Tepper,Sheri - Six Moon Dance

by Six Moon Dance(Lit)

  The wagon took the winding road leading onto the western heights, passing great houses behind high walls. At the top of the ridge, a man stood in an open gateway, obviously awaiting them. Mistress Mantelby halted her carriage and, indicating the waiting man with an imperious forefinger, called to those in the wagon: "Here is my steward. You will be working at his direction, so mind yourselves."

  There was no reply from the wagon, and seemingly none was expected, for she went on in a loud voice. "Well, Nephew! I said I would bring replacements, and here they are!"

  "Thank you, Aunt," the steward murmured, standing with bowed head while the carriage moved away. When she had departed some distance toward the house itself, the man waved the wagon on, following it dejectedly afoot as it went down a lane toward a group of outbuildings. The six prisoners were hauled out of the wagon, two of them were sent along the lane under the watchful eyes of an understeward, while Bastable and the three Consorts were half dragged and half led into the stables. While the Haggers watched from the sidelines, the steward dropped his veils and looked them over, disgust plain on his face.

  "Three layabout supernumes and a triplet of useless Hunks," he complained, "to replace a dozen pairs of skilled hands. And if you don't do the work, it'll be my hide that pays for it, so take this to heart: You'll do the work or I'll make your hide pay for it, count on it."

  "And who're you, g'nephew?" sneered Bane. "A Family Man? A Man of Business?"

  The steward paled, biting his lips. "I am the person who gives orders to the Haggers," he said when he had collected himself. "The Mistress has set them under my direction. So, if you've some idea of attacking me or attempting to leave this place, mark down that I won't be alone in retaliation."

  "We have powerful friends," yelped Dyre. "And they'll not leave us here."

  The steward grimaced. "Oh, surely. And when your powerful friends order me to release you, and when the Hags agree to that, and when Mistress Mantelby signs her name to the order, I'll do it. Until then you are my fingers to move at my command, worthless, and best you remember it."

  He went down the line of them, pulling their veils away from their faces, staring at each of them, noting the brothers' sullen rebellion as well as Mouche and Ornery's puzzlement. The puzzlement, he felt sympathy for. He himself was more than a little puzzled about this whole situation.

  "There is no stable master at the moment," he said. "Until I can find a person with experience, I'll direct you myself. Tools are over there. Muck out all those stalls, put the muck in that cart there. Fill all the mangers with hay. Take the water buckets out, wash them, and fill them with fresh water from the well outside. Put one in each stall. When that is done, haul the cart out to the field and spread the muck about. If you think to save yourself trouble by dumping it all in one pile, you'll crawl about, spreading it with your noses! I'll be back after the noonmeal to see how much you've done. If you've done well, you'll eat."

  And he turned and left, leaving two stout Haggers leaning on their cudgels to observe the work.

  Mouche and Ornery set about the task, as described. There were a dozen stalls; they began on the ones nearest the loft. The job was no new thing for Mouche, though his hands, from which all calluses had long since been removed, soon felt the burn of the manure fork's wooden handle. Ornery had no such problem. Daily manipulation of ropes had given her palms like leather. Observing Mouche's tender hands, she pulled a pair of heavy work gloves from her back pocket and handed them over.

  When Bane and Dyre made no move to help, the Haggers spoke roughly to them. After some muttering, they went unwillingly and unhandily to work at the far end.

  "Y'said when we left Dutter, it was the end of this," Dyre growled.

  "It will be," Bane muttered in return. "All this is a mistake, believe me." Then, with a glance at Mouche and Ornery, he muttered, just loud enough for them to hear, "But I think we'll probably stay long enough to settle with that one. That one there owes us, don't he, Brother? He'll take a beating that will last him a lifetime."

  Mouche clenched his fists and turned. "I owe you more pain than you do me, Stinkbreath."

  "You got that wrong," said Bane, turning white with fury. "I do what I like. I'm a new breed, I am, and nobody interferes with me, not ever."

  This brought the Haggers over once more, and while Bane and Dyer claimed their full attentions, Mouche and Ornery exchanged a few conspiratorial whispers concerning where they might find a haven if attacked. They settled upon the loft, and Ornery climbed there by the loose ladder—taking her and Mouche's belongings with her—and began forking straw down into the two stalls they had so far shoveled out. Mouche brought in two full buckets of fresh water, waited for an unobserved moment and handed one up to Ornery, who set it out of sight. Now, if they had to retreat, at least they wouldn't die from thirst!

  Somewhere a noon bell rang, and the Haggers, who evidently felt they had supervised long enough, filed out and away, chatting between themselves. When the stable door closed, Bane stalked from the stall he had made little effort to clean, threw his manure fork at Mouche's feet, and growled, "Get on with it, dungrats."

  "We'll do six stalls, our half," said Mouche. "And no more than that."

  "You'll do the whole," sneered Bane. "Or you'll suffer for it."

  Mouche and Ornery exchanged a glance, then ignored Bane's bluster and turned back to the stall they were cleaning.

  "Hey, farm boy," sneered Bane. "You been home to visit lately?"

  Mouche paid no attention.

  "You otta go. Somethin' there you otta see."

  Mouche turned. "And how would you know? You've not been home either."

  "Well, Dutters wasn't my home and they weren't my folks. I didn't have a daddy and a mommy like you did, but I got friends tell me things. You know you got two baby sisters, farm boy? You know you got a brother going to grow up to be a Family Man?"

  "That's a lie," said Mouche stoutly. His father would have told him if any such thing were true.

  Bane and Dyre laughed, punching each other in their glee. "No lie. Sold you off and right away, mama had a girl, then another one, then a boy. The farm's doing well without you, farm boy. I guess all they had to do was get rid of their bad luck, and the Hagions made it right for them."

  "How come you know so much?" demanded Ornery, moving nearer to Mouche, who was choking on his anger.

  "We was neighbors. Dutter place is just over the hill. We used to roam around there quite a bit, killing vermin, getting rid of varmints."

  "What do you mean you didn't have a mother and father?" Ornery challenged. "Everybody has."

  "Not us," cried Dyre. "We was born of the thunder, we was. Lightning is our papa. We're a new breed."

  "Born of the stinkbush," choked Mouche, against all good sense. "Fathered by an outhouse."

  Mouche scarcely had time to brace himself before Bane landed on him, knocking him backwards so the breath went out of him. His attacker drew a blade from his belt and wasted no time striking at Mouche's face. Mouche rolled and fended the first blow, but the second bit deep. He felt the slice and the warm blood on his cheek. His mouth was suddenly larger, and something inside himself screamed with outrage. His face. Bane had scarred his face!

  The manure fork was under Mouche's hand, his fingers closed around the neck, just below the long tines. He managed to bring the fork up, twist it so the tines pointed at Bane, and thrust them deep enough that Bane fell back with a yelp, allowing Mouche to scramble to his feet with a firm grip on the fork as he backed, blood streaming, toward the ladder to the loft.

  Meantime, Dyre had attacked Ornery, clutching her clumsily around the waist. Ornery had thrown herself forward, fallen hard on her attacker, and escaped while Dyre was catching his breath. By the time the brothers were on their feet, Ornery and Mouche were in the loft with the ladder pulled up after them and the manure fork close at hand for repelling boarders. Mouche leaked blood from his face, where his cheek had been sliced through, along w
ith other cuts. Ornery had battered knuckles and a cut on her jaw, made by Dyre's ring. She paid no attention to this as she inspected Mouche's face, where the flesh was already swelling.

  "Oh, by all the Hagions, Mouche ... "

  "If i ... 's aad, don' ... ell ... e."

  "It's bad, and I have to tell you. It's got to be stitched. You'll be a horror, otherwise."

  Mouche felt the horror as he moved his fingers over his face. " ... ack," he said, as best he could, and Ornery read his mind. He fetched the pack and Mouche felt through it, coming up with a slender tube. "Glue," he said, almost clearly. "Now ... whiaw is ... resh."

  "Tissue glue? I may not be good at it, Mouche. I may leave a scar."

  "Now ... whiaw ... is ... resh."

  Working from the top of the cut, high on Mouche's cheek, just under his left eye, Ornery applied the glue and pressed the flesh together, centimeter by centimeter, hoping desperately that she would come out even when she reached the lips. The end of the cut was at the corner of the mouth, and this took several applications of the glue before it held. Mouche lay back, eyes wide with pain and sudden terror. Up until now, he'd had a life to depend on. Now? He couldn't be a Hunk, not now. Not unless a miracle happened and it healed so clean that the Dentimed machines could clean it up. Well, Madame would make Mantelby pay his annuity out. Trust Madame. At least he wouldn't starve.

  Meantime, below, the brothers rattled the stable door to no effect, then sat down, muttering to one another and examining the walls in a vain effort to find some climbable way into the loft. The work of cleaning the stables went no further. Nor would it be finished, Ornery whispered, until those other two were got rid of.

  "Let's ... ill 'em," muttered Mouche, dazedly fingering the manure fork.

  "Now, then," whispered Ornery, patting Mouche's shoulder. "Killing them isn't going to do us any good. Calm down. Maybe your folks didn't want to hurt your feelings so they didn't tell you about the new babies."

  Mouche shook off the comforting hand and concentrated on what was going on below. " ... e could ... ake um ... ane isn' ... so good a ... ighter. He's lazy."

  "He may not be a good fighter, he may even be lazy, but we're in no shape to prove it," said Ornery. "Please. Just lie there and let the glue set. Don't talk. Let me just try to get us put to work somewhere else, or vicey-versy."

  Mouche took a shuddering breath and subsided while Ornery wet a clean handkerchief and cleaned the worst of the blood from his face. The glue had sealed the cut, as it was designed to do, which is why the stuff was carried by sailors and roustabouts and others subject to injury in the way of the work. Deep, disfiguring injuries like Mouche's, however, were supposed to be followed up by an immediate visit to the surgery machines, and Ornery didn't think it was going to happen, not with things all in confusion as they were.

  "I'd rather the gardens for me," said Ornery, making conversation to keep Mouche's mind off the wound. "I was raised a farm boy, and I can do gardening without thinking about it. It would smell better out there, too. It really stinks in here."

  Mouche wrinkled his nose, testing. It did indeed stink in the stable, and he knew that the stench was not entirely horse. The fetid odor was the same as he had smelt years ago in the cave, and on his dog, and later in Madame's front parlor. He knew it came from the brothers below, though they had not smelled like this at House Genevois.

  Mouche was unaware of the special bath soaps, the additives in their food, the unusual unguents used during morning massage. Today there had been no morning bath, no morning meal, no morning massage. Bane and Dyre had come a long way in an open cart, sweating under the sun and had begun to smell very much as they had smelled at the Dutter farm.

  Ornery murmured, "We can talk to that head man, if he comes back down here today. Personal, I think he won't remember us until nighttime comes, and maybe not then. This place is in a uproar, just as Sendoph probably is, all at greasy glasses and burned biscuits, I'd warrant. Everbody depending on those Timmys, years and years the way they have ... "

  " ... ou ha ... nt?" Mouche whispered.

  "No, I haven't. No Timmys on ships. No sir. They don't like the water, and that's a fact. You find 'em on the wharf and you find 'em stowing stuff in the hold, but you don't find 'em once the ship goes out on water. No Timmys on the Bouncing Isles. No Timmys at the sea farms ... "

  "Sea ... arns?"

  "Out there in the Jellied Sea, they got sea farms. There's a kind of weed draws gold out of the seawater and fixes it in the leaves, and they hook it and tie it to a hawser and pull it in by the quarter mile into a great pile, and they dry it and burn it and mix the ashes with water to make bricks, and they send the bricks back to the smelter, to get the gold out. And it's not just gold! There's other good metal in the ashes. There's fishes out there, too, kinds we can eat, and dried Purse fish eggs, for making jelly ... " She went cheerfully on, trying to keep Mouche's mind occupied.

  Though the two below continued to search for some way of reaching their prey, they had not accomplished it by the time the stable door opened with a crash. Both Bane and Dyre turned their angry faces to confront the steward once more, along with several Haggers. In the loft, Ornery urged Mouche to the edge of the loft and arranged his veil so the wound would show while Mouche quivered with newly kindled rage and shock.

  "You've got the stalls mucked out?" demanded the steward.

  Bane said something about the other two taking a rest.

  "No rest, sir," said Ornery in as respectful a voice as she could muster. "They tried to kill us, sir. We came up here to get away from them. They've cut Mouche all to bits."

  An argument below built rapidly into shouting and threats, falling silent as suddenly as another voice cut into the fray: "Silence."

  It was Marool herself. "Who has cut whom?"

  Explanations. More argument. More yelling. Through all of which Mouche and Ornery quietly sat at the edge of the loft, their veils so arranged as to allow a full view of their battered faces in the light falling through the air vent.

  "Well, boy," said Marool to Bane, who was by this time held in the grip of several Haggers. "Look at them up there. Their little faces all beaten and bruised, one of them possibly scarred for life, and who's to pay for it? Ah? You baby Hunks have to be returned untouched, unharmed, and here you are, already costing me money. Well, boy, you owe me. I can't get it out of your pockets, so I'll take it in services." And she jerked her head backward. Two Haggers took Bane away, still yelling, while the others restrained Dyre from following.

  Marool followed his departure with her eyes, casting only a single infuriated glance upwards as she said to her steward, "Separate them, Nephew. And see they're tended to. I may get enough use I out of one not to mind paying damages for the one he's ruined, but damned if I'll pay for more than that."

  And she was gone.

  "I was reared a farm boy," called Ornery in a level tone. "If you need gardening done."

  " ... e, too," said Mouche.

  The steward exchanged looks with the Haggers, who shrugged, one of them commenting: "The gardener says the two you gave him are useless, they don't know roots from sprouts, and they've planted three rows of fennet upside down."

  "We'll bring them back here, then," said the steward, in a glum voice.

  Mouche and Ornery were beckoned down from their perch. They were then taken down through the paddocks to the lane, and up the lane to the stone house of the head gardener, and there traded for the two other pressed men who shambled sourly down the lane to | the stables. Behind the gardener's house were several daub-and-wattle houses, brightly painted, where the gardener's invisible help had lived, and the contents of Mouche's pack were soon laid out there, together with a few clothes for Ornery, who had only what he'd carried on the boat upriver.

  Thus it came that Mouche and Ornery, their wounds washed and medicated, sat over a late lunch beside a Timarese hearth, drinking broth from Timarese bowls, spied on, though they did not know it, by
a good many Timmys in the walls, including Flowing Green who was in as near to a frenzy as the Timmys ever got. Mouchidi had been wounded, and badly. Mankinds could die from such wounds. Tim had seen it happen!

  When Ornery had gulped all and Mouche spooned down half what they had been given, enough that they were no longer famished, Ornery set down her bowl and leaned confidentially toward Mouche.

  "That was rotten of him, saying you were bad luck. It isn't true, you know. It's just the inscrutable Hagions, making mock of good sense."

  "I ... udden ... ind so ... uch," muttered Mouche, "if aw had jus tol ... ee."

  "I told you why. Your pa didn't want to hurt you."

  "He could haw 'ought me 'ack!"

  Ornery gave him a long, level look. "He couldn't buy you back. Not from a Consort House."

  Mouche flushed. Of course he couldn't have been bought back. He knew that. Someone could have tried, though.

  "I ... ove' 'at farn," he muttered resentfully.

  "I loved my family's farm, too," said Ornery. "It was beautiful there. We had a vineyard ... "

  "So di' ooee."

  "And we had sheep and chickens and a garden and orchard. But the mountain blew, and the ashes came on a terrible wind, and when I got home they were all dead, Mama and Papa, brother, all gone. There was no sense to that, either. Maybe when they felt the hot wind coming, they hated me because I escaped and they didn't. Maybe they didn't even think of me. Life's hard enough, so my captain says, that most times we should do very little thinking about what other people think or do or say, just enough to get by. Otherwise we just jangle ourselves for nothing. So he says."

  "I renen'er how uh hayhield snelled," said Mouche, stubbornly, determined to make his loss the greater.

  "And the smell of strawberries, new-picked," said Ornery. "And the flowers in Mama's garden, outside the kitchen door."