Catania stepped to the side, and then could see the bear above him. The cub had stopped feeding, and was up on its hind legs in the grass, listening, questing for a scent.
"Upwind, at least," Newton said.
Catania thought Jack would wait for the cub to begin feeding again. But he didn't. He climbed closer. She could see them both very clearly. A cloud had shadowed the hillside, and now was gone, so Jack and the bear cub were in bright sunlight, with only a long lance-throw over gently blowing grass between them.
"He should have let Newton go up," Joan said, "—or me. He's not going to hit anything...."
Suddenly Jack stood and started running, his lance ready. And Catania saw the bear-cub, startled, jump up and begin to run away across the slope. It was bawling like a hoarse and frightened child, running, with Jack after it.
"Mountain Jesus!" Joan said. "A Fool-do, a Fool-do. It'll call the mother!" She and Newton, and Catania after them, went up the hillside. The cub was gone, crying out of sight around the hill's shoulder. Jack was following.
"Why did he do that?" Catania said. As she watched, the cub came suddenly back—but was no cub.
"The mother." Newton started climbing the slope ahead of them, going fast, looking for a shot. Then they heard him say, "Shit...." He stood still alongside a rock outcropping, and lowered his bow.
As Catania caught up, Newton took hold of her arm. She tried to pull away, but he held her. "No," he said, and held her hard.
Above them, the mother bear was coming across the hillside, running fast as the riding-horses had run. She was making deep grunting sounds, coming through the grass.
"Jack!" Catania twisted in Newton's grip.
Joan came up beside her, said, "Oh, dear…." and held her other arm.
"Jack...!" Catania screamed and began to fight them, trying to reach her knife.
"Hold her!" Newton said. They held her, and the baby cried at the struggle.
High on the hill, Jack stood leaning on his lance as if impatient with waiting. He heard Catania call his name. The bear, he saw only as something dark and swift and growing. He felt the ground faintly tremble. Jack braced the butt of his lance into the hillside, footed it with his boot, then swung down behind the outstretched shaft so there was only the bright point, low, for her to run upon. He had forgotten, for a moment, why he was there.
Recalling, he stood and let the lance fall into the grass. A woman was screaming. Jack supposed someone was watching, as he and Sam had watched their father die.
He took a breath of sunny day to last forever, and drew his knife as the bear came to him. Old Mother would have to pay at least a little....
* * *
"Ohhh ... ohhh." Catania was crying out because of something bad she couldn't remember. Joan, helping to carry her, was weeping—a very strange thing.
Catania wondered for a moment if a disease had come and killed the baby; something too bad to remember had certainly happened. But when Newton took her up in his arms, she saw Joan was carrying Small-Sam—then knew that Jack wasn't with them, and was dead.
"The bear," she said, when she woke in camp to night and firelight.
"Gone," Joan said, sitting by her, "—and the cub. We didn't think Jack would have wanted them killed for doing what he wished to be done. The mother bear went limping, though."
"Jack…." Catania said.
"In a tall tree," Newton said from across the fire. "Wrapped warm in pelts. He has his weapons with him."
"Prayers ... ?"
"The 'Yea, though I walk,' "Newton said.
"I don't want to go see him." Catania began quiet crying. "I don't want to see him. It makes him too dead."
"Here," Joan said and she lifted the baby from her lap, and gave him to Catania. "See? You still have a man."
For many days, as they went east, then south, Catania cared only for the baby. She leaned her heart against Small-Sam as if he were grown and strong. She wrapped herself around him like a summer vine and cared for him only, and not herself or her memories of anyone, even Jack—though for several nights, she dreamed of Jack standing on the hillside, waiting for the bear. In each succeeding dream, the bear had come closer to him.
Those mornings, she woke frightened, anxious about the baby, and wasn't satisfied until she had him out of his blanket, and examined him all over for fear of disease, or a bite by the nasty insects they saw more and more as the air warmed and grew wet.
There was game in the deep woods as they traveled through such warmth that they sweated in their buckskins, and went wearing only trousers and boots. They saw an actual pig in the forest, huge, dark-haired, and tusked, but that was late in an evening, so they couldn't hunt it down.
The morning after that no-hunt, they came to a wide way covered in crushed white pieces that Newton said were shells from water things. The sunshine was very bright, and the wind smelled slightly like blood. "Salt air," Newton said, "—from the Gulf Entire."
Very soon, they met other people on that path. Not mountain hunters, not Garden men and women, not the small horse-riders or Texas cavalry either. These were people Catania had never seen before, never read about. Some of these travelers were tall, some short, and all with very different faces, not like Gardens' men and women, who'd looked to be close families. And they wore odd cloth clothes: robes, or tight trousers and shirts, or what must be copybook skirts and dresses—all of them in different colors.
Nearly the first of those strange people—two old men and two old women, barefoot in red-striped shirts and trousers—had turned to stare at Newton, and one had made a bow. Then those four had turned and gone back the way they'd come, but faster.
Newton had said, "Christ on a crutch." Startling words, and certainly very old.
As they walked along, he asked Catania for one of the lengths of white Gardens cloth she cut Small-Sam's crapkins from. He took the long piece, draped it around his neck like a winter scarf, then drew a fold up across his face so only his eyes showed.
"Why do you do that?" Joan said.
"For a good reason," Newton said, and said no more. But the women noticed that once his face was covered, no one looked at him or bowed. A few rude strange people, passing by, did sometimes stare at the women's bare breasts as if they'd never seen breasts before.
There were too many strangers on the white-shell path, and they became too many more. Most walked, but some rode horses or smaller, long-ear, not-quite-horses. Twice, people came by on four-wheel horse-wagons that worked very well on the path. Catania could see that these were the wheels-only, not the wheels-gear. They were perfect for paths—though, of course, not snow— and must have been very useful in Warm-times.
It was all interesting, but there were so many strange people and their clothes and animals and made-things, that it became unsettling, and Catania had to close her eyes sometimes as they went along, for privacy.
"Do we have to go the same way all these rude people do?" Joan said. "Look at them! Those over there are fat as babies. Disgusting—if they had to fight, they'd fall over."
"Be quiet," Newton said, and sounded like a man expecting trouble, though Catania couldn't imagine most of these strangers troubling anyone. Most of these odd people talked nonsense as they went, like children. And looked soft as children.
"Burned men!" Joan said once, as four dark people rode past on little long-ears.
"Not burned," Newton said. "Black men, whose people came from Globe-Africa. Many Kingdom officers are black."
" 'Globe Africa ...' " Hearing that, Catania became interested again in the strangers that came traveling, so she didn't feel so uneasy having them come and go. She asked Newton questions about them, since he appeared to know, but he gave her short answers, and seemed a slightly different man with his face hidden, all but his eyes.
Catania supposed Newton didn't want his tattoos to be seen— and have more old people bowing, or cavalry-men calling him 'Sir.' It was his life before becoming a Trapper, that he was covering wit
h Small-Sam's crap cloth.
Joan didn't like any of the people coming by them, so she went and traveled off the path a while. Catania saw her from time to time, among the odd trees and brush that grew there. Flower buds, each bright red with a yellow heart, were breaking open in the bushes and vines, and there were little purple blossoms. Many nasty insects, most very small, came flying in the path, and touched Catania's face ... seemed to drink sweat from her skin.
After more traveling, and at the sun's best height, Joan came running from odd woods and said to them, "Come look, come look!"
The woods were even stranger to be in than to see from the path. The dirt was soft dark-yellow sand, and there were bushes with tall pale-green leaves pointed as needles, and low-growing thorns that snagged and stuck. The nanny didn't try to graze them. ... There were fat, curving, tall gray trees with no branches except at their tops—and those were strange branches, like wide green hands with many thin green fingers. The air smelled very much like fresh blood.
"Look!" Joan stood on a soft edge of sand, and pointed out into the air.
The salt-blood wind was coming to them over the edge, and Catania went to see. She was startled to be so high on a bank— then stood astonished at water forever.
It lay out and out from them, and no far border could be seen. Green and blue—not ice gray, though she saw some winter ice still floating in it—it was a bigger water than any melt lake below the Wall. So much bigger, there was no comparison. It wrinkled as the wind blew over it, and little white birds went gliding above.
One of these came flying down the edge of the bank, and as it passed, Catania saw it was a sizable bird after all, the color of steel, rather than snow, and its wings were bent at an angle.
"The Gulf Entire," Newton said, took off the cloth scarf, and wiped sweat from his face. Then he pointed with his lance to the right. "That way, west along the Gulf... then far south to the northern provinces of Empire Mexico."
He swung his lance to the left. "This way, east to Middle Kingdom—beginning at Market, very soon—and much farther, Kingdom River."
"Jack said Map-Tennessee." The nanny, bored, butted Catania's leg gently.
"Farther and farther east," Newton said, and leaned on his lance. The Gulf's wind stirred his short dark hair. "—Then north again." He looked better, more Newton, without the cloth across his face.
"That's traveling and traveling," Joan said. "Is there hunting all the way?"
"A Warm-time year of traveling," Newton said, "—into winter and through it."
"Hunting?"
"Yes—but carefully in Middle Kingdom, and with permission."
"I ask no permission," Joan said.
"Permission," Newton said. "Because all game is the King's."
"But that's a very bad thing." Catania pushed the nanny away. The nanny liked her.
". .. Yes," Newton said. "I believe it is."
They stood on the soft edge of sand, and looked out. There was no end to the Gulf and no edge to it except below, where the green and blue water came to the land on a wide wash of yellow-white sand. It eased Catania's eyes to see so far from a high place, restful as looking at mountains.
"See it?" Newton said.
Joan and Catania both said, "What?" Then almost together, "It's a bird. A big bird on the water...."
"No," Newton smiled at them. "A sailing boat."
"Pequod!" Catania was very excited to see the same sort of thing, even though this bird-looking boat was too small to go and hunt great whales.
"Amazing," Joan said, as they watched it. She rarely said 'amazing.' Catania couldn't remember the last time Joan had said it.
They stood on the soft edge and watched the boat go past so far out on the water, driven by the wind.
"Sails...." Catania wondered if all boats were as beautiful.
"It trades at little ports," Newton said. "Places along the Gulf."
They stood watching until the trade-boat was almost lost, then lost completely, in sun-sparkling on the water.
"Light strikes the wrinkles," Joan said, "... the waves."
"That's right." Newton tied the scarf across his face again, then walked away back into the odd woods. And though they could have watched the Gulf Entire much longer, Joan and Catania took up their lances and followed him, the nanny very lively, making little jumps.
* * *
Late the next morning, their seventeenth day in warm-wet country—and traveling alongside even more and more kinds of strangers—they heard faint sounds that slowly became a distant rich music of many drums and flutes, but also things that sounded as the Texas cavalry horn had sounded. And there were other, softer noises, like wild geese calling all together.
"How beautiful!" Catania said. She and Joan stopped walking to listen better. "What makes such beautiful music?"
"A band," Newton said. "A band at Market."
"A band of who?" Joan said, and when Newton laughed behind his cloth, she hit him lightly on the arm with her lance shaft. "We're not fools."
"No," he said, "—you're not. Those are music-makers playing many different instruments together. Not only drums and flutes, like Gardens'. These are a band—but for music, not hunting or war."
Catania and Joan stood still a little longer, listening, the nanny restless on her lead. "It is like Mountain Jesus speaking," Catania said. "Many voices in one voice."
"That's so," Joan said, and she and Catania walked on with the goat, listening.
"Wait." Newton stepped off the path and walked away into the woods, apparently to pee.
A man came calling down the way—a little man with bare crooked legs—who walked hunched under the weight of a small fat wooden keg as he wove through the crowd.
"Guggle-oh!" the little man called. He wore a long green shirt that came to his thighs, and a cord belt with a metal cup dangling from it. "I have Guggle-oh!"
" 'Guggle-oh' what?" Catania said to him, as he came by.
"Barley-whisk," the little man said. He mumbled and was hard to understand.
"Selling drinks of it?"
The little man nodded.
"Not vodka?" Joan said.
The little man shook his head.
"Strong drink?" Catania said. "Strong?" and made a muscle in her arm, patted it.
"Yes," the little man said, smiling at her. He had no teeth at all, and that was why he mumbled.
"Two drinks," Joan said, and the little man nodded, swung the keg off his back, pulled a small stopper out—then waited.
"Oh." Catania shifted the baby's poozy, and searched in her possibles-sack. She took out one fine steel arrowhead and offered it, though it seemed too much to give, and would leave her with only nine. "For two drinks." She held up two fingers.
The little man took it, stroked the steel, tested the broadhead's edge with his thumb—then nodded, tipped his keg, and poured the metal cup full.
The drink was brown, not clear.
Joan took the cup—had to bend a little, since it was tethered— and drank all the brown drink in five long swallows.
Then she stood and blew her cheeks in and out. There were tears in her eyes.
"Good?"
"Different," Joan said, and cleared her throat. "But good. It tastes of things...."
The little man filled the cup again, and Catania stooped and drank all the brown drink down. It tasted only hot at first, like good vodka. Then it tasted of several things; there was a sweetness to it. "...Different," Catania said.
Newton came out of the woods, lacing his buckskin trousers.
"Do you want a brown drink?" Joan said.
"No." Newton motioned the Salesman away, and the little man stoppered his keg, slung it on his back, and walked off, calling "Guggle-oh."
It seemed funny to Catania and Joan, so as they walked along, they occasionally said "Guggle-oh" to each other for the fun of it.
Soon, there was such a crowd of strangers traveling, that persons sometimes touched them. Joan would curse and
shove them away with her lance shaft, and Catania had to do the same, or be jostled holding the baby. But no stranger touched Newton without saying they were sorry to have done it. Unfair, Catania thought, and only because he was a man, and so large—and of his face, only his bear's eyes were showing.
In a little while, they and the goat came with many others under a large sign of wooden letters that was hung across the wide path from tall poles at each side of the way. The large sign read: M-A-R-K-E-T.
"No trouble, now." Newton said. "This is Kingdom's Gulf Gate for trade. No trouble is permitted here.—Joan?"
"I hear you. I don't make trouble. Why not 'Catania'?"
"All right, then—both of you.... We go quietly through this Warm-time measured mile. Then we'll be left alone to travel, if we leave others alone."
"I don't make trouble..." Joan said—then turned to a man walking near her. "Is it that you've never seen a tit? Then you can stare at this nanny's!"
The man she spoke to, very tall and wearing a long brown robe, looked away and said nothing. He was barefoot, his face was shaved, and his hair was tied up in brown cloth ribbons.
"Joan, I mean it," Newton said.
"I don't have to bear this strange thing's fuck-look!"
Catania stepped between Joan and the brown-ribbon man. "There's no trouble," she said, "—but some of these men stare at our breasts in a rude way, even though there are naked people walking." And there were. There had been families of naked people walking on the path a while ago. The men had had hair yellow as the Gulf sand, and little pieces of wood had been stuck through their lower lips. They'd carried body shields made of cattle-hide with the hair on—the first shields Catania had ever seen—and short stabbing spears.
"Assags," Newton had called the spears, and said they were very nice weapons, as long as you had a shield, too. Border Roamers, he'd called those people. Said they didn't read, and were fewer than they had been.
The music of one band, then others, came whistling, singing, crashing in metal and drums as they walked into Market. Joan and Catania—prompted by their swallows of brown barley-whisk—danced a little to it as they went along, Catania dancing gently so as not to trouble the baby. They danced in circles, tangling the nanny's line, so that tripping and leaping, she seemed to dance with them.
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