Hagar. But there were those other feelings, too. I desired her, not just in my body which leapt at the thought, but in my mind.

In the Whykatto, that winter, I looked at the smoke from the trees burning in the hills. I thought of what Dinny said about trees bringing rain and wondered. The people of Orklun cut down all their trees. And there were almost no trees in the Whykatto, nor in the dry western hills. I wondered why I had not understood it before, why Dinny understood it so clearly. Even my father had not understood how badly we needed trees.

We moved constantly that winter, grazing parts of the Whykatto Hagar had never seen before. One day I led the animals to a stream where they sniffed and would not drink. The donkeys struck the water with their feet. It was salty. As I turned the animals and drove them away, the stream seemed to turn and run backwards, and I thought of that river at Orklun.

Looking for sweet water, we moved west that evening. From the top of a rise I looked north. In the last light lay a blue plain that seemed to go on forever until it met the
lighter-coloured sky. For a moment I thought it was a great lake, and asked Hagar if she thought it was the Sea, but she just shrugged and followed the animals.

Long before winter ended we passed some walls half-buried in sand. I could tell by the dried-up water-hole, the steps, it was where Rose and I used to fill the water pots. Hagar did not turn her head as we rode past the cave where we once saw the Animals’ Dance.

The willows were dying as we crossed the Narrower Ford – sluggish, shallow, and stinking – and took a shortcut south through Hammertun’s many walls. I spread the flock in small groups, each guarded by a dog, to get enough feed. Wild dogs followed, but I rode from one group to the next, bow and arrow ready.

Our dogs worked intelligently. Again and again they saved the animals. Hagar spoke as if we would make the Journey to the Whykatto again next year. I had other plans.

Quail had increased between the dry hills, thriving on seeds. Tor loved their flesh. “You won’t see the Narrower Ford again,” I told her. My donkey’s ears turned back, and Tor ducked restive as I put on her hood. “Don’t say anything to Hagar,” I told them.

We saw signs of strangers, ashes, flattened dust where someone had slept under a rock, footprints by a water-hole as we moved south. Even the scrub was dying. At the entry to a sand-washed gully Hagar slipped off her donkey, knelt, and wept. She raised her hands to those stone-faced walls where the Travellers died again and my sister vanished.

We were above the Onger River when Hagar said, “Did you hear a noise?”

“Nothing. But I won’t feel safe until we’re up in our own country.”

“I don’t know if I heard it or if I was watching Nip,” said Hagar. “Maybe I saw her ears prick.” She wouldn’t say any more, and it was no use questioning her. She still chanted
her songs and stories, but there were days now she rode silent. Always however she worked her spindle, polished smooth and glassy-black.

“There’s nothing to make any noise,” I said, both frightened and angry. I had the unpleasant feeling of being watched. “This is the last time we’re spending winter in the Whykatto!” I growled. “No trees; no rain.”

I was determined to work out some better life with Tara. I was incomplete without her. If our plan worked Hagar would never have to travel in fear of thirst and attack again.

Jak led the animals into a deep bowl where there was always feed. I went to unload the donkeys and put up the tent.

It was so loud I dropped the rope. Hagar flinched. The hills shook. Around the basin’s rim a ring of men looked down. I could not move, stunned by the immensity of their shout.

The sheep and donkeys went back to feeding. The goats stared, inquisitive. Tor’s cage stood under its cover on the donkey’s back, my bow hanging beside it. I could not reach it before the descending circle of men riddled me with arrows.

They wore short, deerskin tunics. They were dark, their eyes black, fierce. For every man there were several snarling yellow dogs. Two men went back on our tracks. They spoke our language but in shrill voices. Their leader ordered us on to our donkeys and led us west. The pack donkeys trotted beside us. We reached their encampment in a guarded valley. Hagar swayed as I lifted her down.

Yellow dogs spilled yapping from the tents, thin women in loose leather garments, pot-bellied children with arms and legs like sticks. Smoke rose from cooking fires. It reminded me of something long ago.

Their leader wore the same long black dress and scarf as Hagar. She had the same lines and wrinkles, the same dark
eyes that glinted and peered sharply, but these were arrogant, without humour. She sneered at the donkeys, our few blankets, the tent, my weapons, and Tor’s cage, its dome under the tight-fitting cover.

“Why bring them here?” she cried in a thin voice, lips hardly moving. “We have too many mouths already.” Our captor bowed. “Cut their throats and feed them to the dogs!” The man drew his knife. The woman pointed at Tor’s cage. The man shifted the knife to his left hand and drew off the cover.

Annoyed by her uncomfortable ride in darkness, Tor ruffled and mantled in her cage. She would be foul-tempered until given something to eat.

“The Falcon!” Everyone knelt: children, women, our captors, even the old woman. Somebody dragged Hagar to the ground. A rough hand pulled me down. They hid their eyes from Tor’s mad gaze.

“Let the Goddess go and kill these profaners!” their leader shrieked, but nobody moved. At last, the man who had captured us crawled to Tor’s cage, averting his eyes, fumbling at its door. Impatient, crying to herself, Tor extended one wing, and the door opened.

I did it without thinking: whistled and lifted my hand. She arrowed at me; the vice of her talons closed around my fingers; I thought I would faint. Fortunately the glove in my belt was large. My other hand slipped in easily. I held it in front. The crushed nerves shrieked pain as she released the fingers of my naked hand now ringed white and stepped on to the glove.

The strangers moaned and prostrated themselves. I wrapped the leashes around my wrist. Tor would be uneasy until she killed or fed. Children looked through their fingers. One screamed something about the Falcon standing on my hand.

“Fly her!” Hagar hissed.

“What if she refuses?”

“Chance it!”

And just then came the hammer-beat of wings. Tor glared. A quail drummed over the tents. I swung up my hand, dropped the leashes. Tor spiralled up. She stooped a black line down the sky. The quail bulleted towards a patch of scrub. Tor hit with a thump. They fell together, and I ran to split the head, reward Tor with the brains.

On the glove again, she tore frenzied at the bloody tidbit, and the strangers hissed as she devoured the liver. I held up the quail’s body, and she jerked out feathers, stripping the skin bare and pocked. People groaned and crawled away. I put Tor back in her cage, covered her, and the leader beckoned me.

“Servant of the Falcon,” she said, “from where do you come?”

I pointed south.

“The Goddess has tired of this land,” Hagar said, voice croaking now. “She commanded us to take her back to her mountain.” She muttered at me, “Show her Dragon!”

I slipped off his disc, put it in the leader’s hand. The old woman gasped and held up Dragon’s image for the others to see, and I lost my balance, limped a couple of steps to seize the pack-saddle, and Tor squalled. It was enough. Their leader made much of us. We were feasted, and all because of Tor.

When we were alone that night, the tent flap lifted and a woman slipped inside. “Ish!” she said. “Oh, Ish!” She kissed us both, repeating our names, crying, rubbing her face against mine. “Ish!” I could not speak, not even to say her name.

At last Rose told us how she and the younger women had been seized and carried through the western hills to a lake so big it had no other side. There they lived on fish caught in the salty water. “You can’t drink it,” Rose said, and
I thought of that other bitter Sea to the east, and the salty water we had found north of the Whykatto.

“You stumbled and limped, and I knew it was you, Ish,” she said.

I tried to tell Rose all that had happened since we were parted by Karly Campy, how Bar had brought his precious load to me; and Rose told me her life. At one point she ran out and returned carrying a bundle. I saw a baby’s head, its eyes closed. They opened, the little face screwed and turned red. The mouth pursed and squealed like Tor.