She remounted and continued down Town Trail. In the distance, to the east and to the west of the trail, concrete buildings of three storeys rose here and there above the low scrub. Ahead were more of these, and also taller, more substantial buildings.
The erosion channel widened even more and deepened. Sixty feet down, a sheet of water slid along silently. Like the stumps, a half-mile of buildings had been undermined. Some had toppled or slid sideways into the gully. One of the buildings was many storeys tall. Whatever had filled the spaces between the girders of the top floors had fallen out. From her higher vantage point Noor looked northward through the skeleton of naked beams toward the bridge over Salt Creek. This was the end of Town Trail.
A less traveled path led along other streets, proceeding zigzag fashion toward the water. There were many buildings now, all concrete, whole or only partially wrecked. The smell of excrement was present again, but beyond this and the fact that most of the brush around the buildings had been crudely cut back there was little evidence of life.
Ahead the land fell steeply. Noor caught glimpses of Salt Creek. Beyond the Creek ranged the profuse and tall and melancholy towers. She stopped for a minute and gazed at these. Unlike the domicile, they stood perfectly straight. There was even glass in many of the windows. Staring at the lonely, looming towers, Noor appeared to be both puzzled and hurt. But she clucked twice, and Beauty moved on.
The path swung westward toward the foot of the bridge. There were three-storey buildings on either side, with erosion channels running between them. In a few places these had undermined the road, and the asphalt had sunk, and Noor had to lead Beauty across the depressions before remounting. A few of the buildings had slid down and forward and rested at angles over the old street.
Here and there faces appeared at dark windows, but Noor did not acknowledge them. She sat up very straight and held her spear upright. It had a triangular blade the size of a hand. Smoke was rising from one of the buildings. As she passed that building, she saw without turning her head that a man with a crossbow was standing behind a glass window. Where the path ran smoothly she urged Beauty to move a little faster.
She came to a place where the road had been washed out, and the path dipped into a wide and deep gully with sloping sides. She got down and again laid her spear and sword across the bags and held the cargo in place as best she could as Beauty inched down the slope. Beauty had to struggle a little to make it up and out of the gully as Noor pushed the cart. They came out of the gully into a circle of six people.
There were three men and three women. Only one of them was not naked, a woman with a layered loincloth of blue and white plastic. They had grey skin that hung flabby against bone, and patches of sparse stringy hair. Their eyes were deathly tired but full of fear and determination. They stood well away from Noor, weaving and feinting like wrestlers, making noises of either aggression or terror. One of them, a man taller than the rest but with no more meat on his bones, blocked Beauty’s path. He was holding a warped eight-foot length of two-by-four, which he gripped like a baseball bat.
Noor snatched up her weapons, and the addicts stumbled back. Two of them fell. She shouted “Don’t!” But the man swung the two-by-four at Beauty’s head. He was weak and slow. Beauty reared up, and the two-by-four hit the bottom of a hoof and spun out of the man’s hands. His momentum carried him forward, and one of Beauty’s hooves pawed down on a shoulder. The man cried out and fell. Another man, on Noor’s left, darted in, but Noor jabbed her spear in his direction. His feet skidded out from under him, and he crab-walked backward out of range. A woman on her right made a grab for the bag of squash. Noor slashed her across the wrist. The woman screamed and ran.
Noor skipped up onto the bag of squash and shouted “Hah!”, but Beauty was already running. A squash in the bag rolled under Noor’s foot, but she leapt anyway and came down off balance on the wide target of Beauty’s rump. One wheel bounced over the man who had tried to brain Beauty. The other wheel bounced over the fallen two-by-four. There was a dull crash of buckets in the cart.
The way was almost smooth, and Noor let Beauty run. After a hundred yards she managed to slow her down and to sooth her and finally to get her to stop. She talked to her and patted her for a few seconds and then checked the cart. One of the buckets had fallen over and lost its plastic covering and the water. One of the sandals was gone. The full bucket and the other empty one and the squash and the hay and the hooch were still there.
She looked back. The man that Beauty had stomped was crawling slowly toward the side of the road. He was dragging one arm. Off among the buildings and the rain gullies and the stubble of brush, below the road, toward Salt Creek somewhere, the woman she had cut was still screaming.
Soon the path turned onto Town Bridge. Just to the east she saw again the huge gully that had swallowed the Town end of Town Trail. Here it was shallow but very wide. Water flowed steadily into Salt Creek.
There were perhaps a dozen people spaced along on the south slope of Town Bridge. Of these a few had wool garments. One had a sword that he carried in his hand. They all stopped and watched the woman and the horse and cart pass. The man with the sword raised his free arm in a kind of salute. Noor nodded. A man in a plastic shift held up a small stereo speaker. A woman called “Lookit.” She had a light bulb. Noor steered Beauty over to her and stopped and leaned and took the bulb and examined it and handed it back and continued up the bridge.
At the cusp of the bridge a man with a crossbow stood on the west sidewalk. He rested against the railing and idly watched the few people passing up and down the bridge, all of whom moved to the far sidewalk as they drew near. Noor also directed Beauty as far away from the man as she could. The man was clothed thickly in rabbit skin and had rubber boots. He was stocky and had a bushy brown beard. Near him on the sidewalk was a pile of split cordwood. A small fire was burning at his feet. Noor smelled the smoke that the breeze carried to her side of the bridge.
The man called “Nice day for a horse ride.” He had a deep raspy voice.
Noor kept moving.
“Going to give me a ride on your horse?”
Noor leaned toward him and spat.
“Come and get warm at my fire. You look cold.”
Noor was past him, but she did not move away from the eastern sidewalk.
“Really cold.”
She edged out a ways into the roadway.
“I think I’ll just shoot you and take your horsy. They say horse meat is good.”
Noor stopped and slid off Beauty. She walked briskly in the man’s direction. She held her sword in her left hand and in her right the spear, in throwing position. The man stopped leaning on the railing and started trying to load his crossbow. Noor stopped about thirty-five yards away. She said “Go ahead. I’ll give you time to load up. Then I’ll let you take a shot, which will miss. Then I’ll come and stick this sword through your fat gut and throw you and your fire off the bridge.”
The man finished loading his crossbow. He aimed it at Noor. The expression on his face was not very different from the expressions on the faces of the addicts Noor had left behind ten minutes earlier. The crossbow was trembling.
Noor said “Can you swim?” She waited a few seconds, then walked backwards down the bridge to Beauty and mounted and went on.
To the northwest, beginning at the north end of the bridge, rose a vast sprawl of towers, a desolate world of looming ruins. Between these she sometimes glimpsed fragments of the charred mountains. Finally the sun sank below the western edge of the broken cloud cover. It struck a pane of glass somewhere and made a point of gold until another hulking ruin got in the way. Noor checked her load — hay, water, squash, hooch, one sandal — and continued down the bridge.