Part 21 (1/2)

Geraint shook his head. ”Neither, although we will give you all the fight you care for if that is what you want. No, I am laughing because it turns out those funny little digging things were right after all.”

”You mean the nuggies?” I asked.

Now he nodded. ”Yes, them,” he said indifferently. ”I thought they dug because they were things that had to dig. But there really is a market for tin in this far corner of the world that has none of its own?”

”There is,” I said. ”We have trade goods back at the Horse of Bronze Horse of Bronze, our s.h.i.+p. We will pay well.”

”Will you?” He eyed me in a way I had never seen before: as if I had no right to exist, as if my standing there on four hooves speaking of trade were an affront of the deadliest sort. Worse was that, when I looked into those oceanic eyes, I more than half believed it myself.

Oreus, always quick to catch a slight, saw this perhaps even before I did. ”I wonder if this man-thing has any blood inside it, or only juice like a gourd,” he said.

Geraint should not have been able to follow that. He should not have, but he did. His eyes widened, this time in genuine surprise. ”You are stronger than the nuggies,” he said. ”Do any of them yet live?”

”Yes,” I said, not mentioning that we had seen only Bucca. ”Will you trade tin with us? If not, we will try to mine it ourselves.” I did not look forward to that. We had not the skills, and the nuggies' shafts would not be easy for folk with our bulk to negotiate.

But Geraint said, ”We will trade. What do you offer?”

”We will trade what we have always sent north in exchange for tin,” I answered. ”We will give you jewelry of gold and precious stones. We will give olive oil, which cannot be made here. We will give wheat flour, for fine white bread. Wheat gives far better bread than barley, but, like the olive, it does not thrive in this northern clime.” I was sure the olive would not grow here. I was less sure about wheat, but Geraint did not need to know that.

”Have you wine?” Geraint asked. ”If you have wine, you may be sure we will make a bargain. Truly wine is the blood of the G.o.ds.” The mans with him nodded.

”We have no wine,” I said. ”We did not bring any, for it is not to the nuggies' taste.” That was true, but it was far from the only reason we had no wine. I said not a word of any other reasons. If Geraint wanted to ferret out our weaknesses, he was welcome to do so on his own. I would not hand them to him on a platter.

I wondered what weaknesses the mans had. Seeing him there, straight and erect and G.o.dlike in his all-of-one-pieceness, I wondered if mans had any weaknesses. Surely they did. What those weaknesses might be, though, I had no idea. Even now, I am less certain of them than I wish I were.

I said, ”You must leave off killing the nuggies who grub the tin from the ground. They have done you no harm. That will be part of the bargain.”

One of the mans with Geraint did not understand that. He repeated it in their language, which I could follow only in part. I did not think he turned it into a joke or a bit of mockery, but the mans laughed and laughed as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

To me, he said, ”You misunderstand. We did not kill the nuggies and the other folk hereabouts. They see us, and then they commonly die.”

”Of what?” I asked.

He told me. I was not sure I followed him, and so I asked him to say it again. He did: ”Of embarra.s.sment.”

I refused to show him how much that chilled me. These mans embarra.s.sed me, too, merely by their existence. I thought of Bucca, who was somehow tougher than his fellows. I wondered who among us might have such toughness. I was not sorry these mans dwelt so far from our homeland.

Another question occurred to me: ”Did you make this great stone circle?”

”We did,” Geraint answered.

”Why?” I asked.

I thought he would speak to me of the G.o.ds these mans wors.h.i.+ped, and of how those G.o.ds had commanded his folk to make the circle for some purpose of their own. I would not have been surprised that he and the other mans had no idea what the purpose was. That is often the way of G.o.ds: to keep those who reverence them guessing, that they themselves might seem the stronger. And I would not have been surprised to hear him say right out that the purpose of the circle was to bring a bane down upon the other folk dwelling in those parts.

But he answered in neither of those ways. And yet his words did did surprise me, for he said, ”We raised this circle to study the motions of the sun and moon and stars.” surprise me, for he said, ”We raised this circle to study the motions of the sun and moon and stars.”

”To study their motions?” I frowned, wondering if I had heard rightly and if I had understood what I heard.

Geraint nodded. ”That is what I said, yes.”

I scratched my head. ”But . . . why?” I asked. ”Can you hope to change them?”

He laughed at that. ”No, of course not. Their motions are as the G.o.ds made them.”

”True,” I said, relieved he saw that much. These mans were so strange, and so full of themselves, he might easily have believed otherwise. ”This being so, then, what is the point of, ah, studying these motions?”

”To know them better,” Geraint replied, as if talking to a fool or a foal.

For all his scorn, I remained bewildered. ”But what good will knowing them better do you?” I asked.

”I cannot tell you. But knowledge is always worth the having.” Geraint spoke with great conviction. I wondered why. No sooner had I wondered than he tried to explain, saying, ”How do you know you need tin to help harden copper into bronze? There must have been a time when folk did not know it. Someone must have learned it and taught it to others. There must have been a time when folk did not know of wonderful wine, either, or of this fine wheat flour you brag you have brought to trade. Someone must have learned of them.”

His words frightened me more even than his appearance. He carved a hole in the center of the world. Worse yet, he knew not what he did. I said, ”a.s.suredly the G.o.ds taught us these things.”

His laugh might have been the embodiment of the cold wind blowing across that cold plain. ”No doubt the G.o.ds set the world in motion,” he said, ”but is it not for us to find out what rules they used when they did it?”

”G.o.ds need no rules. That is why they are G.o.ds,” I said.

”There are always rules.” Geraint sounded as certain as I was. ”At the winter solstice, the sun always rises in the same place.” He pointed to show where. ”At the summer solstice, in another place, once more the same from year to year.” He pointed again. ”The moon likewise has its laws, though they are subtler. Why, even eclipses have laws.”

He was mad, of course, but he sounded very sure of himself. Everyone knows eclipses show the G.o.ds are angry with those whose lands they darken. What else could an eclipse be but the anger of the G.o.ds? Nothing, plainly. Quarreling with a lunatic is always a risky business, and all the more so in his own country. I did not try it. Instead, I answered, ”Let it be as you say, friend. Will you come back to the Horse of Bronze Horse of Bronze and trade tin for our goods?” and trade tin for our goods?”

”I will,” he answered, and then smiled a very unpleasant smile. ”We are many in this land-more all the time. You are few, and no more of your kind will come any time soon. Why should we not simply take what we want from you?”

”For one thing, we would fight you, and many of your hes would die,” I said. ”I do not deny you would win in the end, but it would cost you dear. And if you rob us and kill us, no more of our folk will come to this sh.o.r.e. You will have one triumph, not steady trade. Which do you want more?”

The man thought it over. By his expression, he had never before had to weigh such considerations. I wondered whether one orgy of slaughter would would count for more with him than years of steady dealing. Some folk care nothing for the future. It might as well not be real to them. Were Geraint and his kind of that sort? If so, all we could do was sell ourselves as dear as possible. count for more with him than years of steady dealing. Some folk care nothing for the future. It might as well not be real to them. Were Geraint and his kind of that sort? If so, all we could do was sell ourselves as dear as possible.

In due course, he decided. ”You have given me a thought of weight, Cheiron,” he said. He p.r.o.nounced my name oddly. No doubt his in my mouth was not fully to his liking, either. Our languages were close cousins, but not quite brothers. He went on, ”Trade is better. Robbery is easier and more fun, but trade is better. Our grandsons and their grandsons can go on trading if we do well here.”

”Just so,” I said, pleased he could look past himself. Maybe all his talk of rules, rules even in the heavens, had something to do with it. ”Aye, just so. Come back to the s.h.i.+p, then, and we shall see what sort of bargains we may shape.”

We clasped hands, he and I. Though his body could not match mine for speed, his grip was strong. He and his followers turned and went off toward the rest of the mans, who were waiting for them. Oreus and Hylaeus and I trotted back to our fellow centaurs. ”It is agreed,” I called. ”We will trade. All is well.”

A jackdaw flew up from the stone circle. ”Chaka-chaka-chak!” it cried. It seemed as if it was laughing at me. What a fool I was, to let a little gray-eyed bird prove wiser than I.

As I have said, we centaurs were quicker than mans. But Geraint's folk showed surprising endurance. We could do more in an hour. Over a day's journey, the difference between us was smaller, for the mans would go on where we had to pause and rest.

We did all we could to take their measure, watching how they hunted, how they used their bows and spears. They, no doubt, were doing the same with us. How folk hunt tells much about how they will behave in a fight. I learned nothing spectacular from the mans, save that they were nimbler than I would have guessed. With our four feet and larger weight, we cannot change directions so readily as they do. Past that, there was little to choose between them and us.

No, I take that back. There was one thing more. I had seen it even before I saw the mans themselves. The other folk of the Tin Isle could not abide their presence. I wondered if Bucca would call on us while we were in Geraint's company. He did not, which left me saddened but unsurprised. And of the other nuggies, or of the spriggans and piskies, we found not a trace.

Hylaeus noted the same thing. ”Maybe the man spoke true when he said they died of embarra.s.sment,” he said worriedly. ”Will the same begin to happen to us?”

”If it will, it has not yet,” I answered. ”We are stronger-willed than those other folk; no one would doubt that.”