Scorpion Mountain (23 page)

PART FOUR

SCORPION MOUNTAIN

chapter
thirty-seven

T
he sun had been up for forty minutes. As the temperature rose, the wind began blowing from the north, growing in strength with each minute.

The land sailer stood ready, outside the main gate of the hippodrome. Water skins, bedrolls, weapons and food had been loaded onto the triangular platform ahead of the helmsman's position. The sail was raised to its fullest extent, but so far was unrestrained. It slapped back and forth in the wind without any tension on the sheet to hold it in position. As it moved, the spidery structure swayed slightly and the boom rattled back and forth.

Hal adjusted his
kheffiyeh,
the Arridan desert headdress that Selethen had provided for the crew. He drew the trailing ends across his face and twisted one over the other to hold it in position. His face and head were now protected from the sun and the wind. He climbed aboard the central seat, taking up the sheet that controlled the sail in one hand and the steering lines to the front wheel with the other. He glanced at his two companions, waiting to board. The rest of the crew stood in a half circle to see them off.

“Day isn't getting any younger,” he said, and Gilan and Stig moved to their positions, climbing gingerly onto the outriggers, setting their feet in the footrests, and gripping the handholds. Hal smiled under the
kheffiyeh
as he noted they were gripping rather more tightly than might be required.

“Just relax,” he called to them. “Don't try to fight the movement. Go with it.”

They both nodded. Their faces were obscured by their
kheffiyehs
as well. But he could see there was no relaxation of the tension in their bodies. He began to draw in the sheet and the rope squealed softly through the pulleys, taking up the slack until it began hauling the sail in and tightening it against the wind.

There was the usual
whoomph
as the sail caught the wind and filled, forcing the boom out to port. Hal felt the tension in the sheet increase and hauled in a little more.

Creaking and rumbling, the land sailer began to move across the hard, rocky ground. Slowly at first, then with increasing speed as Hal heaved on the steering lines and brought the strange vehicle round to a position where the wind lay on their starboard beam.

As it began to move, the watching crew took an involuntary step forward, then another, keeping pace with the three-wheeled land sailer as it bumped and jounced over the rough ground. Then Hal hauled in tight on the sheet and the spidery craft accelerated suddenly, shooting ahead of the small group of onlookers, leaving them behind as it hit its pace.

Thorn and the others stopped, looking in wonder as the land sailer skimmed across the rough ground, bouncing and rattling as it gathered speed. Then, without anyone suggesting it, they all began to cheer.

Stig turned to wave at them, nearly lost his seat as the land sailer hit a bump, and snatched frantically at his handholds. The group cheered again.

Gilan, gripping tightly to his own handholds, turned to look at Hal, who was leaning forward eagerly, like a rider on a spirited horse. The analogy seemed appropriate, Gilan thought. He began to move with the motions of the land sailer, relaxing his muscles instead of fighting the movement by staying tense. Instantly, he felt more comfortable.

The rigging and mast groaned and the wheels rattled and rumbled, occasionally leaping over a larger than usual rock. The whole frame creaked alarmingly as it flexed over the uneven ground. All in all, the land sailer was making a considerable amount of noise.

“Does it always do this?” Gilan yelled. He saw Hal's head turn toward him. Even though only his eyes were visible above the
kheffiyeh,
he was sure the skirl was grinning in delight.

“How would I know?” came the muffled reply. “I've never done this before!”

He hauled in the sheet a little further and the sail tightened. The upwind strut, the one Gilan was sitting on, began to rise as the starboard wheel lifted from the ground, skimming the surface of the desert, coming back to rest every five meters or so. Hal gripped the steering lines and sheet in one hand and gestured with his other for Gilan to move farther outboard.

Tentatively, Gilan slid his rump along the flat wooden seat built onto the outrigger. There was another handhold farther outboard and he transferred his grip to it. As he moved out, the spar began to sink back to the ground again, until they were running on three wheels once more. The faster they went, he noticed, the smoother their passage became. It seemed that the impacts with the ruts and rocks and hillocks were smoothed out by their increased speed.

On his outrigger, Stig had noticed the same thing. He glanced down at the brown earth flashing past underneath them and grinned. Hal had estimated that they'd travel as fast as a cantering horse. But this close to the ground, with only half a meter separating him from the hard-packed sand and rocks, it seemed much faster. He looked up and glanced inboard at his friend.

“You've done it again,” he said in admiration. But his words, muffled by the
kheffiyeh
wrapped round his face, were drowned by the rush of wind and the constant vibration of the speeding vehicle. A flash of movement out to their right took his eye and he craned round to see more clearly. A rider had burst from the concealment of the oasis and was galloping flat out to the south, paralleling their base course.

It was one of the observers who had kept an eye on them for the past two days. He heard Hal call and looked back inboard. His friend was pointing at the distant rider and Stig nodded his head emphatically to show that he had seen him.

“Off to warn the Shurmel,” he said, although he knew Hal would never hear him.

He had begun to become accustomed to the swooping, soaring movement of the land sailer. Just as Gilan had used his horseman's instinctive movements, Stig employed his ingrained seaman's ability to match himself to the regular, plunging motion.

They careered on, moving faster and faster as Hal became more accustomed to the feeling of the land sailer and brought the sail in harder, always stopping short as a wheel began to lift.

Then Stig and Gilan heard him shout and they both turned to look at him. He had the reins and sheet in one hand and was making a circular motion over his head with the other. Then he jabbed a pointing finger out to starboard.

The meaning was obvious. He's going to come about onto the opposite tack, Stig thought, and took a firmer hold of the bamboo handles in front of him. Gilan did the same. Then Hal heaved on the tiller ropes and brought the land sailer's head round, releasing the sheet as he did so.

The speed dropped away as the land sailer's head came round, the wind driving the sail through the turn. Then Hal hauled in on the sheet again and the sail filled and tightened. The speed began to build up once more and, within a few minutes, they were flying again on the opposite tack.

“Just like a ship,” Stig murmured. Now they were racing on the port tack, the frame rumbling and groaning and vibrating as loudly as before. Ahead of them, and a little to starboard, he could see the distant horseman, galloping frantically, his horse's hooves kicking up puffs of dust that were instantly left behind in his wake. The rider turned to look at them, then redoubled his efforts with his riding whip and the horse began to pull away from them once more.

“You won't keep that up all day,” Stig said, echoing the thought Thorn had voiced about the comparative speeds of a horseman and the land sailer. He glanced astern—he couldn't help using shipboard terms in his mind—and saw they were leaving an impressive rooster tail of brown dust behind them. The buildings of Ephesa were fading into the distance. Only the tallest could still be seen.

“We're really moving,” he said to himself. And once more, he shook his head in admiration of Hal's inventiveness.

After some time, they lost sight of the galloping horseman. They were traveling on slightly divergent paths, and in any event, the land sailer had to change direction back and forth in order to capture the beam wind that would give them their best speed. Stig sat on his outrigger, swaying to the motion of the land sailer, lulled by the repetitive rumbling, creaking, groaning noises of its passage. At one stage, he caught himself on the verge of falling asleep and jerked himself upright.

“All very well to relax,” he told himself. “But don't overdo it.”

The ground below him looked hard and unforgiving. If he fell off, he'd suffer bruises and abrasions, at the least. And he'd delay their passage to the Amrashin Massif. He shook off the sense of weariness and sat up straighter.

Then he became aware that Hal had released the sheet, spilling wind from the sail, and the land sailer was rumbling increasingly slowly across the rocky ground until it came to a stop. The sudden silence was remarkable. Stig's senses had become accustomed to the creaks and groans and rattles of wheels and rigging and the frame itself. Now there was just the constant sigh of the wind out of the south, and the occasional flapping of the sail as the wind tossed it from side to side.

Hal unwrapped the
kheffiyeh
from his face, letting the long ends fall down on either side of his neck. He stepped down from his seat and stretched himself, kneading his fists into the small of his back as he leaned backward.

“Let's take a break,” he said. “My backside's killing me.”

The others agreed wholeheartedly. Gilan stepped down stiffly from his seat and dusted himself off. Clouds of dust flew in the air around him.

“I feel like I've swallowed half the desert,” he said, reaching for one of the water skins, taking a deep swig, then spitting it out on the dry ground. He watched with interest as the damp stain quickly disappeared from the superheated ground. He looked around. On all sides, the empty brown desert stretched away from them.

“How far do you think we've come?” he asked.

Hal shrugged. “Hard to tell. We're tacking constantly, so our progress as the crow flies is a lot less than the actual distance we've covered. I'd say we're about twenty or thirty kilometers from the coast. What do you think, Stig?”

Stig took the water skin from Gilan, rinsed his mouth, then took a deeper drink before replying. Then he nodded.

“I'd say that sounds about right.”

Gilan had a further question, one that had been bothering him for some time. “The wind's behind us,” he said. “Why don't we run directly ahead of it, instead of zigzagging back and forth?”

Hal acknowledged the question with a nod. “If we run dead ahead of the wind, I have no way of controlling our speed. We'd just go faster and faster until we were out of control. By slanting across it, I can slow down or speed up as I want to.”

Stig was looking up at the sun, which wasn't yet directly overhead. “It's not noon yet. We've got at least four hours of steady wind coming this afternoon.”

“And if we want to, we could keep going tonight once the wind shifts,” Gilan said.

But Hal greeted the idea doubtfully. “Don't think I'd care to go careering around the desert after dark,” he said. “If we hit a large rock or fall into a gully we'll be in big trouble.”

Several times that morning he'd been forced to change course suddenly as they went hurtling toward large rock outcrops, and once they had nearly plunged into a dried-up watercourse—known as a wadi to the Arridans. It was a steep-sided gully that was nearly three meters deep.

Stig shuddered as he thought of what would have become of the frail land sailer had they gone over the edge.

“I hadn't thought of that,” Gilan said.

Stig rubbed one buttock. He'd been sitting off center and he could feel a bruise forming there from the constant pounding movement of the land sailer.

“What about our friend from the oasis?” he asked.

Gilan considered the question, then replied. “If he has any sense, he'll stop for the night too. You can't keep galloping across country like this in the dark. His horse could break a leg or fall and roll on him.”

“What if he hasn't got any sense?” Stig asked.

Gilan shrugged. “Then he'll either beat us to Scorpion Mountain or kill himself trying,” he said. “My vote is for the latter.”

Hal had moved to the triangular platform ahead of his steering position and was unpacking some of the supplies they had brought with them.

“Let's take a break now and eat,” he said. “Then Stig and I can tighten up anything that's worked its way loose and we'll keep going till dusk. That should put us more than halfway to the Massif.”

“And Scorpion Mountain,” said Gilan, as he sliced a haunch of cold roast goat with his saxe knife.

Hal nodded. “And Scorpion Mountain,” he echoed.