The Day of Their Return

V

Each nomad Train, a clan as well as a caravan, wandered a huge but strictly defined territory. Windhome belonged in that of the Brotherband. Ivar had occasionally seen its camps, witnessed raffish performances, and noticed odd jobs being done for local folk before it moved on, afterward heard the usual half-amused, half-indignant accusations of minor thefts and clever swindles, gossip about seductions, whispers about occult talents exercised. When he dipped into the literature, he found mostly anecdotes, picturesque descriptions, romantic fiction, nothing in depth. The Aenean intellectual community took little serious interest in the undercultures on its own planet. Despite the centuries, Dido still posed too many enigmas which were more fascinating and professionally rewarding.

Ivar did know that Trains varied in their laws and customs. Hedin led him across a frontier which had no guards nor any existence in the registries at Nova Roma, identified solely by landmarks. Thereafter they were in Waybreak country, and he was still less sure of what to expect than he would have been at home. The yeoman took a room in the single inn which Arroyo boasted. “I’ll stay till you’re gone, in case of trouble,” he said. “But mainly, you’re on your own from here.” Roughly: “I wish ’twere otherwise. Fare always well, lad.”

Ivar walked through the village to the camp. Its people were packing for departure. Fifty or so brilliantly painted carriages, and gaudy garb on the owners, made their bustle and clamor into a land of rainbowed storm in an otherwise drab landscape. Arroyo stood on the eastern slope of the hills, where scrub grew sparse on dusty ground to feed some livestock. The soil became more dry and bare for every kilometer that it hunched on downward, until at the horizon began the Ironland desert.

Scuttling about in what looked like utter confusion, men, women, and children alike threw him glances and shouted remarks in their own language that he guessed were derisive. He felt awkward and wholly alone among them—this medium-sized, whip-slim race of the red-brown skins and straight blue-black hair. Their very vehicles hemmed him in alienness. Some were battered old trucks of city make; but fantastic designs swirled across them, pennons blew, amulets dangled, wind chimes rang. Most were wagons, drawn by four to eight stathas, and these were the living quarters. Stovepipes projected from their arched roofs and grimy curtains hung in their windows. Beneath paint, banners, and other accessories, their panels were elaborately carved; demon shapes leered, hex signs radiated, animals real and imaginary cavorted, male and female figures danced, hunted, worked, gambled, engendered, and performed acts more esoteric.

A man came by, carrying a bundle of knives and swords wrapped in a cloak. He bounded up into the stairless doorway of one wagon, gave his load to a person inside, sprang down again to confront Ivar. “Hey-ah, varsiteer,” he said amicably enough. “What’d you like? The show’s over.”

“I … I’m lookin’ for berth,” Ivar faltered. He wet his lips, which felt caked with dust. It was a hot day, 25 degrees Celsius or so. Virgil glared in a sky which seemed to lack its usual depth, and instead was burnished.

“No dung? What can a townsitter do worth his keep? We’re bound east, straight across the Dreary. Not exactly a Romeburg patio. We’d have to sweep you up after you crumbled.” The other rubbed his pointed chin. “Of course,” he added thoughtfully, “you might make pretty good nose powder for some girl.”

Yet his mockery was not unkind. Ivar gave him closer regard. He was young, probably little older than the Firstling. Caught by a beaded fillet, his hair fell to his shoulders in the common style, brass earrings showing through. Like most tineran men, he kept shaved off what would have been a puny growth of beard. Bones and luminous gray eyes stood forth in a narrow face. He was nearly always grinning, and whether or not he stood still, there was a sense of quivering mobility about him. His clothes—fringed and varicolored shirt, scarlet sash, skin-tight leather trousers and buskins—were worn-out finery demoted to working dress. A golden torque encircled his neck, tawdry jeweled rings his fingers, a spiral of herpetoid skin the left arm. A knife sat on either hip, one a tool, one a weapon, both delicate-looking compared to those miniature machetes the Landfolk carried.

“I’m not—well, yes, I am from Nova Roma, University family,” Ivar admitted. “But, uh, how’d you know before I spoke?”

“O-ah, your walk, your whole way. Being geared like a granger, not a cityman, won’t cover that.” The Anglic was rapid-fire, a language coequal in the Trains with Haisun and its argots. But this was a special dialect, archaic from the nord viewpoint, one which, for instance, made excessive use of articles while harshly clipping the syllables. “That’s a rifle to envy, yours, and relieve you of if you’re uncareful. A ten-millimeter Valdemar convertible, right?”

“And I can use it,” Ivar said in a rush. “I’ve spent plenty of time in outlands. You’ll find me good pot hunter, if nothin’ else. But I’m handy with apparatus too, especially electric. And strong, when you need plain muscle.”

“Well-ah, let’s go see King Samlo. By the way, I’m Mikkal of Redtop.” The tineran nodded at his wagon, whose roof justified its name. A woman of about his age, doubtless his wife, poised in the doorway. She was as exotically pretty as girls of her type were supposed to be in the folklore of the sedentary people. A red-and-yellow-zigzagged gown clung to a sumptuous figure, though Ivar thought it a shame how she had loaded herself with junk ornaments. Catching his eye, she smiled, winked, and swung a hip at him. Her man didn’t mind; it was a standard sort of greeting.

“You’ll take me?” Ivar blurted.

Mikkal shrugged. Infinitely more expressive than a nord’s, the gesture used his entire body. Sunlight went iridescent over the scales coiled around his left arm. “Sure-ah. An excuse not to work.” To the woman: “You, Dulcy, go fetch the rest of my gear.” She made a moue at him before she scampered off into the turmoil.

“Thanks ever so much,” Ivar said. “I—I’m Rolf Mariner.” He had given the alias considerable thought, and was proud of the result. It fitted the ethnic background he could not hope to disguise, while free of silly giveaways like his proper initials.

“If that’s who you want to be, fine,” Mikkal gibed, and led the way.

The racket grew as animals were brought in from pasture, stathas, mules, goats, neomoas. The dogs which herded them, efficiently at work in response to whistles and signals from children, kept silence. They were tall, ebon, and skeletally built except for the huge rib cages and water-storing humps on the shoulders.

Goldwheels was the largest wagon, the single motorized one. A small companion stood alongside, black save for a few symbols in red and silver, windowless. Above its roof, a purple banner bore two crescents. Mikkal sensed Ivar’s curiosity and explained, “That’s the shrine.”

“Oh … yes.” Ivar remembered what he had read. The king of a band was also its high priest, who besides presiding over public religious ceremonies, conducted secret rites with a few fellow initiates. He was required to be of a certain family (evidently Goldwheels in the Waybreak Train) but need not be an eldest son. Most of a king’s women were chosen with a view to breeding desired traits, and the likeliest boy became heir apparent, to serve apprenticeship in another Train. Thus the wanderers forged alliances between their often quarrelsome groups, more potent than the marriages among individuals which grew out of the periodic assemblies known as Fairs.

The men who were hitching white mules to the shrine seemed no more awed than Mikkal. They hailed him loudly. He gave them an answer which made laughter erupt. Youngsters milling nearby shrilled. A couple of girls tittered, and one made a statement which was doubtless bawdy. At my expense, Ivar knew.

It didn’t matter. He smiled back, waved at her, saw her preen waist-long tresses and flutter her eyelids. After all, to them—if I prove I’m no dumb clod, and I will, I will—to them I’m excitin’ outsider. He harked back to his half-desperate mood of minutes ago, and marveled. A buoyant confidence swelled in him, and actual merriment bubbled beneath. The whole carefree atmosphere had entered him, as it seemed to enter everybody who visited an encampment.

King Samlo returned from overseeing a job. Folk lifted hands in casual salute. When he cared to exercise it, his power was divine and total; but mostly he ruled by consensus.

He was a contrast to his people, large, blocky-boned, hooknosed. His mahogany features carried a fully developed beard and mustache. He limped. His garb was white, more clean than one would have thought possible here. Save for tooled-leather boots, crimson-plumed turban, and necklace of antique coins, it had little decoration.

His pale gaze fell on Ivar and remained as he lowered himself into an ornate armchair outside his wagon. “Heyah, stranger,” he said. “What’s your lay?”

Ivar bowed, not knowing what else to do. Mikkal took the word: “He tags himself Rolf Mariner, claims he’s a hunter and jack-o’-hands as well as a varsiteer, and wants to come along.”

The king didn’t smile. His gravity marked him off yet more than did his appearance. Nonetheless, Ivar felt unafraid. Whether dreamy runaways, failed adults, or fugitives from justice, occasionally nords asked to join a Train. If they made a plausible case for themselves, or if a whim blew in their favor, they were accepted. They remained aliens, and probably none had lasted as much as a year before being dismissed. The usual reason given was that they lacked the ability to pull their freight in a hard and tricky life.

Surely that was true. Ivar expected that a journey with these people would stretch him to his limits. He did not expect he would snap. Who could await that, in this blithe tumult?

There passed through him: In spite of everything they suffered, I’ve heard, I’ve read a little, about how those guests always hated to leave, always afterward mourned for lost high days—how those who’d lasted longest would try to get into different troop, or kill themselves—But let him not fret when all his blood sang.

“Um-m-m-hm,” Samlo said. “Why do you ask this?”

“I’ve tired of these parts, and have no readier way to leave them,” Ivar replied.

Mikkal barked laughter. “He knows the formula, anyhow! Invoke the upper-class privacy fetish, plus a hint that if we don’t know why he’s running, we can’t be blamed if the tentacles find him amongst us.”

“Impie agents aren’t city police or gentry housecarls,” the king said. “They got special tricks. And … a few days back, a clutch of seethe-heads affrayed a marine patrol on the Wildfoss, remember? Several escaped. If you’re on the flit, Mariner, why should we risk trouble to help you across Ironland?”

“I didn’t say I was, sir,” Ivar responded. “I told Mikkal, here, I can be useful to you. But supposin’ I am in sabota with Terrans, is that bad? I heard tinerans cheer Emperor Hugh’s men as they left for battle.”

“Tinerans’ll cheer anybody who’s on hand with spending money,” Mikkal said. “However, I’ll ’fess most of us don’t like the notion of the stars beswarmed by townsitters. It makes us feel like the universe is closing in.” He turned to Samlo. “King, why not give this felly-oh a toss?”

“Will you be his keeper?” the seated man asked. Aside to Ivar: “We don’t abandon people in the desert, no matter what. Your keeper has got to see you through.”

“Sure-ah,” Mikkal said. “He has a look of new songs and jokes in him.”

“Your keeper won’t have much to spare,” Samlo warned. “If you use up supplies and give no return—well, maybe after we’re back in the green and you dismissed, he’ll track you down.”

“He won’t want to, sir … King,” Ivar promised.

“Better make sure of that,” Samlo said. “Mikkal, the shooting gallery’s still assembled. Go see how many lightsweeps he can hit with that rifle of his. Find some broken-down equipment for him to repair; the gods know we have enough. Run him, and if he’s breathing hard after half a dozen clicks, trade him back, because he’d never get across the Dreary alive.” He rose, while telling Ivar: “If you pass, you’ll have to leave that slugthrower with me. Only hunting parties carry firearms in a Train, and just one to a party. We’d lose too many people otherwise. Now I have to go see the animal acts get properly bedded down. You be off too.”