The Sea Peoples(28)
“In bed two is glad company, three is choreography and boring,” Heuradys said ironically . . . and softly.
“I heard that! You’re simply jealous!” Susie called, sticking her head out again for an instant.
“It’s not natural the way she picks things up,” Heuradys grumbled.
“Makes her a good scout.” órlaith grinned and shook her shoulders back, thumbs in her swordbelt. “Settle in and familiarize yourself, everyone; then a swim for those who want it, your best clothes, and dinner.”
That raised a cheer. They were here on serious business, but Heuradys was the oldest of them in her mid-twenties, and they were perfectly ready to have some fun along the way.
The which behavior is a good model for life, not so?
CHAPTER SIX
BETWEEN WAKING WORLD AND SHADOW
Deor spoke crisply: “Run!”
“Run away from a horse?” Thora said.
“It’s a crippled horse,” Deor said. “And it isn’t going to trample us. From what Pip says, we have to see it first before it can wreak harm!”
“Which way?” she asked.
Deor felt inwardly for a direction; as far as his eyes . . . you could call them eyes . . . could see they were on a featureless dirt road through scrubby countryside extending in both directions. But there was something like a silver thread running with light in his mind, or at least that was how his consciousness interpreted it.
“This way,” he said crisply, pointing down the roadway. “The Prince lies in that direction.”
It was the logic of a dream, or a nightmare, but that suited the place they were. Thora trotted off in the direction of his finger even as she complained; they’d been together a very long time, and she trusted his judgment in these matters as he trusted hers when it came to fighting.
“Watch where we’re going,” Deor said as the four of them moved off. “We’ll have to retrace our steps to return to the world of common day.”
It was like running in a dream, too. There were moments when he felt as if he were flying, not running; as if he were Láwerce hovering above a great yellow cat and the shambling sleek menace of the cinnamon-colored bear, and the cunning silent beady-eyed menace of the bush rat. Instead he forced himself to travel as a man, booted feet on the dirt of the road and sword slapping against his thigh.
The road stretched ahead through mist, and when the mist cleared the scenes to either side were never the same twice—nor were they ever something you wanted to see—but there was little sense of motion. It was as if they trotted on a strip that moved beneath them.
Toa lengthened his pace effortlessly, the huge muscles rolling like pythons beneath his tattooed skin as he moved ahead but his feet making little sound on the rutted mud. He held the great spear underarm, moving with his trot and ready to flash out in a gutting stroke like a frog’s tongue.
“If this isn’t the real world, why do we have to run?” Pip said, her pale eyes turning angry yellow for a moment. “Why can’t we just imagine bicycles or a nice well-sprung four-horse carriage with a cooler full of Saltie Bites Lager like King Birmo’s?”
Thora chuckled, and Deor grinned at Pip’s indignation. Her face had a certain rigid quality that showed how she was holding it thus by main force, but he liked the guts she was showing.
“That’s why we have clothes and weapons . . . and bodies . . . here,” he said. “But ours aren’t the only will and mind involved. Think of it . . . think of it as walking in someone else’s dream, one that only becomes fixed as we see it. Or the world of someone else’s mind . . . and that one, or Ones, are not of human kind. Not now, not for a very long time if ever. I wouldn’t recommend climbing into any carriage we found here.”
“Because we might not like where it went or what was pulling it. This is Someone’s dream that has that Hell Horse in it,” Thora supplied. “Hi-ho, we’re off to meet them, too. Johnnie’s keeping bad company.”
“And do not take food or drink that any we meet offer as a gift,” Deor added.
Pip nodded. “I’ve heard those stories too. Oh, what fun. Some things are better kept in books.”
“Or sagas,” Deor agreed. “But we live in a world where such things walk. Perhaps our grandparents did also, though they denied it.”
The air around them grew darker as they wolf-trotted—jog a hundred paces, walk a hundred, repeating over and over again, the pace that humans could use to run to death any other beast on the earth. Then the mists parted for a moment. Black cindered stars moved through the sky above, slowly, in chaotic patterns pregnant with meanings that plucked at the edges of his mind.
On a hill in the middle distance a tall fire burned, and stick-thin figures like a cross between human form and that of a praying mantis danced around it, heads thrown back in ecstasy as they pranced and whirled. Limbs raised on high moved twig-like fingers in unison, drawing patterns in lines of dark intensity. Within that white-crimson heat was a pillar, and other figures chained to it writhed against the bonds, shrieking ceaselessly in a high shrill note that scraped at his ears. A wild discordant music of flutes and drums and something that sounded like a steel barrel being pounded by a hundred tiny hammers wove through and around the screams of pain, and the dance went on without end.