If Karl Pig-face had been wearing the strange cap before, he was not wearing it now. His face was red again, shiny with sweat, and he tugged angrily at a cord which bound him to the Bonedancer on one side of him. As they passed, Didir heard one of them say, “If you will not do as you are told, we can put the cap back on you, Rancelman.”
“I’ve told you,” blustered Karl. “When you had that stupid cap on me, I thought I felt him down the road here. But I couldn’t tell you. You need no cap, nor no cord to bind me. Pay me, as you’d pay anyone, and I’ll seek Peter Priss to the end of the lands and purlieus for you. No love between him and me, and I’m glad to do it.”
“Earn our trust, Rancelman. Earn it if you can, and no more sneaking away in the night. Now, stop tugging at the binding and lead us to the place it was you say you felt him last.” And they went on by us, not looking at us at all. It was many a long moment before Globber got himself together to drive the oxen back onto the road. Meantime we had taken Larby Lanooly from farm to shop to mine to devil-take-it.
“If they have anyone in that group who can track,” I said at last when the Boneraisers were gone and we were plodding northward once more, “we may see them again. I doubt not that Chance left readable tracks when he came north from the copse.”
“Three days’ traffic on the road?” asked Jinian. “Would that not cover?”
I clenched my teeth, trying to remember. So far as I could recall, only the yellow horse had had distinctive shoes, nubby ones such as they use along the River Dourt, but the yellow horse should have been sold or traded or simply set loose long since. “Perhaps,” I said. “Though I would feel better about it if there had been rain and a bit of wind.”
“Well, that may happen soon enough,” said Silkhands. “Watch the sky west of us where the black clouds gather and pour. I doubt not we’ll have more rain than is comfortable before nightfall.”
“Before nightfall, we’ll be at Three Knob,” I promised them. We kept that schedule with time to spare, for the sun stood short of noon when we came to the turnoff to the right which led away toward three bald stone hills grouped above the foundry smokes. Stone pillars marked the turn, and we drove between lines of long, low brooder houses where they hatched the groles. There were few of the creatures about during the day, most of them being down below ground, gnawing their way through the stone with their adamant teeth, chewing the rock into gravel and packing it into their endless gut. At night they would digest it, roaring the while, and on the morn the dung gatherers would wash the night’s gravel for powder of iron and nuggets of occamy and silver, less only the light metals which the groles had nourished themselves upon. As we drove, we began to see large groles feeding on piles of broken stone and bone and charcoal. These were the toothlings, just growing their teeth of adamant, soon to be promoted to work in the mines. Handlers stood beside each, stroking the creatures with long iron-tipped staffs, crooning grole songs to them. I shuddered. Imagine a great gut, as wide as a man is tall, as long as five men laid end to end, with a dozen rows of teeth and no eyes, and that is a grole. Still, how would we have metal for our axles and weapons did we not have groles?
“Stop,” said Jinian. “I want to pet one.”
I pulled up the wagon, amazed, and she hobbled over to one of the beasts, staying in character the whole way, to feel its huge side. Nothing would do but that I come as well, and Silkhands, to feel the stony hide of the beast and wonder at its size. The handlers seemed well accustomed to such marveling from travelers, almost uninterested in us.