Luck of the Wheels

‘Give him a chance,’ she protested. ‘He’s only a boy.’

Vandien glanced over in time to see Brin clasp his son’s shoulder, then turn and stride hastily away. Goat’s eyes were very wide as he stared after his father, as if Brin’s back were the most amazing thing he had ever seen. Brin lifted a hand to rub quickly at his eyes as he went. A sudden flash of anger ambushed Vandien. ‘When I was his age, if anyone had called me a boy, he would have had to face my blade!’

‘Exactly my point.’ Ki picked it up smoothly. ‘But you grew up, and so will he.’

‘In two weeks you’re going to convert him into a responsible young man, I suppose,’ Vandien observed bitterly.

‘It’s not impossible.’ She blithely refused the quarrel. ‘Look how far I’ve gotten with you, after only a few years. Don’t act so put out; I thought he was the spoiled child,’ Ki added in a more serious tone.

Vandien just looked at her.

‘This trip is only going to be as bad as you make it,’ she observed.

‘That’s right,’ he agreed sourly, and bent to pick up Sigmund’s hoof. Ki began checking Sigurd’s harness. The big greys stood quiet and passive in the sun. Vandien let down the hoof and made a conscious effort to shake off his ill humor. It wasn’t only disappointment. The thought of travelling with Goat filled him with dismay. Vandien couldn’t recall that he had ever been that callow and immature. When he had been as old as Goat, he had been making his own way in the world. He flinched as those early memories touched him. Sleeping in stables and ditches, telling stories by inn fires to earn a bit of bread and a rind of cheese. Being waylaid once and losing everything to the robbers, even his clothing. Stealing garments from a woman washing on a river bank, and being chased by her dogs. Travelling with a group of Dene through Brurjan territory, and being abandoned by them when he slapped a mosquito on his arm and took its life. Such lovely memories, he thought wryly. The ideal shaping for a young man’s early years; no boy should be without such experiences. Maybe he was jealous, he reflected. Jealous of a young man still in the grip of childhood’s innocence and frivolity.

He had been checking the harness straps as he pondered. He paused and leaned against Sigmund’s wide back, watching Ki. She had tied back her long hair, but brown strands of it already dangled around her face. This southern sun had browned her face and arms until her green eyes stood out startlingly. He remembered buying the soft yellow shirt she was wearing tucked into her trousers. The bodice was embroidered with tiny green leaves and pale blue buds. She looked lovely in it. When she wasn’t upset. Lines divided her brows. She took everything so seriously. He cleared his throat and she looked up. He grinned. She stared coolly at him for a moment, then turned her head to hide her answering smile. ‘If you’d told me it made you feel warm and protective, I could have started acting snotty and rude a long time ago,’ he offered, and saw her relax.

‘Dung for brains,’ she observed fondly. ‘Let’s get these wheels turning.’

Ki mounted the high seat at the front of the wagon. Vandien started to follow her up when the door of the cuddy popped open and Gotheris scrambled out onto the seat. He sat down squarely in the middle. ‘I want to drive the team first,’ he announced.

‘Perhaps later,’ Ki suggested. ‘After you’ve watched for a while. It’s not as easy as it looks, especially with all the foot traffic there is in a town.’

‘You said I’d have to help. And my father promised me I’d be learning new things. So I want to drive.’

The whine in his voice grated on Vandien’s nerves.

But he could be tolerant. He’d engage Goat on an adult level. ‘One thing about Ki: she always drives, unless she’s sick, or bored with an arrow-straight flat road. So by the time she lets you take the reins, there’s not much fun to it. With this team, there’s not much challenge anyway. Sigurd and Sigmund pick their own pace and path. So relax and enjoy the ride.’

Goat cocked his head and looked down at Vandien, his eyes shining. ‘Why do you let her say how everything will be? No woman would treat me so. But if the horses are so smart’ – here he rounded on Ki – ‘why can’t I drive the wagon now?’

Ki looked away from the strain on Vandien’s face and spoke directly to Goat. ‘Because it’s not what the team might do that I worry about. It’s the fool that comes dashing out under their noses, or the horseman who thinks he must gallop, and takes the center of the road.’

‘But my father said …’

‘And besides,’ said Vandien, clambering up onto the seat, ‘Ki said no. And I say no. Now move it over so we can get out of here.’

Goat stared up at him, his eyes more yellow than Vandien had yet seen them. ‘For this treatment of me, my father paid good coin,’ Goat commented bitterly, but he edged over on the seat. Ki settled herself and took up the reins. It rankled Vandien that Goat had usurped his seat beside Ki, but he refused to give it a word. He settled beside Goat.

‘Let’s go,’ he suggested softly.

‘Get up!’ she called to the team, shaking the reins lightly. The greys were ready. They set their shoulders to their collars and the tall yellow wheels of the wagon began to turn. Their heavy, feathered hooves were near silent in the sandy streets. The town of Keddi drifted past them like trees on a riverbank.

‘Is this as fast as they go?’ Goat demanded petulantly.

‘Mmm,’ Ki nodded. ‘But they go all day, and we get there just the same.’

‘Don’t you ever whip them to a gallop?’

‘Never,’ Ki lied, forestalling the conversation. Vandien was scarcely listening. His attention was focused on a street phenomenon. As Ki’s wagon rolled leisurely down the street, all eyes were drawn to it. And as quickly pulled away. All marked Goat’s passage, but no one called a genial farewell, or even a “Good riddance!”’ They ignored him as diligently as they would a scabrous beggar. Not hatred, Vandien decided, nor loathing, nor anything easy to understand. More as if each one felt personally shamed by the boy. Yet that made no sense. Could they have done something to the lad that they all regretted? Some act of intolerance carried too far? Vandien had once passed through a town where a witless girl had been crippled by the idle cruelty of some older boys. She had sat enthroned by the fountain, clad in the softest of raiment, messily eating the delicacies sent anonymously out to her. The focus of the town’s shame and penitence, but still untouchable. This thing with Goat was kin to that somehow. Vandien was sure of it.

‘But they could gallop if they had to?’ Goat pressed.

‘I suppose so,’ Ki replied, her tone already weary. Two more weeks of this, Vandien thought, and sighed.

The black mongrel came from nowhere. One moment the street was quiet, folk trading in the booths and tents of this market strip, all eyes carefully bowed away from Ki’s wagon. The next instant, the little dog darted out of the crowd, yapping wildly at the team. Sigurd flicked his ears back and forth, but calm Sigmund continued to plod along. Why be worried by a beast not much bigger than a hoof, he seemed to say.

Then the dog darted under the very hooves of the team, to nip at Sigurd’s heels. The big animal snorted and danced sideways in his harness. ‘Easy!’ Ki called. ‘Go home, dog!’

The dog paid no mind to Ki, nor to a woman who hastened out from a sweetmeat booth to call, ‘Here, Bits! Stop that at once! What’s got into you? It’s just a horse! Leave off that!’

Around and beneath the horses the feist leaped and snapped, yapping noisily and nipping at the feathers of the huge hooves. Sigurd danced sideways, shouldering his brother, who caught his agitation. The great grey heads tossed, manes flying, fighting their bits. Pedestrians cowered back and mothers snatched up small children as the team seesawed toward the booths. Vandien had never seen the stolid beasts so agitated by such a common occurrence. Nor had he ever seen a dog so intent on its own destruction. Ki stirred the team to a trot, hoping to get out of the dog’s territory, but the feist continued to leap and snap, and the woman to run vainly behind the wagon calling for Bits.

‘I’ll pull them in and maybe she can call it off,’ Ki growled irritatedly. She drew in the reins, but Sigurd fought the restraint, tucking his head to his chest and pulling his teammate on. Vandien was silent as Ki held steady on the reins, baffled by the greys’ strange unruliness.

There was a moment when the dog seemed to be relenting. The trotting woman was almost abreast of them. Then it sprang up suddenly, to sink its teeth into Sigurd’s thick fetlock. The big grey kicked out wildly at this suddenly sharp nuisance. His next surge against the harness spooked Sigmund, and suddenly the team sprang forward. Vandien saw the slip of reins and gripped the seat. The greys had their heads and knew it. Dust rose and the wagon jounced as they broke into a ragged gallop. Vandien heard a yelp and felt a sickening jolt and the dog was no more. Behind them the woman cried out in anguish. The team surged forward as if stung. ‘Hang on!’ he warned Goat, and tried to give Ki as much space as he could. She drew firmly in on the reins, striving for control. Tendons stood out in her wrists, and her fingers were white. Vandien caught a glimpse of her pinched mouth and angry eyes. Then Goat’s face took his attention.

His sweet pink mouth was stretched wide to reveal his yellow teeth in an excited grin. His hands were fastened to the seat, but his eyes were full of excitement. He was not scared. No, he was enjoying this. The last of the huts of Keddi raced past them. Open road loomed ahead, straight and flat.

‘Let them out, Ki!’ Vandien suggested over the creak and rumble of the wagon. ‘Let them run it off!’

She didn’t look at him, but suddenly slacked the reins, and even added a shake to urge the greys on. Their legs stretched, their wide haunches rose and fell rhythmically as they stretched their necks and ran. Sweat began to stain them, soaking the dust on their coats. In the heat of the day they tired soon, and began blowing noisily even before they dropped to a trot, and then a walk. Their ears flicked back and forth, waiting for a sign. Sigmund tossed his big head, and then shook it as if he too were perplexed by his behavior. Silently Ki gathered up the reins, letting the horses feel her will. Control was hers again.

Vandien blew out a sigh of relief and leaned back. ‘What did you make of that?’ he asked Ki idly, casual now that it was over.

‘Damn dog’ was all Ki muttered.

‘Well, it’s dead now!’ Goat exclaimed with immense satisfaction. He turned to Ki, his mouth wet with excitement. ‘These horses can move, when you let them! Why must we plod along like this?’

‘Because we’ll get farther plodding like this all day than by racing the team to exhaustion and having to stop for the afternoon,’ Vandien answered. He leaned around the boy to speak to Ki. ‘Strange dog. Living right by the road like that, and barking at horses: I wonder what got into it.’

Ki shook her head. ‘She probably just got the feist. She’s just lucky it picked a steady team to yap at. Some horses would have been all over that road, people and tents notwithstanding.’

‘It’s always been a nasty dog,’ Gotheris informed them. ‘It even bit me, once, just for trying to pick it up.’

‘Then you knew it?’ Vandien asked idly.

‘Oh, yes. Melui has had Bits for a long time. Her husband gave him to her, just before he got gored by their own bull.’

Vandien turned to Ki, heedless of whether Goat read his eyes or not.

‘Want me to go back, talk to her, explain?’ he offered.

Ki sighed. ‘You’d never catch up with us on foot. And besides, what could you say besides we’re sorry it happened? Maybe she’d just as soon have someone to blame and be angry with.’ Ki rubbed her face with one hand and gave him a woeful smile. ‘What a way to start a journey.’

‘I think it’s begun rather well, myself!’ Goat announced cheerfully. ‘Now that the road’s flat and straight, can I drive? I’d like to take them for a gallop down it.’

Vandien groaned. Ki didn’t reply. Eyes fixed on the horizon, she held the sweating team to their steady plod.