Quait had the first watch. She lay half asleep, listening to the crackling logs and the murmur of the river. He was walking around back by the horses.
He was fairly tall, although he’d always seemed short, standing beside Jon Shannon. Even Avila was an inch taller, but Avila was a six-footer. He had wide shoulders and he moved with easy grace. He was handsome, although not in the classic mode of the long, lean jaw and the straight nose and whatnot. Quait had features that would have drawn no second look from most women except that they were illuminated by the force of his personality. His good humor, the pleasure he took in being with her, his intelligence, all combined to animate his smile in the most extraordinary way. She had known better-looking men. But none more attractive.
They needed two days to complete the raft. Flojian directed the operation, carved and installed a rudder, and set up rigging. He converted blankets into sails and showed Avila how to make paddles. They were delayed an additional day when, as they were about to start across, the wind turned around and blew out of the east.
On the morning of April 19, the river was calm and they prepared again to set off. Baggage and saddles were loaded onto the raft. The horses, of course, would swim. Long individual lines were looped around their necks in loose bowlines, so that if one was swept away or went down, it would not drag the others with it.
“I still don’t know,” Avila said, looking across at the opposite shore. “It’s a long way.”
“Horses are good swimmers,” said Quait. “They can keep going for an hour or so. That should be plenty of time.”
Their lead horse was an animal named Bali, a large roan stallion. They coaxed him into the water. He was less than anxious, but once in he seemed okay. The others followed (there were now thirteen altogether), and they launched the raft, which someone had christened Reluctant.
The wind filled the sails and the raft slipped out into the current. Almost immediately they saw they were clearing shore too quickly and would drag the horses. Quait and Avila jammed paddles into the water to try to break forward momentum while Flojian trimmed the sails. The Reluctant gave way and the animals began to draw closer.
The horses were low in the water. Only their heads and the upper parts of their necks cleared the surface, but they seemed okay. Quait had spread them out on either side of and behind the raft, far enough apart so they didn’t get in one another’s way. Flojian assumed navigation duties while the others tended to the lines and the animals.
As they drew out into the river, Chaka acquired a better sense of the breadth of the waterway, and consequently of the level of engineering skill required to throw a bridge across it. The bridges, like so much else, had given way to the centuries. The towers still stood, trailing cables. But the spans had fallen into the water, where they lay half submerged.
The scale of Roadmaker civilization was much greater than anyone in Illyria dreamed. The accepted wisdom was that the wilderness contained numerous sites like Memphis and the city in the swamp and Little Rock, near Farroad, and Vicks-burg at Masandik and the nameless ruins at Argon and Makar But knowing it was not the same as walking through it: The wreckage just went on and on, buried in hillsides, sinking into forest floors, scattered along riverbanks, occasionally exploding into impossible dimensions as here in this second giam city.
Nobody back home really understands. They think in terms of a handful of relatively small cities. But look at this. There’s a whole world out here that died. Where does it end? How big is the corpse?
The scale of the disaster left them awed. What kind of plague could have taken down this civilization? On Monday, April 10,2079, the trains came in empty.
“Mista’s having trouble.” Avila indicated a black mare. It was beginning to struggle to keep its head up.
They were approaching midstream.
A mild current was pushing them downriver. Avila was kneeling at the stern and Quait joined her. He looked at the animal’s frightened eyes and shook his head. “Take some sail off, Flojian,” he said, hunkering down beside her. “You okay?”
She nodded.
The raft slowed. “The problem,” said Flojian, “is that we’re going to drift farther downstream. We might have some trouble picking up the trail.”
“Why don’t we worry about that after we’re across?” said Chaka. They were now directly south of the island. It was heavily wooded. She could make out a coastal road and a stone house. Roadmaker style, still standing watch.
“We’re going to lose her,” said Avila.
Chaka had deliberately avoided looking back at the struggling animal. Now she saw that it was having trouble keeping us head up.
“Take more sail off,” Avila said. “We need to slow down.”
Flojian shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We can’t go slow enough for her. Turn her loose.”
Avila’s eyes went wide. “She’ll drown.”
“She’ll drown no matter what we do. Turn her loose, and maybe she’ll be the only one that does.”
Avila looked at Quait and tears stood out in her eyes.
“It’s only a horse,” said Flojian. “We couldn’t really expect to get them all across.”
“Turning it loose makes no difference,” Chaka told her. “If it can make shore on its own, it will. If it can’t, there’s nothing you can do.”
Mista’s line had tightened. They were beginning to drag her. Avila let it slip out of her hand, watched it trail into the water.
Quait meantime had turned his attention upstream. “Ship,” he said. It had been hidden by the island and the downed bridge. Now it was coming fast.
Flojian swore. “It’s got guns,” he said. It was low in the water, with a prow that looked like a wolf’s head and six cannons jutting through ports. It had two masts and a lot of sail and it looked flat-bottomed. A pennant with a white rifle emblazoned on a field of green fluttered in her rigging.
Quait could see sailors on deck. They were a ragged bunch, but they moved with disciplined precision. Some were manning one of the forward weapons. Flojian was trying to rig a blanket to get more speed. “Release the horses,” he said. “We’ll try to make shore.”
Quait watched it come. “No chance,” he said. But they let the horses go. Chaka slid her rifle out of the baggage. Quait caught her arm and shook his head. Put it down.
The Reluctant was picking up speed. The ship’s gun fired and water erupted in front of them. A man in a blue coat and hat put a megaphone to his mouth and told them to heave to. He was about eighty yards away and closing fast. “I think we better do it,” said Flojian.
But Chaka was looking at the master and his crew and her expression told Quait she’d already decided she didn’t want to fall into their hands. “We won’t have much of a chance with those sons of bitches,” she said. “I’d rather fight.”
“With what?” grumbled Flojian. “Holy One, preserve us.”
Avila’s dark eyes pinned him. “Don’t look for help,” she snapped. “We’re alone, and we better realize it.”
“It was just an expression,” he stammered. Quait was surprised at the outburst.
But Chaka was right. He could see that nobody was going to walk away unmarked from this crew.
“Who are they?” asked Chaka.
“Pirates. Or maybe there’re naval powers along here somewhere. Who knows?”
The men on the ship were laughing and making obscene gestures. Quait sighed. “Your call, ladies. We can make a stand. Or we can turn ourselves over to them.”
“Won’t be much of a stand,” said Avila.
“I don’t care,” said Chaka. “They’re not going to take me.”