Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

How long, Tilja wondered, since those ditches had first been cut and the land made fertile? Centuries, she guessed. Again, just as she had in the little warded room in Ellion’s house, she felt the size and weight and age of the Empire. All those generations of toilers coming out of their shabby huts morning after morning to spend their days turning the selfsame water hoists, the ropes and buckets wearing out and being replaced, the men and women growing old and dying, never having left these fields, and their children taking up the toil to live the selfsame dismal, empty lives. Standing there, she could feel the Empire around her, above her, below her, before her in time and after, a vast, vague oppression, like a fever dream as huge as the universe.

Alnor woke her from her trance by turning suddenly away from the rail. Tahl led him back to Calico’s side.

“What was that about?” asked Tilja as she took the bridle and dragged Calico into an unwilling walk.

“Just listening to what the stream had to say. It was just local gossip, but you remember Alnor said it might be only our river he could listen to or do anything with? It isn’t. And I could hear it too. Alnor says it’s always easier with two of you, but even so I’m only just beginning to understand ours. Ours giggles and chatters. This one just mutters. But I could hear every word, and it seemed to get clearer and clearer.”

“That was you two pulling the magic in, just listening to it,” said Meena. “Not that I could hear what the water was saying, but I could feel the power starting to get sucked in round us, just like one of those dust devils Lananeth was telling us about. And if I could, so could anyone else who’s got the gift. Strikes me we’re going to need to watch our step pretty well all the time, if we can make something happen like that without us even meaning to.”

Alnor grunted agreement. Tilja stared around as she walked on. She had, of course, felt nothing, but she didn’t doubt what the others were saying. And Meena was right. Yes, now she remembered that just before Alnor had turned away from the rail, she’d been gazing at a woman in one of the fields a couple of hundred yards away, who’d straightened from her hoeing and stared toward the strangers on the bridge. In the daze of her trance Tilja had sensed that the movement meant something. Perhaps that woman too had felt what Meena had felt, an ingathering of magic, starting to swirl into a shape, like a dust devil.

While they were eating, a man came round the booths, stopping at all the occupied ones in turn. He was burly, with a short, square beard, and wore a strange, square hat with a heavy brim. He carried a sort of pike in his hand and had a long knife stuck into his belt—the first real weapons Tilja had ever seen.

“Going south?” he asked when he reached their booth. “To Goloroth?”

“We go to Talagh,” said Alnor.

“Good,” said the man. “I am Zovan. I lead the convoy. Your place is seventh in the line. The fee is one forin for the token, plus four for the bribe, plus two.”

This was, amazingly, the correct amount. Tahl counted out the coins and Zovan gave him a wooden token.

“Be ready,” he said. “We leave at sunrise, and those that aren’t there get left. We won’t be going that fast—there’s some on their way to Goloroth—but we don’t stop if you fall behind. We don’t like losing folk but once you’re off the convoy it’s not our lookout if you find yourselves dumped at the roadside with empty pockets, and the kids taken off to be sold. Got it?”

“We have it,” said Alnor, confidently. The man nodded and moved on.

In the gray dawn light they found their place, about a third of the way from the front of the convoy. Zovan came round collecting the tokens. Eight or nine other men, armed as he was, were scattered along the line. Right at the back came a group of several elderly people and an equal number of children, paired off, old and young. Calico was the only horse in the convoy.

The way station lay between the small town of Songisu and the foot of the Pirrim Hills. Sunrise flung its gold light along their upper slopes, leaving deep-shadowed folds between the spurs. The frontier of light seemed to race toward the plain as the world tilted into day. Zovan shouted. A guard clattered his wooden paddles together. The gates of the way station were heaved open and the convoy filed out toward the hills.

As Zovan had promised they went at an easy pace, and slower yet as the road began to climb. Alnor, born to mountains, strode effortlessly up, but Calico was stupid and balky, trying to stop and browse at every clump of wizened stalks beside the way. Tilja was weary with dragging and driving when at midmorning Zovan called a halt to let the old people at the back catch up.

“That’s the worst of the climbing,” he told them, “but from now on you’ve got to stay together. And if you do fall behind, don’t give up. Keep going. We’ll be stopping a couple more times, so you’ve a good chance of catching us up, but not if you sit down by the road waiting for someone to come and help. It’s a long way to Goloroth, remember, and you’ve only just started. Those of you that are going south’ll get a day’s rest the other side of the hills. And now’s the time to say good-bye to the North West Plain, any of you that won’t be coming back. This is the last you’ll see of it.”

Tilja rose and looked north. As they’d wound up the hillside the distances had seemed to spread and spread behind them, and now from this height she felt that she ought to be able to see as far as could be seen before the curve of the world hid all that lay beyond. But no. Where were the mountains, that even from the southern fringe of the Valley at Woodbourne seemed to tower above it? Gone, gone beyond sight, and the Valley itself and the forest. You wouldn’t have known they were there.

But they are, she told herself. And I’m not saying good-bye to them. I’m going home .

The fog came down without warning. At one moment they were under clear skies on an almost level track that had been winding for several miles along the bottom of a valley, wooded with ancient pines. Next, they rounded a corner and could see nothing beyond a soft pale wall of cloud and the shadowy loom of the next few trees. The line jostled to a halt as the cloud rolled over them. Tilja could no longer see the head of the column nor, looking back, the tail of it. Zovan’s call echoed through the murk.

“Happens up here, this time of year. Nothing to worry about. Close up and keep up. All here? March.”

The guards repeated the orders down the line. The pines and the fog swallowed their voices.

They plodded along through the dankness, Tilja leading Calico with her eyes on the back of the man in front of her. She could barely see the next person along the line. The track was well kept and she wasn’t watching her footsteps, so she was utterly unprepared when Calico’s bridle was wrenched from her grasp and something massive rammed into her shoulder and sent her sprawling forward and sideways. She broke her fall on her elbow and scrambled up.

Everyone seemed to be shouting. Calico was lying on her side with her hoofs flailing as she struggled to rise, but a piece of loose rope that must have been lying on the path had somehow wrapped itself round her legs and brought her down, and now it was refusing to let go. Meena was lying on top of Alnor on the bank beside the path. Alnor’s right foot was trapped under Calico’s saddle. Tahl was trying to snatch at the rope. The rest of the convoy was beginning to edge round on the other side of the road, desperate not to get left behind.

Tilja had once seen Ma deal with Tiddykin when she’d caught her foreleg in some loose brushwood and fallen and panicked as she’d tried to kick herself free. Tilja yelled at Tahl to wait, grabbed the bridle, turned and sat heavily down on Calico’s head, hissing as loudly as she could between tongue and teeth, and calling her by her name. Calico heaved once more, then gave up as Tilja clung on. Tahl darted in and unwrapped the tangling rope.