passion for Chaka.
She stood about an inch taller than he, dark-eyed and mysterious. That she had been a priest added to her exotic aura.
Meantime, Chaka demonstrated an impressive range of abilities. She was an accomplished forester and marksman. She was at home around horses, and seemed capable of walking everybody else, even Quait, into the ground. Although she had been distracted during the first couple of days, a more amiable spirit had emerged once they were well under way.
Cold rain settled in as, on the ninth day, they approached Argon. Had he been with his detachment, Quait knew what the mood would have been. But only Flojian showed any inclination to grumble, and he usually caught himself quickly and stopped. They reined up at Windygate, the last accommodation below the city, and consequently their final evening in beds. They checked in, relired to their rooms, and scrubbed down, luxuriating in the hot water. At dinner that evening, Quait detected a sense of expectancy and possibly of nervousness. Tomorrow they would connect with Wilderness Road, which would take them east, away from civilization. Into the eternal forest.
This was also the evening during which they got into an altercation with an oversized cattle trader who’d had too much to drink. His throat was scarred and he needed dental work. His face looked as if he’d been hit by a plank. But he visibly drooled over Avila. Quait, walching from his chair, felt his muscles bunch and remembered a remark a comrade had once made: Never pick a fight with a three-hundred-pounder who has broken teeth.
The cattle trader was sitting at the next table. He grinned at Avila and raised his stein in an elaborate toast. “How about you and me, gorgeous?” he asked. “Shake off these creeps and you can have a man.”
Before Quait could respond, Flojian leaped to his feet with both fists clenched. “Back off,” he snarled.
Avila iried lo inlervene. “I can handle this myself,” she said.
The trader casually set his beer down. “Stay out of it, dwarf,” he told Flojian. He grinned at a friend as if he’d just said something amusing, and signaled for somebody to refill his stein. The friend was only moderately smaller, but every bit as ugly. A boy hurried over and poured cold beer until it overflowed and ran down onto the table.
The trader turned his snag-toothed stare on Flojian, daring him to say more.
“You owe the lady an apology,” sputtered Flojian.
“The lady needs a man,” he sneered. “If you want to show what you can do, porkchop, I’m right here.”
Damn, Quait thought. He got up.
But Flojian, to his surprise, knocked the beer into the trader’s lap. That was a mistake, of course. Quait knew that if you have to initiate hostilities against a dangerous opponent, do it with a view to taking him out with the opening salvo.
The trader roared to his feet, wiping his soaked trousers, and came around the table after Flojian. Flojian went into what he thought was a fighter’s crouch. But Quait had to give him credit: He didn’t back away.
Everything happened at once. The trader cocked his right fist, which looked like a mallet for driving tent pegs; Quait borrowed the pitcher from the young man (who had hovered within range to watch the action) and brought it down over the trader’s head; and Avila broke a chair across the shouders of his companion, who had got up a little too quickly. The battle was effectively over from that point. The waiters, who also served as peacekeepers, arrived armed with short clubs. Quait got knocked in the head for his trouble, and the trader (who no longer knew where he was) absorbed a solid blow to the shin. He was taken to the back for repairs and later returned to his table, still glassy-eyed.
As was common practice in that relatively civilized time, the peacekeepers announced to both sides there would be an additional charge for their trouble, apologized if they had seemed to use undue force, and implied that further hostilities would be treated severely. The evening proceeded as if nothing untoward had occurred.
Later, Avila found her opportunity to take Flojian aside. “I appreciated your defending me in there,” she said.
Flojian stared back at her. ‘I’d have done the same for any woman.” .
Wilderness Road was a Roadmaker highway, twin tracks through the forest, rising into eastern hills and fading finally the horizon. It was built on a foundation of concrete and asphalt, which was usually buried by as much as a foot of loam. Often, however, the loam had worn away and the concrete gleamed in the sun. That the highway was still usable, after all these centuries, was a tribute to the engineering capabilities of its makers. Chaka tried to imagine what it had looked like when it was new, when hojjies rolled (by whatever means) along its manicured surface. Behind them to the northwest, the towers of Argon loomed in the midafternoon haze.
They camped on the roadway that night, enjoyed rabbit stew provided by Chaka and Quait, and listened to the sounds of the forest. Avila produced a set of pipes, and Quait a Walloon (a stringed instrument), and they serenaded the wildlife with ballads and drinking songs. Silas made the first field entry in his journal, and Avila dispensed with her nightly prayer to Shanta.
That was a difficult decision, because she knew hazards lay ahead, and all her instincts demanded that she place her life in the hands of the Goddess. But she rebelled. My hands, she thought. It is in my hands, and if I’m going to get through this, I’d better remember it.
Flojian was feeling extraordinarily good about himself. He had twice stood up to loudmouths now. Not bad for a man who reflexively avoided conflict. He had been replaying the incident while they traveled, watching himself challenge the giant, discovering the special kind of joy that an act of courage can bestow. When things go well.
His father would have been proud. As Avila had been proud.
Flojian had always ascribed his problems with his father to the fact that Karik had simply not thought much of his son. Flojian had taken no interest in the Roadmaker mysteries, no interest in their cities, no interest in the past. He had never walked through the ancient corridors in which his father had spent most of his intellectual life.
His mother had died when he was two, and Karik had never found time for the child. He’d grown up moving around among aunts and cousins. Your father’s excavating a Roadmaker church in Farroad, they would tell him. Or, they found some odd hojjies south ofMasandik, and he’s trying to figure out what they are. So he’d resisted the Roadmakers and the Imperium and the library and everything else his father believed in. Just as well. It was all nonsense anyhow. Ironic that he would wind up on this idiot expedition. But the suspicions that had for years engulfed his father’s reputation also cast a shadow over Flojian, and consequently over the business. He saw no real choice. Nevertheless, Karik would have approved of his presence. And that fact annoyed him.
There was a sense of excitement that evening, of finally being on the quest. Tomorrow they would reach the League frontier, and shortly thereafter encounter the first markings left by Landon Shay. The adventure was beginning, and there was an almost mystical sense of crossing out of the known world.
This was also their first night under the stars. Flojian drew the watch while the others drifted off to sleep. Armed with a revolver, he slipped into the darkness, checked the animals, and circled the camp. The threats posed by highwaymen or by renegade Tuks had receded in recent years, but he was not one to take security for granted. He noted off-road avenues of approach, but did not believe anyone could get close without alerting the horses.
When he returned to the fireside, only Avila was still awake.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked. He still felt uncomfortable in her presence, but he was determined to tolerate her.
“No, thank you.” Her face was ruddy in the firelight. “Big day tomorrow.”
Flojian nodded.
“May I ask you a question?” she said.
“Sure.”
“Are you a believer?”
“In the gods?”
“Yes.”
He glanced at the sky. The moon was a misty glow in the treetops, and the stars looked far away. “Yes,” he said. “Without them, there’s no point to existence.”
She was silent for a time. “I’d like to think they’re out there somewhere,” she said at last. “But if they are, they’re too remote. They shouldn’t complain if we neglect them.”
“Even the Roadmakers believed,” said Flojian. “They left chapels everywhere.”
“What good did it do them? They’re gone. Everything they accomplished is gone.”
The fire was getting low, and Flojian threw a fresh log onto it.
