Free Lamarchos by Jo Clayton

you see her face. Ahhh.…” She giggled and stretched, wriggling on the hard plank of the seat.
    He reached out and flipped a stray curl off her face. “She never thought a barbarian land-grubber could handle her like that.”
    â€œWell, she was right, wasn’t she.” She wrinkled her nose at her hands. “I wasn’t the one working these.”
    Miks sobered. “In a way it’s too bad we couldn’t keep that card stashed for the future. Maissa’s a snake, Lee. She knows now she can’t take you from the front. You watch your back.”
    â€œI don’t understand.” She scratched at her knee with a forefinger, worrying at a small flake of dead skin. “You keep telling me how evil and cruel she is. All right. So she mistreats animals. Loses her temper easy. Tried to kill Loahn. None of that’s very sweet and gentle, but she hasn’t really done anything to us.”
    â€œShe needs us now.”
    Mid morning, they swung off the main track onto a narrower lane, as deeply rutted but not so bare. Spindly weeds, dry and dusty as little old men, hunched between the whitish wheel tracks. The wind had turned and came to them from the north instead of the west, lakeland’s breath instead of the hot dry effluence from the stonelands. As they moved north the air grew progressively more humid, the tough, thin-bladed grass giving way to another species more succulent than herb, until the land was covered by a crunchy green carpet a double-handspan high. At intervals darker lines of green to the left or right marked one of the hundred lakes that gave this section of Lamarchos its name. Twice after they passed by branching tracks she caught glimpses of slender crimson towers swelling at the top to tulip shaped bells that looked open to the sky. She assumed that these marked towns or villages.
    On either side of the road split rail fences, aged by time and weather to a velvety grey, shut in pasture land, the seried sections enclosing brood mares in one, then yearlings, then pihayo, mares again, stallions and geldings, pihayo, repeating the pattern over and over. A vine with heart-shaped leaves and trumpet flowers wound around the fence horizontals, cascades of leaves plunging in a ragged green fall, while the nodding fist-sized blooms released a flood of heavy sweet perfume. Hour on hour of vine. Hour on hour of sickening sweet perfume mixed with air that grew heavier and heavier with moisture so that the dust kicked up by the horses’ hooves and the iron-tired wheels clung like itching powder to bare skin.
    Occasionally a horse or two would come to the fence and watch them pass, wide dark eyes bright with interest, quivering nostrils snuffing and snorting in nervous excitement. Once something spooked a small herd of two-year-olds, all sorrels with blazed faces, so that they wheeled, galloping off, tails high, manes whipping the air. Aleytys exclaimed with pleasure then met Stavver’s laughing eyes, feeling a warm complicity in their shared enjoyment.
    Several times they saw distant riders, but none near enough to show interest in the travellers.
    Just before nooning they moved past a field with a herd of grazing pihayo. This time the odd-looking creatures were close enough to examine in some detail. They were heavy animals with massive thighs and wide muscular bodies, looking at first glance like dirty tan sheep grown outsize. Instead of a sheep’s close curled wool, their thick hair was straight, long and shaggy, heavy with oil. Their sharp rancid stench was strong enough to break through even the overpowering perfume of the trumpet flowers. Aleytys wrinkled her nose, slightly sick at the thought of eating meat that smelled so bad on the hoof.
    When the sun’s glow spot crossed zenith in the circustent sky, they came on Maissa’s caravan pulled to one side in a lay-by, a circle of trees drooping over weathered tables, benches and a flat-roofed