Using the tobacco, Brazil managed to trade for some small items he thought they would need, then got a room for them at a waterfront inn, where they spent the night.
The next day they set out early across the trails of Dillia toward the northeast. She had trouble staying back with him, having to walk in almost uncomfortable slow motion. After several kilometers of particularly slow going, she suggested, “Why don’t you ride me?”
“But you’re already carrying the pack,” he protested.
“I’m stronger than you think,” she retorted. “I’ve hauled logs heavier than you and the pack put together. Come on, climb on and see if you can keep from falling off.”
“I haven’t been on a horse since I went to the first Wilson inauguration,” he muttered incomprehensibly. “Well, I’ll try.”
It took him three tries, even with her help, to mount her broad, stocky body that reminded him so much of a Shetland pony. And he fell off twice, to her derisive laughter, when she started to trot. She finally had to put her arms behind her to give him something to hold on to. When her circulation started going, he had to hold on to the much-less-reassuring pack. His own circulation was in no great shape. His legs discovered a hundred new muscles he had never known before, and the agony almost obliterated the soreness of his rump from bouncing.
But they made good time, the kilometers flying by. Near dusk they reached the Dillian border, through the last village and seeing here and there only an isolated farmhouse. It started to snow, but it was only a flurry at first and didn’t really bother either of them.
“We’re going to have to quit soon,” he called to her.
“Why?” she mocked. “Scared of the dark?”
“My body just won’t take much more of this,” he groaned. “And we’ll pass into the Slongorn Hex in a little while. I don’t know enough about it to want to chance it in the dark.”
She slowed, then stopped, and he got off. Pain shot through him but it was the aching sort, not the driving sharpness of riding. She was amused at his discomfort.
“So who couldn’t make the trip because they were too weak?” she teased. “Look at the brave superman now! And we’ve already stopped five times!”
“Yeah,” he grunted, stretching and finding that that only made it hurt in different places. “But that was only so you could eat. Lord! Do you people stuff yourselves!”
And they did, he thought, consume an enormous quantity to support their large bodies.
“Will we have to camp here?” she asked, looking at the darkening woods with no sign of lights nearby. “If we do, we’d better get some good shelter. It looks like the snow may pick up.”
“If that road we passed about a kil and a half ago was the turnoff to Sidecrater Village, there should be a roadhouse not too much farther on.” He checked a frayed and faded map he had in the pack.
“Why not go back to the village?” she suggested.
“Almost eight kils down a dead end?” he replied skeptically. “No, we’ll go on and hope the roadhouse is still in business. But I’ll walk for a while, no matter what!”
As darkness fell the snow did pick up, and started to stick. The wind whistled through the trees, keeping time with the subtle, quiet sound of the snow hitting against trees, bushes, and them.
Visibility dropped to almost zero.
“Are we still on the road?” she yelled to him.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We should have come to that roadhouse by now. But we don’t have any choice. We’d never build a fire in this stuff now. Keep going!”
“I’m getting real cold, Nathan!” she complained. “Remember, more than half of me is exposed!”
He stopped, and brushed the snow off her backside. Insulating layer of fat or not, he realized she couldn’t continue too much longer.
“I’m going to climb on!” he yelled above the wind. “Then go on as fast as you can! We’ve
They pushed forward, he clinging to her back, but it was slow going against the wind. They continued on for what seemed like hours in the blowing cold and darkness.
“I don’t know how much longer I can go on!” she called to him at last. “My ass is frozen solid now.”
“Come on, girl!” he shouted. “Here’s that adventure you wanted! Don’t give up now!”
That spurred her on, but it seemed hopeless as the snow continued to pile up.
“I think I see something ahead!” she shouted. “I can’t be sure—I think my eyes are covered with icicles!”
“Maybe it’s the roadhouse!” he shouted. “Head for it!”
She pushed on.
Suddenly, as if they passed through an invisible curtain, the snow was gone—and so was the cold. She stopped suddenly.
He got off and brushed the snow from him. After a few moments to catch his breath, he walked back several steps.
And back into the blowing snow and cold.
He went back to her.
“What is it, Nathan?” she asked. “What happened?”
“We must have missed the roadhouse,” he told her. “We’ve crossed the border into Slongorn!”
Her body began to thaw rapidly, and painfully. Her eyes misted, then started to clear.
Looking back, she could see nothing but billowing, snowy fog.
In any other direction, the spectacular night sky of the Well World shone cloudlessly around them.
“We might as well camp right here,” he suggested. “Not only am I too tired to go any farther, but there’s no use chancing unfamiliar territory. Anything that might cause us problems is unlikely to be this close to the border, and we always have a convenient if chilly exit if we find any real problems.”
“It’s hard to believe,” she said as he unstrapped the pack and removed a couple of towels, wiping his face and hair, then starting to give her the much more difficult rubdown. “I mean—coming out of that awful storm and into this—winter to summer, just like that.”
“That’s the way it can be,” he replied. “Sometimes there’s no clear dividing line, sometimes it’s dramatic. But, remember, despite the fact that things interlock on this world—tides, rivers, oceans, and the like—each hex is a self-contained biological community.”
“All of a sudden I’m starting to sweat,” she noted. “I think I’ll take these heavy fur clothes off.”
“I’m ahead of you,” he responded, drying her rear and tail. She twisted around and saw that he had removed almost all of his clothing. He looks even punier naked, she thought. You can just about see every rib on his body, even through that carpet of black chest-hair.
He finished and came around to her front. Together they stood and looked at the landscape eerily illuminated in the bright starlight.
“Mountains, trees, maybe a small lake over there,” he pointed out. “Looks like a few lights off in the distance.”
“I don’t think we’re on the road,” she commented. They seemed to be on a field of short grasses. She reached down almost automatically and picked a clump.
“I’m not sure you ought to eat that right now,” he warned. “We don’t know all the ground rules here.”
She sniffed the grass suspiciously. Although Dillians were moderately nearsighted, their senses of smell and hearing were acute. “Smells like plain old grass,” she said. “Kind of short, though. See? It’s been cut!”
He looked at the stuff and saw that she was right. “Well, this is logically either a high-technology hex or a nontechnological one, judging from the pattern I’ve seen,” he noted. “From the looks of things, it’s high.”
“The grass has been cut in the last day or two,” she observed. “You can still smell it.”
He sniffed, but didn’t notice much, and shrugged. He never had much of a smeller despite the Roman nose, he thought.
“I’m going to chance it,” she decided at last. “It’s here, and I need it, and we have two or three days before we’ll get through here.” She took about three steps, then stopped.
