The Autumn Caravan
We've found some animals that look like little armored Volkswagens.
-Grigori Dudayev, senior M.D.
Something about the position of the sun on his cheek brought Jeremy Winslow gently awake.
He was dozing upright in the driver's alcove. Harlow was driving. Behind them on the roof, Tanya Hearst kept watch with Steban, the new yutz they'd picked up in Haven. They weren't paying much attention.
In this territory, they needn't. There was farmland on both sides, and large houses sparsely set. People who feared bandits didn't build like this.
It was all new. This must have been wilderness when last he'd seen it. Jeremy wondered if he would recognize the New Hann Farm.
The sun: it was midafternoon, almost time to quit. A caravan doesn't hurry. If they didn't reach Warkan's Tavern tonight they'd make it tomorrow.
Some pointed structure poked up from the Road, too far ahead to make out.
Jeremy looked downslope, a mere half-klick to a strip of sand and then water dark with Destiny devilhair weed. It all looked strangely familiar. He still didn't know where he was until somebody far ahead shouted, 'Warkan's Tavern!'
Angelo Hearst climbed up from the sales window to see. The word bounced down the caravan's length to Hearst wagon, and Angelo's bellow sent it on, while Jeremy stared ahead in befuddlement.
-Oh, of course, he'd been looking for Carder's Boat! which had been there forever, until-
He'd last seen Carder's Boat moored offshore of Tail Town. Haunted Bay fishermen used it as a dock. It had swarmed with children on the day the caravan rolled through.
He'd come home... but fifty meters past the just-visible façade of Warkan's Tavern, a slender triangular arch stood above the Road. In the Road. A gate, or a barrier.
Harlow was bringing the wagon to a stop. It took a while for the chugs to get the idea, but the message was welcome. Wagons behind were stopping too. The lead wagons wanted a little more space first. If you made chugs bunch up, they wouldn't bring in as much weed and wouldn't get enough to eat.
Locals were gathering on the hills above Warkan's Tavern. They knew: merchants did no business now.
Hearst wagon (#6) was at a halt. Harlow and Jeremy gave the reins the practiced flip, flip, flip that freed the chugs. A good trip: they still had all twenty.
The spring caravan had come back somewhat shot up. They'd found and obliterated a bandit nest, they said. Obliterated: maybe. Bandits hadn't bothered the autumn caravan.
The chugs drifted downslope.
Angelo dropped straight from the roof, showing off for his wife. Jeremy eased on down, then gave a hand to Harlow, who didn't need it, and Tanya, who didn't either. Wave Rider's pit chef always did that. It irritated Angelo and amused Steban.
On the roof Steban threw open the sides of the wagon, then came down to help the others deploy cookware. Miller wagon's people (#8) were doing the same.
The dark line of chugs had reached the sand.
Hearst wagon carried Tanya and Angelo Hearst, Angelo's grandfather Glen, and the Winslows. Five merchants meant room for only one yutz. Miller cookwagon carried three yutzes to make up for that. Glen Hearst made small concessions to pay off the debt.
Thus: the caravan would be here two nights. Not all could afford to dine at Warkan's Tavern or go into town, but it didn't take both cookwagons to cook dinner. Hearst wagon would cook on the first night.
The line of chugs flowed into the waves.
Jeremy and Harlow moved well together, unloading and deploying tools, hanging an ostrich and four chickens the hunters had shot. At this their steady efficiency and decades of practice made them the best in the caravan. Yutzes from all the wagons were gathering Destiny firewood and digging out the pits.
Something was bothering Glen Hearst. He spent less time supervising than in looking toward town, or the Tavern, or- Far up the Road, two electric wagons approached. Jeremy glanced that way from time to time as he worked. Atop one he picked out the glitter of Begley cloth. The wagons stopped short of the pointed structure, and men began unloading them.
The barrier stood just at the border between Warkan's Tavern and Bloocher Farm.
'Glen, what is that thing?'
'Never saw it before.'
Hearst and Miller wagons had made all reasonable preparations for dinner, and no sign of chugs. The fires in the long pits were beginning to catch.
'Mind if I go look?'
'Set up the tents first.'
Jeremy and Harlow exchanged glances. Jeremy hadn't meant now! There was time to break out the tents and set them up, but not to walk most of a klick, almost as far as Warkan's Tavern! Glen knew that. What had made him so touchy?
They busied themselves setting tentpoles and deploying tents and inflating pillows, until a long black line of devilhair weed rolled out of the sea. Then all the traders and yutzes dropped their work and returned to their wagons. As the chugs emerged pushing devilhair ahead of them, Hearst wagon's crew settled on the roof with a liter of lemonade and their guns.
The chugs fed placidly. Then they all broke off at once and rolled uphill.
Six long low shapes darted from the water, all at once and wide apart. Only six. A few guns sounded: overeager yutzes, quickly silenced. Four sharks stopped at the black weed.
Two came on. The caravan fired, one long roll of thunder. The two fell. Four sharks darted from the weed and into the next wave.
Two lay dead. Jeremy was pretty sure he'd hit one. A few yutzes were still firing into the shredded bodies.
It wasn't just Glen Hearst. The elders were in a fury. At dinner they gathered in a small, tight circle. They fell silent when yutzes came to serve them.
Harlow and Jeremy approached the circle and were rebuffed.
Yutzes did most of the work of serving dinner. Jeremy only had to get it off the fire while it wasn't yet charred. In dying orange light he stopped to look at one of the dead sharks. They were too chewed up to show detail. He'd look up LUNGSHARK if he ever reached another library.
The light was dying, and so were the coals. Jeremy set his pan of pureed cherries and gelatin where the.heat wouldn't char it. He'd practiced that, and ruined several batches during the training period. He'd brought gelatin and honey and twenty pounds of seeds to roll it in. All along the Road he'd found fruit to make jell. Every batch of festivity was different.
Harlow was watching him. She said, 'I think your festivity candy was what really put us here. It made us just that extra notch more desirable.'
'You're very desirable.' He kissed her.
Harlow gestured toward the circle of elders; lifted one brow. Harlow didn't like being treated as a child.
He said, 'Maybe when you're older, dear.'
'We're Glen Hearst's age! Let's eavesdrop?'
'No safe way. Love, the yutzes know how to clean up. Let's go look at that gate.'
Warkan's Tavern was full of light and activity as they strolled past. At the edge of Bloocher Farm, they stopped beside the arch. It was poured stone in a cast-iron frame. It straddled the Road, narrower than a caravan wagon.
The chair beneath it was made of iron and poured stone, though lined with pillows. As Jeremy approached the man in the chair stood up, tall and massive, though armed with no more than a stick at his belt.
Harlow asked, 'Are we barred from Spiral Town?'
The man didn't respond. Jeremy touched Harlow's hand: Take it easy. He reached into his special pocket for three thumbs of candy. 'Try this.'
