“Well?” Crown asked finally.
“They will allow us to pass,” Sting said.
“How courteous of them.”
“But they claim the wagon and everything that is in it.”
Crown gasped. “By what right?”
“Right of prophecy,” said Shadow. “There is a seer among them, an old woman of mixed stock, part White Crystal, part Tree Companion, part Invisible. She has told them that everything that has happened lately in the world was caused by the Soul for the sake of enriching the Tree Companions.”
“Everything? They see the onslaught of the Teeth as a sign of divine favor?”
“Everything,” said Sting. “The entire upheaval. All for their benefit. All done so that migrations would begin and refugees would come to this place, carrying with them valuable possessions, which they would surrender to those whom the Soul meant should own them, meaning the Tree Companions.”
Crown laughed roughly. “If they want to be brigands, why not practice brigandage outright, with the right name on it, and not blame their greed on the Soul?”
“They don’t see themselves as brigands,” Shadow said. “There can be no denying the chief’s sincerity. He and his people genuinely believe that the Soul has decreed all this for their own special good, that the time has come —”
“Sincerity!”
“ —for the Tree Companions to become people of substance and property. Therefore they’ve built this wall across the highway, and as refugees come west, the Tree Companions relieve them of their possessions with the blessing of the Soul.”
“I’d like to meet their prophet,” Crown muttered.
Leaf said, “It was my understanding that Invisibles were unable to breed with other stocks.”
Sting told him, with a shrug, “We report only what we learned as we sat there dreaming with the chief. The witch-woman is part Invisible, he said. Perhaps he was wrong, but he was doing no lying. Of that I’m certain.”
“And I,” Shadow put in.
“What happens to those who refuse to pay tribute?” Crown asked.
“The Tree Companions regard them as thwarters of the Soul’s design,” said Sting, “and fall upon them and put them to death. And then seize their goods.”
Crown moved restlessly in a shallow circle in front of the wagon, kicking up gouts of soil out of the hard-packed roadbed. After a moment he said, “They dangle on vines. They chatter like foolish monkeys. What do they want with the merchandise of civilized folk? Our furs, our statuettes, our carvings, our flutes, our robes?”
“Having such things will make them equal in their own sight to the higher stocks,” Sting said. “Not the things themselves, but the possession of them, do you see, Crown?”
“They’ll have nothing of mine!”
“What will we do, then?” Leaf asked. “Sit here and wait for their darts?”
Crown caught Sting heavily by the shoulder. “Did they give us any sort of time limit? How long do we have before they attack?”
“There was nothing like an ultimatum. The chief seems unwilling to enter into warfare with us.”
“Because he’s afraid of his betters!”
“Because he thinks violence cheapens the decree of the Soul,” Sting replied evenly. “Therefore he intends to wait for us to surrender our belongings voluntarily.”
“He’ll wait a hundred years!”
“He’ll wait a few days,” Shadow said. “If we haven’t yielded, the attack will come. But what will you do, Crown? Suppose they were willing to wait your hundred years. Are you? We can’t camp here forever.”
“Are you suggesting we give them what they ask?”
“I merely want to know what strategy you have in mind,” she said. “You admit yourself we can’t defeat them in battle. We haven’t done a very good job of aweing them into submission. You recognize that any attempt to destroy their wall will bring them upon us with their darts. You refuse to turn back and look for some other westward route. You rule out the alternative of yielding to them. Very well, Crown. What do you have in mind?”
“We’ll wait a few days,” Crown said thickly.
“The Teeth are heading this way!” Sting cried. “Shall we sit here and let them catch us?”
Crown shook his head. “Long before the Teeth get here, Sting, this place will be full of other refugees, many of them, as unwilling to give up their goods to these folk as we are. I can feel them already on the road, coming this way, two days’ march from us, perhaps less. We’ll make alliance with them. Four of us may be helpless against a swarm of poisonous apes, but fifty or a hundred strong fighters would send them scrambling up their own trees.”
“No one will come this way,” said Leaf. “No one but fools. Everyone passing through Theptis knows what’s been done to the highway here. What good is the aid of fools?”
“We came this way,” Crown snapped. “Are we such fools?”
“Perhaps we are. We were warned not to take Spider Highway, and we took it anyway.”
“Because we refused to trust the word of Invisibles.”
“Well, the Invisibles happened to be telling the truth, this time,” Leaf said. “And the news must be all over Theptis. No one in his right mind will come this way now.”
“I feel marchers already on the way, hundreds of them,” Crown said. “I can sense these things, sometimes. What about you, Sting? You feel things ahead of time, don’t you? They’re coming, aren’t they? Have no fear, Leaf. We’ll have allies here in a day or so, and then let these thieving Tree Companions beware.” Crown gestured broadly. “Leaf, set the nightmares loose to graze. And then everybody inside the wagon. We’ll seal it and take turns standing watch through the night. This is a time for vigilance and courage.”
“This is a time for digging graves,” Sting murmured sourly, as they clambered into the wagon.
Crown and Shadow stood the first round of watches while Leaf and Sting napped in the back. Leaf fell asleep at once and dreamed he was living in some immense brutal eastern city —the buildings and street plan were unfamiliar to him, but the architecture was definitely eastern in style, gray and heavy, all parapets and cornices —that was coming under attack by the Teeth.
He observed everything from a many-windowed gallery atop an enormous square-sided brick tower that seemed like a survival from some remote prehistoric epoch. First, from the north, came the sound of the war song of the invaders, a nasty unendurable buzzing drone, piercing and intense, like the humming of highspeed polishing wheels at work on metal plates. That dread music brought the inhabitants of the city spilling into the streets —all stocks, Flower Givers and Sand Shapers and White Crystals and Dancing Stars and even Tree Companions, absurdly garbed in mercantile robes as though they were so many fat citified Fingers —but no one was able to escape, for there were so many people, colliding and jostling and stumbling and falling in helpless heaps, that they blocked every avenue and alleyway.