"There's another one," Joan said, meaning a man staring at their breasts.
"Then let's trade for cool shirts." Catania hauled the goat in and settled her.
There were many cloth lean-tos—striped red-and-white, green-and-white, and black-and-white—set up on both sides of the path. At each stand, different things were being offered: leather work—harness, belts, sheaths, and possibles sacks; little boxes of bright jewelry stones; jointed toys for children that danced at the ends of strings; shining rings and bracelets; made-boots and strap sandals. There were clay jugs, painted with flowers looking almost real—and at another stand, metal pots and kettles in every size.
More things, and more people, than Catania had seen, even in Gardens.
There were smells of food—some wonderful, and some not wonderful—and smoke from stands with iron grills and griddles drifted in the air amid the noise of strangers talking and trade-arguing in shade beneath striped cloth.
Newton led them off the wide path to a narrower way, where there were only cloth-trade stands. The first had blankets, and none of those as fine as Gardens'. But the next two traded women's clothes, and at the second, Joan and Catania found almost-white shirts—claimed by the Salesman to be loomed of Empire cotton—loose enough not to hinder drawing a bow.
Joan chose a shirt with yellow flowers sewn at the neck, to set off her braid of long red hair. Catania's flower trim was sewn in little red blossoms and green grass, so she would have forever spring at her throat.
They each traded art arrowhead for their shirt, though reluctant to part with it. The Salesman, who had green ribbons woven through his beard, admired the fine steel broadheads—tested their edges with his thumb, and cut it slightly. "This Market is costly," Joan said.
Then Joan and Catania paraded their new shirts, both still slightly dizzy from guggle-oh, and turned this way and that to show them off while Newton stood impatient. Then, Joan said, "Food."
"All right," Newton said, "—but we'll eat walking. I want to get through here, and gone.".
And as they'd been lucky with shirts, so they were lucky with food—and hadn't gone a stone's throw down another path through strangers, before there was a lean-to stand of cloth striped blue-and-gold that could barely be seen for cooking smoke. When they went to it, they found thin, oiled wooden sticks, each with several pieces of fat mutton stuck on it, grilling over coals. The mutton smelled almost as though from mountain sheep, but not quite.
"What do we trade?" Catania looked in her possibles and took out another arrowhead. She thought Joan was right—Market was costly.
The man turning the oiled sticks with quick fingers was handsome and looked strong. He had only a mustache, no beard. "Two of those good pieces of steel, Lady," he said, "—for three shish, heavy with meat." And when Catania paused to consider, added, "Also a North Map-Mexico apple to divide among you." "One arrowhead." Newton stood leaning on his lance.
"Not quite enough," the mustached man said. "Almost, but not quite. Now, the fox-fur tied to the tall lady's pack...."
"Take it," Joan said, "—if you can wear it in air so warm."
"For the fur," Newton said, "—six shish that we pick, and an apple for each."
"Not fair," the cook said. "Absolutely not fair…. But, I'll trade out of kindness."
So, eating fat-dripping mutton certainly less fine than mountain sheep's—Newton lifting his face-cloth to chew it—and keeping their apples for later, they went down the Market ways through noise and talk and music.
"A pleasure," Catania said, and found she was enjoying strangers, as long as there were stand-foods and stand-things and band music to enjoy as well. She wished they could go see one of the music bands, their odd instruments. She missed her harp.
"Steel," Joan said, stopping at a black-and-white striped lean-to. There was a woman, very tall and very big, selling there. She was large as two women, and wore tight yellow clothes. "Steel...." Joan looked at knives ranked side by side on a polished board, picked up a heavy curved blade, and handled it.
"Five-hundred times folded," the big woman said. She had a girl's voice, and eyes bright as a squirrel's. "Forged, folded, then hammered out to fold again."
"Joan, we need to keep on," Newton said.
"This is a fighting lady," the woman said to him, and smiled. "—I can see it. Should she not have fine steel?"
"When we have time," Newton said, "—and silver to trade for it."
Joan put the curved blade down. "Your husband is a fine smith."
"I have no husband." The big woman held out hands larger than Newton's, calloused, and scarred by burns at the forge.
"Joan, we need to go," Newton said, and walked away so Catania, then Joan, had to follow or lose him.
A man was chanting "Best... best... best." They saw him standing on a plank platform beyond the lean-to stands. He was calling to many Market-strangers gathered before him. There were naked people standing in a line on the platform, each with an iron collar on.
"He's trading people," Joan said.
"Slaves." Catania stood staring.
"Yes," Newton said. "We need to keep moving."
"If a person is such a dog he can be traded," Joan said, "—then he is dog enough to trade."
"The children are not dogs." Catania pointed with her lance. "There are children there."
Newton walked them away from their argument, and past a wonder. A man was eating fire from a burning stick, stuffing the . flames down his mouth, then drawing them out still blazing and with no harm done.
—And right after, an even greater wonder. A man and woman drew bright thick golden water, thick as honey, out of a small furious furnace, twirling the stuff on a long pipe-rod. Then they blew into the pipe's end so the hot honey-water slowly grew into round clear hot ice, that cooled and cooled until, when it was struck free, it had become a trade-glass bottle, shimmering and beautiful.
"That is how it is done!" Catania stared until Newton took her arm and tugged at her to come along.
"We're going too fast," Joan said to him. "You're being unkind to hurry us."
"It's necessary."
"It is not necessary," Joan said, following him with a sullen face.
Still, she was no help when Catania wanted to stop at a big wooden bench, round as a wheel-gear, that circled an iron post. Four men were trotting, pushing at its edges so it spun around and around. People were giving these men little pieces of metal in trade for a seat on the spinning bench, and riding it, whirling, laughing.
"Oh, what a wonderful thing!" Catania reached into her possibles for an arrowhead to trade for a ride, but again Newton said, "No time. We need to get through this place and out of it." So she put her arrowhead away, and followed with the nanny, looking back as she went.
"Anyway," Joan said, "—it would likely have upset the baby."
"You could have held Small-Sam for me, Joan." The nanny suddenly leaped ahead, pulling so Catania almost stumbled. Something made a hard clicking sound behind them.
Catania turned—and jumped back, holding the baby's poozy to her hip.
Joan turned too, and said, "Mountain Jesus!"
There were two things just behind them—big, bigger than riding-horses. They had no pelt; their skins were mottled gray, and running sweat that smelled like men's. They looked fat at first, and seemed to squat on long forearms and short hinds, with no hooves, but huge flat hands and feet.
Their heads—large as the heads of snow-tigers—looked like foolish men's, with white hair cut short, round empty blue eyes, and wide, lolling tongues. One stared down at Catania and the nanny-goat, licked its lips, then made the quick hard clicking noise again with its teeth.
"Bad things!" Catania stepped back for room to lower her lance, and Joan did the same beside her.
Newton stepped in front of them. "I said, 'No trouble!' Now, put those lances up, and both of you come walk beside me."
A woman called, "Stand out of our way, savages!" She was sitting
on the tooth-clicking creature's broad slanting gray back. "Or don't you understand book-English." She was a pretty woman, in boots, a dark-blue robe, and a wide-brim blue hat. Her long dark hair fell free.
"Savages?" Joan said.
"Those are made man-things!" Catania called to the riding woman. "We heard of those, and it's true. You're riding things made in women's bellies!"
"Be quiet!" Newton said, and took Catania's arm and Joan's, to keep them still. Market people were watching.
"At least they can speak." The man riding the other thing gave them an enemy look. He also wore blue—a long coat and wide-brim hat. "Get-on!" he said, hitting his riding-thing with a short whip. It grunted and came pacing so fast that Newton had to pull Joan and Catania aside as it went by. The woman, riding after him, said, "Four goats...." and smiled.
Catania shook her lance after the blue-hats, and shouted, "You are the animals—look what you've made!"
" 'Goats?'" Joan said, and perhaps made angrier by barley-whisk, jerked her arm from Newton's grip and stepped away. "Stay!" she called to the blue-hat people. "I have a courtesy-lesson for you!"
The woman rider turned on the back of her thing, and drew a sword-knife from a long sheath beside her—a curved sword-knife, and slender. The man had turned also, but hadn't drawn a weapon.
"Shittinwoods!" the blue-hat woman said, and laughed at them.
"Wait for me, nasty laugher," Joan called. "I'll put steel into your mouth, where pee-dicks usually go!" And she dropped her pack, and ran at them.
Catania let go the nanny's lead and raised her lance—then remembered the baby on her hip as Newton ran to catch Joan. He ran fast, reached out, gripped the collar of her new shirt and yanked her back. Joan fought him, and while struggling, threw her lance—and would have hit the woman's riding-thing but it spun and ducked away, showing its teeth, so the lance hummed past and slid into the dirt.
Then the woman with the sword-knife called, "I'll see you two bitches burning!" The man said something to her, and she straightened her big hat—it had tilted on her head when her riding-thing turned so quickly.
"Let me go." Joan tried to kick Newton where it would hurt, but he shook her, cuffed her to furious silence—then glanced at Catania and said, "No more from you, either."
Newton looked so funny with his crap-cloth scarf, and trying to deal with two angry women at once, that Catania grew calmer and turned her lance butt-down to lean on, though she'd marked the blue-hat woman and wouldn't have missed the throw, barley whisk or not.
Some of the strangers around them were shouting, calling out so loudly it troubled her hearing, though no one had been killed, or even cut.
Though Newton still held her, Joan yelled at the riding woman, "Come here! Come here!" But the woman only shook her head, smiling, so Catania wished she had thrown her lance. Then the woman wouldn't be smiling and sitting on a nasty thing.
Something odd sounded through the people's shouting—a regular thudding, like padded sticks beaten together—and all the people around them moved back, and back. Many walked away.
"Perfect," Newton said, but not as if meaning perfect, and Catania turned and saw that men were coming—but walking like one man, stepping all together in heavy boots, left foot then right, which made the thudding sound. She thought this was almost certainly Warm-time marching. The men wore leather shirts and heavy leather skirts, with strips of blued steel fastened to them. And each wore a round metal hat with a brim all around.
These men had short straight sword-knives at their belts, and carried crossbows bigger than the ones the Garden Gold-bracelets had used. There were bent metal handles on the sides of these
Weapons…. It was strange to watch ten, twelve men walking as one. Stranger even than the first-pulp mill's duty-dance. Catania thought it possible they were copybook soldiers.
"Do we fight?" Joan said. But Newton just looked at her, so Catania supposed not.
"All chases circle back," Newton said, and sounded tired.
"Troublemakers in Market!" the blue-hat woman called, and the man climbed down from his riding-thing, and came over to meet the probably-soldiers.
"You turd," Joan said to the blue-hat man, but he paid no attention.
"Kingdom-guest," a probable-soldier said to the blue-hat, and stepped away from the other marchers, "—if you and your lady wife have been troubled in Market, we'll deal with it."
This man had a grim face that had been cut and its bones broken. He seemed to Catania a serious person and a fighter. Certainly a soldier, though looking odd in his round metal hat. He had a dark dot tattooed on each cheek.
"We have been troubled," the blue-hat man said, "—and threatened by these two shittinwoods women, who have no notion of conduct. One threw a lance." He said this, but didn't draw a weapon, so Catania saw he was relying on the soldier to fight for him. "I'll be fair, however, and say the man here did not offend us."
"These people," Catania said, "—they are riding very bad things!"
"Women," the soldier said, and sounded like any man saying, 'Women.'
"But still troubling," the blue-hat woman called, "—women or not." She sheathed her curved sword-knife. "I'm a woman, and I've been troubled in Market, and Boston will not be happy to hear it!"
"You kiss my butt!" Catania called to her. "And tell Boston he can kiss my butt, too."
"You see," the blue-hat woman said, "—how we've been troubled by these ignorants?" Like a dog taking drift from its master's mood, the gray thing she sat on hunched its high shoulders, turned its head, frowning, and stuck out its thick pale tongue like an angry child.
"If you don't become quiet," the soldier said to Catania, "—if both you tribeswomen don't become quiet, you'll find yourselves chained in a fire."
"You won't live to see it, Broken-face." Joan put her hand on her knife.
Newton shoved her back. "Shut your mouth." Then he said to the soldier, "Let it pass."
"No," the blue-hat man said to the soldier, "—do not let it pass, Two-dot, or we'll report you upriver."
"These are only women," Newton said, "—and strangers here, and have a baby with them. No one has been injured—"
"That one threw a lance!" Blue-hat said.
"It slipped from her fingers."
The soldier shook his head. "I cannot let it pass." And though that was all he said, and Catania saw him make no motion, suddenly all eleven men behind him drew their short sword-knives, so the blades hissed free together.
"Floating fucking Jesus...." Newton reached up to loose his face cloth, pulled it free, and threw it on the ground.
"Oh ... Oh, may I beg your pardon?" the blue-hat man said to Newton. "Because indeed I do, sir. Indeed, I beg your pardon."
The soldier knelt on one knee. And though he'd said nothing and made no motion, his men all did the same.
"Get up," Newton said to him, but the soldier didn't. "Get up," Newton said. Then the man got up, and his men with him, and sheathed their short sword-knives.
"Is my beg-pardon accepted?" the blue-hat said.
"Louis, what is it?" the woman called over, and the blue-hat called back, "Be still,” Then said, "My wife...."
"What do you want me to do?" the soldier said to Newton.
"Go away," Newton said. And to the blue-hat, Louis, "You go away, too."
The soldier did as he'd been told. He fitted himself back into the others, said four words, and they all turned together, then went away as they'd come, like one person walking.
Louis Blue-hat had gone back to the woman, who was looking questions. "Just be quiet," he said to her, climbed onto his riding-thing, and kicked its ribs so it hunched itself and swung away, showing huge gray buttocks. Its testicles were gone. The back legs were like a man's, but made massive, bent, and thick with muscle. Louis rode away, and his wife rode after him.
"What a surprising thing!" Catania said. "I thought we would have to fight."
"Newton," Joan said, "—who are you to them, that you
sent them away and they went?"
"Foolishness," Newton said. "Old foolishness. Because of my family, I have dice-eight dots across my face. For Boxcars, these are important things." He picked up his pack. "But Boxcar things have never been important to me. Joan, go and get your lance. And no more trouble—you understand?"
While Joan, silent, went to get her lance, Catania said, "Have things changed, now?" The nanny had come back to her, trailing its lead.
"Yes," Newton said. And he seemed a different, weary Newton. "Yes, they've changed. Better we had stayed and become Map-Texans, but I thought I could travel through."
When Joan came back with her lance, she said, "Newton, if you hadn't held me, I would have hit her. It's your blame."
"I accept it," Newton said, smiling though he seemed so troubled—and Catania saw he found Joan amusing, was fond of her in that way. "Now we have to get out of Market fast as we can without running." He picked up his scarf from the ground, and drew the cloth across his face again.
"Why not run?" Catania said.
"If we run," Newton said, "—we'll be chased for thieves." But even so, he started walking so fast, striding through all the strange Market people, that Joan and Catania had to trot a little to keep up. They hurried down several turning paths, passing striped lean-to stands on either side all along the way—the Salesmen calling after them to buy this or that—until Newton led down a steep sand-bank, and out along the edge of the Gulf.
Here, there were no trade goods, but only people camping to spend another day in Market. They were cooking their own food in little fires on the sand. Their children played in the blue-green water, running in, screaming at the chill, then running out.
Newton trotted along the beach, and Catania's catching-up hurry disturbed the baby. The nanny, tired, had to be tugged along.
"Give me that." Joan took the goat's lead.
Catania saw a marching-soldier standing up on the bank. He'd taken off his iron hat, and stood between two trade-stands, watching them.
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