Sweet Silver Blues

50

Vasco and Saucerhead also went into the wagon, with a moderately carved-up soldier on the driver's seat. Doris insisted he was capable of helping Marsha pull. Fine. Let him if he wanted. Let him bleed to death. I wasn't his mother.

Mrs. Garrett taught her boys never to argue with grolls.

We put the women on horseback. Everyone else would walk, like it or not.

We were ready to head out when Morley summoned me to his boulder. "Bring the spyglass."

When I got there I heard it. It came from the direction of the cave. I trained the glass. There was barely enough light. "The ones who came out can't get back inside."

"Oh, my. Isn't that sad." Then he muttered something else, and pointed.

"Oh, my twice or thrice," I said. "I guess this means we slip out the back door."

"Yep. Papa's coming home. Jodie goes out the window and keeps moving fast. It won't take him long to figure we got out again."

I could hear them now as well as see them. "I never saw so many in one mob before. He must have rounded up his whole tribe." I guessed there were at least five hundred centaurs. Their advance was a movement of precision to be envied by any cavalry commander. They changed directions and formations as easily and quickly as a flock of birds, and with no more apparent signaling.

"Let's not sit here talking about it while they just prance up and grab us."

"Good thinking." We got moving.

Zeck Zack and his people didn't interfere with us at all, though I'm certain their scouts knew where we were. We hastened eastward as fast as we could hoof it, with me sort of hanging around the rear, staring at backs, wondering which, if any, was the major.

News of Glory Mooncalled's adventure had reached every cranny of the Cantard. The land was coming to life. Three times we went into hiding while soldiers passed. They were all headed south. The smallest lot were Venageti rangers. No telling what they were up to when they heard and decided to head home. I didn't care as long as they didn't want to include me in their game of kings.

Morley and I both watched our companions more closely than we did the rangers. The major, if he was with us, didn't give himself away. Not that I expected him to, but I wasn't missing any chances.

We kept on until everyone was stumbling, and kept on still. What Zeck Zack might want to do with us we had no idea, but he had no cause to be friendly. And there were the other perils of the Cantard, which Glory Mooncalled had conjured to life like a shower livens the plants of the desert. It seemed we couldn't go five miles without some sort of alarm. The nights were more friendly than the days.

We reached the abandoned mill without falling into misfortune. I began to feel optimistic. "We'll rest here a day or two," I announced.

Some of my comrades by circumstance wanted to argue. I told them, "Take it up with the grolls. If you can whip them, go do what you want." I wasn't feeling a bit democratic.

The only would-be sneak-off was Rose.

I had to give the little witch credit for being stubborn and determined. No matter what, she was going to keep after Denny's legacy until she got it. She worked on Morley, but he had reached a state where he had nothing on his mind but watercress sandwiches. She worked on Saucerhead, but he had signed on with my squad and the gods themselves couldn't have moved him until I released him. She worked on Vasco, but he was completely introspective, interested only in going home. She worked on Spiney Prevallet, but he said he'd had his fill of pie in the sky by and by and told her to go to hell.

She decided to take the future by the horns herself.

I caught her with a sharpened piece of firewood trying to decide the best place to stick it into the bundle containing Kayean. I'm afraid I lost my temper. I sprawled her across my lap and applied the stick to her posterior.

Morley said, "You should have left her with her spiritual family."

She gave him a look to sear steel.

I think his remark hurt her more than the spanking, though a person of her temperament was the sort to turn the thrashing into a grudge worth nursing for years. It sent her off to sit alone and reweave her skein of self-justification. Come the next night, while we were waiting for Dojango to come back with a report on our standing in the city, she decided to go her own way.

Morley reported her defection. "Shall we let her go?"

"I guess not. Chances are she'd get herself enslaved or killed, and I have an obligation to her family. We know she won't learn from experience, so there's no point letting her suffer for education's sake. And if she did get through, she'd just set us up for something unpleasant."

Tinnie was sitting beside me, her shoulder half an inch from mine. We'd been rehashing those things men and women talk about when they have other things on their minds.

"You really ought to ditch her, Garrett." Morley sighed.

Tinnie said, "His conscience wouldn't let him. And neither would yours, Morley Dotes."

He laughed. "Conscience? What conscience? I'm too sophisticated to have one and Garrett is too simple."

I said, "Go get her, Morley. And put hobbles on her."

Once he had gone, Tinnie asked, "Would he really let her... ?"

"Pay him no nevermind, Red. We talk that way. But it's just talk."

Rose was not fighting when Marsha lugged her back into the circle of light cast by our fire. The fight was out of her. Morley came to report, "She ran into something out there. We scared it off. She won't say what it was, but you might consider a double watch and maybe a prayer for Dojango."

"Right." I took care of it and resumed my seat, considering Rose across the fire, feeling moody.

Tinnie touched my arm and said, "Garrett, when we get home... "

"If we get home is soon enough to talk about when we get home." It came out more curt than I'd intended. She fell into a silence as sullen as my own.