Titus called a halt after about a quarter of an hour, so that people could make minor adjustments to boots and harnesses and other bits of clothing. Then they pressed on for another half hour, until Titus called another stop for water, and then another half hour when he rotated the crew, with Beth slipping into the traces vacated by Mardina.
After just three hours—Stef guessed they’d gone only five or six miles—Titus decreed that they were done for the first day.
The rest were anxious to keep moving now they’d started, with the thousands of miles that lay ahead of them weighing heavily on their minds. But Titus was nothing if not an experienced marcher, and he knew what he was doing. He had them all strip off their boots, bathe their feet in a stream, and then slip into the loose, open camp sandals he’d had them make. This first day, unpracticed, it would take them longer than usual to make camp, to get into the routine of digging a latrine ditch and gathering food and collecting water, and Titus wanted to be sure they did all this properly. Also Titus wanted to check over the cart, to see if it was passing this ultimate test of roadworthiness. They had spare parts and pots of marrow to fix up obvious flaws.
“Come on, come on!” Titus chivvied them as they got to work. “When Roman legionaries are on the march they set up camp every night—”
“Sure they do.”
“And you don’t hear a word of complaint—”
“Sure you don’t!”
“Why, I remember once on campaign—”
“Save it, Titus Valerius!”
Once the labor of the camp building was done, and they were gathered around the fire they’d built for the night, Stef could see the wisdom of Titus’s management. They’d all encountered unexpected difficulties, even if Stef’s had been only the lack of a cushion under her bony behind. And they were all more tired than they’d expected to be. But they’d got through the day, they’d done everything Titus had demanded of them, and they knew now they only had to repeat this routine in the days to come.
Before they bundled up under their blankets and clothing heaps to sleep, huddling together under Beth’s stretched-out tent, Titus came around one more time, accompanied by Clodia with a simple medical pack. The legionary insisted on checking everybody’s feet, for bruises, chafing, incipient blisters. “Now that you’re all soldiers on the march, you’ll learn that your most important items of equipment are your feet. Look after them and the rest follows. And the sooner you’re all capable of doing this for yourselves, the better.”
“Good night, Titus Valerius.”
“Good night, auxiliaries…”
And, after Titus had done his round, Stef heard rustling, saw shadows slip through the dim light under the canopy. They were unmistakable: Chu Yuen and Mardina Eden Jones Guthfrithson, clutching blankets, hand in hand, making their way out from under the canopy and into the shade of the forest.
The next day they made better progress. And the day after that, better still.
Stef made a deliberate effort not to count the days, not even to try to estimate the distance traveled. She knew she could leave that kind of management to Titus and the ColU. And besides, she slept better if she tried not to think about the monumental journey ahead. She thought of this as a new way of life, a long tunnel of routine that was going to fill her days for the foreseeable future. Sleep, break camp, march, make camp, sleep… Without beginning, and without end.
But, gradually, the country began to change.
They descended from the substellar high ground, and the haulers began to lose the benefit of the downward slopes Titus had cunningly scouted for them. On the other hand, the weather on the lower ground, away from the permanent low-pressure system over the substellar point, became milder, less turbulent. Day by day there was less wind and rain. And the vegetation around them responded. Now the broken forest that characterized the relatively unsettled substellar gave way to more open country, with forest clumps separated by broad swaths of ground-hugging, light-trapping vegetation.
During the long hours between the days’ marches, the ColU had Chu carry it out into the country away from the camp to inspect the changing terrain. Out of curiosity, and when she had the strength, Stef followed them—often with Beth, who was curious to see more of what had become of this world that she still thought of as home.
At the end of one unremarkable day, they walked side by side over a plain almost covered in sprawling green leaves, like tremendous lilies, Stef thought. Systems of three leaves united at a central stem, covering the ground, and basking in Proxima light. When she knelt down to look closer she saw that the leaves were firmly anchored to the ground by fine tendrils, covering every square centimeter. No competitor was going to swipe this plant’s growing space, this share of the starlight. It was a very Arduan scene. But when she dug her hand into the ground beneath the leaf, she came up with what looked like an authentic sample of terrestrial soil, complete with an earthworm, a thing like a woodlouse, and other creeping terrestrial creatures.
As they walked back to camp, Stef gradually got a broader sense of the wider landscape. With the star static overhead, and every square centimeter of ground colonized thickly by the green of life, this part of the world was like a huge, collective, cooperative system, optimized over time to extract every scrap of energy from the light falling from the sky. Stef felt as if she were in some huge greenhouse, old and decayed, the glass choked by lichen, moss and weeds—with here and there a vivid splash of Earth life embedded in the rest.
In the middle of the next day they came to the bank of a river, wide, placid.
Stef clambered off her bench and hobbled over to Titus. He was standing with his one good hand on his hip, staring out at the water, grinning. “This is as far as I came with Clodia, during our scouting trip. Well, I judged we need come no farther. This river clearly flows out of the substellar point,” and he waved his hand back in the direction of Proxima, “and, no doubt fed by many tributaries, continues to flow in a roughly southeasterly direction. Well, you can see that. Now, Stef, tell me I’m no surveyor. Madam, I present a highway as straight and true as any Roman road. And now, for a time at least, we can all ride in comfort, as you have been all the way from our first camp.”
“Aye aye, cap’n.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I imagine that didn’t translate…”
They made camp in the usual manner. Then they got to work reassembling their cart into a small boat—detaching the wheels and axles, going over the seals with their marrow caulking, and digging out paddles they’d crudely made from dead stems lashed up with rope.
In the breaks, they took advantage of the river, washing their feet and clothes, dunking their whole bodies luxuriously in water that ran refreshingly cool. But Titus banned any swimming. Though the river ran with a strong current, it was obvious that the bed was choked with life, and he didn’t want anybody getting caught up in that.
It took them forty-eight hours before they were ready to embark. After so long on the road, many days already, they had all learned not to rush.
As with their first day’s walk, Titus decreed that their first jaunt in the boat would be a short one, to ensure they ironed out any flaws. He made sure that those to whom he entrusted the paddles had fabric wrapped around their palms for protection, and ponchos improvised from lightweight survival blankets to keep off the spray. They even had to wear their light camp sandals, so that their boots, precious items of equipment, could be bundled in waterproofs. It was all detail with Titus, Stef observed.