As for the ‘tribe’ Jazz had expected to see, so far there were no more than sixty Travellers in all: Arlek’s party (now fully accepted back into the common body) and Lardis’s companions, plus a handful of family groups which had been waiting in a stand of trees to join up with Lardis at the Sunside exit from the pass and head west with him through the foothills. And all of these people going on foot, with the exception of one old woman who lay in a pile of furs upon a travois, and two or three young children who travelled in a similar fashion.
Jazz had studied their faces, taking note of the way they’d every so often turn their heads and stare suspiciously at the sun floating over the southern horizon. Zek had told Jazz that true night was a good forty-five hours away; but still there was an unspoken anxiety, a straining, in the faces of the Travellers, and Jazz believed he knew why. It was that they silently willed themselves westward, desiring only to put distance between themselves and the pass before sundown. And because they knew this world, while Jazz was a newcomer, he found himself growing anxious along with them, and adding his will to theirs.
Keeping his fear to himself, he’d asked Zek: ‘Where is everyone? I mean, don’t tell me this is the entire tribe!’
‘No,’ she’d told him, shaking her damp hair about her shoulders, ‘only a fraction of it. Traveller tribes don’t go about en masse. It’s what Lardis calls “survival”. There are two more large encampments up ahead. One about forty miles from here, the other twenty-five miles beyond that at the first sanctuary. The sanctuary is a cavern system in a huge outcrop of rock. The entire tribe can disappear inside it, spread out, make themselves thin on the ground. Hard for the Wamphyri to winkle them out. That’s where we’re heading. We hole up there for the long night.’
‘Seventy miles?’ he frowned at her. ‘Before dark?’ He glanced at the sun again, so low in the sky. ‘You’re joking!’
‘Sundown is still a long way off,’ she reminded him yet again. ‘You can stare at the sun till you go blind, but you won’t see it dip much. It’s a slow process.’
‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ he said, nodding his relief.
‘Lardis intends to cover fifteen miles between breaks,’ she went on, ‘but he’s tired, too, probably more than we are. The first break will be soon, for he knows we all need to get some sleep. The wolves will keep watch. The break will be of three hours’ duration – no more than that. So for every six hours’ travel we get a three-hour break. Nine hours to cover fifteen miles. It sounds easy but in fact it’s back-breaking. They’re used to it but it will probably cripple you. Until you’re into the swing of it, anyway.’
Even as she finished speaking Lardis called a halt. He was up front but his bull voice carried back to them: ‘Eat, drink,’ he advised, ‘then sleep.’
The Travellers trudged to a halt, Zek and Jazz with them. She unrolled her sleeping-bag, told Jazz: ‘Get yourself a blanket of furs from one of the travois. They carry spares. Someone will come round with bread, water, a little meat.’ Then she flattened a patch of bracken, shook out her bed on top of it and climbed in. She pulled the zipper half-way shut from bottom to top. Jazz lit her a cigarette and went to find himself a blanket.
When he too lay down close by, food had already been brought for them. While they ate he admitted: ‘I’m excited as a kid! I’ll never get to sleep. My brain’s far too active. There’s so much to take in.’
‘You’ll sleep,’ she answered.
‘Maybe you should tell me a story,’ he said, lying back. ‘Your story?’
The story of my life?’ she gave him a wan smile.
‘No, just the bit you’ve lived since you came here. Not very romantic, I know, but the more I learn about this place the better. As Lardis might say, it’s a matter of survival. Now that we know about this Dweller – who apparently has a season ticket to Berlin – survival seems so much more desirable. Or more correctly, more feasible!’