He watched her a long while. She appeared real enough. She halted twenty paces from the nose of the wagon and scanned the entire horizon slowly, her eyes coming to rest at last on the window of the driver’s cabin. She was aware, certainly, that he was looking at her, and she looked back, eye to eye, staring unflinchingly. They remained locked that way for some minutes. Her expression was glum and opaque, a withered scowl, but suddenly she brightened and smiled intensely at him and it was such a knowing smile that Leaf was thrown into terror by the old witch, and glanced away, shamed and defeated.
When he lifted his head she was out of view; he pressed himself against the window, craned his neck, and found her down near the middle of the wagon. She was inspecting its exterior workmanship at close range, picking and prying at the hull. Then she wandered away, out to the place where Sting and Shadow and the chief had had their conference, and sat down cross-legged where they had been sitting. She became extraordinarily still, as if she were asleep, or in trance. Just when Leaf began to think she would never move again, she took a pipe of carved bone from a pouch at her waist, filled it with a gray-blue powder, and lit it. He searched her face for tokens of revelation, but nothing showed on it; she grew ever more impassive and unreadable. When the pipe went out, she filled it again, and smoked a second time, and still Leaf watched her, his face pushed awkwardly against the window, his body growing stiff. The first rays of sunlight now arrived, pink shading rapidly into gold. As the brightness deepened the witch-woman imperceptibly became less solid; she was fading away, moment by moment, and shortly he saw nothing of her but her pipe and her kerchief, and then the clearing was empty. The long shadows of the six nightmares splashed against the wooden palisade. Leaf’s head lolled. I’ve been dozing, he thought. It’s morning, and all’s well. He went to awaken Crown.
They breakfasted lightly. Leaf and Shadow led the horses to water at a small clear brook five minutes’ walk toward Theptis. Sting foraged awhile in the thicket for nuts and berries, and having filled two pails, went aft to doze in the furs. Crown brooded in his trophy room and said nothing to anyone. A few Tree Companions could be seen watching the wagon from perches in the crowns of towering red-leaved trees on the hillside just behind the wall. Nothing happened until midmorning. Then, at a time when all four travelers were within the wagon, a dozen newcomers appeared, forerunners of the refugee tribe that Crown’s intuitions had correctly predicted. They came slowly up the road, on foot, dusty and tired-looking, staggering beneath huge untidy bundles of belongings and supplies. They were square-headed muscular people, as tall as Leaf or taller, with the look of warriors about them; they carried short swords at their waists, and both men and women were conspicuously scarred. Their skins were gray, tinged with pale green, and they had more fingers and toes than was usual among mankind.
Leaf had never seen their sort before. “Do you know them?” he asked Sting.
“Snow Hunters,” Sting said. “Close kin to the Sand Shapers, I think. Midcaste and said to be unfriendly to strangers. They live southwest of Theptis, in the hill country.”
“One would think they’d be safe there,” said Shadow.
Sting shrugged. “No one’s safe from the Teeth, eh? Not even on the highest hills. Not even in the thickest jungles.”
The Snow Hunters dropped their packs and looked around. The wagon drew them first; they seemed stunned by the opulence of it. They examined it in wonder, touching it as the witch-woman had, scrutinizing it from every side. When they saw faces looking out at them, they nudged one another and pointed and whispered, but they did not smile, nor did they wave greetings. After a time they went on to the wall and studied it with the same childlike curiosity. It appeared to baffle them. They measured it with their outstretched hands, pressed their bodies against it, pushed at it with their shoulders, tapped the timbers, plucked at the sturdy bindings of vine. By this time perhaps a dozen more of them had come up the road; they too clustered about the wagon, doing as the first had done, and then continued toward the wall. More and more Snow Hunters were arriving, in groups of three or four. One trio, standing apart from the others, gave the impression of being tribal leaders; they consulted, nodded, summoned and dismissed other members of the tribe with forceful gestures of their hands.
“Let’s go out and parley,” Crown said. He donned his best armor and selected an array of elegant dress weapons. To Sting he gave a slender dagger. Shadow would not bear arms, and Leaf preferred to arm himself in nothing but Pure Stream prestige. His status as a member of the ancestral stock, he found, served him as well as a sword in most encounters with strangers.
The Snow Hunters—about a hundred of them now had gathered, with still more down the way—looked apprehensive as Crown and his companions descended from the wagon. Crown’s bulk and gladiatorial swagger seemed far more threatening to these strong-bodied warlike folk than they had been to the chattering Tree Companions, and Leaf’s presence too appeared disturbing to them. Warily they moved to form a loose semicircle about their three leaders; they stood close by one another, murmuring tensely, and their hands hovered near the hilts of their swords.
Crown stepped forward. “Careful,” Leaf said softly. “They’re on edge. Don’t push them.”
But Crown, with a display of slick diplomacy unusual for him, quickly put the Snow Hunters at their ease with a warm gesture of greeting—hands pressed to shoulders, palms outward, fingers spread wide—and a few hearty words of welcome. Introductions were exchanged. The spokesman for the tribe, an iron-faced man with frosty eyes and hard cheekbones, was called Sky; the names of his co-captains were Blade and Shield. Sky spoke in a flat, quiet voice, everything on the same note. He seemed empty, burned out, a man who had entered some realm of exhaustion far beyond mere fatigue. They had been on the road for three days and three nights almost without a halt, said Sky. Last week a major force of Teeth had started westward through the midcoastal lowlands bound for Theptis, and one band of these, just a few hundred warriors, had lost its way, going south into the hill country. Their aimless wanderings brought these straying Teeth without warning into the secluded village of the Snow Hunters, and there had been a terrible battle in which more than half of Sky’s people had perished. The survivors, having slipped away into the trackless forest, had made their way by back roads to Spider Highway, and, numbed by shock and grief, had been marching like machines toward the Middle River, hoping to find some new hillside in the sparsely populated territories of the far northwest. They could never return to their old home, Shield declared, for it had been desecrated by the feasting of the Teeth.
“But what is this wall?” Sky asked.
Crown explained, telling the Snow Hunters about the Tree Companions and their prophetess, and of her promise that the booty of all refugees was to be surrendered to them. “They lie in wait for us with their darts,” Crown said. “Four of us were helpless against them. But they would never dare challenge a force the size of yours. We’ll have their wall smashed down by nightfall!”
“The Tree Companions are said to be fierce foes,” Sky remarked quietly.
“Nothing but monkeys,” said Crown. “They’ll scramble to their treetops if we just draw our swords.”
“And shower us with their poisoned arrows,” Shield muttered. “Friend, we have little stomach for further warfare. Too many of us have fallen this week.”
“What will you do?” Crown cried. “Give them your swords, and your tunics and your wives’ rings and the sandals off your feet?”
Sky closed his eyes and stood motionless, remaining silent for a long moment. At length, without opening his eyes, he said in a voice that came from the center of an immense void, “We will talk with the Tree Companions and learn what they actually demand of us, and then we will make our decisions and form our plans.”
“The wall—if you fight beside us, we can destroy this wall, and open the road to all who flee the Teeth!”
With cold patience Sky said, “We will speak with you again afterward,” and turned away. “Now we will rest, and wait for the Tree Companions to come forth.”
The Snow Hunters withdrew, sprawling out along the margin of the thicket just under the wall. There they huddled in rows, staring at the ground, waiting. Crown scowled, spat, shook his head. Turning to Leaf he said, “They have the true look of fighters. There’s something that marks a fighter apart from other men, Leaf, and I can tell when it’s there, and these Snow Hunters have it. They have the strength, they have the power; they have the spirit of battle in them. And yet, see them now! Squatting there like fat frightened Fingers!”
“They’ve been beaten badly,” Leaf said. “They’ve been driven from their homeland. They know what it is to look back across a hilltop and see the fires in which your kinsmen are being cooked. That takes the fighting spirit out of a person, Crown.”
“No. Losing makes the flame burn brighter. It makes you feverish with the desire for revenge.”
“Does it? What do you know about losing? You were never so much as touched by any of your opponents.”
Crown glared at him. “I’m not speaking of dueling. Do you think my life has gone untouched by the Teeth? What am I doing here on this dirt road with all that I still own packed into a single wagon? But I’m no walking dead man like these Snow Hunters. I’m not running away, I’m going to find an army. And then I’ll go back east and take my vengeance. While they—afraid of monkeys—”
“They’ve been marching day and night,” Shadow said. “They must have been on the road when the purple rain was falling. They’ve spent all their strength while we’ve been riding in your wagon, Crown. Once they’ve had a little rest, perhaps they—”
“Afraid of monkeys!”
Crown shook with wrath. He strode up and down before the wagon, pounding his fists into his thighs. Leaf feared that he would go across to the Snow Hunters and attempt by bluster to force them into an alliance. Leaf understood the mood of these people: shattered and drained though they were, they might lash out in sudden savage irritation if Crown goaded them too severely. Possibly some hours of rest, as Shadow had suggested, and they might feel more like helping Crown drive his way through the Tree Companions’ wall. But not now. Not now.
The gate in the wall opened. Some twenty of the forest folk emerged, among them the tribal chief and—Leaf caught his breath in awe—the ancient seeress, who looked across the way and bestowed on Leaf another of her penetrating comfortless smiles.
“What kind of creature is that?” Crown asked.
“The mixed-blood witch,” said Leaf. “I saw her at dawn, while I was standing watch.”
“Look!” Shadow cried. “She flickers and fades like an Invisible! But her pelt is like yours, Sting, and her shape is that of—”
“She frightens me,” Sting said hoarsely. He was shaking. “She foretells death for us. We have little time left to us, friends. She is the goddess of death, that one.” He plucked at Crown’s elbow, unprotected by the armour. “Come! Let’s start back along Spider Highway! Better to take our chances in the desert than to stay here and die!”
“Quiet,” Crown snapped. “There’s no going back. The Teeth are already in Theptis. They’ll be moving out along this road in a day or two. There’s only one direction for us.”
“But the wall,” Sting said.
“The wall will be in ruins by nightfall,” Crown told him.
The chief of the Tree Companions was conferring with Sky and Blade and Shield. Evidently the Snow Hunters knew something of the language of the Tree Companions, for Leaf could hear vocal interchanges, supplemented by pantomime and sign language. The chief pointed to himself often, to the wall, to the prophetess; he indicated the packs the Snow Hunters had been carrying; he jerked his thumb angrily toward Crown’s wagon. The conversation lasted nearly half an hour and seemed to reach an amicable outcome. The Tree Companions departed, this time leaving the gate open. Sky, Shield, and Blade moved among their people, issuing instructions. The Snow Hunters drew food from their packs—dried roots, seeds, smoked meat—and lunched in silence. Afterward, boys who carried huge waterbags made of sewn hides slung between them on poles went off to the creek to replenish their supply, and the rest of the Snow Hunters rose, stretched, wandered in narrow circles about the clearing, as if getting ready to resume the march. Crown was seized by furious impatience. “What are they going to do?” he demanded. “What deal have they made?”
“I imagine they’ve submitted to the terms,” Leaf said.
“No! No! I need their help!” Crown, in anguish, hammered at himself with his fists. “I have to talk to them,” he muttered.
“Wait. Don’t push them, Crown.”
“What’s the use? What’s the use?” Now the Snow Hunters were hoisting their packs to their shoulders. No doubt of it; they were going to leave. Crown hurried across the clearing. Sky, busily directing the order of march, grudgingly gave him attention. “Where are you going?” Crown asked.
“Westward,” said Sky.
“What about us?”
“March with us, if you wish.”
“My wagon!”
“You can’t get it through the gate, can you?”
Crown reared up as though he would strike the Snow Hunter in rage. “If you would aid us, the wall would fall! Look, how can I abandon my wagon? I need to reach my kinsmen in the Flatlands. I’ll assemble an army; I’ll return to the east and push the Teeth back into the mountains where they belong. I’ve lost too much time already. I must get through. Don’t you want to see the Teeth destroyed?”
“It’s nothing to us,” Sky said evenly. “Our lands are lost to us forever. Vengeance is meaningless. Your pardon. My people need my guidance.”
More than half the Snow Hunters had passed through the gate already. Leaf joined the procession. On the far side of the wall he discovered that the dense thicket along the highway’s northern rim had been cleared for a considerable distance, and a few small wooden buildings, hostelries or depots, stood at the edge of the road. Another twenty or thirty paces farther along, a secondary path led northward into the forest; this was evidently the route to the Tree Companions’ village. Traffic on that path was heavy just now. Hundreds of forest folk were streaming from the village to the highway, where a strange, repellent scene was being enacted. Each Snow Hunter in turn halted, unburdened himself of his pack, and laid it open. Three or four Tree Companions then picked through it, each seizing one item of value—a knife, a comb, a piece of jewelry, a fine cloak—and running triumphantly off with it. Once he had submitted to this harrying of his possessions, the Snow Hunter gathered up his pack, shouldered it, and marched on, head bowed, body slumping. Tribute. Leaf felt chilled. These proud warriors, homeless now, yielding up their remaining treasures to—he tried to choke off the word, and could not—to a tribe of monkeys. And moving onward, soiled, unmanned. Of all that he had seen since the Teeth had split the world apart, this was the most sad.
Leaf started back toward the wagon. He saw Sky, Shield, and Blade at the rear of the column of Snow Hunters. Their faces were ashen; they could not meet his eyes. Sky managed a half-hearted salute as he passed by.
“I wish you good fortune on your journey,” Leaf said.
“I wish you better fortune than we have had,” said Sky hollowly, and went on.
Leaf found Crown standing rigid in the middle of the highway, hands on hips. “Cowards!” he called in a bitter voice. “Weaklings!”
“And now it’s our turn,” Leaf said.
“What do you mean?”
“The time’s come for us to face hard truths. We have to give up the wagon, Crown.”
“Never.”
“We agree that we can’t turn back. And we can’t go forward so long as the wall’s there. If we stay here, the Tree Companions will eventually kill us, if the Teeth don’
t overtake us first. Listen to me, Crown. We don’t have to give the Tree Companions everything we have. The wagon itself, some of our spare clothing, some trinkets, the furnishings of the wagon—they’ll be satisfied with that. We can load the rest of our goods on the horses and go safely through the gate as foot-pilgrims.”
“I ignore this, Leaf.”
“I know you do. I also know what the wagon means to you. I wish you could keep it. I wish I could stay with the wagon myself. Don’t you think I’d rather ride west in comfort than slog through the rain and the cold? But we can’t keep it. We can’t keep it, Crown, that’s the heart of the situation. We can go back east in the wagon and get lost in the desert, we can sit here and wait for the Tree Companions to lose patience and kill us, or we can give up the wagon and get out of this place with our skins still whole. What sort of choices are those? We have no choice. I’ve been telling you that for two days. Be reasonable, Crown!”
Needle in a Timestack Page 19