Julian May - The Many-Coloured Land

She said miserably, “Ecce elongavi fugiens: et mansi in solitudine.”

“Oh, yes. ‘Lo, I would flee far away and live in the wilderness.’ ” He waved a hand at the emergent landscape. “And here it is! Magnificent. Just look at those mountains in the east. They’re the Jura. Amazing the difference six million years makes in them, you know. Some of those ridges must be at three thousand meters, perhaps twice at high as the Jura of our time.”

Amerie wiped her eyes on her scapular. “You knew them?”

“Oh, yes. I was very keen. Tramped and climbed all over the Earth, but liked the Alps best. I’d planned to climb them again in their juvenile aspect. My reason for coming to Exile, you see. In my last rejuv, I had my lung capacity upped twenty percent. Had the heart and large muscles fortified as well. I’d brought all kinds of special climbing gear along. D’you know, parts of the Pliocene Alps might be higher than the Himalaya we knew? Our Alps were greatly eroded by the Ice Age that’ll be along in a few million years. The really high country would be farther south, around Monte Rosa on the old Swiss-Italian border, or southwest into Provence where the Dent Blanche nappe overrides Rosa’s. There could be folds down there pushed above nine thousand meters. There could be a mountain higher than Everest! I hoped to spend the rest of my life climbing these Pliocene mountains. Even the Alpine Everest, if I managed to find a few kindred souls to accompany me.”

“Perhaps you still will.” The nun tried to force a smile.

“Not friggerty likely,” he replied cheerily. “These exotics and their flunkies will put me to work hewing wood or drawing water when they find out that my only talents are classical donning and falling off alps. If I’m lucky and have any spare time after slavery, I’ll tootle tunes for drinks in the local equivalent of the village pub.”

He apologized for interrupting her prayers and turned forward again. In a few moments, Amerie heard the soft sounds of his flute mingling with the birdsong.

She resumed her own quiet chanting.

The caravan was on a downhill slope once more, still traveling northward parallel to the Saône. The great river was invisible, but its course was marked by a wide belt of mist-hung forest far down in the valley. The countryside beyond the woodland on the opposite bank was much flatter, a prairie dotted with trees that gradually blended into a marshy plain with many small meres and sloughs that sparkled as the sun climbed. Tributary streams twisted through the eastern swamp; but the west bank of the Saône that they traveled was several hundred meters higher, cut only by widely separated creeks and gullies, which the patient chalikos plodded across while scarcely breaking stride.

Now that it was fully light, Amerie could see the other people in the train, the soldiers and Epone riding three or four ranks ahead, the pairs of prisoners strung out behind at neatly maintained intervals. Richard and Claude were near the baggage animals and the rear guard. The outriding amphicyons galumphed stoically on either side, sometimes closing in, so that she saw their evil yellow eyes or smelled the carrion reek of their bodies. The chalikos had their own distinctive smell, odd and sulfurous, like a flatus of turnips. It must be from the roots they eat, she thought wearily. All that food that made them so big and strong and wide .

She groaned and tried to ease her tormented muscles. Nothing helped, not even prayer. Fac me tecum pie flere, Crucifixo condolere, donee ego vexero. Oh, shit, Lord. This isn’t going to work.

“Look, Amerie! Antelopes!”

Felice was awake, pointing to the savanna on their left where a golden rise of land seemed strangely overgrown with dark stalks that waved in all directions. Then Amerie realized that the stalks were horns and the entire hillside was thick with reddish-tawny bodies. Thousands upon thousands of gazelles were grazing the dried grass. They were undisturbed by the passing caravan and raised mild black-and-white faces, seeming to nod their lyre-shaped horns at the amphicyons, which ignored them.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” cried Felice. “And over there! Those little horses!”

Hipparions were even more numerous than the gazelles, roaming the uplands in huge loose herds that sometimes seemed to cover an entire square kilometer. As the party of travelers came into lower elevations where the vegetation was more lush, they saw other grazers, goatlike tragocerines with mahogany coats, larger harnessed antelopes that had thin white stripes on their fawn sides, and once in a scrubby little grove of acacias, massive gray-brown elands bearing stout spiraling horns, the bulls, with their drooping dewlaps, standing over two meters tall at the shoulder.

“All that meat on the hoof,” Felice marveled. “And only a few big cats and hyenas and bear-dogs for natural enemies. A hunter would never starve in this world.”

“Starving,” the nun said dourly, “hardly seems to be the problem.” She hoisted her skirt and began to massage her thighs by pounding them with the sides of her hands.

“Poor Amerie. Of course I know what the problem is. I’ve been working on it. Watch this.”

As the nun stared, puzzled, Felice’s chalicothere drifted casually toward her own until the sides of the two animals touched lightly. Then Felice’s mount moved away, maintaining its steady pace as it trotted a good arm’s length to the left of its proper position in line. After just half a minute of this aberrant movement, the beast slipped back into its normal caravan slot. It moved sedately for a few moments, then broke stride so that it decreased the distance between it and the animal ahead by a meter and a half. The chaliko continued tailgating while Amerie began to comprehend what was happening. It fell back into its usual place just as a suspicious bear-dog let out a howl.

“Mamma mia,” murmured the nun. “Can the soldiers tell you’re doing it?”

“Nobody’s fighting my override of their control. There probably is no feedback at all, just the preset command for the entire train that keeps them moving at speed in the selected intervals. You remember when those blue partridges spooked the chalikos early last evening? The guards came back to see that we were all properly lined up again. They wouldn’t have had to do that if they had feedback from our mounts.”

“True. But…”

“Hang onto your wimple. Now it’s your turn.”

Amerie’s pain and spiritual malaise were swept away in a sudden wash of hope, for her own chalicothere was now duplicating the earlier motions of Felice’s animal. When the eerie solo dance had been completed, both of the creatures performed identical maneuvers in concert.

“Te deum laudamus,” Amerie whispered. “You just might pull it off, child. But can you reach them? ” She nodded in the direction of the nearest amphicyon.

“It’s going to be hard. Harder than anything I ever did back in the arena on Acadie. But I’m older now.” At least four months older. And it isn’t a stupid game anymore with me hoping that they’d learn to care instead of only being afraid. But here she is now trusting and even the others would if only they knew. They would trust and admire. But how to test? Must not give the thing away. So hard. Which way would be best?

The bear-dog running twenty meters off Felice’s left flank came slowly closer, lolling tongue dripping saliva. The brute was nearly exhausted after its long trek. Its wits were slowed and its willpower diminished. The pricking within its mind that urged it onward and kept it alert was being callused round with fatigue and hunger. The call to duty was now weak in comparison to the promise of high meat in the trough and a bed of dry grass in a shady place.