—8—
BLACK-WHITE-RED
I BARELY HAD TIME TO ADJUST TO MY NEW VISION OF MISI WHEN, with no warning at all, there was trouble.
Our train happened to be in the lead. The men had been up ahead on a scouting or hunting expedition. Now they came cantering back with bows strung, with horses steaming and prancing. They were all good horsemen, those trader males, but they were shouting a lot and I could see that some of their mounts were giving trouble, as if anxiety was infectious. When Jat scrambled onto the platform, I saw that his eyes and nostrils were dilated as if he were spooked himself. Then he turned to Misi and began to whisper urgently in her ear.
The country was patchy woodland, rolling in large hills and ridges under dismal low clouds. The rain had stopped, but the air was still full of the feel of it. Odd movements of wind stirred gusts of mist amid the copses, and the twisted white tree trunks hovered like flocks of ghosts on the edges of reality.
Often, as now, I huddled in a blanket for warmth. The sun, when visible, had fallen halfway down the sky, lower than I had ever seen it, and shadows stretched eerily out to the east. I sorely missed the constant cloudless blue of the grasslands.
For several sleeps we had been skirting a large river to the south of us. Jat had spoken of deep jungle beyond it. To the north bare spines of rock rose faintly, higher than anything I had seen since we had left the Andes. Long ago burned off by High Summer, those would now be incapable of growing anything, even when watered. So this might be a natural pass, a narrowing of the borderlands, an obvious place to ambush traders. There was danger—I could smell it.
I could stand on my feet now, but only briefly and not without pain. Walking was still beyond my powers, and I was happier wearing my splints. Whatever lurked ahead of us, I could not flee it at any speed greater than the snail crawl of the hippos, for I could not even sit astride a horse yet.
Of course trader women never rode and would never abandon their wagons. The men, I suspected, might. If the danger was some predatory animals—or men—then I could expect to take part in a collective defense. I had not shot an arrow since I joined the seafolk, but even a sitting man can use a bow.
Or I might be the danger. Jat straightened up and looked back at me again. He smiled automatically, but for once his jauntiness failed him, and his smile was obviously as utterly false as I had always suspected it to be. He jumped down and hurried over to the other men, who had dismounted and were walking their horses, arguing fiercely.
So the trouble did concern me. I laid away my sewing, untied my splints, and began some leg exercises. Misi was keeping her eyes on the team and had not looked around.
Angels?
Slave trading was a forbidden violence. If there was an angel waiting up ahead, then the traders had only three choices—turn back, kill the angel, or dispose of the evidence. I was helpless. Dreams of jumping out the window and running for the woods must remain only dreams.
Jat and the other men were standing in a group just ahead, holding their horses’ reins and still arguing. Lon Kiv cantered up and dismounted also.
Puffing and bedraggled from sleep, Pula scrambled onto the platform to relive Misi, who clambered down, painfully awkward, and plodded forward to join the discussion. The talkers stopped to form a circle in a sheltered spot, the train drawing slowly away from them.
All the trader men had gathered, with only the one woman?
That confirmed my guess: Knobil was the problem. I wondered if I dared hang my head out the window to watch, and I decided that I would be wiser to pretend to be unconcerned. That was not easy.
I lay back, grunting with pain as I gripped and bent each leg in turn. The amount of movement I could tolerate was pitiful, and even short exercise sessions still left the joints puffed and sore. I felt as helpless as I had when Hrarrh had loosed his horrors upon me. I hoped that traders granted quick deaths. A sword thrust would be better than being tossed aside in the bushes and left to die.
The talk lasted a long time. I worked my knees until I thought they would smoke. I even lurched over to sit on the front bench, near to Pula, and tried talking to her, but that was always hopeless. Misi was certainly much smarter than she pretended, but I had not yet discovered whether Pula had a brain at all.
Then Misi returned, wheezing from unaccustomed exertion. She heaved her great bulk up on the platform, evicted her daughter, and took the reins again. Pula dismounted without a word.
“Misi, what’s going on?” I was beside her, still on the chest—barely—but facing backward. Her feet were out on the platform and mine inside, on the floor.
She chewed her usual wad of paka for a while, until she caught her breath. “Nothing.”
“Rubbish! Is it angels?”
That earned no detectable reaction.
I did not wait for the ruminated response. “Misi, I won’t tell! I’m very, very grateful to you. You saved my life! Trust me!”
Pula had somehow found her way into the middle of the team and was doing something with the harness. Misi yanked on the traces, which are attached to the hippos’ ears, reportedly their only tender part and certainly the only place any attachment could be made on their vast brown smoothness. I once tried to steer a team of hippos. It took all the strength I possessed, and much more patience, for if hippos are smarter than woollies, then the victory is narrowly won. They remember no signal for longer than a man could draw a breath. To make a team stand still for more time than that is impossible.
Misi halted the rear pair. The front two continued to plod ahead, bearing their great yoke. In a moment the rear pair began to move again, but now they were pulling the train by themselves. The loose pair advanced more quickly, with Pula following, holding the traces and gradually turning them in a slow arc to the left.
“Trust you to do what, Knobil?”
“Trust me not to tell the angel that I’m a slave.”
Chew…chew…“You’re not a slave, Knobil.” Chew…“What angel?”
I considered trying to strangle her, but my hands would not have girdled her neck. She would have swatted me like a bug anyway.
And she was right not to trust me. One glimpse of an angel and I would start screaming at the top of my lungs, yelling for rescue.
She began to turn the train to the right. We were going back, then? But why divide the team? Seething with mingled anger and worry, I could do nothing but wait and watch. Eventually we had turned to retrace our path, and I saw that the train itself had been divided also. Pula was guiding the loose hippos toward the now-stationary rear wagon. Jat and Lon were throwing open doors, pulling out goods. Now I could guess what had been decided during the long debate—the various partnerships had been dissolved.
Later, when all the rearranging was complete, I found myself riding with Misi and Pula in the cab of a very short one-wagon train and still heading back to the west. All the others had vanished eastward with Jat and Lon driving the other half of what had once been the joint rig, although I had never before seen men handling a team. Apparently Misi and Pula had traded one of their wagons for two of the men’s hippos. Certainly other merchandise had been involved in the transaction, including me.
Among traders, anything was negotiable.
My two huge companions sat on the bench at the front of the cab. I was stretched out again on the bed, at the back, and almost ready to weep from frustration. Which woman did I belong to? Or did they each own a part of me? Six clay pots for his right arm… I should be grateful they had not shared me out with a saw. I was certain now that the traders had heard word of angels up ahead, and now I was being borne away from them and from my only hope of rescue.