Loaf rolled his eyes. “Fool boy. We’ll get there.” They left the outfitter behind. Rigg knew that by telling him the truth about their destination, but only after acting stealthy about it, the man would assume that they were lying, and so would the soldiers who questioned him. And even if General Citizen decided to believe the Wall was their destination, there was a lot of Wall.
Soon the buying was done. It was late enough in the day that they couldn’t very well begin their journey in earnest. But the ostler and the outfitter both recommended several different roadhouses on the way out of town. They reached the second one before full dark, and stayed the night, Param in one room, with the door stoutly barred, and the four men and boys sharing the bed and floor in the other. “If anybody so much as scratches at your door in the night,” said Loaf, “you set up a holler and we’ll have him in a moment.”
Param shook her head. “If someone tries to break in, they’ll only find an empty room,” she said.
Loaf looked startled, but then remembered what she could do, and sighed and shrugged. “It’s a strange world we live in now.”
The farther out into the country they went, the more unusual their expedition was. They weren’t on a main road between important cities, but on a road used mostly for bringing crops and trade goods to market, or for visiting among neighbors. Sometimes the road wasn’t a road at all, but a few ruts here and there in a meadow or pasture, and Loaf had to ride ahead on the fifth horse to see where the road picked up again, so that Olivenko would know where to drive the carriage.
“We’re too memorable,” said Olivenko one morning, after they had set out from the house of a prosperous farmer who had given Param a room in the house and the rest of them space in the barn. “Maybe for the first few days, Citizen’s outriders were searching for the two royals, or for the royals and their privick friends, a boy and an old soldier. But soon enough they must have found out about your buying of the carriage, and then they’d have a better count of us five, and the carriage makes it easy to follow us. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re only a day behind us, especially with us stopping each night for sleep in an inn or tavern or house.”
“At least we’re off the main roads,” said Umbo.
“All the more memorable we are then,” said Loaf. “You’re making his point, lad.”
“What can we do?” asked Rigg. “If we sell the carriage or give it away, then they’ll find out about it and know they’re not looking for a carriage any more.”
“Could we hide it somewhere?” asked Umbo.
“Maybe,” said Olivenko.
“No,” said Loaf. “I know what I would do as a soldier tracking somebody, and there’s no chance you could hide it where I couldn’t find it.”
“True enough,” said Rigg. “Father and I were both good trackers.”
“You with your paths,” said Umbo.
Param spoke up then. “I think Umbo is right, we have to hide it.”
“And then what will you do, Param?” asked Rigg. “Have you ever ridden a horse?”
“As a little girl, I remember once,” said Param, and then she smiled. “I know I’m the reason we’re going so slowly and being so obvious-the carriage is for me because I couldn’t even run a hundred steps without panting, back there in the city on the day we escaped.”
Rigg nodded with a shrug. “We are what we are, Param. No one gave you a chance to build up any stamina.”
“But build it I shall,” she said. “And the carriage is no help to me. So hide it.”
“Where?” asked Olivenko.
“How?” asked Loaf at almost the same moment.
“In the past,” said Param.
Rigg was disgusted that he hadn’t thought of it himself. “Far enough in the past, and either somebody finds it and steals it, or it sits there and rots in the rain and wind for a hundred years and Citizen’s men are sure it isn’t the one we’ve been using.”
They picked a place where the road led along the crest of a gentle hill, sloping down a mile or more to streams on both sides. Soon the horses were free of the traces and hobbled in the meadow on the left side of the road, grazing peacefully, three of them loaded with their provisions, expertly bundled and tied to their backs by Loaf.
“Sorry I don’t know how to do any of this,” said Olivenko. “In the city guard we didn’t have much need for loading and unloading animals.”
“As Rigg said, we are what we are,” said Loaf.
“All right, then,” said Rigg. “The four of us will go back into the past and push the carriage off the road. If we can get it rolling free down toward the stream, it’ll look like an ancient accident. Param can stay with the horses.”
“And I’ll stay with her,” said Umbo.
“You’re not very big, but you can still do your share,” said Loaf.
“I’m not going into the past with you,” said Umbo. “Not if we mean to get back to the present where Param will be waiting for us.”
Rigg was surprised. “Why would that be a problem?”
Umbo looked at Loaf. “Remember what happened when we dug up the stones? At O?”
Loaf nodded. “That’s right. When Umbo goes himself, and handles things in the past, he doesn’t go right back to where he was. He was a day off, a day early.”
“And that was after going back only a few months,” said Umbo. “Who knows how far off I’ll be if we go back a hundred years. Or two hundred. What if I miss by a month?”
“So you wait here with Param,” said Rigg. “But that raises another question. When I pushed Param into the past, I put her hand into the hands of people to whom that time was the present. Whom will we be giving the carriage to?”
“Can’t we just take it back there and then let go of it?” asked Loaf.
“This sounds so crazy,” said Olivenko. “Straight out of the Library of Nothing.”
“I don’t know,” said Rigg. “I’m not even sure if we can ‘take’ something that’s bigger than we are. Why not put our hands on a mountain, go into the past, and then leave the mountain there? Why doesn’t the ground come with us every time we move through time?”
“Our clothes come with us-which I for one think is convenient,” said Param.
“I think the ground, and things attached to the ground, they stay in the present because time is tied to the world,” said Umbo. “Remember, Rigg? Otherwise time travel would mean dropping yourself into the middle of the space between stars, right?”
“So is the carriage attached to the ground?” asked Rigg. “Would we have to lift it up all at once?”
“Not likely,” said Loaf, “not if we have to hold hands with each other like we did when we were going back to join Olivenko in his time.”
“Let’s stop talking and try it,” said Rigg.
In a few moments, he and Olivenko and Loaf were tightly gripping the carriage at various points, using their right hands, while gripping each other’s left hands in a three-handed knot.
Rigg searched for a useful path, more than a hundred years old. He found one-a cow that had moved through the meadow across the road from where they meant to push the carriage. “All right, Umbo,” he said.
He felt the familiar change as the paths on the road started to become people-walking, riding horses. But he didn’t let himself get drawn into focusing on any of them. Instead, he kept his eyes on the path of the cow. It moved very differently, and was harder to get a hold on. Rigg had never done this with an animal before, and now he realized how difficult it was. It was as if the smarter brains of people made it easier for him to latch on to them. The cow was elusive. Just a little vague, though the image was always clear enough. Like trying to see through sleepy eyes at the first light of dawn.
But he locked in with the cow soon enough, and saw the world change around him. The cow was behind a fence now. There were fences on both sides of the road. Rigg hadn’t counted on that. This area used to be more populated, and what were now meadows had once been pastures. The road was also more trafficked-instead of being mostly grass, it was mostly dirt and stones.
“Are you seeing the fences?” asked Rigg.
“Yes,” replied both Loaf and Olivenko.
