Luck of the Wheels. Megan Lindholm

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       FOUR

      In the coolness before dawn, Ki’s strangely vivid dreams broke and dragged against her like cobwebs. Gently she drew away from Vandien and pulled on her clothes. The camp was silent; Gotheris slumbered deeply by the dead ashes of the fire, his arms flung wide in sleep. Ki took the kettle and water bucket and headed for the spring. She considered waking Vandien to share the quiet with her but decided against it. She needed this solitude; the rest of the day would offer her little enough.

      On her way back to camp she passed Vandien. His hair was tousled, his eyes vague with sleep. He greeted her silently and moved on toward the spring. In camp, she found a few embers buried in the ash and coaxed them into blossom. She set the dripping kettle atop the small fire and mounted the wagon step.

      The door was jammed. She tugged at it futilely several times before she realized that Willow had latched it. Suddenly irritated that anyone could lock her out of her own wagon, she pounded on the door. There was no response. ‘Willow!’ she shouted. ‘Unlock this door!’ Goat rolled over and opened his eyes.

      There was a muffled reply, but Ki fumed on the step for several moments longer before a yawning Willow slid the door open. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked sleepily.

      ‘Why didn’t you open the door?’ Ki demanded, pushing in past her. ‘And why was it locked at all?’

      ‘I wasn’t dressed.’ Willow sat down on the tousled bedding. ‘And you know why I locked it. Because he’s out there.’

      Ki glared at the girl, who sulked back at her. The silence was thick as Ki shrugged into a fresh tunic. Ki gathered up travelling bread and cheese from the food bins. Willow was still pouting on the bed when Ki left the wagon. The door slammed and latched behind her. Almost she turned back; but she set her teeth and let it pass. Foolish, to make a fuss over a latched door. But she hated its assumption, that the wagon space was Willow’s, and Ki could be locked out of it. Forget it. Ki made a conscious effort to loosen the muscles in her shoulders and set her irritation aside.

      She set the bread and cheese on a wooden platter from the dish-chest, and had just found the tea when an arm fell across her shoulders. ‘I’m hungry!’ Gotheris announced in her ear. The sack of tea leaped from her hand as she startled.

      ‘You spilled it all over!’ he exclaimed, pushing forward to gaze at the wrinkled balls of leaves and herbs littered across the jumbled dishes.

      Ki’s hands were fists at her sides. She spoke each word separately. ‘Don’t creep up behind me and grab me like that.’

      ‘I didn’t!’ Goat protested. ‘I only …’

      A thudding of many hooves interrupted him. Ki held up a hand for silence while her eyes grew wide. Stepping around the tail of the wagon, she stared up the long flat road. Her heart leaped painfully, then began to hammer in her chest so that she could hear nothing else. Rousters.

      There were six – no, seven – Brurjans, and two stout, ugly Humans, all mounted on great black horses with scarlet hooves. She gripped the corner of her wagon, watching them come, knowing there was no place to flee to, no place to hide. Childhood memories flooded her mind, of wagons set ablaze in the dark night, of Romni women fleeing with their children caught up in their arms, of men struck down by flying hooves as they stood, not in hopes of defending their lives, but only to buy their families time to escape. Rousters, come by nightfall or in the bright day, to put the Romni trash on the road again, to steal their bits of things and drive them away.

      The Brurjans rode high and catlike on their peculiar saddles. Their huge jaws were wide with their hissing laughter, and their myriad pointed teeth flashed in the new sun that stroked their glossy hides. Their quilled crests were high. They did not pull up as they approached the camp, but rode full tilt into it, great hooves tramping Goat’s bedding and the small fire, and sending the hissing kettle flying. Vandien emerged from the trees, a strangely small figure before the tall horses with their massive riders. The riders milled through the camp. Ki could not speak. Goat was plastered up against the wagon, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open. The world tilted around Ki. One of the Humans rode close to her, sneered down at her disdainfully. Let Willow remain silent within the wagon, she begged the Moon. Her beauty was too fresh for one such as that to resist bruising.

      One of the Brurjans snarled something, СКАЧАТЬ