The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part two

The Ghoul sent up a clamor, “Allies, allies!” into the roar of the flames. I thought I heard a Herald’s trumpet away somewhere and turned to catch a sudden dazzle of light reflected off something, but I could not see it and could not wait. I had enough power by then to lift the women and flutter away, through the columned forest like a crippled bat, bumping and sliding across branches in a search for water. Behind me I could hear the Ghoul screaming, and I muttered “Ghoul’s Ghast Ten,” to myself. “Move and Game.” I had never planned to die as Armiger’s Flight Ten in a strange wood, eaten by liches. But it had been close.

We found a little islet in a pond, and there Silkhands Healed our burns. I drew more power and Searched as the fire burned in all directions, wider and hotter. It would stop at the river on the south, and there were only flat fields to the east, but it would burn long to the north and west unless some sensible Tragamors brought in clouds and wrung them out. I could do nothing about it alone, chose not to in any case, for I wanted to see who ran before those flames. Twice I caught that dazzle of light, but I could find no one. Whoever it might have been had flown away. At last I gave up and returned to the women.

They had made a couch of grasses behind some fallen trees. All three of us lay there in the late afternoon sun to let it quiet us. Later I was to think it strange that I did not inquire what Talent the girl, Jinian, had. Silkhands had not mentioned the matter in my hearing. If she had had any headdress, it had been lost in the attack. In any case, I did not ask and she did not offer. She did ask to borrow my knife in order to set a snare, but I told her I would furnish a meal before I left them to go away and arrange our farther travel. I did it by Shifting into pombi shape and murdering some foolish farm poultry who had wandered into the woods to brood. While the fowl popped over the flames, we spoke of alternatives. I could have gone back to Xammer to procure horses, supplies, a replacement carriage, even guards and servants. We chose not to do so. Instead, when we had eaten, I Shifted myself into a middling ordinary human shape and went off to find some settlement where goods and beasts would be available.

After that was only a weary time of looking and bargaining and going elsewhere for this thing and that thing which no one, ever, would have thought of having when and where it might be wanted or convenient to any other thing which might have been wanted. The evening spent itself into night and the night into morning. It was noon the following day before I led Silkhands and Jinian out of the trees to see what I had accomplished.

“By the pain of Dealpas,” said Silkhands reverently, “I have never seen such a tumbletrundle in my life.”

I nodded, pleased. The wagon did look as though it might fall apart at any moment, but it would not. I had fixed certain parts of it myself. The animals hitched to it were probably mostly water oxen, though the parentage of either could have been questioned. They were large, ugly, and looked too tough to tempt hunters, too rough to tempt thieves. The clothing in the wagon was of a kind with the rest, ugly and boring.

“No one would want it,” said Jinian.

I cast her a quick look, thinking it a pity she was so plain-looking, for she had a perceptive mind. “Exactly,” I said. “Now we must make sure that no one would want any of us, either.”

I believed that we succeeded. Time would prove, the occasion would tell, but we had certainly changed the conditions of our travel more than a little. No one would be interested in the old man or either of the two mabs at his side. All three had dirty faces and gap-toothed smiles. The girls’ teeth were blackened out with tar; from an armslength away they appeared to be missing. When evening came of this day after I had left Chance, we were on the Great North Road once more, only a little north of the Boundary bridge. Looking back at it, I sighed. We had spent much time and effort coming a very small way, and there were still twenty leagues between us and Three Knob.