Ammonite Nicola Griffith

Archiwum

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wondered what they were running from, then stopped wondering to concentrate on
staying in the saddle.
The slope steepened and Pella skidded on loose shale, nearly sending them both
facefirst. Marghe remembered Janet Eagan s warning: Do you have any idea how
many different ways a person could get herself killed? For all I know, Winnie
could have fallen off her horse and broken her neck the second day out. The ride
became a nightmare.
Then, miraculously, the wind died; they were in a high-walled side cut. With an
effort that made her hiss, she swung out of the saddle. Her boot dislodged a pebble,
sending it clattering on bare rock. The cut was sharp with the smell of limegrass. It
made her eyes sting.
The cave s ahead. Holle slung a leg over her horse s neck and slid down with
an ease Marghe envied. There ll be food and dap. Shill took the horses.
The cave was dim and hot with animals. The herd milled and lowed restlessly.
Why s the herd sheltering in a cave? Marghe asked.
Hyrat.
What Shill means, Holle said, is that a swarm of hyrat were spotted, so the
droving started early. We don t know how big the pack is. If it s small, then we can
fight them off at the cave entrance and the herd will be safe without having to run the
flesh off their bones.
And if it s big?
We ll run.
The pack turned out to be small. Marghe helped herd the taars out of the cave,
and when she dismounted outside she saw a pile of dead hyrat. Their pelts were
shades of gray, like the rock, and looked soft. Marghe wanted to touch one but was
wary of vermin. Each strand of hair seemed unusually thick. Perhaps they were
hollow, like ting grass. Their forequarters were heavy, the pelt matted around the
chest and throat of male and female. When she saw their fangs, she understood why.
The upper canines were grayish yellow and long enough to leave matted channels in
the fur of the lower jaw; if they fought amongst themselves, they would need the
protection. No tail to speak of. It was the eyes that looked alien: silvery, with
horizontal slit pupils.
Holle and Shill strapped Marghe s belongings behind her saddle. Marghe pulled
out her map for a final check. Without a navigation satellite, she would have to
reckon with map and compass.
Holle looked at it over her shoulder. Those who don t know their way around
Tehuantepec have no business going up there in winter.
It s not winter yet.
It will be up there. Holle picked up the map and stroked its smooth plastic
surface with her fingertips. This is your path? She pointed to the broken line that
stretched northeast from Singing Pastures to the forest and Ollfoss. Marghe nodded.
You d be wise to avoid the tribes that move south for the winter. She traced a
new route with her finger. There was dirt under her nail. Take a more easterly path
the first few days, then turn north.
How much longer will that take?
Holle shrugged. A day, two days.
Marghe frowned, weighing the delay against Holle s seriousness and others
previous advice. She rolled her sleeve back, touched RECORD, and indicated new
headings into her wristcom, then reset her compass reminder. Holle watched,
curious.
That will help you find your way?
Marghe pressed REPLAY and Holle laughed at the sound of Marghe s recorded
voice. Like a southern mimic bird! She looked at Marghe slyly. Maybe those
stories are true.
Which stories?
That there are people here from another world.
Later, repacking her map, Marghe wrapped her fingers around an unfamiliar
shape. She pulled it out: a knife. The flint blade was short and ugly. She pushed it to
the bottom of her pack.
Snow slanted across the mouth of a smaller cave. Beyond a brake of tanglethorn,
the clouds were dirty yellow, heavy with more snow. Shivering hard, Marghe shaved
slivers of bark from the dry tanglethorn and heaped them in a pyramid around a
kindling pellet. Then she peeled back the metal strip and waited for the chemical
reaction. A curl of bark puffed into flame. She blew on the tiny blaze, adding bigger
stems of the thorn until the fire crackled. Pella snorted and backed as far from the
flames as she could.
Her shivering eased and her face and hands tingled and ached as blood squeezed
through previously closed capillaries. The scratches on her hands stung. She
slapped her arms around her body a couple of times and tried not to think of what
might have happened if she had not found the cave before the snowfall had become
a blizzard.
Your turn now, Pella.
Her fingers were thick and red and felt as though they belonged to somebody
else. She struggled with the clumsy wooden girth buckles and staggered a little as
she dragged the saddle off. There was a cloak in her pack. She pulled it out and
rubbed the mare down with it as best she could. Pella sighed and leaned against her.
Marghe thumped her on the withers until the mare grumbled and straightened up. She
draped the cloak over the horse s back, dragged her pack over to the fire, and sat
down, exhausted by the cold.
Food would help. She could name only half the items she pulled from her pack:
goura, sun-dried until shriveled to the size and color of large apricots; moist wild
rice, pressed into squares and wrapped in crumbly rice paper; honey cakes; thick
succulent leaves, like vine leaves, rolled to finger size; nuts; strange crunchy shapes
that tasted vaguely of bacon; strips of smoked wirrel& She chewed various
combinations and decided that the green fingers were good stuffed with the rice, and
dried goura went well with honey cake.
She filled a nosebag for Pella, then lay down and listened to her heart beat and the
wind howl over Tehuantepec.
When she was young she had lain awake in the sticky heat of Macau and listened [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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