Travellers #2 Read online

  I had wanted to stay there for ever, a Gardener, a Farmer, but now felt Hagar’s old urge – to be a Traveller again. We must leave the Hawk Cliffs, but it wrenched my heart.

  I fed the donkeys all they would eat, even the grain I had in store, building them up for the work that lay ahead, grazing the sheep and goats on the choicest grass because there was no reason now to save it. While they fattened I talked to Hagar and recorded the shambles on the wall of the Painted Cave. Tara running towards me, arms outstretched, the other girl speared, and the two Salt Men. The Metal People’s village burning, Dinny, Sim, and Petra dead. A shuffling Salt Man, head scarred down one side, the bare patch of skin on his temple, the leering squint of his eyes. And a boy with a caravan of animals leaving the Hawk Cliffs, travelling towards the country of ice my father said lay south of the snow-hooded mountains, the land of the mountain that ate the sun.

  Food is sacred to a Traveller: I did not want to tempt fate: I stored in the Painted Cave all the donkeys could not carry. With a heavy pole I dislodged the cliff-face above so rocks poured down concealing the door to the Painted Cave. The ghosts of those buried beneath its floor would protect it.

  The killing fire went out of the sun that afternoon as I bade Hagar farewell and held up my hands to the north, to where Tara lay. In woven panniers the donkeys carried our metal tools. Others carried blankets, tent, woven goods I hoped still to trade with somebody. Potatoes, dried vegetables, venison, smoked trout. We carried so much because there would be no returning. I wore around my neck the green stone fish.

  In the evening light we moved over the grasslands, Lake Top blank-faced to our right. That first Journey, with Hagar, I had been afraid of its huge stare. Now I thought I was abandoning my past, but we were on the move, and it felt good. I recognised old landmarks, places we used to camp. They brought to mind the animals, the parents of our present ones. At a patch of tasty thorned plants, I had the old problem of moving the goats. They seemed able to nibble around the thorns, their mouths tough enough to resist the stings. I remembered them being reluctant to leave the patch in years past.

  It seemed strange, going against the direction of our old Journey. Hagar would have been uneasy. To her there had only been one Journey, always made in one direction, and to depart from that would be asking for trouble.

  Early one morning, before we stopped to shelter from the demon sun, I looked back and saw a column of smoke rise behind the mountain east of the Hawk Cliffs, a white scratch up the sky’s blue wall. North, a white scrawl rose in reply, and another.

  “We moved off just in time,” I told Jak and Jess, but they laughed, tongues hanging out. Het ran beside the donkey which carried a basket with her pups, looking up, whining to their whimpers.

  “I hope the Salt People won’t track us,” I said to her. “They can move faster. The donkeys need to be rested and have plenty of grazing while they’re carrying loads.” Het looked at me, back at her pups, and trotted on.

  Each halt I inspected the donkeys for galling on their backs and where the woven straps went around their bellies. Each evening, when the danger had gone out of the sun, we continued.

  We dropped down and worked our way through the swamps south of Lake Top. One morning we camped beside the Tungaro River where years ago I worked out a clever crossing and where, a lifetime before that, Hagar saw her old father left behind to die alone.

  If we crossed the Tungaro and climbed the northern slopes of the mountains, we were condemned to head west below their white scarp of snow. There were good summer pastures high on the mountains. Deer were abundant, fish in the streams, and ducks, but the soil was thin. It would be difficult gardening. And it was still too close to Squint-face and his Salt People.

  We would have to keep travelling west across the northern slant of the mountains, down the creek, to Towmranoo and its savage river, the Wunger, that I would not dare cross. The animals would die in it. So we could not turn south from there.

  West and north of Wunger was the land of the Falcon People, and they would not let me go a second time. Though Rose, my sister, lived among them, their warning had been death if we returned.

  Even if we managed to get north through the Falcon People’s land, there was only desert and dryness. The Whykatto now dead as the sun-blasted city of Orklun still further north. I thought of Dinny and our plan to plant trees, to defeat the killer sun, bring life back to the Whykatto. I would never see that now. In the afternoon I climbed a hill, looked north up the lake and beyond to where Tara lay, cried her name. My voice vanished upon that huge spread of land and water. Loneliness gripped me, a cold hand.

  Shivering, I descended, loaded the donkeys, rubbing their heads, talking to them. The dogs barked and frisked as we moved off. Not across the cold waters of the Tungaro, not up the scrub and forested slopes where I had shot my first deer and Hagar taught me to weave and dye. During the day I had taken the animals across the river, left a false trail emerging the far side. Now Jak and Jess led them across a sandy beach into the river, leaving fresh tracks and dung, but turned in mid-stream, followed up a drowned shingle bank, and climbed out across solid rock on to the same bank we had left.

  The broad valley of the Tungaro rose between the western knees of the mountains and round-shouldered bush ranges to the east. West, snow bandaged a perfect cone that stood alone before a jumble of white peaks. I whistled Jak and Jess, pointed them ahead. The goats trotted after, sheep bunching behind. I followed with the donkeys. South, up the valley, Jak found a deer track through thick scrub. The woven pack bags scraped, and the scrub sprang back together, a solid wall behind us.

  Before sunrise next morning, we came up out of the scrub and followed a grassy strip above the river, the animals snatching feed as they walked, taking it easy. I thought of my beloved Hawk Cliffs and looked for the land of ice and snow my father had described, the mountain that ate its sun each winter. There must be hard country ahead.

  Chapter 3

  The Burning Mountain

  On our left, hills blurred shaggy beneath trees. We crossed and recrossed the Tungaro, taking only shingle fords. The spring floods were finished, the level low, the water warm as it would ever get. The smallest lambs and kids, and two of the older ones, I carried across. That was one of the few memories I had of Hawk, my father: helping the weak.

  On the move again! We had escaped Squint-face. “We are the Travellers!” I told the animals. And knew the busy life of the Journey kept my mind off Tara’s death.

  The bush withdrew up the sides of the valley. We passed the white cone, moved under peaks that jostled against the western sky. This far south I was tempted to travel later into the day, but kept to our old practice: moving in the hours of light before the sun rose high, and after it lost its scourging fire in the afternoon. It might not be the furnace we had known in the Whykatto, but only a fool would risk its anger.

  Something of the sun’s northern malevolence had occurred last summer, even by Lake Top, and the animals themselves preferred to rest in the shade during the middle day. Wild creatures, too, did their eating and moving late and early. Remembering the Travellers’ habit, I made myself a broad-brimmed hat of flax leaves. With that and my long tunic I felt safer when we travelled after sunrise. And the talisman around my neck.

  I remember seizing the green stone fish the first time the noise came. We were under trees one noon, the animals nervous. The night before they had been uneasy. I had to send the dogs around them and, even then, they kept breaking. Jak and Jess rounded up the goats which had run furthest, brought them back into the shade. Instead of lying, they stood, panting, although it was cool under the branches.

  At first I wondered if they heard Squint-face and his men. But the afternoon passed, and the animals quietened, grazing out from beneath the trees and across the grass. I loaded the donkeys. We were moving off, Jess ahead with Jak, the goats following, when there was a roar, a bump, and the ground shook. Het’s pups whimpered. A goat cried. Several ran
in different directions. I thought of the monstrous shout of the Falcon Men when they surrounded us.

  “It’s all right.” I whistled Jak and Jess to go ahead. “It’s only the Shaker!” Through a belt of tea-tree the animals followed out of habit, and I came along, pleased with myself. I had recognised the roar and bump for what it was. Getting the animals moving had been the answer. Then I found my left hand still gripping the green stone fish at my neck, fingers aching from their clutch, and looked back. All the way from the trees, across the clearing, through the tea-tree, and halfway across the grassy slope, I had run clutching the carving like an amulet of safety. Panicked helter-skelter with the animals.

  “All right! Quiet down.” Trembling-voiced. “It’s just the Shaker.” I still gripped the carving. The animals were distressed. First, though, I had to calm myself, and the ease for that seemed to flow from the green stone into my hand. As I recovered, so did the animals.

  That was only the first of many bumps and rumbles, but the animals took no notice of the rest. They followed Jak towards the night. Jess came back and walked with me. We made good time.

  The dished lower valley of the Tungaro was fairly open. Then came more belts of scrub, but Jak used his nose to find deer trails, the best way through. He would disappear and return, taking up the lead, the others rounding up the animals to follow him to another open stretch. After all these years, I still marvelled at the dogs’ skill.

  As we climbed, the grass changed from the lush green by the lake to red and gold tussock. The sheep liked it. The others did well on it, too. We travelled on the mountain side of the valley, the country there more open. East, the valley walls were scrub-covered below bushed knees of hills.

  We came up out of scrub and trees. Behind us the single smooth-walled cone. Closer, higher, a mass of walls and peaks, snow-covered to the skyline from a straight line drawn around its giant waist. The crags moved past like monsters staring down at our little caravan standing still.

  “That’s just the silly sort of idea Hagar used to warn you against!” Jess looked up, padded over and nuzzled my hand. “You don’t think they’re monsters, do you?” She looked up. “They’re not moving. It’s us!” I patted her and followed the sheep with the donkeys. Looking back at the mountains I grinned at my stupidity, and my hand leapt again to the comfort of the green stone fish for, rising in billows above the snow peaks, huge, dirty bubbles of smoke dull-red at its heart, a monstrous cloud darkened the sun.

  For one terrible moment I thought it had something to do with the Salt People’s smoke signals. My heart bumped like the ground. A long rumble reached our ears, and I remembered Hagar’s stories of the mountain blowing up, of how when she was a girl it flung smoke and ash as far north as the Whykatto.

  Remembering helped me. The sky-wide column leaned top-heavy towards the north. At least the southerly was blowing the smoke away from us. I whistled Jak to hurry, and we kept on as long as the light lasted. Early next morning we moved further south in the cloud’s shadow, unable to see the sun. At mid-morning and midday we rested and continued while the mountain muttered and dragged a dark banner across the northern sky.

  Several days later the wind went into the west. The cloud shifted across the way we had come. It loomed almost above us, and I noticed an unusual smell, something familiar about it, then found myself crying. It was the same sulphurous smell from the boiling pools at the Metal People’s village. My lost Tara… I camped, unable to carry on.

  The smell pungent next morning, we moved on in smudgy light. Ash penetrated everything, formed a crust in my nostrils and mouth. My teeth ground on it like sand. A dusty coat over the animals, on the donkeys’ loads, it thickened the tiniest twigs and leaves. The animals went to eat the grass but turned away from the grit, tried again, and shook their heads. Blinking to clear my eyes, I drove them on, hungry as they were.

  That afternoon we emerged into clear light from under the ash cloud. The sun sinking, its rays long fingers poking into shadowy gullies. The animals querulous. I kept them moving. At last the tussock rippled, lifted and turned over, pointing north. A southerly carried the sinister cloud away.

  The animals relished the clean tussock. The ground here was sand and ash, like our last glimpse of the Whykatto, but a different ash, as if the soil itself had burned long ago and had been mixed with red and yellow sand.

  The narrow torrents off the mountain had turned sludge-grey. Jak and Jess led east to a clear stream, and we camped there. Next day, the animals fed and slept again, and I was content to lie under tall tussock and scrub and watch the spectacle of the burning mountain.

  The ash-cloud boiled. Sometimes it sprang from behind the peaks, curveting, ripped by lightning, glowing grey-red. Bumps shook the ground. Explosions were a continuous dull mutter.

  The white-wrapped mountain mass was now smeared grey, the tussock gaudy red and gold against it. Lake Top, the Hawk Cliffs, Tara’s grave, the Whykatto – even, perhaps, Orklun – must all lie grey beneath the mountain’s curse. I hoped it would drive the Salt People back behind the burning range east of the Whykatto. Certainly it would cover our tracks, stop anyone trying to follow.

  I spent a day hunting and fishing to renew stores. There were deer and trout, but this high ground would be brutal in winter. I wondered if there was some way my father might know I was doing what we planned all those years ago, looking for the mountain that ate the sun, the land of ice and snow.

  Moonless nights when it was too dark to travel, I stared into the fire, thinking all those people and animals were with me still. Dwelling on the past, I would think about Tara, and that made me cry. Instead, I made myself remember pictures of the Painted Cave. Its cache of tools would be safe, the store of dry food, and the bright paintings that lined its walls, telling the story of the Travellers. And deep beneath its floor, Old Hagar beside the little girl, and Nip, too.

  Then one day I realised the country was tilting towards the south. We had passed through the mountains. They were hills we travelled now, tussock turning to grass, scrub to trees. Any land of snow and ice must lie much further south. There were walls in places, not great ruins like Hammertun in the Whykatto, but people had once lived here, too.

  We needed to find shelter before the next winter. A garden to replace the potatoes I was eating. Somewhere to stop long enough to shear the animals, spin their wool, and weave it into new blankets and gear. And I wondered where I might find people who would swap things for my weaving.

  Winding between trees, we came down one evening into a green valley. Jak and Jess ran along a grassy stretch above a river, dull and thick with sediment. Cliffs along the other bank, white and yellow bluffs glowing amongst darkening shadows.

  Travellers were always looking for firewood. Towards the end of each night’s journey, we would pick up scraps. The donkeys never liked it when they saw us about to add to their loads. We burned anything that was dry. The heavier woods that burn better, we never had time to split and dry. That had been one of the joys of the Hawk Cliffs, being able to dry timber well ahead of its burning.

  Above a dry heap of logs and branches left by an old flood, I pitched the tent and went to light a fire. Amongst the tangle were bright fragments of a resinous wood, good burning. Somebody had split a log with an axe! A chip in my hand, I swung round, looking for smoke, footprints, a track.

  The flitches, tall slabs split and stacked on end for the sun and wind, stood on a higher terrace. There was no other sign, but I felt we were being watched. It was too dark to move on. We’d still have to camp somewhere, and the animals were tired.

  I lit a fire. Het and her pups lay nearby. Dark shapes on the flat by the river, the animals grazed outside the light. I could hear them nibbling, wrenching the grass. Now and again the dogs trotted into the dark, returned, lay, stood, and looked into the dark again. Something was making them uneasy. I looked, too, but saw only darkness. My fingers found the green stone fish at my neck, touched it for luck. Once again, I envied the
dogs their ears, noses. They knew of so much before it happened.

  Chapter 4

  A Bellow in the Night

  The fire a mound of sluggish jewels. Het and her pups a sprawled heap against its glow. The animals leave off grazing, move in, stand scared on the edge of the little light. I hear their breathing, feel their stare.

  Slip the knife from its sheath. Turn on one side. Wriggle backwards into the darkness. Still no warning from the dogs, just their unease. They are circling the animals, ready to protect them, but from what? Has Squint-face followed us despite the burning mountain? Nonsense! Nobody could force their way through that choked air.

  Across the damp grass I slither between two donkeys, old Hika and his mate, Bok. They like to travel together, side by side. If one has to go ahead, it is always Bok. At night they stand or lie side by side, head to tail. They sway and let me between, my eyes scouring the gloom for movement, for something darker than the night itself.

  I creep around the circle of dogs who stand looking outwards. Holding their heads up against my touch, they neither sniff nor press their muzzles against my hand. They know something is out there.

  Awful, the enormous bray smashes through my head. Deep, shaking, a brutish roar. I run calling the terrified animals, trying to hold them, hearing their grunts and screams, the dogs’ howls. So long as the bellow continues, they run, and I run, too.

  A magnified gasp, and the earth-shaking roar cuts off without dwindle. Still holding the green stone fish, I stop, too. “Jak! Jess!” Relieved of the bellow, I know who I am again. Hackles up, the dogs rush back ahead of me, bristling stiff-legged where our camp had been. I trip over a stack of gear, hear the metal graunch and know the tools are safe, but our tent has disappeared.