At length King Samlo boomed through the shadows: “Cleanup and curfew!” His followers bounced to obey the first part of the command. Ivar decided that the chaos earlier in the day, and now, was only apparent. Everyone knew his or her job. They simply didn’t bother about military snap and polish.
Musicians gathered around the throne. “I thought we were ordered to bed,” Ivar let fall.
“Not right away,” Dulcy told him. “Whenever we can, we have a little fun first, songfest or dance or—” She squeezed his hand. “You think what you can do, like tell us news from your home. He’ll call on you. Tonight, though, he wants— Yes. Fraina. Fraina of Jubilee. Mikkal’s sister . . . half-sister, you’d say; their father can afford two wives. She’s good. Watch.”
The wanderers formed a ring before their wagons. Ivar had found he could neither sit indefinitely on his hams like them, nor crosslegged on the ground; after dark, his bottom would soon have been frozen. There was no energy to lavish on heated garments. He stood leaned against Redtop, hidden in darkness.
The center of the camp was bright silver, for Lavinia was high and Creusa hurrying toward the full. A young woman trod forth, genuflected to the king, stood erect and drew off her cloak. Beneath, she wore a pectoral, a broad brass girdle upholding filmy strips fore and aft, and incidental jewelry.
Ivar recognized her. Those delicate features and big gray eyes had caught his attention several times during the day. Virtually unclad, her figure seemed boy-slim save in the bosom. No, he decided, that wasn’t right; her femaleness was just more subtle and supple than he had known among his own heavy folk.
The music wailed. She stamped her bare feet, once, twice, thrice, and broke into dance.
The wind gusted from Ivar. He had seen tineran girls perform before, and some were a wild equal of any ballerina—but none like this. They save the best for their own, he guessed; then thought vanished in the swirl of her.
She leaped, human muscles against Aenean gravity, rose flying, returned swimming. She flowed across ground, fountained upward again, landed to pirouette on a toe, a top that gyrated on and on and on, while it swung in ever wider precessions until she was a wheel, which abruptly became an arrow and at once the catavale which dodged the shaft and rent the hunter. She snapped her cloak, made wings of it, made a lover of it, danced with it and her floating hair and the plume of her breath. She banished cold; moonlight sheened on sweat, and she made the radiance ripple across her. She was the moonlight herself, the wind, the sound of pipes and drums and the rhythmic handclaps of the whole Train and of Ivar; and when she soared away into the night and the music ended, men roared.
Inside, Mikkal’s wagon was well laid out but had scant room because of the things that crowded it. At the forward end stood a potbellied stove, for use when fuel was available. Two double-width bunks, one above the other, occupied the left wall, a locker beneath and extensible table between. The right wall was shelves, cupboard, racks, to hold an unholy number of items: the stores and equipment of everyday life, the costumes and paraphernalia of shows, a kaleidoscope of odd souvenirs and junk. From the ceiling dangled an oil lantern, several amulets, and bunches of dry food, sausages, onions, dragon apples, maufry, and more, which turned the air pungent.
Attached to the door was a cage. An animal within sat up on its hind legs as Mikkal, Dulcy, and Ivar entered. The Firstling wondered why anybody would keep so unprepossessing a creature. It was about 15 centimeters in length, quadrupedal though the forepaws came near resembling skinny hands. Coarse gray fur covered it beneath a leathery flap of skin which sprang from the shoulders and reached the hindquarters, a kind of natural mantle. The head was wedge-shaped, ears pointed and curved like horns, mouth needle-fanged. That it could not be a native Aenean organism was proved by the glittery little red eyes, three of them in a triangle.