Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

A disdainful sniff was all the answer she got.

Past the Church wagons, Alwir's household and the remnants of the government of the Realm were holding what appeared to be a Chinese fire drill on the steps of the Town Hall. Rudy saw Alde seated in the front of one of the carts there, muffled in black fur, her eyes peeking from the shadows of her streaming hood. On her lap she cradled a great bundle of dark, trailing blankets, in which no round pink baby face was visible; but once he saw the blankets squirm. That would be Tir. Medda, her round face swollen with weeping, clambered up to take her place at the Queen's side. Alde turned her head, her gaze searching the crowd. Across the milling confusion she met Rudy's eyes, then quickly looked away, as if ashamed to be caught seeking sight of him. Beyond her, Bektis was climbing into another wagon, his narrow face framed in a great collar of expensive marten fur, looking down his elegant nose at the bedraggled mob in the square.

Then someone was calling out orders, Commander Janus' harsh, braying battle voice rising above the sluicing drum of the rain and the clamor of argument and preparation. Alwir appeared from around the corner of the Town Hall, mounted on a slim-legged sorrel mare. His great cloak flapped in the wind as he bent from the saddle to exchange last-minute instructions with someone on the ground. The Guards moved into line, a ragged double file on either side of the Chancellor's wagons. Like a kettleful of oatmeal coming at last to a boil, the people in the square, alone or by couples, families, or clans, caught up their few possessions and jostled for a place within that doubled line, or, failing that, as close to its protection as they could get. Those who weren't ready to go yet redoubled their preparations, hastening in the hope of catching up on the road. Whatever their ultimate goal, the north or Gettlesand or Renweth, sticking with an armed convoy was far preferable to taking that long road alone.

Rudy was a little surprised at what a mob there was, once they got out on the road. They moved almost without order, a vast confusion of provision wagons, transport carts for the furniture of Alwir's household and the records of the government of the Realm, small herds of cattle and sheep, here and there coveys of spare horses for those fortunate enough to be riding to Renweth, the shambling rabble of household servants, and the few remaining dooic slaves that an occasional wealthy family had brought out of the ruin of their world. Families straggled behind and around the main body of the royal wagons, with their crated chickens and barking dogs, their pigs and their milk goats; it was astonishing how many families had actually succeeded in holding together through the chaos of the last few weeks, though many of them, Rudy knew, were missing members. Fathers and mothers were carrying the bulk of the load, older children carrying those too young to walk, others leading or driving such livestock as they'd been able to save or acquire. There were not a few grannies and grandpas of startlingly venerable years, too-Rudy wondered how some of those old people had managed to run fast enough to escape the Dark. But they were there, leaning on walking sticks or on the shoulders of their grandchildren or great-grandchildren, chirping to one another with the equable calm of those who have long since ceased being surprised by fate. And as they departed from Karst, that great straggling mob passed an infinitely greater number of half-assembled households, still loading the last of their belongings onto donkey back or dog travois, or trying to sort out the least essential essentials, arguing and watching with apprehensive eyes as the convoy slopped past in the driving gray rain. By the looks of it, Rudy calculated, people would be drifting out of Karst all day.

A mud- spattered old man with a shabby bundle and a stout walking stick fell into step with Rudy as they passed the last outskirts of the town. The path dipped steeply in a treacherous slide of black muck. Rudy's feet slithered on it, and a strong hand grasped his elbow. "Cut yourself a staff from the woods," a familiar scratchy voice advised. "The roads aren't going to get any easier, once we reach the mountains around Renweth."

"We're leaving the mountains, though," Rudy said, picking his way more carefully in the wizard's tracks. "Are these the same mountains we're heading for, or different?"

"Different," Ingold said. "We're picking up the Great South Road outside Gae and following it down the valley of the Brown River, which runs through the heartlands of the Realm. The road up to Sarda Pass crosses it, and we'll take that up into the Big Snowies, the great wall of mountains that cuts the Realm, the lands of the Wath, in two, dividing the river valleys from the plains and the desert of Gettlesand. Renweth stands above Sarda Pass. Watch the ground."

Rudy scrambled over slippery autumn-yellow grasses around a noxious patch of black quicksand. The road from Gae up to Karst had been graded and cut so as to be easily negotiable in good weather, but the constant coming and going of the refugees, combined with the rains and the steady departures that had been taking place from the town since dawn, had reduced the way to a treacherous river of slop. Those refugees who waited until the afternoon to quit Karst would have to wade all the way to the plain. Rudy looked around at the darkness of the misty gray woods and pictured what the land would be like for those who got bogged in the road when night began to fall. He shivered.

"How far is it?" he asked suddenly. "How many nights are we going to have to spend in the open?"

"Close to a hundred and seventy miles," Ingold replied, making his way through the wet brush on the firmer ground at the edge of the roadbed. "Eight or ten nights, if the weather stays good and the Arrow River isn't too high to cross when we get there."

"You call this good?" Rudy grumbled. "I've been freezing my tail off since I came here. I don't think I'll ever dry out."

Ingold held out his hand, and the rain collected, a tiny lake, in his calloused palm. "It could be far worse," he said mildly. "We've had harsh winters these last ten years, with killing snows on the plains beyond the mountains driving the White Raiders, the barbarians of the plains, to attack the settlements out of pure famine. This winter promises to be the worst yet-"

"Fantastic."

"- but it has been noticed that the Dark Ones seem to attack less in foul weather. High winds, heavy rains, or snow seem to keep them underground. Few blessings or disasters come unmixed."

"Great," Rudy said, without enthusiasm. "So we've got a choice of the Dark Ones or pneumonia."

The old man raised his eyebrows, amused. "So which would you prefer?"

They turned a corner of the road, as Gil had done two days before, and the rusty woods seemed to part, revealing below them the dim, tawny plain and, half-hidden in the pearl of the river mist, the ruined city of Gae. Used to the megalopolis of Los Angeles, Rudy found the city very small, but there had been a grandeur to it, a walled unity with which the sprawling, featureless towns of his own experience could not compare. In his mind he pieced it together to put roofs on the burned walls of the close-set, half-timbered houses and leaves on the gray lace of bare branches. He remembered Minalde's low, gentle voice saying wistfully, "Now I'll always remember it in its beauty... "

That thought brought others, and he stood for some time, looking out over the pastel vista of ochre and silver-gray, until a dimming of the noise behind him alerted him to the passing of the convoy, and he thrashed back to the road and hurried to catch them up, plowing his way through torn black mud in which white chicken-feathers were caught like flakes of fallen snow.