fringed and varicolored shirt, scarlet sash, skin-tight leather trousers and buskins—were worn-out finery demoted to working dress. A golden torque encircled his neck, tawdry-jeweled rings his fingers, a spiral of herpetoid skin the left arm. A knife sat on either hip, one a tool, one a weapon, both delicate-looking compared to those miniature machetes the Landfolk carried.
“I’m not—well, yes, I am from Nova Roma, University family,” Ivar admitted. “But, uh, how’d you know before I spoke?”
“O-ah, your walk, your whole way. Being geared like a granger, not a cityman, won’t cover that.” The Anglic was rapid-fire, a language coequal in the Trains with Haisun and its argots. But this was a special dialect, archaic from the nord viewpoint, one which, for instance, made excessive use of articles while harshly clipping the syllables. “That’s a rifle to envy, yours, and relieve you of if you’re uncareful. A ten-millimeter Valdemar convertible, right?”
“And I can use it,” Ivar said in a rush. “I’ve spent plenty of time in outlands. You’ll find me good pot hunter, if nothin’ else. But I’m handy with apparatus too, especially electric. And strong, when you need plain muscle.”
“Well-ah, let’s go see King Samlo. By the way, I’m Mikkal of Redtop.” The tineran nodded at his wagon, whose roof justified its name. A woman of about his age, doubtless his wife, poised in the doorway. She was as exotically pretty as girls of her type were supposed to be in the folklore of the sedentary people. A red-and-yellow-zigzagged gown clung to a sumptuous figure, though Ivar thought it a shame how she had loaded herself with junk ornaments. Catching his eye, she smiled, winked, and swung a hip at him. Her man didn’t mind; it was a standard sort of greeting.
“You’ll take me?” Ivar blurted.
Mikkal shrugged. Infinitely more expressive than a nord’s, the gesture used his entire body. Sunlight went iridescent over the scales coiled around his left arm. “Sure-ah. An excuse not to work.” To the woman: “You, Dulcy, go fetch the rest of my gear.” She made a moue at him before she scampered off into the turmoil.
“Thanks ever so much,” Ivar said. “I—I’m Rolf Mariner.” He had given the alias considerable thought, and was proud of the result. It fitted the ethnic background he could not hope to disguise, while free of silly giveaways like his proper initials.
“If that’s who you want to be, fine,” Mikkal gibed, and led the way.
The racket grew as animals were brought in from pasture, stathas, mules, goats, neomoas. The dogs which herded them, efficiently at work in response to whistles and signals from children, kept silence. They were tall, ebon, and skeletally built except for the huge rib cages and water-storing humps on the shoulders.
Goldwheels was the largest wagon, the single motorized one. A small companion stood alongside, black save for a few symbols in red and silver, windowless. Above its roof, a purple banner bore two crescents. Mikkal sensed Ivar’s curiosity and explained, “That’s the shrine.”
“Oh … yes.” Ivar remembered what he had read. The king of a band was also its high priest, who besides presiding over public religious ceremonies, conducted secret rites with a few fellow initiates. He was required to be of a certain family (evidently Goldwheels in the Waybreak Train) but need not be an eldest son. Most of a king’s women were chosen with a view to breeding desired traits, and the likeliest boy became heir apparent, to serve apprenticeship in another Train. Thus the wanderers forged alliances between their often quarrelsome groups, more potent than the marriages among individuals which grew out of the periodic assemblies known as Fairs.
The men who were hitching white mules to the shrine seemed no more awed than Mikkal. They hailed him loudly. He gave them an answer which made laughter erupt. Youngsters milling nearby shrilled. A couple of girls tittered, and one made a statement which was doubtless bawdy. At my expense, Ivar knew.
It didn’t matter. He smiled back, waved at her, saw her preen waist-long tresses and flutter her eyelids. After all, to them—if I prove I’m no dumb clod, and I will, I will—to them I’m excitin’ outsider. He harked back to his half-desperate mood of minutes ago, and marveled. A buoyant confidence swelled in him, and actual merriment bubbled beneath. The whole carefree atmosphere had entered him, as it seemed to enter everybody who visited an encampment.