Джеффри Лорд - The Torian Pearls

By Blade's rough reckoning, it was two hours after dark when they turned off the trail and stopped. Blade saw they were surrounded by grass heavily grazed in spots but not trampled into the ground. The drends promptly lowered their heads to the standing grass and began munching busily. The warriors dismounted, took nuts and strips of salt meat from their pouches, and began to eat. They seemed to have forgotten Blade's existence.

Eventually Paor finished his meal, drank some water from his bottle, and came over to Blade. In the darkness his face was unreadable, but his tone was sympathetic.

«It is unbreakable law that a stranger can neither eat nor drink with warriors of the Kargoi until at least five of the baudzi, the War Guides, have called him worthy. I call you worthy and will go on calling you worthy, but I am alone. Four more baudzi must be found before I can give you food or drink without being cast down among the tent carriers and the dung gatherers.»

Blade nodded silently. He could not help wondering where else he could eat and drink among the Kargoi, if not with the warriors. If the Kargoi were migrating, they and their chiefs might be scattered far and wide across a plain extending for many days' march. Blade didn't particularly want to fast until five chiefs could be tracked down and assembled in one place to judge his worthiness.

Something of this must have shown in his face. Paor smiled. «It will not be so hard to find four baudzi or perhaps even more. All six clans of the Red People are together. We will be up with them once more before it grows light.»

«I understand,» said Blade. «Do not worry. You ask of me no more than a warrior should be prepared to face, if he is worthy of the name.» He did not say that in a boastful tone, but as quietly and politely as if he was discussing the weather. Blade's eyes met Paor's and held them for a moment. Paor smiled and turned away. In a few minutes they were on the move again.

They rode on through the empty, silent darkness for the rest of the night. One more time they swung off the trail to let the drends graze. The warriors dismounted, but neither ate nor drank.

An hour after that the sky began to turn gray. Blade watched the eastern horizon, to see if sunrise in this Dimension would match the sunset. He saw that the forest no longer marched parallel with them to the east. There were scattered groves and isolated trees, but much of the land was open. Once he saw what could only be the ruins of a small castle, with a stone keep rising blackened and grim against the lightening sky. Half a dozen cattle were grazing in the shelter of a half-tumbled wall. Once they must have been part of the castle's herds. Now they were wild things that galloped clumsily off in all directions as Blade and the Kargoi rode past.

The light to the east grew and began to flare. Once more Blade saw the sky lit up with a dozen different colors and a dozen different shades of each color, a display so overpoweringly beautiful that it was almost terrifying to watch as it grew steadily. It grew until it was possible to imagine that the colors would spread all across the sky, then pour down on the world and swallow it entirely.

Blade watched the faces of the Kargoi as the sunrise grew. He would have liked to ask them about the colors, but this might not be wise. So far they seemed to think that he was merely a wanderer from some other part of this Dimension. If he said anything to hint that he was not familiar with the Dimension's spectacular sunrises and sunsets, at least the sharp-witted Paor might wonder.

The baudz watched the sunrise in silence, until its raw beauty began to fade as daylight came to the land. Then he turned to Blade.

«What do your people say of the colors at the rising and the setting of the sun?»

«The sky is the face of the Worldmaster,» he said with glib assurance. «The Worldmaster feels a mighty anger toward us below, his servants. From that anger the colors come, that pass across his face at the dawn and the sunset.»

Paor laughed grimly. «There were those among us who said the same thing, when the sky changed after the shaking of the land and the burning of the mountains. But then the waters began to rise. Slowly they ate up our homeland so that we had to seek a new one. Then we no longer worried about what anger the gods might be showing in the sky. It was enough that their anger was on the earth-or rather, in the waters that were swallowing it.» He paused, then fixed Blade with a not quite friendly stare. «Is your land yet uneaten by the waters?»

«Part of it,» said Blade. «Some remains. But what remains is only enough for those people who live there now. Our hearts are not hard, but our swords would be swift against anyone else who came seeking a home among us.» He laughed, to take the harshness out of his words. «There is also this. I sailed to this land in a ship that traveled for thirty days and nights before it was wrecked. Can the Kargoi ride their drends and haul their wagons across such a width of sea?»

Paor relaxed visibly. «No, I think your land is safe from the Kargoi, if not from the gods. It is in our power to take our beasts and our wagons and ourselves across small rivers and perhaps large ones. So much water as you have crossed would stand in our path forever.» He frowned. «Or at least until we learned the art of building ships. That is an art we may well wish to learn, when we have found our new home. If the gods take from the land and give to the sea, those who can sail the farthest may live the longest.»

«Perhaps,» said Blade politely. «But the wrath of the gods is abroad on the sea. Remember that although my ship came thirty days from my homeland, it was wrecked in the end. A storm overthrew it, a storm that made me think the bowels of the earth were being torn up. Then the creatures of the sea fell on my comrades, so many of them did not even live to drown.»

Blade could now be reasonably sure what had happened in this Dimension. His guess about volcanic dust in the air causing the sunset colors had been right. There'd been a period of seismic activity, with volcanoes erupting all over the world and spewing dust into the air. That dust not only colored the sunsets and sunrises, it made the world warmer. Somewhere massive icecaps had begun to melt and gone on melting, pouring water into the seas until they started to rise and swallow the land. One by one, the people whose lands were vanishing beneath the water had to flee, fighting their way along as they searched for new lands. A grim picture.

Blade let no hint of his thoughts appear as he went on. «I shall gladly teach you as much as I can. I have little chance of returning to my homeland. By the time the Kargoi have learned to build great ships, I will be dead or far too old for the voyage. Perhaps by that time the anger of the gods will also be no more, so that when the Kargoi and my people meet, they will do so in peace.»

«We can indeed hope for an end to the anger of the gods,» said Paor with a sigh. «I wish we could do more than hope.»

They rode on in silence for another hour. Then the horizon ahead began to show squat black shapes. In a few more minutes they were in sight of the camp of the Red People of the Kargoi.

The camp was laid out in a circle, a circle formed by more than three hundred immense wagons. Each wagon was a high-sided rectangular box, about thirty feet long and ten feet wide, set on four pairs of large solid wheels. The two pairs in front were smaller than the pairs in the rear. They were attached directly to the yoke and could swivel to steer the wagon. Each wagon was covered by a straight-sided canopy of heavy canvas.

The wagons formed a double circle nearly a mile in diameter. Between the inner and outer circles was a space about a hundred feet wide. In that space Blade saw tents with decorated poles from which banners flew, campfires whose smoke reeked of dung, blacksmiths and wheelwrights and other craftsmen hard at work. Warriors greased boots and weapons, mothers nursed babies, older children ran about, naked or wearing only leather breechclouts.