Page 19 of Into the West

“How many barges in the string?” she asked.

“Five. Yours, a second sleeping barge, a supply barge, and two flat-tops for the Gate uprights and the skids if we have to turn the barges into sleds. The Baron gave us a Tow-Beast, and even with the Gate uprights, it’ll be like pulling bags of feathers for him. If we have to turn the barges into sledges, Hakkon and Ivar will hitch their horses to a barge apiece. But I hope we won’t have to do that,” said Sai. “There’s twelve plus a Doll in our party, which is not too many, and not so few that dividing up night watches is going to be awkward.”

“I can tend the horses too,” she reminded him. “How many of them are we going to have, including the Tow-Beast?”

She was hoping he would say “twelve,” and he did. “We’ll need a mount apiece if for some reason we have to cut the barges loose and run back to the main body of the caravan,” Hakkon said with authority. “If we have to make speed, I want everyone on their own horse. Did anyone explain how this is going to go?”

She shook her head, and he gestured to her to come over to the table. The object they had all been bending over turned out to be a map.

“Here’s the lake. Here’s the river that drains into the lake,” he said, tapping the left-hand “horn” of the crescent. “This is all swamp; there’s no way that we’d get our herds through there even if it was frozen—a frozen swamp is a nightmare to try and traverse. But Ivar and the other scouts he’s training have been to the other side, found a new river draining out of the swamp here.” He pointed to a short stretch of river newly drawn on the map. “So this is what we do. We’ve got a Gate set up here—” He put a stone on either side of the river flowing into the “horn.” “We have another Gate set up here—” He put two stones on the new river. “And first we go through with four more Gate uprights, and we keep going, and the rest of the caravan follows. They’ll be much slower than we are, so we’ll start getting further and further ahead of them with every day. The Doll we’ll have with us will keep us abreast of their progress. If we get too far ahead, we’ll stop for a little bit and take a rest. Meanwhile, once the last of the caravan is through this Gate, Ceri and Dole will make a temporary Gate, take this one down, and go through the temporary one with the Gate uprights, so we leave nothing behind us that the Empire mages can use to find us, much less send people after us. And if we find, say, a stretch of bad water, or the river peters out to nothing, most of the scouts will stop and set up a new Gate, while Ivar and I and maybe one of the Fairweather lads will go on ahead and find smoother water or another river. As long as it takes us in some combination of west and north, it’ll do. When we find a good place to resume our travel, we’ll come back and get Jonaton and Sai and set up the destination Gate. Meanwhile, there will be two flat-top barges following us with nothing but Gate uprights on them. When they catch up to where we’re stopped, we’ll take their uprights and load them on our empty barges, and they’ll return.”

It was an incredibly well-thought-out plan, at least as far as she could see. “But what if the river starts to freeze over?” she asked.

“Well, we have two options. One is, if we find a place with enough stuff for the herds to live on, we just stop until spring. The other is to put runners on the barges and continue that way.”

“I’d rather not do that unless we have to,” said Ivar behind Delia. She jumped; she hadn’t heard him come up. “It’s risky. It’ll be hard hauling the barges up on the bank fully loaded. It’ll be hard levering them up onto the runners. And the footing along the riverbank is going to be treacherous if the river has frozen over. We could lose horses if they stumble and fall into the river and break the ice.”

Hakkon nodded. “But we’ll hope that doesn’t happen. The river we’re heading for has a pretty brisk flow. We can put a metal blade from the lumber-finishers onto the front of the first barge to break any ice for the others, and we can dedicate one Tow-Beast just for that barge.”

“But staying has its risks too,” Ivar pointed out. “The barges will have to be hauled out on the bank if the ice starts to threaten the hulls, and they’re not the best shelter in a bad winter. But—” He shrugged. “They’re not the worst either. I’ve wintered in snow huts. The barges are better than that.”

He gave her a sharp look, as if gauging whether or not his blunt words were putting her off.

But now that she had committed to this . . . she was looking forward to it.

“Now, you go find Alberdina and Sergeant Fairweather and see which Doll is coming with us, and the three of you figure out what they’re going to need for their comfort, because I haven’t a clue,” Ivar added, laughing. “Then we’ll all meet up for duck stew and any last-minute planning, and we’ll leave in the morning.”

So soon? But . . . there was really no reason to wait. She had everything she needed. And her sister was right. This was going to be an adventure.

Instead of feeling unsettled, suddenly she could not wait until morning.

“Excuse me, Baron,” Rose said, as Kordas stood on the bank and watched the first lot of barges jockeying around to get their strings in place. Although they were, indeed, going through in strings of eight, there was other positioning he was insisting on. That every eighth barge be a supply barge, for instance, because if the convoy got separated, or if there was truly hideous weather, he didn’t want all the food at the rear, or the middle, and out of reach. It wasn’t merely grain that was on those barges, although the bulk of the cargo was barley, oats, wheat, and rye. They’d weighed the advantages of having meat that was transporting itself on its own four feet against the disadvantage of possibly having to feed all those animals if forage ran out, and the disadvantage won out, so after a careful culling of everything that would have been slaughtered for winter back home, there was a lot of dried, salted, pounded, potted, smoked, and otherwise cured meats or preserved meats and bones as well as foraged and preserved or dried fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, herbs, and—anything remotely edible was on those barges as well.

He was interspersing all those barges full of weapons and ammunition among the rest as well, for the same reason. And also because, as his tactical lessons in the Games when he was a hostage had taught him, if some portion of the convoy elected to have a revolt, he didn’t want all the weapons to fall into their hands. And every fourth string of eight had with them a common kitchen barge, with ovens made from the fire-bricks potters had been carefully crafting all the time they had been here, then covered with clay mixed with fibers as a binder. He had given permission for these barges to be used as sleeping spaces overnight. But the only things to be stored in them were cooking implements, pots and pans, fire-handling equipment, and just enough food for that day. That way if there was a kitchen-barge fire, no one would be trying to save anything rather than give the priority to getting out safely, and no more food would be lost than a single day’s worth.

“What can I do for you, Rose?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the clumsy shuttling of barges around.

“It seems that now that we are leaving there are some individuals, not families, who wish to depart from their families and remain, and some from the local villages wish to join the convoy.” Rose’s matter-of-fact tone confused him for a moment, as did the statement. Why would—oh!

There had been quite a bit of mingling of the Valdemarans and the people from the surrounding villages in the moons since they had been there. Trade, for one thing; the villagers had been very willing to trade dried vegetables for meat during the cullings. And with a population of fifteen thousand—quite a heavy percentage of them marriageable age—there was bound to be mingling of another kind.

So now that the time has come to part, there are wails and sulking and “Father, I can’t bear to be parted—” I should have seen this coming. Do I make an official edict about this too?

No . . . he rather thought not. “There is no one true way” meant people should be allowed to make up their own minds about themselves and their families. Even if he personally didn’t like the decisions they made, it was strain that tested resolve. Begin as he meant to go on.

“Rose, let it be known that I will not interfere in parents’ decisions about children that are not adults. Nor will I interfere in the decision of a child that is an adult. And if they are old enough to make this kind of life-changing decision, they are certainly old enough to find a way to get on a barge. If someone wants to give space on their barges for a couple, fine. If someone wants to barter space on their barges for a couple, also fine.”

He thought about adding, Adults will be allowed to join or leave us now, but in the future, they are stuck with the path they chose. But . . . who was to say that they wouldn’t have another situation with a friendly village, and a lad or lass who wanted to stay, or persuaded a new lover to go? “That’s the condition, Rose. They have to find a barge of their own, somewhere, one that is not already earmarked as storage, or find room on someone else’s barge on their own. I can’t be spending my time going from one end of this lake to the other trying to organize a ride.” There were a lot of creative ways this could be done, but if the couple in question couldn’t figure this out for themselves, well . . . too bad. This was part of growing up.

“I will pass this on, Baron. It is a sound decision.”

He smiled a little to himself. Talking about herself as “I” and freely saying what she thinks. Rose must have taken the fact that he encouraged her to have opinions and think of herself as more of an individual to heart.

Of course, he had given the order that today was the day for people to start getting their strings in order and moving through the Gate, and as evidenced by the lines of people on both sides of the river, there were plenty who had been ready long before that order went out. This gave the laggards who waited until the last minute plenty of time to get themselves and their belongings to rights. And meanwhile, down at the very middle of the crescent where the ruins of that ancient town were, barges had already been hauled up out of the water, and their owners were pondering various ways of winterizing them. Those stone houses would be wonderful—next year. But winter was coming, and between a barge and a half-finished stone house, there simply was no comparison.

Some people had laid claim to a house anyway, by widening the doorway and having the barge hauled inside. And when some of the people remaining had come to him, indignant about the “theft,” he pointed out that they were not under his jurisdiction anymore, and they should talk to their own headman.

“But we don’t have one!” someone had protested. At his stern no-nonsense glare, they had amended, meekly, “So we’ll go pick one.”