declared poisonous. Finally they
breasted the ridge, to look out over the Dead Steppe: a flat, gray waste,
lifeless except for tufts of gorse and pilgrim plant. Below, almost at their
feet, ran a track of two wide ruts. It came up from the southeast, skirted the
base of the hills, passed below, then three miles northwest turned among a
cluster of rock towers, or outcrops, which rose near the base of the hills like
dolmens. The track continued to the northwest, dwindled away across the steppe.
Another track led south through a pass in the hills, another swung away to the
north-east.
Traz squinted
down at the outcrops, then pointed. “Look yonder through your instrument.”
Reith brought
forth his scanscope, scrutinized the outcrops.
“What do you
see?” asked Traz.
“Buildings.
Not many-not even a village. On the rocks, gun emplacements.”
“This must be
Kazabir Depot,” mused Traz, “where caravans transfer cargo. The guns protect
against Green Chasch.”
The Dirdirman
made an excited gesture. “There may even be an inn of sorts. Come! I am anxious
to bathe. Never in my life have I known such filth!”
“How will we
pay?” asked Reith. “We have no coin, no trade-goods.”
“No fear,”
declared the Dirdirman. “I carry sequins sufficient for us all. We of the
Second Race are not ingrates and you have served me well. Even the boy shall
eat a civilized supper, probably for the first time.”
Traz scowled
and prepared a prideful retort; then, noticing Reith’s amusement, managed a
sour grin of his own. “We had best depart; this is a dangerous place, a vantage
for the Green Chasch. See the spoor? They come up here to watch for caravans.”
He pointed to the south, where the horizon was marked by an irregular gray
line. “Even now a caravan approaches.”
“In that
case,” said Anacho, “we had best hurry to the inn, to take accommodation before
the caravan arrives. I have no wish for another night on the gorse.”
The clear
Tschai air, the extent of the horizons, made distances hard to judge; by the
time the three had descended the hills the caravan was already passing along
the track: a line of sixty or seventy great vehicles, so tall as to seem
top-heavy, swaying and heaving on six ten-foot wheels. Some were propelled by
engines, others by hulking gray beasts with small heads which seemed all eyes
and snout.
The three
stood to the side and watched the caravan trundle past. In the van three
Ilanths scouts, proud as kings, rode on leaphorses: tall men, wide-shouldered,
narrow of hip, with keen sharp features. Their skins were radiant yellow; their
raven-black hair, tied into stiff plumes, glistened with varnish. They wore
long-billed black caps crowned by jawless human skulls, and the plume of hair
rose jauntily just behind the skull. They carried a long supple sword like that
of the Emblems, a pair of hand-guns at their belts, two daggers in their right
boot. Riding past on their massive leap-horses they turned uninterested glances
down at the three wayfarers, but deigned no more.
Great drays
rumbled past. Some were top-heavy with bales and parcels; others carried tiers
of cages, in which blank-faced children, young men, young women, were mixed
indiscriminately. Every sixth vehicle was a gun-cart, manned by grayskinned men
in black jerkins and black leather helmets. The guns were short wide-mouthed
tubes for the discharge, apparently by propulsor-field, of projectiles. Others,
longer, narrow of muzzle, were hung with tanks, and Reith presumed them
flame-ejectors.
Reith said to
Traz, “This is the caravan we met at lobu Ford.”
Traz gave a
gloomy nod. “Had we taken it I might yet have carried Onmale ... But I am not
sorry. There was never such a weight as Onmale. At night it would whisper to
me.”
A dozen of
the drays carried three-story lodges of blackstained timber, with cupolas,
decks and shaded verandahs. Reith looked at them with envy. Here was the
comfortable way to travel the