[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

many exploration and food-seeking expeditions. By the next day they would descend again into a valley
that opened to the far side of the ash-mud wastes bordering more familiar territory.
As they receded farther from the lowlands the surroundings became bleaker, the slopes of scattered
scrub and thorn bushes giving way to a wilderness of shattered black rock standing in angled pinnacles
split by fractures that in places rent the ridge into immense blocks already starting to slide apart. Nothing
grew here. The earth and rocks threw off an oppressive heat that Rakki could feel on his face. Vapors
rose from the chasms and fissures, searing the throat and stinging the eyes. Even the dogs were affected,
ceasing their noisy investigations around and ahead of the group, and instead following reluctantly behind,
their ears flat, tails hanging down. Partway through the morning, rain began falling but it didn't wet the
ground. Rakki's people told him that these were places where new parts of the world were made, when
the earth heaved and roared, and fire fell from the sky.
There could be no stopping until they were past the barren uplands. They had brought some water in
sacs made from skin and bladders, but the Neffers began squabbling over shares, and the supply was
soon gone. The hairhides plodded ever more slowly, tongues lolling from slack mouths, their eyes bulging
and taking on a strange crazed look, and the Neffers had to pull them by the halters and beat them with
sticks to keep them moving. Bo and Scar-arm were surly at Rakki for bringing them this way, which
somehow seemed to make it his doing that the water had run out. Screecher echoed their mood and
subjected him to an assault of ongoing abuse interspersed with blows. Rakki's tongue swelled, and his
mouth felt as dry as ashes from a fire. He endured the thirst and the insults without protest. The time for
reckoning would come very soon now.
Finally, they dragged themselves over the last crest and could look down over folds of falling ground
showing patches of lichen and stubby weed before disappearing into banks of mist, beyond which the
dark shadows of mountains loomed indistinctly. The animals smelled water, and their lethargy gave way
to a sudden eagerness to get ahead, making the handlers fight to keep them back. Beneath the mist were
mud hills and then tar bogs that connected roundabout to the swamplands that Rakki was from. That was
the route that Jemmo and the others would have taken. Rakki watched Screecher yelling at Gap Teeth,
whose hands were slipping on the halter of the hairhide that he was trying to restrain.Soon now , he
promised himself.
They descended into a basin of shelving slopes, where water rising from the ooze among the rocks came
together to find its way down into the head of a ravine opening below. Already the air was cooler.
Breaking free, the hairhides forged ahead to plunge their muzzles into the rivulets, while the dogs ran past
them and lapped frenziedly. Rakki found a spot where the water spilled over a lip of rock in a trickle,
threw himself down, and scooped it to his mouth in cupped hands. It was warm with an acrid, sulfurous
taste, but in his condition he would have drunk the tar waters that lay in oily pools among the reeds lower
down. Shingral and Fish started refilling the skins.
Rakki waved a hand at them. "Not this, here. Better farther on."
"This yo' country herebout?" Scar-arm asked him.
"I been up near this part sometime " Rakki pointed to the direction ahead, " from down that way."
Bo was standing, studying the cloud cover above. It was showing the first sign of darkening before night
came. "Need find place okay for bed down pretty soon," he said.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Rakki pointed ahead again. "Go more, not far. Down from wind. Is food root and berry. Clean water."
"You don't say what we do, Dog Meat," Screecher snapped, cuffing him. "Bo, he the Man. He say."
Bo waved an arm. "Move on," he told all of them. Jemmo had said the end of the day would be the time,
when the Cavers were tired and their minds distracted.
They clambered down into the ravine and followed it over boulders and falls of loose shale between
broken walls growing steeper and higher on either side. Thorn bushes and scrub growths began [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]