Kim offered, “The thing Abasio called the Listener, Xulai. Nothing else like that anywhere.”
“He’s right,” Xulai agreed without enthusiasm. “It’s not in what I’d call a convenient location, but it’s huge. A kind of curling red stone—that is, it’s said to be red at sunrise. It’s green most of the time, and it coils up from the ground and circles up to the north, then back toward the south, like a huge skinny ocean wave, only frozen in time.”
“Where did you see it from?”
Xulai shrugged. “We were just below the pass, weren’t we, Kim? No! I remember the sign we saw right after we passed the thing. It said ‘One day to Findem Pass.’ We were looking northeast. How many switchbacks from that sign, Kim?”
He turned away, counting on his fingers as she went on: “It was only visible from that one curve on the road. That near the top, the roads between switchbacks were a lot shorter.”
Xulai nodded, remembering the weird effect the thing had had on Abasio. “The thing really didn’t show up very much, but it had a very odd effect on Abasio. I think we were on the third switchback from the top when we saw it.”
Precious Wind ate her breakfast while she consulted her folder of maps. Various landmarks were noted, as were the roads used by the king’s tax-hogs. She counted three down from the top, examined that stretch of road, then took ul xaolat and vanished once more, intending to start from the place their wagon had been this morning.
Several Artemisian men from Arakny’s camp filtered into the wagon clearing shortly thereafter.
“My name’s Deer Runner, ma’am,” announced their spokesman. “Your friend spoke to Arakny, and she sent us just in case any of Sybbis’s guards wander anywhere near your wagon. If you don’t mind, ma’am, I’ll just stay here with you.”
Xulai didn’t mind. “What’re Sybbis’s men doing?”
“Oh, they’re standing around the northern two-thirds of our camp, looking bored and hungry.”
“They don’t seem to know that a third of them are gone,” said Kim. “No one has ever told them how to organize themselves, and they don’t know. Their queen didn’t leave any one person in command of them. How do they respond to problems?”
“They probably don’t respond to problems, ma’am. I would imagine they often encounter a bad problem they didn’t see coming . . .”
“ . . . or live long enough to see it depart . . .” suggested Precious Wind.
Xulai poured a cup of tea and handed it to Deer Runner. “Tell us about Catland. Everything you know . . . or suspect.”
Deer Runner accepted the cup of tea and relaxed, leaning against the wagon. “Well, when the Catlanders got here, it was Midsummer and they started out with a camp. Most of ’em had tents. When they noticed that most of our buildings are ’dobe, some of ’em learned how to make ’dobe. Sybbis told ’em to build a wall around the camp. They built the wall and spent some time putting pictures on it. That was very bad problem number one because by the time they had enough bricks made and dried to build that wall, fall had come and it was turning cold. About then, maybe, they realized they should have built houses instead of a wall.” He sipped at his tea, shaking his head.
“So, they had a very chilly winter. Soon as it got warm enough for ’em to make brick again, they built some shelters. They needed clay and they needed straw to make more bricks; they had to bring the clay and straw to them or go to where it was, so they tried to steal some wagons. They ended up with arrows through them, so they decided to set up their brickwork place where the clay was and buy wagonloads of straw.
“First thing they built was a house for Sybbis, and they had a look at the men’s houses at Wide Mountain and built some bad copies of those for the men t’sleep in. We suggested they should build a cookhouse. We even offered to show them how, but they said they could see how. Since they couldn’t see the foundations, they really didn’t see how they were built. Their houses had no foundations under ’em. That was another bad problem. Once it came to snow, the bottoms of the walls got soggy. ’Dobe’ll do that, and the walls started caving in. You need to put rocks where the walls are going to go, and you need to slope the ground on the outside away from the wall and ditch it—‘landscape it’ is what Arakny calls it—so the water drains away. And you need to slope your roofs so the water runs off of them on the downhill side so water drains away.
“By that time, some of the men had built houses of their own, an’ they’ve gone on like that for several years now.” He grinned to himself. “ ’Course, like I said, they didn’t put any foundations under the buildings, so they’re startin’ to crack pretty bad.”
“No overall plan?” asked Xulai.
“Not s’much as a line in the dirt even. No streets between things. Inside that wall everything’s crowded together. Next bad problem they didn’t see coming was that nobody figured out where to put the shit. It got pretty deep before they finally thought maybe they’d better have a special place to put it instead of just droppin’ pants wherever.”
“Who cleaned it up?”
Deer Runner shook his head. “Nobody. Finally Sybbis sent one guy to Wide Mountain Mother to ask her what to do. Seems wherever they came from, that’s the way things had been, just shit, dead bodies, filth, trash everywhere. One of Wide Mountain Mother’s family showed them how to dig earth closets. Most a’ the buildings are outside that wall now, so they got room. Houses inside the wall hafta empty pots into earth closets outside the wall.”
Kim said, “You said there were pictures on the wall?”
“Yup. There’s one of the guy, CummyNup. He’s sorta the main one over there. Then there’s one of Baso the Cat.”
“What does he look like?” whispered Xulai.
Deer Runner considered the matter. “Ooh, well, it’s got real bright red hair, standy-up ears, round eyes, muzzle sticks out like a cat, with great long whiskers on either side of its mouth—long fangy teeth in that mouth. Looks like a cat.” He grinned. “When Sybbis told the painter to put him on the wall, that’s what CummyNup told the painter he looked like, a real cat.”
Xulai grinned at this, thinking of Abasio’s possible reaction. She anticipated telling him he did not in the least resemble his eidolon. Arakny had said there was a definite resemblance between the picture of CummyNup and Sybbis’s son. CummyNup wasn’t with this group. He had possibly been left in charge of the main encampment.
“How did they ever end up down here?” Kim demanded.
Xulai thought back to what Abasio had told her. “When the few remaining gangers left the city, most of them came south. Sybbis was the daughter of one of the gang chiefs. She was bought by the chief of the ‘Purples’—that’s the gang Abasio got recruited into. The Purples made up the largest group left when everything in Fantis fell apart, and on their way south they gathered up the remnants of other groups.”
“But she rules? How?”
She shrugged again. “She was the daughter of a gang chief. She was bought by old Chief Purple to be the wife of his only son, a boy who never matured physically—in his twenties he had a body like a little boy of seven or eight. Abasio said old Chief Purple wouldn’t admit it, not even to himself, that the boy was not a normal man. Sybbis knew that her father had ruled his gang. When the whole city fell apart, she gathered up the remnants and took her father-in-law’s place.”
Deer Runner nodded. “Well, that could explain it: she believes she’s inherited his power, and she has a few powerful enforcers around her who pretend to believe that. They’re the ones who actually run the place. ”
Xulai offered, “Precious Wind says it’s good to have a putative but nonessential leader for enemies to focus on. Someone the group can lose to assassination or accident without feeling the loss or endangering the structure.”
“Pute-a-tive but non-essential. That pretty well fits,” murmured Deer Runne
r, with a sideways grin. “So it’s someone among the men who’s the real power, probably this CummyNup!” He scanned a circle around them. The number of guards had dwindled. “When you figure Precious Wind is coming back?”
“Whenever she loses the other thirteen or fourteen guards.”
Deer Runner straightened up, abruptly losing his folksy manner and homegrown speech. “Tell her I congratulate her on her activities. Nicest job of dispersal I’ve seen in a very long time. As for Sybbis, she thinks she’s ‘building an empire,’ but she has no idea what an empire is. She brought her gang south because someone told her it was warmer in the south. If old Chief Purple was still alive, I’d say he’d be the one giving the real orders. Either that or the guys who pretend to take her orders but really give their own. It doesn’t matter. She’s already set the place up to fail . . .”
“Like how?”
“Lady, you haven’t been here, but Abasio has, and he’ll verify what I say. This geographic area can’t support a heavy population. Wide Mountain Mother rules a very widely spread population of people whose numbers are limited and who live almost entirely off the land. For efficiency and defense, each population cluster is assembled around a small local plaza which is located in or near the special resources a village needs. These places are always near water and near forests; can’t bake bread without firewood, can’t build houses without rafters.”
Xulai had taken a notebook from her pocket and was taking notes as Deer Runner went on. “Each place will have a baker—less wood needed for one big oven than for fifty little ones—but there’s only one wheelwright in the whole area. Only one tile maker and one kiln. One healer in each place, but only one or two surgeons in places specially equipped for him or her and the students. A surgeon has to teach as well. Originally we hired a man from way east of here, and he taught others. There’s a medical school way east of us. Wide Mountain Mother picks two or three people out of each generation to send there. Seven years, it takes, to graduate from there.
“Each plaza doesn’t necessarily have the whole variety of special things in it, but Wide Mountain Mother keeps a rider, at least, in every population center—that’d be a little house and stable with three or four good horses and some local family providing him with food and doing up his laundry and some local boy caring for the horses. That’s so the word can get out and people’s needs can be met quickly if there’s a problem somewhere.
“From Wide Mountain Mother, three riders go to in three directions, to stations one, two, and three. From each of them, three horses go out, that’s nine. And three from each of those, that’s twenty-seven, thirty-nine locations in total. Fourth riders are the last one to catch the tiny places. There’s about fifty little communities. All of ’em get the word within two days. Same thing works in reverse if some small place wants to alert the people to something—a group of marauders, a pack of wolves bothering the sheep, something like that.
“Outside each settlement there’ll be some farms. If the land provides the right kind of ground, there’ll be an orchard. Most essentials are found locally, grown locally, or obtainable by a crew spending a few days at a time to go get or make whatever’s needed. Things not locally available that we need to trade for are carefully planned by Wide Mountain Clan. There’ll be a farrier somewhere, and a blacksmith, and so on . . .
“If someone needs a house, someone pays the wagon man and the lumber man to go to the mountains and come back with a load of tree trunks for rafters. The bricks will be made at the nearest ’dobe brick works, which is the most convenient place to find clay, sand, straw, and water. If you have a tank wagon, water can be transported to wherever the clay and sand are found. If you don’t have a tank wagon, everything has to go where there’s water. That place becomes the center for brick production.
“There are several potteries that make cups, pitchers, big jars with tight covers to store things bugs or mice might get into. Pottery has to be fired, that means firewood or dried cattle dung. The dung is actually easier to gather and lighter to transport. The women spin and weave—the sheep are theirs. There are tanners here and there to take the hides from the animals hunted for meat. There are carpenters and wood craftsmen here and there. Each of these efforts may involve several people who do it as their primary productive activity. I believe you understand what I’m saying.”
Xulai nodded. “I hear you say there’s a lot of planning and adjusting necessary to keep everyone fed and healthy and happy and employed in providing everything the people need.”
Deer Runner nodded agreement. “When Sybbis left Fantis, she stayed awhile on a farm—that’s according to CummyNup—but nobody mentioned what time of year it was. Certainly it wasn’t long enough to see the whole cycle from seed to harvest. She could have helped weed rows of carrots without connecting the growth to anything she ate at Purple House. So, the first winter her people were down here, they managed to accumulate enough food by raiding farms north of here, killing milk cows for meat and taking the grain and vegetable harvest. The people they raided weren’t our people and they’d refused our offer of help, and when spring rolled around, the farmers packed up their remaining stock, loaded everything into wagons, and went east, toward the forest lands. There were enough of them to build a stockade, share the labor, and get settled in by winter. They’re still there; we send riders back and forth, we keep in touch. The second year, there were no farms within raiding distance and people in Catland went hungry.”
“They didn’t raid Artemisia?”
“We had our defenses in order. Raiders ended up with arrows through them. We made a point of leaving the bodies where they’d be found. Catland got the message. After that, Sybbis—or whoever issues orders in her name—quit raiding the farms, but that’s not the issue. It doesn’t matter whether she tries to steal food or buy food or trade for food. The local area cannot produce enough food to feed hundreds of totally nonproductive people. The gangers have no skills. If they’d stayed up near where Fantis was, they’d have had year-round snowmelt streams off the mountains and they’d have had deeper, better soil. If they’d learned to farm and stayed there, they might have managed to live fairly well.”
Xulai said, “I get the point. The population has to fit the environment, not the other way round.”
“Exactly. This year Sybbis heard about Saltgosh, so she’s sent a troop of men to raid Saltgosh for winter provisions.”
Kim had been listening quietly, but he snorted at the mention of Saltgosh. “The men she sent are dead or captured.”
Xulai murmured, “If they can sing, they might stay captured. Sing or not, they won’t come back. We took their horses, Saltgosh will have taken the men. I don’t understand what keeps any of them here. If she doesn’t get the Saltgosh food, her men will go looking for farms to raid, despite what they’ve been told.”
Deer Runner massaged his forehead, as though even thinking about the gangers was painful. “She’s already lost over a third of her men to death or departure. We have the advantage. It’s our home ground. Gangers are alley fighters, they have no weapons effective at a distance. Our people are hunters—excellent bowmen . . . and women. Just as Saltgosh does, we keep watch day and night. Any raiders Sybbis sends out don’t return. If Sybbis were to take them east, a long way east, she’d find big rivers, deep soil, places where there’s enough water to grow their own food, places where they could survive. Even back near Fantis, she’d find that. But she has none of the skills she needs to rule a sizable group of people.”
“Who could she learn them from?” Kim asked.
Deer Runner gave him a brotherly pat on the shoulder. “A good question, Kim. Who indeed? How has she managed to get through these last years? They haven’t succeeded in raiding for food. Where did they get it? We have the feeling someone is running her, keeping her here: probably somebody left over from Fantis that tells her wha
t to do but stays out of sight.”
Xulai looked up at this. Someone running her? The real manager or gang leader. She would have to tell Abasio that, the moment he returned . . .
Deer Runner yawned, stretched, and headed from the clearing, saying, “I’ve done enough frittering. Chances are Precious Wind has distributed the rest of the Catland guards. Think I’ll go see if I can find her.”
Evidently he did not find her. Shortly after his departure, and from the opposite direction, Precious Wind returned to the wagon to make a sandwich and talk around bites of it. “That thing is called the Listener by the local people, who say it’s always been called that. It gave me an anchor point for dozens of forest places not too far from villages of some sort. Probably it’s the area Needly came from. Is everything quiet here?”
Xulai replied, “Except for Deer Runner. He went off to look for you. He’s really quite interesting.”
Precious Wind flushed. “Artemisians can fool you that way. Except for the few like Wide Mountain Mother and Arakny, by and large they give you the expressionless face and the monosyllabic talk, and you’d swear they’re ignorant as a gopher. Then they drop the mask and become quite . . . fascinating.” She chewed, ruminatively. “I’ll go looking for him when I’m finished.”
She finished her sandwich and went off through the trees, leaving Xulai to stare speculatively after her. Was it possible that Precious Wind was . . . attracted to an Artemisian? Precious Wind? Icily logical Precious Wind? Precious Wind who usually eschewed emotion as though it were contagious? Hmm.
Precious Wind returned shortly after noon—not to the wagon, but to a place near the junction half a day’s wagon journey southeast of Arakny’s camp. There she seated herself on a conveniently placed fallen trunk, shut her eyes, and recalled the map of the area she had examined when she had joined the Artemisian group to come north. The map had shown a long finger of fractured stone pointing from the roots of the mountain out into the desert. Several miles wide at the mountain end, the finger dwindled gradually in both width and height as it came southeastward. On each side of this finger was a road, the northern one coming down from Catland and turning southeast along the ridge, the southern one down from Findem Pass to run more nearly due east on the finger’s other side. Where the finger pointed, at its eastern end, was the Gap—pinched between the end of the finger on one side and by the Devil’s Whatsit, or Devil’s Ah, on the other. Here the two roads joined to continue generally southeast, across one of the few wagon fords of the Big River—a ford built by, maintained by, and whose tolls were collected by Artemisia—and thence on to Wide Mountain Plaza. The wide, low mountain for which the community was named was farther east, stretching itself along the horizon.