Destiny's Road

"What do they say?" Senka demanded.

"Love a merchant, never get over it." He was guessing, but not wildly. It was a thing Loria might have concealed, and a thing a merchant woman might like hearing.

Senka was nodding. "But you can't spend the whole circuit wondering about Cavorite and Otterfolk, can you? You'll wonder what you're missing."

"Loria's wondering right now, back in Twerdahl Town."

She searched his face. "You asked her to come? She must be flattered, Tim. But we wouldn't take her."

"I wasn't thinking."

"Would you like a visitor tonight?"

She might not see his nod. "Yes, very much."

Her hand caressed his ear, and then she walked into the dark.

Haron Welsh had come home with no interest in Twerdahl women. That was Loria's fear.

A man wasn't expected to resist a merchant woman.

And Tim was burning to learn why. And yes, he was burning.

In the night a woman came to him. He knew a woman's rich scent that wasn't Loria's, that wasn't quite human. The dark hid everything but that.

She talked. They talked, voices in the dark, puffs of her sweet breath on his face. It made him self-conscious for a time, and then somehow it felt right. They moved together and peeled layers of gauzy cloth off each other. Then he was talking to a woman while they made love. It felt kinky, delicious.

Jemmy Bloocher was a virgin when he left Spiral Town. What he knew of sex was what the older boys told. Later he learned what the married men were willing to say.

Loria Bednacourt had taught Tim Ha

But Senka knew things he had never heard spoken.

They were making a lot of noise, his hoarse shouts, her wild laughter. In a moment of quiet he heard a distant chuckle, Joker's, and a querulous mumble, Shireen's.

In the morning she was gone and he must move.

Breakfast was always the same. Fires, woks and bread dough, chugs and sharks. Quicksilver didn't show at all: for these few days it would be behind the sun. Put the gear away, then share out the bread. The caravan was in motion before he saw any of the family.

Senka greeted him cheerfully from the steering bench. Shireen and Joker leered. Rian wouldn't look at him.

Tim Bednacourt had kept no secrets last night.

The morning looked like coming rain. He lay on the roof and thought.

When Loria let him go with the caravan, she hadn't asked him to be faithful. It seemed nobody would expect him to do that... nobody outside of Spiral Town.

Spirals and merchants never mixed. They even danced separately in the Road outside Warkan's Tavern. What was wrong with Spiral Town?

Hybrid vigor: merchants mated with everyone along the Road. They were trained at love, and everyone came to know it. Except in Spiral Town.

On the strength of that alone, for a moment Senka had guessed what he was.

It was the eighth day since Tim Bednacourt had joined the caravan. Something was different. The hunting parties never moved out of sight, and what they brought back was skimpy. The drivers released their chugs in order, first to last, so that they could bring the wagons closer together.

On the eighth night Tim fell asleep hoping that Senka would come; but he slept dreamless and woke alone on a gray and drizzly morning.

He'd half-expected that.

She'd acted to keep peace in the caravan. Now that problem was solved; and after all, the woman had a husband; and if Damon's knowledge of lovemaking matched her own....im Bednacourt had better make breakfast.

On this ninth morning the wagons got an early start. Chefs handing out bread must walk farther to reach the lead wagon.

Tim had trouble describing what he'd noticed, but Bord'n knew what he meant. "Open territory. They're thinking about bandits," he said.

Again the hunters stayed close through the day. And again the wagons released their chugs first to last, to draw the wagons together; but the first chugs slowed and waited, so that the entire line of chugs entered the water in a wave.

Again on the tenth morning the wagons, too close together, must hook up their chugs each wagon in turn. Lead wagons got an early start.

Tim mounted to the driving alcove. Joker, Rian, and Senka crowded the bench. Shireen must be resting in the cabin. Tim climbed to the roof. It had been cozy, all five of them huddling in the cabin with rain drumming outside. Better than this.

Joker climbed up to join him. He opened the hatch and burrowed within. The rain had become a steady fall, and Tim asked him, "Shall we go below?"

"No. Here."

Tim took what he was handed: two handfuls of bullets for his silk pouch, and then a hat with a brim half a meter across, with a great gaudy feather stuck in the band. No, not a feather: an orange-and-scarlet Destiny weed such as he'd never seen before, a stalk that split repeatedly into a tremendous plume.

The guns were crude cast iron, but these bullets showed sophistication. Bullets could not be carefully hoarded ancient treasures, after all. Somewhere on the Road, someone was making bullets.

The drizzle suddenly turned into a torrent. It was too noisy to talk. It wasn't cold, but Tim would have preferred the cabin. The chugs ahead faded into a silver blur. Chugs plodded out of the blur aft.

Joker waited for the lull, then bellowed, "This is bandit country. Bandits love to hit us in the rain."

"What do I look for?"

Joker stared. Was Tim Bednacourt speckles-deficient?

Tim shouted, "Joker, suppose I look out into that murk and I see something human. Is that a merchant or a yutz or a local or a bandit? How do I know? What do I shoot?"

"Oh. All right, look for the hats. A hat with no cockade is a bandit. Shoot it. These cockades molt, so they don't lasts more than one trip. Hard to steal. There aren't any locals."

"Can't bandits just pick their own cockades?"

"They don't grow here. Tim, if you see a cockade, don't shoot. We've got patrols ahead and behind. Father's in the lead patrol!"

"Could a bandit strip the hat off a dead merchant?"

Joker sighed. "I guess you just have to give him first shot. Or follow my lead."

The rain turned noisy again. Tim could see the wagon ahead, and a hint of the wagon behind and its chugs plodding endlessly out of the rain.

"What do you know about these bandits?"

"Tim, there's nothing to know. Whatever you learn, it won't be true the next time you come by. Now go guard the other side."

Tim crossed to the right side of the roof. Joker stayed on the left. The rain continued steady.

Rian climbed out of the driver's well and took a position at the aft edge of the roof, cross-legged, with a gun in her lap.

In the dark to the side of the Road: something moving?

The rain slacked for a moment. Clearly those were man-shapes ru

Rian was next to him, propped on her elbows and firing as his gun ran empty. Joker held his position on the left. One man was ru

Too noisy to hear the roar, too rainy to see the flash, but someone was shooting back.

Tim could see bodies in the Road as the chugs passed them. He could count four. Oh, damn, one was dressed as a caravan yutz!

It was Randall! Randall was dead in the Road.

"They got us," Rian said.

Tim said, "Hell, no. We got them." Three to one or better.

Rian wriggled across the roof and was talking urgently to her brother.

Ibn-Rushd wagon was slowing, and, incredibly, the chugs behind were pulling Dodgson wagon around to pass. And now Tim saw that the line of chugs ahead of him was broken.