Angel-Seeker (8 page)

Jerusha nodded, so Rebekah leapt to her feet and made sure her soft-soled boots were laced. “Thank you, dear lord Jovah,” she murmured, and slipped out the back of the tent so none of the other men could see her. “Released from this prison at last.”

They headed west onto the glittering gold pathway painted across the sand by the setting sun. There was little to see out here—they were miles from any narrow creek bed or friendly waterhole—but just being free of the confines of the tent put Rebekah in a giddy mood. They chased each other across the gentle dunes, found small rocks and aimed them at boulders in a fairly equal contest of skill, and came across a marrowroot bush where they least expected it.

“Aren't we lucky,” Rebekah exclaimed, bounding forward to strip some of the blue green leaves off the low bush. Jordan was right beside her, and each of them stuffed a handful of the waxy leaves into their mouths. The taste was gingery but not so bad once you got used to it, and this was a plant they'd been familiar with since they were toddlers. Hardy and deep-rooted, it grew all over the desert and offered a refreshing mouthful to the thirsty wanderer. There was such a high liquid content in its leaves that it could replace water, at least temporarily, in the diet of a traveler. People had been known to
survive a week in the desert with nothing but marrowroot leaves to sustain them.

“We should bring some back for Mother and the others for the cook-fire,” Rebekah suggested, so they plucked a dozen more leaves and stowed them in their pockets. They didn't denude the bush; that would cause it to wither and die, and marrowroot was too precious a plant to treat so badly.

Some of their energy spent, they wandered more sedately for another hour or two, idly talking. A small creature hopped across their path, and Jordan threw a rock at it but missed. He spent the rest of their excursion bemoaning the fact that he hadn't brought a bow.

“I'm sure we have plenty to eat, at least these first few days out,” Rebekah said.

“Yes, but Isaac would have been so impressed! And Hector would have been proud of me.”

“Well, tomorrow, then. Just never leave the tent without your bow in hand.”

They had roamed about an hour before it started to get really dark. True children of the desert, they had no fears about finding their way back to the campsite by barely distinguishable landmarks, but they turned homeward anyway. Jerusha would be worried if they were gone for long, and supper would be ready soon. And they were both hungry.

Still, for Rebekah, the evening meal was not very enjoyable. She ate it alone in her tent, while the men gathered around the campfire to eat the food the women had left out for them. After the men had finished their food, they lingered before the flames, talking and smoking a pipe filled with a pungent weed. The three women gathered behind one of the other tents, eating their own meal and gossiping with each other. Rebekah heard the quickly smothered cries of laughter and the occasional exclamation of surprise. They were far enough from the circle of men that she could have slipped out and joined them, but she didn't really want to. She'd had plenty of time with her mother already this day, and she didn't particularly care for Simon's wife or Reuben's. No, once her mother slipped a plate to her
through the back flap, Rebekah was content enough to sit there and eat her meal all by herself.

When she was finished, she lay the plate aside and checked to make sure the baby was sleeping. Well, in fact, he wasn't, but he seemed happy to simply look around the interior of the tent and wave his fisted hands at invisible visitors. She patted him on the cheek and rose noiselessly. Moving carefully, so as not to draw any attention to the wagon by making it creak or shudder, she crept to the front opening of the canvas. It was drawn shut fairly tightly, but there was still a roughly circular opening that overlooked the driver's bench—which overlooked the campfire and the men collected before it.

Luck was with her. Ezra, Simon, and Reuben sat together with their backs toward her. Jordan and Simon's sons sat across the fire from them, heads bent over some contraption in Isaac's hands. The bow, no doubt, though from this distance it looked nothing like a bow. It was long and thin and looked more like a slim stick picked up from the side of the road.

Whatever it was, Jordan was fascinated by it and kept asking quick, excited questions. Isaac threw his head back and laughed at something the younger boy said, and Rebekah smiled in sympathy. Jordan was right; Isaac
was
a handsome man. He had straight dark hair that fell to his shoulders in a rather careless way, and his face was narrow and watchful. But not unkind. Thoughtful, rather, Rebekah decided. He was slimly built, but that didn't mean much; good living and a fondness for food caused virtually every Jansai man to grow ponderous as he aged.

Rebekah glanced at Simon. Now,
he
was not as fat as Hector or Ezra or most of the Jansai men she knew. So perhaps Isaac would take after his father and remain a reasonable size as he matured. For a moment she wished Simon would turn away from the fire and look in her direction, so she could see how time had restructured his face and guess from that what Isaac might look like in twenty years. But the older men remained engrossed in their conversation.

She turned her attention back to the young men. Isaac's brother had leapt up and was holding the thin stick up like a club, brandishing
it in the air. That got everyone's attention. Simon jumped to his feet and snatched it away from him.

“Give that back to me! Who told you that you could play with weapons as dangerous as this?” the older man demanded, swatting his son with some force.

“I'm the one who got it out,” Isaac said swiftly. That was good; he was quick to take responsibility for his own actions. “They wanted to see it.”

Simon made a sudden move in Isaac's direction, as if to strike this son, too, but merely growled and stepped back toward his place before the fire. “You boys leave this alone. It's a man's weapon, not to be put in hands like yours.”

Reuben and Hector had come to their feet in a more leisurely fashion and stepped forward to look at the stick in Simon's hands. Rebekah inched forward a little to try to see more, but it still just looked like a long, straight staff of wood. Or maybe metal. It was hard to tell.

“What is that?” Reuben asked. “Doesn't look like any weapon I ever saw.”

“Firestick,” Simon said with some pride. “It can shoot a bolt a couple hundred yards and hit whatever it's aimed at.”

Hector grunted and bent over to look at it without getting near enough to touch it. “Where'd you get it?”

Simon stroked the sleek barrel. “Belonged to my brother.”

Reuben looked over at him. “The one who died on Mount Galo?”

Simon nodded. “He got this from Raphael.” Simon shrugged. “Told me he wasn't supposed to have it, but that the Archangel had a handful of them and wouldn't miss just one. We were going to try to sell it, down in Luminaux maybe. After the Gloria.”

There was a moment of silence. At the Gloria, Raphael had challenged the god, and Jovah had brought the mountain down. The mountain and everybody standing on it, which had included Raphael, and some of his angels, and dozens of Jansai and other followers. Simon didn't have to explain that his brother was dead.

He shrugged again. “So after that, I decided to keep it. Use it for myself, if I felt like it. It's not really good for hunting game, though, because it rips too big a hole in a small creature, and it's too bright if
you're hunting herd beasts. You might bring down one animal, but the others'll run off as soon as you use it. A bow's still better.”

“Why'd you bring it, then?” Hector asked in his usual blunt, nasal voice. Rebekah just hated to hear him talk.

Simon lifted it to his eye as if to sight down the long, smooth stick. “Might find me something else to shoot someday,” he said, and his voice was calm and deadly. “Say the Archangel Gabriel flew into town some afternoon. I might try to set his wings on fire.”

“Gabriel,” Reuben said, and spat to one side of the fire.

“Kill an Archangel, and the god might kill you,” Hector suggested, and for once Rebekah had to agree with him.

“I think I'd die happy enough,” Simon said. He glanced down at the weapon another moment, then said, “I think this goes back in the wagon.” He strode off to his own tent and the others redisposed themselves around the fire.

Rebekah returned her attention to the younger set, but they had their heads bent over a game of chakki. The only expressions she could see on Isaac's face were greed and calculation, and those weren't designed to make him more attractive, she thought. Anyway, just then the baby gave out a hesitant, irritable cry, and she turned around and crept back to his side.

“Yes, aren't you the sweetest thing?” she crooned, holding him up in the dark tent and trying to catch the liquid shine of his eyes by the dim firelight that filtered in. “You're not going to grow up to be a mean, harsh Jansai man, are you? Oh, no, not my little baby brother. I'll see to that. I'll take care of you, and I'll kiss you every day, and I'll love you so much that you'll want to spread love everywhere you go.”

She talked nonsense to him until he smiled and chortled at her in return. Truly, he seemed like the sweetest child. Jordan, who had been born when she was six, had been a dreadful baby, screaming at the top of his lungs any time he was hungry, dirty, or bored. Strange that he had become such a good-natured and easygoing boy now. She hoped this did not mean the baby, so happy now, would grow difficult and loutish as he reached his early manhood. She kissed him again on his soft, warm cheek and assured herself that he would never change.

The next day was exactly the same, until shortly after their noon meal. They had not been traveling very long when there was an ominous crack from Simon's wagon, and the whole back end tumbled untidily into the sand. Simon's wife yelped and scrambled out the back, then hastily ran to conceal herself in the tent with Reuben's wife. Simon brought the team of horses to a halt and jumped off the front bench to see what the trouble was. His sons reined in their mounts and circled back.

Jerusha and Rebekah peered out through the front of the tent, gazing out over Hector's shoulders. They were directly behind the fallen wagon, so they had an excellent view.

“Damn axle,” Simon called from his hands and knees. “Broke clean in two.”

“You got a spare?” Hector said.

Simon backed himself out from under the wagon and stood up, looking disgusted. “No. Didn't bring one. You?”

Hector shook his head. Reuben, who strode over at that point, also replied in the negative. The three men stood together in a tight conclave, discussing options.

“What do you want to do?” Reuben asked. “Go on or go back?”

“I can make it to Catter's Creek in about a day,” Simon said, naming the nearest stretch of land that boasted a body of water and a stand of trees. “A day to get back, another half day to plane the wood. You might not want to wait that long. We can fix the wagon and go home. You two head on.”

Reuben looked over at Hector. “Hector? You're the one with a delivery. I'm just selling.”

Hector lifted his shoulders in a halfhearted shrug. “There was no exact date set. I'm in no particular hurry. We can wait here till the new pole is ready.”

Such conversations had happened on virtually every trip that Rebekah ever had been on. Something was always going wrong: A horse went lame, a driver got sick, a wagon fell apart. The Jansai were never in much of a hurry, and it was rare that some members of a caravan would forge ahead, leaving the unfortunate party behind. But the discussion always had to be held anyway.

“I'll leave my boys here to take care of their mother,” Simon
said. “Make them hunt. Give them any chores you need done. Don't let them sit around being lazy while others are working.”

Reuben nodded. “You'll leave now, then?”

“I can make it to Catter's Creek tonight or tomorrow morning. I should be back sometime tomorrow.”

It was a quick matter to set him up with some provisions, make sure he had enough water for the journey, and hand over extra waterskins that he may as well fill while he was at the creek bed.

“But there's a waterhole not three miles from here,” Reuben said, “if we run low while you're gone.”

“I know the one,” Simon said. “Only weeds there, though. No wood for the axle.”

“You'll find what you need at Catter's Creek.”

In another fifteen minutes, he was ready to go. He'd unhitched one of the horses from the wagon and fitted it with a makeshift bridle and saddle pack. Not that he had a saddle, since Jansai rarely bothered with such amenities. Just his food, his water, some bedding, a bow—and his firestick, Rebekah noticed from the back of the wagon as she watched him ride away. He might be planning to bring down game after all.

Once he left, the others got down to the business of making a more permanent camp. They would be here two days at least, so they arranged the more mobile wagons around the one that had broken down, and the boys began to collect tumbleweed and dung for a small campfire. The women gathered in Reuben's tent to look over their food supplies and gauge how much more they might need now that they would be on the road another two or three days. All the males were sent off hunting, the men in one party, the boys in another.