head sort of hung there in the air, its hood flared. I’m no naturalist, but I know a cobra when I see one. They turn up from time to time in the city, but this was the first time I’d seen one up close outside a street show. It watched me, its tongue flicking slightly. I wanted to call out to the others but didn’t dare. Could snakes hear? I didn’t even know that. I turned my head to face it and felt like I was about to pass out.
“Don’t look at it.”
Garnet was behind me. I hadn’t heard him approach. “They spit venom into your eyes,” he said. “Look down and back off slowly.”
“They spit venom?” I muttered, fear making me stupid.
“Just back away,” hissed Garnet, rather like the snake.
I moved and the cobra reared another few inches and made a gasping, hostile sound like Mrs. Pugh on rent day. Garnet slipped between me and it with his ax in his hand. I edged back, then scrambled away and watched Garnet staring at it. It was a good ten feet away but looked big enough to strike most of that distance. Shielding his face, he too backed off, towards me. When he reached me and the snake lowered itself to earth I spluttered, “Why didn’t you kill it?”
“It wouldn’t have harmed you so long as you kept your distance.”
“And if it comes back?”
“We’ll be sleeping,” said Garnet. That was supposed to be reassuring. He added, “It can’t eat anything as big as us so it will only strike at us if we threaten it. How can we threaten it if we are asleep?”
Great. So we would be sharing our camp with all manner of reptiles, which was fine so long as we didn’t move and force them to kill us all.
“Snakes have worse social skills than you,” I remarked. “I can’t believe you didn’t swing for it while you had the chance. What do you carry that ax for if you never use the bloody thing?”
“Oh,” he replied menacingly, “I use it, all right.”
They put me on first watch. I asked what I was supposed to do and Renthrette, her lips curled with the contempt she reserved for me, said, “You watch.”
That was really helpful. So I spent an hour sitting by the dying fire looking around through the night and reflected on the day. I had washed in a bucket of warm water until it was cool and brownish. I had eaten two raw carrots and some stewed mutton and potatoes flavored with the herbs Orgos found hereabouts. Not bad, but not duckling. Though I had presumed that Renthrette would do the cooking, she had left it all to Mithos and Orgos while she repaired a broken wheel spoke on the wagon, just to prove me wrong. The two men worked silently together, used to each other. How long had they been together? Ten years? More, perhaps. Ten years of tents and wagons and bloody snakes and swords. They must be out of their minds.
And I was with them. I had relieved myself in the bushes, drunk from a smelly waterskin in the wagon, and shot my little crossbow over and over until I could hit a tree at twenty paces every other time. I had been reprimanded by Mithos for bringing green wood and for shooting at live trees. I had been vaguely threatened by Garnet and ignored utterly by his good-looking sister. If things didn’t change soon, I was going to make a real pig’s ear out of the rest of my life.
I had watched Renthrette and her brother unpacking their stuff and laying it out. Everything was meticulously arranged: cooking pots stacked together, rope neatly coiled, horse bridles and harnesses untangled and hung up, mail corselet oiled and laid out, sword at the ready in case of emergency. Renthrette had spent much of the evening stitching some clothing, and I had watched her working with the same careful, regulated focus that typified the pair of them. I looked over to where she had bedded down in a small tent and thought about going to wish her good night, but figured she’d probably knife me as soon as I was in range.
The cicadas and crickets in the treetops buzzed and clicked smugly to themselves. Twice I heard an owl somewhere and tried to find it, wandering around the makeshift tents and trail fodder where the horses lay, but it just laughed at me invisibly. I nodded to Orgos, who lay awake inside the back of the wagon on a pile of boxes draped with the materials that had got us out of Cresdon.
“Have you done your watch?” he said, and his voice was low and hoarse.
“Not quite,” I said. “There isn’t much to watch, and if there was, I wouldn’t see it till it had bitten my leg off. Maybe nothing’s hungry. Garnet’s on next but he’s sleeping.”
“Then leave him be. I’ll do it. I can’t sleep anyway.” He sat up and dropped to the ground, stretching and pulling on his ring mail in an irritatingly easy motion. In the darkness he was just a shadow, save when he looked at me and I saw his eyes bright and clear. Taking one of those long swords of his he wandered over to where I had been sitting and said, “Get some sleep, Will. We have a long way to go tomorrow and we’re going to have to move fast, probably off the road. Whether the Empire comes after us or not, we’re in dangerous country and will be for a while. Sleep tight.
“Funny,” I said. “Thanks.”
SCENE XI Of Gorse and Wild Thyme
I slept under the wagon in a sleeping bag of cotton so thin that I could feel every contour of the hard ground beneath me, and dreamed of the fight in the Cresdon pub when I had met the party. I was back in the chest and the soldier was opening it, seeing me, grinning.
And then.
I couldn’t remember it properly, but there had been a strange amber light.
When I woke, my right arm numb and my back aching, I found myself wondering how my life could have been so screwed up in only twenty-four hours. Half an hour later, Mithos told me in a confiding voice that I wasn’t exactly pulling my weight as far as dismantling the camp was concerned. This was true. I started to tell Mithos that I had a bad back, but he just gave me one of those please-don’t-waste-my-time looks of his and tossed me a canvas bag that felt like it had a cow in it.
So I lugged bags and boxes back into the wagon and Mithos watched and prompted me to the thrilling act of high adventure I might try next: washing the breakfast pans. I fed the horses (at arm’s length). I stamped out the fire and buried the ashes. I put more stuff in the wagon. I wasn’t sure I could take all this excitement.
Orgos re-dressed the wound on my leg, which showed no sign of infection and would be gone altogether soon.
“Morning, Will,” said Garnet unexpectedly. “Will you be riding on the wagon again today?”
“I expect so,” I said guardedly. “Why?”
“Would you mind doing me a favor?”
I regarded him steadily and waited.
“It’s not a big job but my hands will be full since I’ll be riding escort. Some of the armor we acquired in Cresdon needs cleaning up.”
Of course: more menial labor for the party’s mentally subnormal help. He handed me a coarse, heavy sack, which clanked against my legs.
“There’s a wire brush, rags, some oil for the rust and the moving parts, and some polish to finish them off. Do you mind?”
I muttered that it was fine, anything to oblige, and so on, and he beamed at me, guessing how much it hurt.
“Thanks, Will,” he said, his green eyes smiling brightly, “I appreciate it.”
He slapped my arm good-humoredly as if to say “welcome aboard” or something similarly nauseating, and strode off to his horse. He was already in his armor, complete with helm, ax, and a leather-covered shield. He looked like an adventurer. I, however, looked like a metal polisher. I climbed onto the wagon and looked at the sack sulkily.
“Got a job?” said an irritatingly cheerful Orgos as he took his place.
“Of sorts,” I muttered.
“It’ll pass the time,” he laughed, flashing his teeth. “You won’t be wrestling cobras all the way to
