“What sort of sundry matters? Feeding him?” Sekyw said in a quiet voice.
Djer watched Auron eat. “Yes, and other things. You’ll see what you’ll be dealing with within the hour of that roast disappearing.”
The three partners laughed.
“You’ll head up the Iron Road tomorrow,” Zedkay said. “If I remember my tallies for this year right, you’ll have to hurry; most of the tradegoods have made the trip to Wallander. Too bad your young skyking doesn’t have his wings yet.”
“We’ll leave at once. No sense wasting a night. We can sleep on whatever cargo’s making the run now.”
Auron held the roast in his forepaws, dribbling juice on the carpet. “No, after we eat. And stock up on sausages.”
Chapter 13
Wallander was just that: a land surrounded by a wall. The palisade enclosed gardens, pastures, the riverbank, and landing. A few houses, with only half-walls of clay bricks keeping them from being called shacks, sat at the riverside. There was no dock proper. A long spit of mud had been built up with gravel to form a dike. Shallow-draft boats just pitched up on the dike; deeper ones lowered planks to the spit.
The wall had a single tower in the center and at each end: round wooden constructs of three rings, each one smaller than the first, ending in a mast as Auron had seen on ships. The familiar red-and-gold banner of the Diadem waved there, a long pennant as narrow as a dragon’s tail. Something about the foundation of the towers looked strange to Auron. There was an arch underneath, tall enough for a dwarf to walk upright. Auron thought it an unusual kind of gate, but one that would allow dwarves and their flocks to pass easily outside the walls. Over the walls Auron saw the dust-streaked backs of a herd of wraxapods.
There were wagons, though not as many as Auron imagined when the Caravan had been described to him on the weeklong rail-to-river trip. Djer and Sekyw pored over maps, tracts, and books, trying to prepare themselves for the bargaining that would take place in the fabled bazaars at the other side of the steppes.
Auron studied the maps, as well.
Wallander marked the gateway to the dangerous steppe country. Auron had seen some of it in mind-pictures from his father, and heard more from Djer and his new assistant as they discussed the Caravan’s journey. The steppe was a brown land of extremes: heat and cold, mud and snow, with dust in between. It was owned by the fabled Ironriders, endlessly warring clans who were born, lived, and died on their horses. They were nomads who traveled light, trading pelts and cattle even for the horseshoes that gave the clans their name in Parl. There were principalities here and there along the rivers cutting the plains and ruins that hinted at a greater culture before that of the Ironriders.
Djer’s new role as Partner, complete with red velvet vest closed by a golden chain—a last-minute gift from Zedkay, who claimed to have a closet full that he did not need—gave him instant deference on the rails and river, except by the captain of the Suram, an irascible river elf named Windcheek with hair growing in imitation of cattails.
“Full of wind, and cheek,” Djer said after he asked the captain if they would make Wallander in time for the Caravan for the second day in a row. The vessel, named in the nomad-tongue for the warm south wind, was a single-masted galley that could be rowed—even by Partners, as Djer learned—on the few occasions when the wind didn’t serve. She sailed crammed with last-minute supplies and travelers for the Caravan.
To pass the time and settle his nerves, Djer fashioned a “rooster claw” for the stump on Auron’s tail. He took a dwarvish fighting-gauntlet and modified it into a sock that fit over the stump. A tiny round shield covered one side, and Djer fixed a point taken from a pike to the end. Auron found it light and handy, entirely satisfactory except for one item.
“It shines too much,” he said.
“Easily fixed,” Djer said, and took it away for an hour. When he returned, it was as black as Auron’s claws.
Auron put it back on, and after a few practice tries, he thrust his extra claw a dwarf-finger’s depth into the side of the ship.
“Ai-yo, wingless,” the elf captain called. “Take care with my ship. I’ll not stand for you splintering my woodwork. Do it again, and I’ll spit you.”
“The Chartered Company’s ship,” Djer corrected.
“It’s my ship from when it leaves the falls until we touch sand at Wallander. Then it’s the Company’s ship again, dwarf.”
Sekyw flushed. “You shouldn’t let him speak to you like that. You’re a Partner, after all.”
Djer sprinkled his beard with river water. “He can say what he wants. I care not. As long as he gets us to the Caravan in time.”
So Djer breathed a sigh of relief when they rounded one of the wandering river’s many wide bends and came upon Wallander with the Caravan still assembling. The captain piloted the flat-bottomed galley past a chain of sand hummocks in the river and threw down her anchor at the landing. Small boats, bearing supplies and trade goods from a southern Caravan from the ivory-rich forests of Bant, rowed back and forth across the river like busy water-beetles. The crew jumped overboard, splashing as they set up the gangplank to the entry port at the ship’s waist.
Slave-laborers with sweat-darkened leather bands at their waists and wrists hurried on board, urged onward by the yells of a dwarvish taskmaster. Auron looked upon his first blighters. They resembled heavy-muscled men but with bigger heads and jaws, longer of finger and toe. They were covered with hair, growing in varicolored patches short and curly on chest and back and longer, almost manelike, at face, forearm, and knee.
“Prisoners taken in wars, or more likely the children of the defeated grown large,” Sekyw said. He made his way from the water, supporting his bulk with a gnarled walking stick. The three watched the unloading then turned and hiked up the trodden-over riverbank. The dwarf in charge of the landing bowed and answered a question from Djer.
“Now you’ll see something wonderful, Auron,” Djer said. “A traveling tower. A marvel of dwarvish brains and engineering.”
They crossed between temporary pens, piles of rugs, rolls of fabric, mirrors, and furnishings of all description. Stacks of arms, suits of armor, shields, and more mundane tools covered the landing, being counted and recorded by apprentice dwarves of the Diadem.
They walked in the shadow of the tower, and Djer pointed to its base. “It moves, friend dragon, on those. A revolving track.”
“A what?” Auron asked. He saw wheels, resting on and surrounded by a line of what looked to be small rectangular shields, linked like warriors standing in close ranks.