Destiny's Road

Two hundred-odd years ago. Best to keep that in mind too. Was the sea higher in that age? Were there storms to make the shore a death trap?

Something had persuaded Cavorite to leave the sea.

Water and tea leaves and a glass jar were kept on the wagon roof. During the day it would be warm and fragrant and ready to drink. Tim filled five big mugs and shared them out, then refilled the jar.

Merchants had their secrets, and questions about Cavorite were not welcome. Tim kept his silence. He'd learn about Cavorite. He'd learn why merchants would rub up against anyone along the Road, except in the Shire and Spiral Town. The secrets in Spadoni and Tucker wagons didn't interest him, but he'd learn why merchants kept them hidden. There were questions he hadn't thought of asking yet, and he'd learn those too.

A river ran in S-curves, broad and shallow, across the caravan's path. Tim could see no sign of a bridge.

Tim lay on the roof with his head over the driver's alcove. He pointed ahead and asked, "How do we pass that?"

Damon looked up from where he was cleaning their guns. "The Spectre? You'll see."

They were all clutching big mugs of sun-warmed tea. Joker was driving, Shireen beside him, their heads a little below his. Neither looked up as the old woman prattled.

"Lucia Doheny? She doesn't have a family. It's just her-"

"She did, though," Joker said.

"Oh, yes. Doheny wagon was the infirmary before I was born, but it used to be at the tail, until Lucia's man and father and boy and girl were killed by... I can't recall."

"An animal?" Tim asked. "Bandits?"

"Bandit town, I suppose-"

"Wasser Township!" Damon snapped without turning around. A few moments later he said, "They're gone now, of course. That's their graveyard upslope. It's what reminded me."

There was nothing to mark a graveyard here, and nothing to mark a town ahead or behind, unless... a certain linearity to the chaos downslope.

"Yes, Wasser," said Shireen. "They were buying stuff as we went past. Not buying much. All crowded around Doheny there at the tail, but we didn't notice anything until they all pulled knives. Lucia was on the roof. That saved her. Brenda Small saw what was happening back there and we came. They killed Morris and Boris and tore ~their way in and got Wendy and, and, I can't remember, the little boy. But we got there in time to save Lucia."

Damon: "So Lucia reinforced Doheny wagon. Built it like a safe. Turned it into a refuge. Oh, and it's heavier than the rest of the wagons, so Doheny always has twenty chugs even if they have to come off another wagon."

Shireen: "A lot of Wasser Township got away. They bothered us for years after."

Damon: "We burned their village, though. Most of their graves weren't marked, but we flattened those too."

Both front wheels went over a bump.

When the rear wheels bumped, Tim was at the roof's edge to see what happened. The Road humped, just a bit, in a little ridge. Cavorite must have stopped here and then resumed, and what was the ship doing in between?

But Doheny wagon was arcing around, off the Road. Spadoni wagon's chugs were following Doheny around one curved arm of the river. That seemed far more interesting to Tim.

"Damon, what are they doing?"

Damon looked around. "Turning off for Haunted Bay."

"Damon, is that whole stretch of coast Haunted Bay?"

"Sure. Baytown is just downslope."

The bay stretched around in a ragged arc, and Tim remembered the maps. He suddenly realized what he was seeing.

The arc was a hundred and ten klicks around, he remembered that. The middle of that arc, unseen, was the Neck. Beyond that... he was looking at the mainland.

The trail down didn't match the curves of the Spectre River, but it had its own switchbacks. It was unpla

Tim wondered if they would leave the wagons. But the chugs must be fed, and they were two klicks uphill from their clientele, so the whole caravan came picking their way down.

There was a bridge. Doheny's chugs were already plodding past it. The river was wide here, and the bridge was too, with two sturdy feet in midstream. This didn't look like Cavorite's work. Impressive, but crude.

The nearest houses were not far below the bridge.

They'd been noticed. Women and children were coming up to meet them. Joker and Senka and Rian descended to keep shop while Damon drove.

The river splayed out into a salt flat cut by bifurcating streams, twenty or thirty before they reached the sea. Near a hundred houses crowded this side of the river. On the far, northwest shore was nothing but sand beach, and a line of posts, and an eroded shape like a shallow dish set on the sand. Tim knew that shape. Cavorite must have settled on its drive flame.

The southeast shore was sand. Inland was a stand of Earthlife trees, just a bit too green and regular, as if tended: possibly a graveyard. Better leave that alone, but there were scrub trees growing elsewhere, dusty green among the Destiny colors. Tim saw that he could make fire pits and find firewood.

That was how they would cook, no problem, if Haunted Bay didn't cook for them.

Out on the water... those tiny shapes were boats. Twenty, thirty, more: narrow, pointed at both ends, with white sails above.

The houses spoke a community of two or three hundred. They were squarish, well made, built wide of the river delta and well back from the sea, leaving a beach scores of meters wide. Tim counted more than thirty boats. None were on the water.

Now, where were the men?

"Tim," Damon said, "keep the children occupied, will you?"

"Mmm. So their mothers can buy in peace?"

"They buy when we're leaving. Now they just want to see what we've got."

In Twerdahl Town and elsewhere they might have wanted that too. Their wish had not been granted there; why here? But Tim only asked, "What are they expecting, a magic act?"

"Can you do that?"

"No. I could show off my surfing? Nope, not that either." There were no surfers on the water, and in fact Haunted Bay was as flat as a sheet of glass, barring the boats and a thousand white riffles.

Show off a bicycle? Tim Bednacourt didn't have one and perhaps shouldn't know about them.

He shrugged elaborately, and Damon grimaced. "Get them to lecturing you. You're good at that."

The children exclaimed over Tim's scrimshaw. Three or four had seen Otterfolk skulls, or claimed to, and one said he'd seen a shark skull. He got them talking about themselves.

A little girl pointed. "That's where we live, see? The little house between two big ones."

Tim asked, "Why are they only on this side of the river?"

She stared at him, astonished. An older boy said, "We can't build houses on the other side. That's where the Otterfolk come to trade. Mother says they like the water near river mouths. Salty, but not real salty."

Tim watched, and nodded. Houses along the river had access to fresh water. Southeast, that stretch of beach would feed the chugs. In between was the delta: diluted salt water. "Is that where the Otterfolk live?"

The girl nodded vigorously. An older girl said, "There, and there," waving toward thousands of square klicks of water, west and northwest.

Joker was suddenly among them, dropped from the wagon roof. "Won't have to worry about sharks here," he said. "Water's too fresh for 'em. Hi, Carlene!"

"Hi, Joker!"

Joker set to stowing items that ibn-Rushd wagon was getting in trade. Tim asked the little girl, "You know Joker?"

"Since I was little. Mom says he's my father. What's it like, being a yutz?"

"So far so good. I haven't really had time to find out. Carlene, what's that huge dish?"