Part Two
Chapter 17
THE MARCH
It was their second day out from the caves.
All the little shocks associated with the outdoors had been registered and assimilated by the veteran journeyors: the brightness of the day, first and foremost; then the startling sensation of moving air; the intimidating deadness of voices without echoes; the heat of the sun (although it was nothing to the maciantols, compared to their forges); the penetrating and inescapable scents of dust, soil, and growing things, the tastes of which, try as they might, they could not get out of their mouths; the unexpected soft spot alarmingly sinking underfoot; the appearance of stars overhead at night.
The many novices, however, were suffering the nightmares of the damned. Their plight was not at all relieved by their companions, either, who derided and ridiculed them mercilessly, without considering how they themselves had reacted on their first outing, or even what doubts haunted them still. It was merely a ritual hazing.
The one newcomer who was spared on both fronts was Snecchen. As a former hunter, she harbored no terror of the outdoors; and as the Giestranweard, she need fear no comment from any Traeppedelfere - save perhaps Haegtesse, whom everyone dreaded; and the ever irreverent Smerian.
She was possibly the only one out of the entire sortie who genuinely enjoyed the walk, being the only hunter along, except for some of the Yldras, who were kept too busy with the politics of elbowing each other for position on their crowded wains to be able to appreciate the scenery. The duties of a tongue-walker were hardly demanding: keep the wain-tongue from dragging, and occasionally relay information from one wheeler to the other when they were employed beside the wheels with the rattling, squeaking wain seperating them. She took in with relish all the sensations which so unnerved the other novices, and tried to keep from reflecting on her reasons for forsaking the open life of the hunters for the cloistered role of Giestranweard.
This was not easy, because someone or something always managed to recall to her mind her position.
They had been walking now for some time, and Smerian was beginning to emerge from the morning shadow of the wain. He and Stanstrang were beside the wheels, using the hand-pegs on the outside of the wheels to keep them rolling. It was not difficult work, once the heavy wains were moving, but it required constant attention to maintain the pace and the proper spacing between wains.
Widucippians bustled up and down the sides of the train carrying tubs of thriddahype fat, which they constantly smeared around the groaning hub-pins of the fyrstan wains, and daubed less often on those of the lighter vehicles. They also brought replacement wheel-loops, hand-pegs, hub-pins, and tongue-grips when these parts became worn or broken, rushed to the spot from the maintenance carts strategically spaced along the train. With marvelous dexterity they would remove and replace the damaged part without stopping the wain (even the critical hub-pins, which were ingeniously designed so that the newly inserted pin would punch its predecessor out through the other side of the hub). In this way the whole train advanced evenly and continuously, and the procession, if all went well, would stop only at night to rest.
Stanstrang slogged along determinedly. He kept his mind on the hand-day of relaxation ahead, when the stancippians were absolutely without duties. Once the fyrstan was delivered and dumped, and the wains had been cleaned out to receive kernals, Bicce had no further use for her underlings, and they were at liberty to do as they pleased. Some of them whooped it up to an unbelievable extent, striking terror into the minds of the Mocwalwians, who listened to the carousing from their side of the river. Stanstrang planned to sleep.
Bicce handled all the serious negotiations with the Mocwalwians personally, and she was an exasperatingly shrewd and stubborn bargainer. The plains folk more often than not conceded points just to be done with her, and she knew it, and used that knowledge mercilessly against them. She dealt with a hunters' primal lust for the kill.
Cwidu had been repulsed many times when witnessing the unyielding and avaricious grip she would get on her Mocwalwian counterparts, but he couldn't deny that the Traeppedelferes benefitted by her expertise. He just wished that she would seem to enjoy it less, somehow; at least in front of the Mocwalwians. Every season they would leave Ceapig, the Bazaar island, muttering angrily amongst themselves in their incomprehensible tongue, obviously resentful of the exchange they had just been more or less forced to agree to, while Bicce would cavort and squeal with glee, gloating over them. He always feared that no good would come of it.
But all that was still before them. For two or three more days yet all efforts would be directed toward the forward motion of the wains. The wheelers and tongue-walkers never left their posts while the train was moving, eating and drinking on the move. A few stancippians would move from position to position as necessity dictated, allowing brief respites here and there, but generally all the journeyors walked at the slow, constant, inexorable pace of the train from dawn to twilight.
Then, at a sign from the Yldras, passed along by the widucippians, the wheelers would let out the wheel-loops and, utilising the increased leverage of the great wheels, pull back, gently slowing the wains to a full stop. Chunks of fyrstan were chocked securely under the wheels; dried thriddahype, coecil, and other ready foodstuffs were distributed; the blownslaep cider was brought out; and the journeyors rolled up in their skins for the night. There was no tomfoolery, there was very little conversation: the Traeppedelferes were uniformly tired, disoriented, and anxious to finish the march.
By the middle of the third morning out from the caves the caravan had left behind the forest skirting the mountains. The novices, just acclimated to the open sky as seen from the forest trail, now had to contend with that sky extended clear down to the horizon all around. Equally disturbing was the sight of the mountains receding into the distance behind them. There seemed to be no relief from the crushing empty vastness of it all, and as yet the end of the road was not in sight.
But some relief did prove to be forthcoming, slight though it was. By noon-time a solid line of grey clouds had advanced into notice, and by mid-afternoon the sky was entirely muddied over. The dimming of the intense sunlight and the vague but reassuring sense of something being over their heads greatly improved the mood of the novices, many of whom now relaxed and chatted gaily for the first time out of the caves. The crowning circumstance contributing to the cure was that, as the train followed the bend in the road around the last dying outthrust of the foothills, the line of the river came into view far ahead. Up until then, it seemed, they had been blindly suffering at the mere whim of the Yldras. Now, they had a visible goal. The difference was palpable.
Even Stanstrang, a veteran of many of these marches, felt it. He resolved to adventure into a dialogue with Snecchen, although not entirely without trepidation, with a question that had bothered him since she had joined their wain.
"Er, Giestranweard?" he stammered.
"Um?"
"Er, Giestranweard, uh, I uh, I - "
"Snecchen," she interrupted.
Stanstrang gulped. "Giess-ss uh, Snecchen," he enunciated carefully, testing the keen edge of the name with a faltering tongue. "I uh, want to know something."
"Um?"
"No - forget I say!"
"No, Stanstrang. Say," she encouraged him. "What you want to know?"
Stanstrang wished he had kept his mouth shut. He cleared his throat. "Well, I wondered," he articulated slowly, "I mean, uh," - he winced slightly as he said it - "why you here?"
"Why did I come?"
"N-no," he forced out, "I mean, why you tongue-walker? Why you not ride cart, with Yldras? You Giestranweard."
Snecchen smiled. "Would you ride in cart full of Yldras?"
Stanstrang slowly visualized himself surrounded by irritable Yldras. He could hear the constant disputes in their carts from his post beside his wain, and he shuddered at the thought of traveling in amongst them. A momentary spasm of panic seized him, though, when he considered the indiscretion of admitting this dread in answer to the Giestranweard's question. But soon another, more diplomatic answer occured to him.
"Stanstrang not Giestranweard," he shrugged simply, sidestepping the issue.
"Snecchen is Giestranweard," she told him, "and I not ride wain full of those flotasaecs, not if I breathe."
Stanstrang was taken aback at the bluntness of this statement, but not at its meaning. No one who toiled under Bicce would be. He smiled to himself at the memory of Snecchen's summary dismissal of Bicce at the embarkation.
Snecchen went on, "if I not ride with Yldras, I must walk. If I walk, I can help. So, I tongue-walker."
This made sense to Stanstrang, and he was emboldened to put another question to her.
"You say thing a moment ago I not think before, but now I wonder," he began, no longer hesitant. "Why you go to Bazaar?"
Smerian pricked up his ears at this question. It had occurred to him, also, and he had his own reasons to be curious about it.
Snecchen was silent. How could she explain to this uncomplicated stancippian her reasons for wanting to attend the Bazaar? She sighed.
For over a season she had been preoccupied with her efforts to learn of the Waeccelang. At first, she felt as if it was just one sidelight of her duties as Giestranweard: she was vitally interested in it, of course, but not to the exclusion of all else. But as time went on, it became an obsession with her; she practically thought of nothing else. Her behavior had changed, her personality had changed, and the worst of it was that she herself had not been aware of these changes at the time.
She was aware, though, that the Traeppedelferes seemed to realize that she was on to something. They revered her, they feared her, her word had become like unchallengeable law. Again, at first this new respect seemed meet and proper: she was not merely one of them anymore, she was Giestranweard! She discontinued her regular conversations with members of the tribe, she even halted the interviews with older Traeppedelferes that she had instituted in search of forgotten lore. She talked to no one save her pupils, and to them she had become cold and dictatorial, to their consternation. She told no one about Monwyrt or his mission, no one could be trusted! - not even Haegtesse was consulted any more. And all the time she grew in stature in the eyes of the tribe and in her own mind. She was untouchable! She was proud! But she was alone.
Finally, inevitably, she became the possession of her own obsession. She burst into that Yldramot like the voice of fate, hardly aware of what she was doing. She remembered few of her actual words, but she could vividly recall the feeling of irresistible power and energy she had felt while making her bold announcement before the startled Yldras. She remembered also suffering through that irritating and disgustingly condescending lecture of the Wrencanmodor afterwards. Haegtesse was all wrong, of course (she thought at the time), but she would humor her for the sake of the general ignorance of the tribe.
But Monwyrt did not return.
The last days before the Great Banquet were a blur to her memory now. She had reclused herself in her chambers, not even admitting her bewildered morwegiestranweards. Time itself seemed to move backwards and forwards; she was not sure of her own name some days, she barely ate; and still the Waeccelang danced tantalizingly before her, enveloping all.
The crushing blow came at last. A terrified pupil rapped on her door, tremulously announcing that it was time for her to address the Great Banquet. The scales fell from her eyes in a rush. The Great Banquet! She had not even realised it was near - she had not prepared a lesson; how could they hold the Great Banquet before she was ready? How dare they?
It was then that she realized her folly; how caught up she had been in herself, and how little it really affected the lives of the tribe. Life goes on. Suddenly she felt very small, and cold, and alone. Standing there in her chamber, with a frightened pupil waiting for her outside her door, the Giestranweard was utterly humiliated, ashamed, and, for the first time in her life, genuinely afraid.
The puzzled looks on the faces of the tribe had been embarrassing, of course, very much so; but nothing she suffered afterward could compare with the pain and anguish of that moment of self-revelation in her chamber, when the call had come. She no longer felt the part of omniscient Giestranweard; the burden of the role was suddenly insupportable. In the days following the Banquet she found herself reminiscing more and more about her life before she had been Giestranweard, before she had come to old Leornian. She realised that she had estranged herself from everyone; she fancied she felt the symptoms of drygeslaep, the hunter's fiend - and she very much feared becoming gemaed.
The idea of attending the Bazaar struck her then with the stunning force of inspiration. It would get her out of the caves again, and she would be amongst members of the tribe - there would be no private chambers in which to hide. She hastily sounded out Cwidu, the only Maegenyldra she could stomach, on the possibility, and learned that there were a few, at least, of her old acquaintances who would be in the sortie. And when she heard that she could walk with Smerian, whom she remembered well, all doubt left her, and she made ready to go.
But should she say all this to Stanstrang?
"I go to Bazaar," she said, deliberating, "to learn ways of Mocwalwians. Um. Traeppedelferes know little about Mocwalwians, Giestranweard should learn. There much lore to know." She kept her eyes on the wain-tongue in her hand.
Stanstrang frowned. This was impenetrable. Why would anyone care anything about the Mocwalwians? Those stupid, lanky weaklings, blabbering ridiculously away in that indecipherable gibberish of theirs - the very thought of them repulsed him. He felt as the sortie as a whole felt: the Mocwalwians should be squashed like so many sphex, except they provided kernals. But for that one saving justification, the Traeppedelferes would rather that those nauseating creatures had never existed.
Smerian's eyebrows were split, too. To him, the Mocwalwians were an inspirational source of satire, but aside from that, were absolutely negligible. The nights at Bazaar had always been filled with outrageous pleasantries, with the Mocwalwians ever as the butt. To propose to study them in earnest, though, was as idiotic as the plains folk were themselves.
"Oh, oh, oh, oh!" Smerian finally erupted in laughter. "Good one, Snecchen! 'Learn ways of Mocwalwians.' Oh, oh, oh, oh!"
His merriment was infectious. Snecchen smiled, glancing at Stanstrang. Stanstrang was not sure it had been meant to be a joke, but smiled anyway, so conducive was Smerian's mood to sympathy. Together, the three of them walked along at ease: Smerian, ever jolly; Stanstrang, more comfortable than he had felt in days; and Snecchen, enjoying the pure sound of laughter again after so long.
This relaxation of tension was happening all up and down the train, as it always did by the third or fourth day out from the caves, when the party were at last becoming inured to the outdoors. The gloom of the skies had accelerated and intensified the effect this season, and the Traeppedelferes made merry among themselves as they stepped with renewed spirit.
Except Cwidu.
He was a veteran of more of these trips than any of them, and he remembered one, long ago, which had started out well enough, but had ended in disaster. That train never did arrive at Ceapig; the Mocwalwians, outraged, had boycotted the Bazaar the following season; there had been as a result much hunger and dissent in the tribe for two long seasons; and he saw signs of such a calamity being repeated this season. As the clouds lowered, and the spirits of the journeyors rose, Cwidu's apprehensions grew. He feared rain.
The Great Bazaar, coming as it did at the end of the season, was almost never visited by rainfall. The weather at that time was nearly always dry, which was a great convenience to the Traeppedelferes. Not only did it allow them to travel a hard, smooth road, but it meant that the great river would be low enough (on their side of Ceapig) to ford with their loaded wains. Otherwise, it was an almost impossible, time-consuming, and quite dangerous job to transfer all the goods across the rushing water to the island.
But it had so happened that it had not rained on a journey for long seasons out of memory of all save Cwidu. He turned to Bicce and informed her of what he intended to do.
Smerian looked up sharply and laughed at the sudden blast heard from Bicce. What could she be upset about now? He supposed that she could find something to be dissatisfied with in the best of situations.
Soon, a widucippian checking the hub-pins came back and nervously told Snecchen that Cwidu would like to speak to her: he (the widucippian) would carry her wain-tongue for her if she would go up now. She surrendered her duty, shrugged her shoulders to Smerian as if to say, "Don't ask me what it's about," and swiftly walked to the head of the train.
"Snecchen," said Cwidu when he saw that she had ascended into the Maegenyldras' wain, "you were hunter. Say to me, what does sky make you think?" Bicce's eyes narrowed distrustfully, but she seemed not to dare to speak.
Snecchen was surprised. "Sky?" she asked.
"Um. Look at sky. What you think?"
Not knowing what Cwidu was driving at, and possessing the hunters complete indifference to inclement weather, she looked up and said the first thing that came into her head: "Sky low." She tasted the air, thrilling to this hunters' basic skill which she had not employed for so long. "Later," she said emphatically, "maybe tonight. Next day, no doubt."
Bicce sneered. "What you talk about? What you mean, 'next day,' Giestranweard?"
Snecchen looked at her with astonished eyes, then at Cwidu. How could they not know what she meant? It was patently obvious. "Rain," she explained. "It rain soon. And," she added, looking up again, "it rain long, I think. Why you ask?"
But Cwidu had turned to Bicce. "There, you hear? She hunter, she feel rain many times, she know." Bicce scowled. He turned back to Snecchen. "Rain wait next day, maybe?" he asked her.
She tasted the air again. "Maybe. But rain come."
Cwidu shook his head at the thought, then steeled himself to what he had to do. "Thank you, Giestranweard. If you will, tell widucippian at your wain-tongue to come to me now."
This curt dismissal aroused Snecchen's curiosity, but she let it pass, dismounted the wain, and relayed the message. They could hear Cwidu and Bicce fiercely contesting something, and soon the widucippian reappeared, obviously dismayed about something.
"What happens?" Smerian asked him with a grin, apparently thinking the whole thing quite humorous.
"Cwidu argue with Bicce," the widucippian needlessly informed them. "Cwidu tell me to do something, Bicce tell me not to do it." He shuddered.
"What you do?"
"I widucippian," he replied. "Cwidu my Maegenyldra, not Bicce."
"Um," Smerian nodded approvingly. "Good thinking. What Cwidu tell you to do?"
"Bring message to other widucippians, to take to whole train." He blanched. "We walk all night tonight, not stop. And must walk faster. Cwidu say we sleep when wains on Ceapig, not before." He hurried away to tell the others.
Stanstrang groaned. "Not like this," he took up his chant again.
Smerian whistled softly to himself, not understanding the reason behind Cwidu's decision. He was not alone there. Not one of the journeyors understood it either, and tempers were heard to flare along the train as the pace slowly picked up. What had been a comfortable stroll was rapidly becoming a forced march, and that, coupled with the prospect of keeping it up all night, did nothing for Cwidu's popularity.
The rest of the day passed as drearily as it had promised that morning to be pleasant. The toiling Traepedelferes had no breath to waste in grumbling as they strained at the wheel-pegs. The widucippians were a harried lot, striving to keep up with the increased need for lubrication and repairs as the wains picked up speed. When daylight failed, Cwidu ordered torches to be lit on every other wain, so the procession could maintain its order and spacing. At first, the journeyors were greatly cheered, so much did the torches in the black night remind them of the caves. But after a while, fatigue bore down heavily, and even the chore of keeping the torches alight was cursed by the travelers.
The night was endless. The wains were encased in their little cocoons of light, cut off from the rest of the train except for the faint glow of the torch ahead. The stancippians (and Smerian) found themselves trapped in a nightmare of exertion; the wains seemed to grow in weight with every turn of the wheels; and they stumbled and dragged their feet with increasing effort as the night wore on interminably. Just when they felt that nothing could be worse than pushing the train in the dark like this without knowing why, they were unnerved by a deep, loud, and for nearly all of them unknown, rumble.
"What that?" started Stanstrang. "Not like that!"
"Thunder!" thought Snecchen, surprised. She had seen no lightning. She could hear terrified screams from a few Traeppedelferes somewhere out in the blackness of the train, and she knew that very few of those in the sortie could ever have seen lightning or heard thunder before. The thunder rolled and rolled so that their bodies shook with it. The novices were horrified, and not only the novices. It was an awful night.
But they kept going. Somehow, even though they were utterly exhausted, even though they were terrified, hungry, thirsty, and, most oppresively, ignorant of the reason for this haste, they kept going. Miraculously, no wheel split, no tongue-walker fell beneath a wain, no wain spilt its contents onto the road; in short: no disaster happened to stop the progress of the company, and at long last the grey light of dawn somewhere up beyond the clouds finally filtered through, and they extinguished the torches thankfully.
Cwidu looked up with bleary eyes and shouted. He could hardly believe what he saw, but there it was: Ceapig! Just visible through the gloom of the shadowy morning and the rising mists of the river was the black hump of the island. He sent word with the widucippians to notify the train.
No sooner had the hearts of the journeyors rejoiced at this news of the approaching end of their labors than they were crushed by yet one more unknown and terrifying sensation. It started to rain. They could stand only so much, and this last mysterious and uncomfortable manifestation of nature was just too much to bear. The wains stopped almost immediately, the Traeppedelferes groveling under them to avoid the raindrops, crying with confusion and fatigue.
Snecchen was disgusted. It was hardly even raining, to her mind; and look at them! It was as though it was huge boulders coming down, rather than tiny droplets, judging by the reactions of the Traeppedelferes, and she stood out from the wain defiantly.
Cwidu was despondent. "So close, we come so close!" he wailed.
Bicce had long since ceased to listen to him, so incensed (and mystified) had she been by his decision to begin with. But now, within sight of Ceapig, in the early morning drizzle, Cwidu's fear finally revealed itself to her. "Moc!" she muttered under her breath as she watched the tiny drops spatter the dust of the road. "Rain make road moc! Cwidu! Rain make road moc!"
"Um, moc," Cwidu repeated mechanically.
"Wain wheels stick in moc?" she ventured.
"Good, Bicce," he congratulated her sarcastically. "Why you think we walk all night?"
"I not know," she replied heatedly. "No one know, you not tell! Cwidu, we must move wains, must get on Ceapig before road become moc!"
"I know," he told her. "Say to them!" He turned around and waved his hand toward the train.
Bicce was already climbing out of the wain. "I will!" she declared. She walked through the rain (unafraid!) stopping at each wain, offering her customary encouragement and charm to each crew, becoming more frustrated and enraged at each stop. She had not succeeded in convincing anyone to begin moving again by the time she had reached Snecchen standing in the road.
"Mocsaecs!" Bicce bellowed.
"Saelig flotasaecs!" Snecchen agreed.
"Rain make road moc! Must move wains!" Bicce barked.
"Afraid of water!" Snecchen glowered.
"Somebody must show them," Bicce demanded.
"Somebody..." Snecchen repeated thoughtfully. They looked each other in the eye with a single thought.
"Smerian!" they cried with one voice.
Smerian sighed. He had just got comfortable under the wain. His legs and shoulders ached, and most of the rest of him, and the idea of a few moments of sleep appealed to him mightily. He knew what they wanted: they wanted him to be miserable. Well, he was already miserable, so they should be happy.
"Smerian!"
He looked at Stanstrang. Stanstrang looked back with a helpless expression on his face, as if to say, "I don't like this!"
Smerian laughed. "Come, mocbraegen," he coaxed. "Let's move train."
"No."
"Come, almost to Ceapig."
"No."
"Come, or I bring Bicce to say to you!"
This put the wind up the stancippian in a big way, as Smerian had intended.
"I come. But I not like."
The Giestranweard, the Maegenyldra, the stancippian and the maciantol walked up to the first fyrstan wain, unceremoniously dragged its crew out from under it, and proceeded to start it rolling toward the island. Cwidu, heartened by this, took up the cry, and went up and down the train, pointing ahead to the example of the lead wain, rousting out the widucippians to the cause, and generally making the journeyors feel ashamed of themselves.
Stanstrang shook the perspiration and rain from his brow and glanced behind him to guage their progress, and whistled to himself. "Look at that!" he called to the others. They turned around to a thrilling sight: the entire length of the train was again beginning to move.
The struggle was far from over, however. As the day advanced the rain steadily advanced as well, building up in intensity gradually but inexorably, and the road rapidly deteriorated into the mess anticipated by Cwidu and Bicce. Even though they had not all that far to go, the entire party was already worn out, and by the time the fyrstan wains had begun to ford the ankle-deep river at the front of the train, the light carts and walkers were struggling through a deep, slippery mire at the back.
At last, in a miserable, cold, driving downpour punctuated by lightning and partially obscured by an eerie waist-high steam rising from the river, the end of the sortie struggled across the already rising and knee-deep waters of the ford, and with the last remnants of their strength flung themselves onto the banks of Ceapig.
They made it.
|