East of Murgin, the River Del swung far to the north to join the Gomilbata before turning east once more. Thus, though they had come weary miles from the river in reaching the Hill by Gerenhodh, they had to go a much smaller distance to reach the Del near its confluence. There, where it separated the vast grasslands of the cattle herders from the northern lands, the Del spread into a wide, shallow basin which the horses and wagons could cross on winter’s ice. Leona drove them toward that fording relentlessly. They reached the river after dark in a night unlighted by moon or stars, with rain clouds hanging heavily over the Savus Mountains and the air breathing of storm.
‘We will cross tonight,’ she said to the scouts, shutting off their objections impatiently. ‘By torchlight. By candlelight. By feeling our way if necessary. Tonight it will rain, and the floodwaters of the mountains will come down the Gomilbata in black torrents. You have seen it year after year. We will cross tonight.’
Cross they did, with the horses slipping on the ice, the drovers swearing, the children crying, the young women snapping at each other as they tried to keep stored food and bedding inside the wagons while they kept themselves and their charges warm and dry. Torches guided them away from patches of thin ice where dark water gurgled and bubbled. When all had crossed, Leona pressed on, not letting them stop until the last wagon had been dragged over a sheltering rise and circled into an encampment far beyond the river. Then she walked among the sullen, exhausted travellers. ‘Sleep. When we wake, you will be glad we came this far tonight. Rest. In the morning you will see a sight.’
They woke to see Gerenhodh hidden behind cloud and a vast muddy lake stretching where they had come, a lake tossing wildly with angry water and into which black floods came bearing an endless foamy litter of storm. The scouts who had argued with Leona the night before had the grace to look ashamed of themselves, and there were more than a few mumbled apologies to which Leona paid no attention. Instead, her eyes searched the clouds obscuring Gerenhodh as though she would see across the miles to know what happened there. At last, sighing, she turned away and gave the order to move the train once more.
‘In ordinary times,’ she told the scouts, ‘we would go south to Das, then to Dierno, then east to the Unnamed River, following that to its source in the World Wall Mountains. We would find food among the cities of the plain. The cities are now closed and dangerous, therefore we will scout a trail south-east through the unsettled lands until we come to the River of Hanar. Remember, this is called “the land of the cattle herders.” The herds move across this grassland accompanied by men and by fighting dogs to guard the herds. It is said, “The dogs of the herders are the walls of the herds.” They are huge, vicious, dangerous, those dogs. So stay away from them. Find us a level way, near water, so that we are not seen. Task enough, I should say.’
For a small part of that day the children were sufficiently tired or cowed by strangeness to be quiet. By evening the quiet had gone. By morning, Leona knew it would not return. She grew alert to the sounds of the children, to their movements and habits as she would have studied the sounds and habits of wolves or deer. Shortly she began to know them, to name them. Lithe Nilla, always followed by a train of little ones, dark and silent, able to disappear among the grasses like water. Fat Bombaroba, steady on the march as one of the harness beasts, fair hair plastered to his moist, round head, little mouth pursed as he searched the horizon. The other children made fun of Bombaroba, but they listened when he spoke. There was noisy, complaining Sharba, Tinine the comforter, two sturdy ones often in demand for rounding up the littlest, Dath and Dorme. There were hundred, like and unlike. She came to know them.
The younger Sisters were scarcely older than the oldest children, many of them cradling babes at the breast. None of them were old. All the middle-aged and older ones had stayed behind. Looking at her charges cynically, Leona thought she might as well have had a thousand children to guard and ware for. Then she caught a glimpse of one of the grey-haired scouts coming wearily back to camp after a full night in the saddle. No, she thought. Not all children. Mimo whined at her knee, and she stroked him. Werem was pretending she was a puppy again, pursuing three screaming children in a race through the tall grass, watched tolerantly by a Sister with a round, capable face. Not all children, she thought again.
She joined the scouts. ‘The voices of children can be heard for great distances,’ she said. ‘I trust we are out of range of wary ears?’
One of the oldest shook his head. ‘We could gag ‘em, ma’am, and lead ’em in chains, and they’d still find ways to make a racket. Little devils. There’s nothin’ half day’s ride ahead or to either side. We’ll stay well out, though, to be sure.’
The night scouts ate and went to sleep in the creaking wagons while the day scouts took their places. The train wound slowly south and east across the endless plains, rising and falling with the swells of the prairie, the un-dulant horizon before them moving from crest to shallow crest. Spring flowers peeped through the brown grass, green at the roots where new blades
