I said, “Not at all. I value your advice and will gladly follow it. Show me what to do.”
Sarton pulled the covers over the handle and sheath for me and said that he approved of the look and the fit.
Aeyli and I left our Bokken with him and said that we would return in an hour or so. I kissed Alexia on the cheek and we left she and the weapon maker to finish the work.
Outside I said, “Aeyli, what a wonderful gift! I love it. Thank you!”
She said, “Oh, I’m glad that you like it. I’m so glad. Here’s what we need to do next. First, I think that you should give me the money and stones that you carry. I’ll take them to Tronuck and he will give me enough for our journey; a few coins should be more than we need since there’s nowhere to spend them where we’re going. He’ll keep the rest safe for us.”
I handed her my pouch. She pulled out some of the coins and held one out to Rani.
She said, “Rani, take this and go buy us a Calot and cart, with the agreement that if we return it in good condition that the stable will buy it back from us for 80 percent. Wait for us at the gate.”
She took another few coins and handed them to Sashar. She said, “Sashar, take Mark and go to the market and buy what you think we should have for food. Mark, you go with her to carry what she buys. Belle, you buy packs and lanterns and other things that you think we might need. Fill water bags at the fountain. Take all of it to Rani at the gate and load it into the cart.”
Belle said, “I think we should bring hammocks and a few very light furs. Also a net and a light ax.”
I said, “What does a Calot like to eat? Not just to live on, but as a special treat?”
The girls looked at each other and then said, “We don’t know.”
I said, “Rani, ask at the stable. If it’s possible, buy a good amount of it. Not enough for meals, but enough for snacks.”
Rani said, “Snacks for a Calot? Do you know what a Calot is? It’s a big animal with a lot of teeth and sharp claws that pulls a cart. They don’t sit at the table with us.”
I said, “Perhaps not, but get the snacks anyway. They will come in handy, I promise you.”
She said, “OK, but a Calot is an angry thing. It will do as we say, but only if we insist.”
I said, “That’s why we need snacks.”
She asked, “Mark, why?”
I said, “We need snacks because they taste good.”
She said, “Oh, my mistake, I thought that I was talking to Mark, but it sounds like Alexia now! I better hurry… because it’s faster! I love you because I do! I should take you to the furs right away because I want to!”
We laughed and sent her off to negotiate for the animal. Aeyli took the pouch and headed for Tronuck’s house saying “I’ll meet you at Sarton’s in an hour.”
Belle, Sashar, and I headed to the market.
At the market, first we went to buy packs from a leather working stall. We bought three light weight furs from the same vendor. Belle kept one of the packs and I took four and Sashar and I went to buy food while Belle shopped for the other things that she thought would be helpful. Sashar took one of the packs from me and told me to look around for a few minutes while she went to find her friend to take over her fruit stand while we were gone and to tell a few people why she wouldn’t be around for a little while.
I looked around the market and greeted people for about 15 minutes. Sashar called out to me and handed me a pack full of fruit and we went to buy vegetables and some dried meat. It didn’t take long.
All in all, we didn’t need much. We couldn’t take enough food and water for the entire time that we were planning to be gone, so we would find both while we were out. A two to three day supply was plenty and we could do very well on just six pieces of fruit each per day. Because of the incredible properties of the honey flavored milk, I could easily go without the fruit if necessary and would probably only take three pieces a day anyway.
There were no tents or canopies, no stoves or fuel, and no ice chests or sodas. There were the knives on our belts, about a hundred pieces of fruit, the strips of dried meat, two dozen small bags of water, and three portable versions of the mineral lamps that were used for lighting all over Barsoom.
Sashar and I finished buying the food. Belle had finished her shopping and had caught up with us. I took all of the heavier packs and we headed toward the gate to meet up with Rani and the cart that she had gone to get for us.
When we got to the gate, Rani stood beside a very large dog, like a Newfoundland or Saint Bernard, but even larger. It was harnessed to a two wheeled cart about three feet wide, six feet long, and two and a half feet deep.
I asked Rani about the animal, “Rani, I thought that you were going to get a Calot? What’s this?”
She looked puzzled and said, “This is a Calot. What did you expect?”
From the stories of John Carter that I had read as a boy, I expected something very different. I had expected something like a dog, if your dog has eight short legs, a broad head with multiple rows of teeth like a shark, and is about ten feet long and stands relatively low to the ground with his shoulder about 30 inches high!
I said, “This is a Calot?”
She said, “Yes? This is a Calot.”
I asked, “Rani, what is a Banth?”
She said, “A Banth is like a giant cat. About twice as large as the Calot.”
I said, “But how many legs does it have?”
She laughed and said, “What are you talking about? It has four legs. Calots have four legs, Banth have four legs, you have two arms and two legs, spiders have eight legs, snakes have no legs and they say that fish have no legs either. Tell you what, when we stop for the night, I’ll teach you all about it, using my legs! Two legs, two arms, two boobs, six lips, one pussy, four cheeks. Um, any more questions?”
I thought, so Calots were big dogs and Banth were lions with four legs, not ten. I guessed that I was going to have to add those facts to the things that got fictionalized in the books. Wait, now that I thought about it, how many limbs did the Great White Ape that I killed have? I had thought that it was six, but that is what I expected to see. Now that I thought about it, the carcass did have just four limbs.
I said, “No, not right now. Oh, wait, yes! You said that the Calot was ‘an angry thing’?”
She laughed again, “If something tries to come into our camp, you’ll see. But this big guy is sweet and furry and a great big loyal friend. Aren’t you? Yes you are!”
A large bag of ‘snacks’ for the animal was already in the cart. We loaded the rest of our supplies and tied one of the light furs over the top of the bundle. Before we tied everything down, I filled one of the small bags on my belt with the treats for our animal.
While the Sashar and Belle finished securing the cart, I had Rani introduce me to our new Calot companion.
I said, “Rani, show me how we handle him.”
She said, “We command him as with anything. They understand the meaning of many things that we say to them.”
In actuality, it was more accurate to say that the animal understood the telepathic component of what we said, and if we told it to follow us, it understood the sense of the request, not the words themselves.
She continued, “When it is happy, you can touch it on the shoulder or head or neck, but be careful. It won’t bite your arm off, like it would if you were an enemy, but it may bump you hard with its snout if you irritate it, even a little. I like them, but they can be difficult.”
I approached the beast, and standing several feet from its face, I took a treat from my bag and held it on my palm at let the thing get a whiff of it. It did not move toward me, but it was interested. I tossed the morsel toward it and the big dog snapped it out of the air. I repeated this several more times and each time, the animal seemed to be put more at ease. Within a few minutes, I was standing directly in front of it with my hand on its head, feeding it from my hand.