Paragaea (33 page)

The area through which the company moved now was broad savannah, dotted here and there with copses of trees, pampas grasslands stretching out to either horizon with only the gray scar of the main trunk road interrupting the waves of silvery stalks.

The sun pounded down on them from above, and the only respite they found was the meager shade from the gnarled trees found irregularly spaced, but the trees were often too far from the road to make the side trip for a brief midday rest worth the time, and they made due with taking tarpaulins from their packs and setting up makeshift awnings propped up with their swords and scabbards, stretching out at full length in the minuscule amounts of shade provided.

Nights, they slept by the side of the road, making surprisingly comfortable beds for themselves by gathering up stalks of grass cut down with Hieronymus's saber and piling them into nests. Their meals were simple: dried, salted fish that Balam had brought with them from the
Acoetes Zephyrus
, supplemented by the occasional bird or small rodent caught along the way.

As they moved farther south, day by day, it became clear that they were following close on the heels of some large convoy, a caravan of enormous beasts that had churned up the road in their wake. Leena could scarcely imagine how these massive creatures must appear.

The days passed mostly in silence, the company's energy and attentions focused more on locomotion than on communication, but when night fell, and they had eaten their humble meals, they sat around the flickering firelight in their makeshift nests of piled grasses, the heavens wheeling overhead, and passed the hours in quiet conversation.

To Leena, these nights seemed of a piece with the weeks she had spent with the three men traveling across the Sakrian plains. Though different muscle groups now ached, since she walked instead of sitting astride a trotting horse all day, the pains were familiar, as were the jokes and jests shared across the flickering firelight.

Benu's stories were, typically, the most wide-ranging, since he had a much larger store of experience from which to draw. And Balam knew hundreds of ribald jokes, handed down by generations of Sinaa princes, each more toe-curlingly hilarious than the last. But it was Hieronymus's tales that Leena found the most engaging. Whether he was relating one of the Greek myths his mother had taught him as a child, or recounting one of his own adventures as a naval officer on the oceans of Earth, just the sound of his voice was often enough to keep Leena's rapt attention.

As she sat and listened to Hieronymus speak, she couldn't help but be reminded of Sergei. The two men resembled one another not at all—not in appearance, manner, or habits—but nonetheless when she looked at Hieronymus, of late, there was something that brought her former love immediately to mind.

Nights, when the conversation drifted off to silence and the company settled down to rest, Leena would look up at the stars overhead, unable to sleep, inescapably aware of the nearness of Hieronymus's sleeping form.

It was midmorning when Hieronymus cried out, slipped, and promptly fell flat on his back. “Ugh,” he spat, lying lengthwise in a deep pile of greenish mud, which had splattered onto his chest and face as he fell. “What is that stench?”

Balam rushed over, but when he saw that his friend was unhurt, just stood back, pinching his nostrils shut and shaking with laughter.

“What?” Hieronymus said, his tone annoyed as he tried unsuccessfully to stand, the green mud seeming to have cemented him in place. “I tripped!”

Leena and Benu came to stand beside the jaguar man, and immediately saw what he found so amusing.

“Oh, Hero.” Leena tried to retain her composure, but her sympathetic noises were laced through with barely controlled laughter. “You seem to have taken a bit”—she ineffectively stifled a laugh—“of a spill.”

“What am I lying in?” Hieronymus tried to lift his arm, but it took effort to pull away from the murky green stuff in which he had fallen, and his arm came away with an unpleasantly loud squelching noise.

“I had no idea, Hieronymus, that you had coprophilic tendencies.” Benu rarely laughed, but even he now grinned broadly, amused at their companion's predicament.

“What?” Hieronymus struggled into a sitting position.

“Dung, Hero,” Balam called out, doubled over with laughter. “You're lying in dung.”

Hieronymus scrambled, trying to climb to his feet, but instead slipped again, this time pitching face-first into the greenish mound.

“Arrgh!” He pushed to his knees, and launched himself forward, clearing the mound and landing in the pitted road. He spat out clumps of the foul stuff, which coated his cheeks and clung to his hair.

“Fresh, too, by the looks of it,” Benu observed, peering at the mound without getting a step closer than was necessary.

“Blast!” Hieronymus climbed unsteadily to his feet, and then reached out to Balam and Leena. “For god's sake, help me get this mess off of me.”

“Oh, no,” Leena said, raising her hands to ward him off as she and Balam danced out of reach.

“Go roll in the grass,” Balam ordered, still pinching his nose shut. “It won't be as good as a proper bath, but it'll have to do.”

Hieronymus staggered into the high grasses, stripping off his soiled clothes and doing his best to rid himself of the clinging clumps of dung. While he did, Leena and Balam stepped as near to the dung heap as they dared, their eyes wide.

“How big must be the monster that laid
that?”
Leena said, disbelieving.

“Too big,” Balam said warily. “Much, much too big.”

That night, as the sun dipped below the horizon to the west, and the company prepared to make camp for the night, they spied an orange glow to the south.

“The convoy?” Leena asked.

“Quite likely,” Hieronymus said. He'd managed to wash most of the dung from his clothes, face, and hair in a little puddle of brackish water they'd passed that afternoon, but the smell of the foul stuff still clung to him like a shroud.

“Well, shall we go and make our introductions?” Balam said. “If we're lucky, maybe they'll have something besides dried fish or prairie mice to eat, eh?”

A short while later, they approached the firelight of an encampment. As they drew nearer, they could hear the lowing of giant beasts, and saw large shadows hulking on the horizon.

“Approach carefully,” Hieronymus warned, his voice low. “We don't want to startle them.”

Suddenly, above the sounds of the beasts there rose the voices of men and women shouting calls of alarm.

“It wasn't me!” Balam said quickly, raising his hands in protest.

“Hsst!” Hieronymus raised a finger to silence him, and cocked his ear to listen closer. His eyes widened, and his hand flew to the hilt of his saber. “They're under attack!”

Hieronymus didn't hesitate, but charged forward, saber in one hand and Mauser pistol in the other. The others followed close behind, Balam with a knife in either hand and Leena bearing her short sword and Makarov.

In a span of heartbeats, they came upon the encampment, and in the flickering light of the campfire found a dozen men and women fending off a pack of carnivores. Each of the creatures was as tall as a horse, and looked somewhat doglike, but with hooves instead of claws, and a long snout, with meter-long jaws that looked like they were strong enough to crush a human skull in a single bite.

“Fenrir!” Hieronymus spat.

Already men and women lay wounded and bleeding on the ground, and the number of defenders standing against the pack of fenrir seemed to be dwindling.

“Come on,” Balam shouted, racing for the nearest of the huge carnivores, fangs bared and knives out. “This looks like fun!”

By the time morning arrived, the last of the ferocious fenrir had been killed or driven away, and Leena felt that she could not hold her sword point up for an instant longer. Balam's knives, claws, and fangs were slicked with gore from the necks and flanks of the fenrir, and even Benu looked in disarray, the simple tunic and trousers he wore ripped to shreds by the incisors of the creatures, leaving him standing unclothed and naked in the morning light. The defenders of the camp, seeing his odd, sexless parts, shied away from the artificial man, even after Leena insisted that he clothe himself once more with spares from his pack.

Hieronymus cleaned his saber on the pelt of one of the fallen fenrir, and grimly regarded the ruins of the encampment. From the looks of things, several of the men and women who had fallen before the carnivores had since died from their wounds in the night.

“What
were
those beasts?” Leena asked, coming to stand beside him, holstering her Makarov, from which she'd fired two shots in the
intervening hours of the engagement. Her sword she cleaned on the grass, and with it sheathed, she collapsed into a sitting position on the ground.

“Fenrir,” Hieronymus said, his mouth drawn into a line.

“I gathered that much,” Leena said, scarcely amused. “But what manner of beast is a fenrir? They seemed something like enormous wolves, but I found their cloven hooves to be…unsettling.”

“You know as much as I, little sister. I've had a run-in or two with them in my travels, but never a pack that size. These people are lucky to have survived the night.”

“Those of us that did survive, that is.”

Leena and Hieronymus looked up into the face of a man nearly as tall as Balam. His skin was the color of ebony, his head completely hairless. Dressed in a suit of dark blue linens with scuffed brown leather boots that came to his knees, he was built like a prizefighter gone to seed, still muscled but with ample layers of fat for padding.

“Yasen Kai-Mustaf at your service,” the man said, extending a massive hand. He spoke Sakrian with an Elveran accent. “Bondsman of the Six Brothers Consolidated Shipping Concern, and master of beasts on this caravan. And you?”

Hieronymus took the man's hand in a firm grip.

“Hieronymus Bonaventure, honest traveler. And this is my companion—”

“Akilina Mikhailovna Chirikova,” Leena said, taking the man's hand and introducing herself. “The Sinaa is Balam, and the newly clad man with the unusual eyes is Benu.”

“You are welcome,” Yasen said as the other two joined them. “And our thanks for your assistance against the dread creatures last night. Had you not joined the fray when you did, I'm not sure that any of us would have survived till morning came.”

“It was nothing,” Hieronymus said with a shrug.

“It was fun,” Balam said.

“Not so fun for those who perished from their wounds,” Leena said, scolding.

“Now, now, my dear lady,” Yasen said, resting a comradely hand on Balam's shoulder. “Do not berate our friend Sinaa, for taking joy in the fact that he still lives. The dead do not envy us, nor should we pity them. Besides, the men who died did so in fulfilling their contracted duty to the Six Brothers Consolidated Shipping Concern. They were bonded guards, they guarded, and their untimely extinction was merely the price of doing business.” He clapped his huge hands together and grinned, ivory teeth showing in his dark face. “Now, is there anything I can do to repay you? Our generosity is limited only by our means, which are meager to say the least.”

“We seek passage to Hele,” Hieronymus said. “Are you taking on passengers?”

“Well, now, that is a sticky question,” Yasen said, chewing his lip. “You see, my employers at the Six Brothers Consolidated prohibit us from taking on any passengers, wayfarers, or stowaways in the course of our route. To do otherwise would be to risk offending my employers, which could mean censure at best, and elimination at worst.”

“Elimination of your contract?” Benu asked.

“No, elimination of
me!”
Yasen drew a finger across his neck, and stuck out his tongue. “My employers take contracts very seriously, and I'm sorry to say that renegotiation of terms is rarely an option.”

The master of beasts began to pace in front of them, clasping his hands behind his back. “However,” he went on, talking at breakneck speed, “it occurs to me that there might be another alternative. While neither I nor the freight master are permitted to allow passengers, we are either of us empowered to hire on new labor, circumstances demanding. And considering that we lost the lion's share of our guard contingent to those bloody fenrir, I think that circumstances are quite demanding at the moment, don't you? Yes?”

Leena and Hieronymus glanced at each other, having trouble parsing out his meaning.

“Are you offering us a job?” Balam said, squinting his amber eyes at the figure pacing faster and faster before them.

“Precisely. I can't pay you much, if anything, beyond two square meals a day, but our course will bear us southwards, and Hele is one of the stops along our route.”

The four companions looked to one another, and shrugged.

“Why not?” Hieronymus said. “Count us in.”

“Splendid.” Yasen said. “We've four new guards, which puts us at three-quarters strength at best, but you'll not hear me complain. Now, come along with me, and I'll introduce you to the beasts, and show you the burdens you'll be guarding.”

The company followed Yasen Kai-Mustaf around a line of tents, past a copse of gnarled trees, and came at last to the beasts. These were the shapes they'd glimpsed shadows of in the night, but nothing could have prepared Leena for the sight of them in the broad daylight.

There were some dozen of the creatures in all, each standing nearly seven meters tall, so huge that even Balam came only up to their knees. They had long, giraffelike necks, surmounted by narrow heads looking almost like that of a sheep, and were covered in a rough gray hide, like that of a rhinoceros.

“What
are
they?” Leena breathed, barely above a whisper.

“These, dear lady,” Yasen said, indicating the enormous creatures with a grand gesture, “are my babies, my only friends, the finest indriks you will find anywhere on the Paragaean continent.”

“Big, aren't they?” Hieronymus said, leaning over and whispering into Leena's ear.

“Too big,” Balam said, looking up at the giant creatures uneasily.

“No,” Benu said, shaking his head slightly, “that is the normal size and proportion for an indrik.”

“Well, I say they're too blasted big,” Balam sneered.

“What?” Yasen said, overhearing the whispered conference. “Do you fear these gentle giants? Nonsense! They're as tender as a babe in arms, and wouldn't hurt a fly. Provided, of course, the fly wasn't in their path as they walked by, but then, that would really be the fly's lookout, and not the fault of the indrik, now wouldn't it? They are nature's perfect engines, my friends the indriks. They can go without food and water for days, thanks to their prodigious size, and can live into their eighties, so that once you teach them a route, they'll remember it for as long as you're likely to require. Some of these beasts have been walking the trade routes of the east since my grandsire first plied the cargo trade, back when there were only four brothers in the Consolidated Shipping Concern. And some of them will be walking these pitted roads long after you and I have moldered to dust.”

“I wouldn't be so sure of that,” Benu said with a slight smile.

The indrik, having fed and watered, were driven back to the road. The indriks in the lead and in the rear carried howdahs upon their backs—large platforms the size of a boat's deck, ringed with railings that rose a meter above the planks, and covered by a sheltering canopy. The other indriks in the train were each loaded down with crates and bales strapped to their broad backs.

When the indriks had all been led back onto the road, everyone clambered up rope ladders and climbed aboard the howdahs, with the freight master and his able landsmen in the rear, and the master of beasts and the guards in the front.

“Count yourself lucky you ride fore with me, and not abaft with the others,” Yasen explained as the indriks began to lumber forward. “If you were in that end of the train”—he jerked a thumb behind him—“you'd have nothing but the back end of an indrik to look at, all the livelong day. Never a pleasant sight, to say nothing of the occasional smell.”

“Yes,” Hieronymus said through gritted teeth. “We've encountered it before.”

“Have you now?” Yasen said, smiling broadly. “I knew I was right to think you a group of worldly individuals, well traveled and the like. I'm glad to have you aboard, and no question.”

From what Yasen had said, their role as guards on the convoy was fairly simple. The guards' primary role appeared to be as deterrent, with little call for action. Aside from the tussle with the fenrir the night before, the guards on this journey had done little more than sit atop the howdah day and night, watching the scenery roll by.

Aside from the four of them, there were only two other guards, one a heavy-browed, barrel-chested Kobolt with a broken nose, who stood only to Leena's shoulder; and the other a Rephaim who towered over even Balam, with rippling muscles and huge hands that could wrap twice around Leena's waist. Neither spoke much, keeping each to himself, and so it was almost as if the company traveled alone with the master of beasts.

Days passed, blending into weeks. The indriks could travel long hours during the day, stopping only during the hours between sunset and sunrise to rest.

The landscape changed around them as they moved farther south. Grasslands gave way to wide, dry plains, with high mesas on the far horizons. In the rainy season, Yasen explained, this route would
become almost impassable, the plains turned to squelching quagmire, and in that season the shipping routes—and shipping schedules—doubled, tripled, or sometimes quadrupled. Most shipping occurred during the summer and winter months, with spring and fall being either very slow, or very, very difficult. It was late in the season, near the full rains, but in recent years the Six Brothers had come under new management that tried to milk every possible profit from the operation. As a result, they had been asked to squeeze in one more regular shipment before the rains, to keep from having to pay their employees the increased wages of an off-season journey.