The Torian Pearls

Chapter 6

The camp was laid out in a circle, a circle formed by more than three hundred immense wagons. Each wagon was a high-sided rectangular box, about thirty feet long and ten feet wide, set on four pairs of large solid wheels. The two pairs in front were smaller than the pairs in the rear. They were attached directly to the yoke and could swivel to steer the wagon. Each wagon was covered by a straight-sided canopy of heavy canvas.

The wagons formed a double circle nearly a mile in diameter. Between the inner and outer circles was a space about a hundred feet wide. In that space Blade saw tents with decorated poles from which banners flew, campfires whose smoke reeked of dung, blacksmiths and wheelwrights and other craftsmen hard at work. Warriors greased boots and weapons, mothers nursed babies, older children ran about, naked or wearing only leather breechclouts.

In the center of the circle Blade saw a solid mass of drends. They were unmistakably the same species as the beasts the warriors were riding, but obviously bred for pulling instead of riding. They were half again as large as the riding drends, thicker in the legs, and with only one blunt point on each horn. Their necks and shoulders looked as massive as the Rock of Gibralter and were galled and darkened by yoke and harness.

Blade started to count the wagon drends, reached three hundred, then gave up. With six or eight drends to each of the wagons, plus spares, that meant between two and three thousand wagon drends.

Two or three riding drends were tethered to each of the wagons in the outer circle. At least twenty mounted warriors were riding slowly around the whole circle. Blade noticed that each carried a staff with a red pennant on the end and a small skin drum slung on one hip. Paor called one of the riders to him and sent the man off to bring word of a stranger's arrival to the other baudzi.

Paor and Blade rode on toward the wagons. Halfway around the circle, a party of nearly naked men was at work under the supervision of several guards. They were pulling away piles of brush from between two pairs of wagons, leaving a gap. Half a dozen mounted warriors rode in through the gap and started herding the wagon drends out to graze. The great beasts lumbered out slowly, swaying like drunkards and making little hoots and muttering noises from deep in their throats.

Blade had somehow expected that the wagons of the Red People would be painted that color. The wagon bodies and wheels were actually dirty brown or gray, and the canopies were ugly blotched patterns of brown and green. Ugly, but also good camouflage. The wagons would be hard to see from far away, and at night they would be almost invisible from any distance. Only the wheel hubs were painted red.

Definitely the Kargoi seemed to be a people well organized to search out a new homeland and fight to win and hold it when they arrived. Blade began to suspect he was in for a more than usually interesting time, here among the Kargoi in this Dimension of drowned lands and spreading swamps.

Paor took Blade to his own wagon and left him there, under the politely watchful eyes of several of Paor's clansmen.

«The women of my wagon know that you may eat meat at their fire if it is your wish,» he said. «You may also drink from the water skins that hang below the wagon. Do not drink the kaum-the fermented milk of the she-drend. That is only for proven warriors.»

«I do not think it will be long before I drink kaum and eat meat at the fire of the warriors,» said Blade with a polite smile. «I will drink the water, but I think I would rather not eat with the women.»

«Is that wise, if you wish to be strong enough for your test?»

«It is wise enough. The Kargoi seem an honorable people, and their baudzi more honorable still. Therefore I judge they will not wait until hunger makes me weak, but will test me soon. If this is so, I can hardly fail the tests.»

«You have great faith in yourself,» said Paor. His eyes narrowed. «Or perhaps you have some doubts about the strength of the Kargoi. Do not let such doubts grow, Blade. That would be unwise, and there is no place for the unwise among warriors of the Kargoi.»

«That is as it should be,» said Blade. «I have no doubts about the strength of the Kargoi. Neither do I have doubts about the strength in war of my own people, the English. Often they have fought off opponents greatly outnumbering them. I was a principal warrior among the English. Not a chief, but the most valued warrior of one of the great chiefs. So I do not think I will seem weak or helpless, even facing warriors as strong and wise as the Kargoi.»

Blade crawled under Paor's wagon and drank from the water skin until he was no longer thirsty. Then he climbed into the wagon and tried to make himself comfortable inside.

He didn't succeed. The air inside the wagon was thick with a dozen different odors, each one worse than the last. Dry rot poorly-cured leather, rancid grease, spoiled milk and still more spoiled cheese, human sweat, and human filth-at that point Blade stopped trying to pick out the separate odors. He also felt half a dozen different kinds of vermin that crawled, leaped, or crept about.

Ignoring the tempting smell of roasting meat, Blade climbed out of the wagon. He picked a patch of dry grass that was reasonably free of drend-dung, lay down, and went to sleep.

He awoke in the middle of the afternoon, feeling hungry but otherwise refreshed, and strong enough to fight three Kargoi warriors with one hand tied behind his back.

He drank some more water and looked around. No one seemed to be paying any attention to him, so he started to explore the great camp, looking and listening as he went.

No one could mistake Blade for one of the Kargoi, not with his full head of hair, his beard, and his fairer skin. Everyone also appeared to believe that anyone wandering around the camp, Kargoi or not, had a right to be there. No one stopped him, and few were at all careful of what they said in his hearing. So Blade learned a good deal that afternoon.

The Kargoi were divided into three Peoples-the Red, the Green, and the White. The Greens and the Whites were following routes across the plain farther to the west. That was to ensure ample grazing for all the many thousands of drends. Mounted messengers rode back and forth among the three columns each day.

The Kargoi numbered about twenty-five thousand, divided almost equally among the three Peoples. Each of the Peoples was in turn divided into five to eight clans, each with its own baudz or War Guide and traung or Wagon Guide.

Of the twenty-five thousand, about a quarter were warriors. About half of these could be mounted on riding drends, while the rest fought on foot or from the wagons themselves. There were also free craftsmen and a class of laborers who were hardly better than slaves. There were women in proportion to the men, many children, but only a few babies.

There seemed to be no old women, and the only old men were those highly skilled in some craft that did not demand strength or swiftness. Blade thought he knew what had happened to the old people, and it was not a pleasant thought. When the Kargoi started off in search of their new homeland, the old people had been left behind, to drown or starve. Or perhaps the Kargoi had shown more mercy and killed them outright?

So the Kargoi had set out in search of their new home. Each wagon was virtually a self-contained home for twenty to thirty people. It carried tools, clothes, bedding, weapons, household shrines, everything they'd chosen to carry away from the homes now sunk beneath the rising sea.

Practically everything else the Kargoi needed was provided by the drends. The beasts drew the wagons and carried the mounted warriors. Their meat and milk fed everyone, from warriors down to newly weaned infants. Their hides became clothing, harness, and a hundred other things. Their sinews became thread, their bones and horns were tools and needles. Nothing was wasted. Even a slaughtered drend's tail usually ended up as the tassel of some mounted herder's staff.

In short, the Kargoi seemed to have everything-except the hope of a future that would have made them happy. They were launched on a journey into the unknown. At the end of that journey there might be a new homeland, as good as the one they'd left. There might also be nothing but a barren desert, a steaming, disease-ridden jungle, or a battle against a people who could sweep the Kargoi away like children.

In spite of all this, Blade heard a good deal of laughter as he walked around the camp. But it was brittle laughter. The Kargoi seemed to be a people who laughed because otherwise they might weep. That was courage of a very high order, and more and more Blade began to hope he could do something important to help them.

Blade returned to Paor's wagon as the raw colors of sunset began to spread across the sky. Again he drank water, ignored the smell of roasting meat, and got ready to sleep on the ground.

He was just pulling the cloak over himself when Paor returned. He looked down at Blade, amusement flickering across his face.

«You fear the clan ghosts in our wagon?» The smile took any insult out of the words.

Blade sat up. «No. The warriors of England worship the Earth Wisdom, among other things. So before a battle or an ordeal, we sleep upon the ground, to draw upon the Earth Wisdom.»

«I see,» said Paor. «Well, you would do well to draw on it-heavily. We will be staying in this camp for some days, to prepare for our march along the shore. So your testing will take place tomorrow.»