Thirst

Half a day east, the grass ran out. A full day east, the soil turned red.

By the second day, nothing grew out of the ground, but the rock had begun to look as though it were growing. Rocks worn away at the base by the wind, standing on thin legs. Thousands of them. The wagons threaded through between.

Two days were enough to see why the old men in the market never talked about the east. There is nothing to say about it.

＊

Roslyn Vake the scribe walked behind the sixth wagon.

She wore a guard's coat, but it did not fit her. The sleeves were folded back twice. A woman somewhat past thirty, short. Her hair was cropped, and uneven at the back. One look told you she cut it herself. Her mouth was wide and her features were plain, but her eyes moved a great deal. She wore glass spectacles. She was probably the only one in the company who owned glass.

She wrote as she walked. Paper clipped to a board, the board held in her left hand, writing with her right. Her fingers were black to the first joint.

“You the scribe Drag told me about?”

“Roslyn Vake. On the roster I am listed as cargo. Paper, ink, and myself.”

“Cargo?”

“Cargo. That is what it said. There was nobody to complain to, so I left it.”

“What are you writing.”

“You.”

“Me.”

“There is no use hiding it, so I will say it first. Whether you turn on the eleventh day. And if you turn, in what order and in what way. That is what I write.”

“Pleasant line of work you've got.”

“It is not pleasant. No. It is not.”

Roslyn pushed her spectacles up. They did not need pushing up.

“But there is a column that has stood empty for three hundred years. Blank. Nobody has written anything in it. When I look at it I cannot sleep. I truly cannot. There was a time I did not sleep for three days.”

Roslyn lifted the board and turned it toward Marlow. She did not hide it.

The writing was neatly even. The date. The weather. The distance walked that day. Even the number of words Marlow had spoken that day.

“You counting how much I talk?”

“Yes. Without counting, there is nothing to compare.”

“Compare to what.”

“To you yesterday. Today is thirty-one times. Yesterday was forty-four. The day before was fifty-two.”

“That's going down.”

“It is going down.”

“Hey.”

“Though it may be only that you are in a poor mood. That I cannot know. So I write the number and not the reason. Once I begin writing reasons, a record becomes an opinion.”

Marlow thought he was not going to be able to like this woman.

Then he thought one thing more. A person who does not write reasons can probably be trusted.

＊

The water was fixed at two liters a day per person.

Eighteen barrels. Half of it the oxen drank. If an ox went down the wagon stopped, so the oxen came first.

At night the barrels were gathered in the middle of the wagon ring, a fire was lit, and two men at a time took turns watching. Not the load. The water.

On the night of the fourth day, Marlow was paired with Willa.

“Hey. Can you turn a grain back into water?”

“No.”

“Has nobody tried?”

“Three hundred years of trying. Nobody's done it.”

Willa fed one more branch into the fire.

“It's strange. A whole ox's worth of water is sitting right there and you can't drink it.”

“It isn't sitting there. It's gone. Out of the world.”

“But the grain's there.”

“The grain's there. The water's gone.”

“…I've never understood that, you know.”

“I don't understand it either.”

“What? You've been saying it like you did!”

“Course I don't. Nim doesn't either. Nobody has in three hundred years.”

Willa laughed. Across the fire he could see the gap where a tooth was missing.

＊

They came late that night.

The oxen noticed first. All twelve raised their heads at once and turned the same way.

Twenty meters out, past where the firelight reached, the ground was moving.

Low. Not even knee-high. Long and thin, the body about as long as a man is tall. Six legs. No eyes. Where a face should be, two holes.

There were more of them than could be counted.

“Water-suckers! Ring the barrels!”

One of the guards shouted it. The man who had shared his fire three days before.

The soldiers moved. They did not use the guns. They beat the ground with poles tipped in iron. Beat it and drove them off.

“Willa, get on the wagon!”

“What about you!”

“Up! Just get up there!”

The water-suckers did not attack anyone. They did not avoid anyone either. They went straight for the barrels, and if a man was standing in the way they went over his feet.

One climbed over Marlow's boot. Heavy. Like a wet sack of sand.

Seven of them fastened onto the third barrel. The wood groaned and split. What was inside fell to the ground.

It was gone before it landed.

The water did not soak in. Before it could soak in, seven bodies drank it. He could see the water-suckers swelling where they had taken it.

“Number four is breached!”

The man who had shared his fire had climbed on top of a barrel and was swinging a pole. His foot slipped.

Where he fell there were nine water-suckers.

Marlow ran. Three steps and he stopped. Because he knew he would not reach him.

Drag went past him at a run. It was the first time Marlow had seen how fast an orc runs.

Drag did not use a pole. He took hold of the water-suckers with both hands and threw them. He threw three. He had hold of the fourth when he stopped moving.

When Marlow caught up, Drag was looking down at the man.

The man's body had shrunk inside his clothes.

＊

By morning the water-suckers had drawn off.

Of the eighteen barrels, five were lost. Two oxen had their legs ruined and were put down where they stood. They cut down to five wagons and shifted the load.

One man was dead. Theo Lant. His mother is in Calva, Roslyn said.

“You looked up that kind of thing too?”

“Before we set out I copied down every one of them. The twelve, the six drivers, the captain, and the two loaders. Twenty-one in all.”

“What for.”

“Because it is awkward to be unable to write it when someone dies.”

“…You came prepared.”

“It is an unpleasant kind of preparation. While I copied them, I was thinking that one of these columns would be filled in.”

Roslyn took off her spectacles and pressed at her eyes.

“Last night you stopped after three steps. I ran five steps and stopped. Two steps more, and I was in the same place as you.”

“You writing that down too?”

“I am not. That is not a record.”

＊

The fifth morning of the journey came, the eleventh day all told.

Marlow woke to something poking his face. It was Willa's finger.

She was sitting beside his head. Arms around her knees, eyes red, plainly not having slept at all.

“…You awake?”

Marlow opened his mouth. He waited, himself, to hear what he would say.

“Keep your fingers out of my face. That was up my nose just now.”

Willa's face crumpled once. Then she hit him on the shoulder with everything she had.

“You — idiot! Idiot! Idiot, idiot, idiot!”

“That hurts.”

“It does not, you liaaar!”

She was right. It did not hurt. She kept hitting him anyway.

Five meters off, Roslyn was writing.

“What are you writing.”

“Eleventh day, no change.”

“That's all?”

“That is enough. All nine of them turned on the eleventh day. The date is the one thing written for every one of the nine. You did not turn. It is the first such line in three hundred years.”

Roslyn held the board against her chest. Her hands were shaking a little.

“I came in order to write this. I am glad I could write it.”

“Don't celebrate. Nothing's solved.”

“Nothing is solved. But you are not like the nine. Knowing only that, we have moved one step along.”

＊

While Willa was off drawing water, Marlow undid the cloth on his shoulder.

Vesta's eight stitches were still in. Too early to take them out. It was only day eleven.

He took them out.

The thread came away without resistance. Not one of the eight had bitten into the skin.

Under the thread there was no wound. No redness. No swelling. Only the marks of the stitching, eight dots in a row. Touching it, the skin there alone was new.

Ribs don't knit in three days, Vesta had said.

Nor does an eight-stitch wound normally vanish without a trace in eleven days.

Marlow laid the eight threads out on his palm.

It was not that he had not turned. He was turning a different way from the nine.

Whether to tell Willa, he could not decide.

End of Chapter 8