Elric watched as the Rose, to release some of her anxiety no doubt, suddenly let her horse have free rein and went galloping along the narrow track beside the chasm while stones and tufts of clay and turf went tumbling down into the darkness and the roar of the unseen river. Then, one by one, the gypsies followed, galloping their horses with daredevil skill in the Rose’s wake, yelling and hallooing, jumping up in their saddles, leaping and diving, as if all this were completely natural to them, and now Elric laughed joyously to see their joy, and Wheldrake clapped and hooted like a boy at the circus. And then they had come to the great wall of garbage, higher than anything Elric had seen earlier, where more gypsies waited at a passage they had made through the waste and they greeted their fellows with all manner of heartiness, while Elric, Wheldrake and the Rose were subjected to the same off-hand contempt with which they treated all non-gypsies.
“They wish to join our free-roaming band,” said the tall man in red and white. “As I told them, we never reject a recruit.” And he guffawed as he accepted a somewhat overripe peach from one of the other gypsies’ bags. “There’s precious little to forage as usual. It’s always thus at the end of the season, and at the beginning.” He cocked his head suddenly. “But the season comes. Soon. We shall go to meet it.”
Elric himself thought he felt the ground shivering slightly and heard something like a distant piping, a far-off drum, a drone. Was their god slithering along his causeway from one lair to the next? Were he and his companions to be sacrifices for that god? Was that what the gypsies found amusing?
“Which season?” asked the Rose, almost urgently, her long fingers combing at her curls.
“The Season of our Passing. Indeed, the Seasons of our Passing,” said a woman spitting plum stones to the ashy filth of the ground. Then she had mounted her horse and was leading them through the passage, out onto the fleshy hardness of the great causeway, which trembled and shook as if from a distant earthquake and now, in the far distance, from the east, Elric looked down the mile-wide road and he saw movement, heard more noise, and he realized something was coming towards them even as they approached.
“Great Scott!” cried Wheldrake, lifting his hat in a gesture of amazement. “What can it be?”
It was a kind of darkness, a flickering of heavy shadows, of the occasional spark of light, of a constant and increasing shaking, which made the banks of garbage bounce and scatter and the carrion creatures rise in squawking flurries of flesh and feather. And it was still many miles off.
To the gypsies the phenomenon was so familiar they paid it not the slightest attention, but Elric, the Rose and Wheldrake could not keep their eyes away.
Now the rocking increased, a steady motion doubtless created partly by the free span of the road over the bay, until it was gentle but relentless, as if a giant’s hand rocked them all in some bizarre cradle, and the shadow on the horizon grew larger and larger, filling the causeway from bank to bank.
“We are the free people. We follow the road and call no man our master!” sang out one of the women.
“Hear! Hear!” chirrups Wheldrake. “Hey-ho, for the open road!” But his voice falters a little as they draw nearer and see what now approaches, the first of many.
It is like a ship, but it is not a ship. It is a great wooden platform, as wide across as a good-sized village, with monstrous wheels on gigantic axles carrying it slowly forward. Around the bottom edge of the platform is a kind of leather curtain; around the top edge is built a stockade, and beyond that are the roofs and spires of a town, all moving on the platform, with slow, steady momentum, with dwellings for an entire tribe of settled folk.
It is only one of hundreds.
Behind that first comes another platform, with its own village, its own skyline, flying its own flags. Behind that is another. The causeway is crowded with these platforms, rumbling and creaking and, at turtle pace, ploughing steadily on, packing the refuse into the ground, making still smoother the smoothness of their road.
“My God!” whispers Wheldrake. “It is a nightmare by Brueghel! It is Blake’s vision of Apocalypse!”
“It’s an unnerving sight, right enough.” The Rose tucks the tongue of her belt into its loop another notch and frowns. “A nomad nation, to be sure!”
“You are, it seems, pretty self-sufficient,” says Wheldrake to one of the gypsies, who assents with proud gravity. “How many of those townships travel this way?”
The gypsy shakes his head and shrugs. He is not sure. “Some two thousand,” he says, “but not all move as swiftly as these. There are cities of the Second Season following these, and cities of the Third Season following those.”
“And the Fourth Season?”
“You know we have no fourth season. That we leave for you.” The gypsy laughs as if at a simpleton. “Otherwise we should have no wheat.”
Elric listens to the babble and the hullabaloo of the massive platforms, sees people climbing upon the walls, leaning over, shouting to one another. He smells all the stenches of any ordinary town, hears every ordinary sound, and he marvels at the things, all made of wood and iron rivets and bits bound together with brass or copper or steel, of wood so ancient it resembles rock, of wheels so huge they would crush a man as a dog-cart casually crushes an ant. He sees the washing fluttering on lines, makes out signs announcing various crafts and trades. Soon the traveling platforms are so close they dwarf him and he must look up to see the gleam of the greased axles, the old, metal-shod wheels, each spoke of which is almost as tall as one of Imrryr’s towers, the smell, the deep smell of life in all its variety. And high above his head now geese shriek, dogs put their front paws upon the ramparts and bark and snarl for the pure pleasure of barking and snarling, while children peer down at them and try to spit on the heads of the strangers, shouting catcalls and infant witticisms to those below, to be cuffed by parents who in turn remark on the oddness of the strangers and do not seem over-enthusiastic that their ranks have grown. On both sides of them now the wheels creak by and from the sides are flung the pails of slops and ordure which form both banks, while here and there, walking behind the platforms, come men, women and children armed with brooms with which they whisk the refuse up onto the heaps, disturbing the irritated carrion eaters, creating clouds of dust and flies, or sometimes pausing to squabble and scrabble over a choice piece of detritus.
“Raggle-taggle, indeed,” says Master Wheldrake, putting his huge red handkerchief to his face and coughing mightily. “Pray tell me, sir—where does this great road go?”
“Go, man?” The gypsy shakes his head in disbelief. “Why nowhere and everywhere. This is our road. The road of the Free Travelers. It follows itself, little poet! It winds around the world!”
CHAPTER FOUR
On Joining the Gypsies. Some Unusual Definitions Concerning the Nature of Liberty.
And now, as Elric and his companions wandered in amazement amongst the advancing wheels, they saw that behind this first rank of moving villages came a vast mass of people; men, women and children of all ages, of all classes and in all conditions, talking and arguing and playing games as they went, some walking with an air of unconcerned familiarity in the wake of those pounding rims; others unaccountably miserable, hats in hands, weeping; their dogs and other domestic animals with them, like people on a pilgrimage. The mounted gypsies had disappeared by now, to join their own kind, and had no interest at all in the three they had found.
Wheldrake leaned down from his horse and addressed a genial matron, of the type which often took a fancy to him. His hat was swept from his red comb, his little bantam’s eyes sparkled. “Forgive me for this interruption, madam. We are newcomers to your nation and thought perhaps we should seek out your authorities …”
“There are no authorities, little rooster, in the Gypsy Nation.” She laughed at this absurdity. “We are all free here. We have a council, but it does not meet until the next season. If you would join us, as it seems you have already done, then you must find a v
illage which will accept you. Failing that, you must walk.” She pointed behind her without interrupting her stride. “Back there is best. The forward villages tend to be full of purebloods and they are never very welcoming. But someone there will be glad to take you in.”
“We’re obliged to you, ma’am.”
“Many welcome the horseman,” she said, as if quoting an old adage. “There is none more free than the gypsy rider.”
On through this great march, which spanned the road from bank to squalid bank, rode Elric, Wheldrake and the Rose, sometimes greeting those who walked, sometimes being greeted in turn. There was in many parts a festive quality to the throng. There were snatches of song from here and there, a sudden merry barrel-organ reel, the sound of a fiddle. And elsewhere, in rhythm with their stride, people joined in a popular chant.
“We have sworn the Gypsy Oath,
To uphold the Gypsy Law,
Death to all who disobey!
Death to all who disobey!”
Of which Wheldrake was disapproving on a number of moral, ethical, aesthetic and metrical counts. “I’m all for primitivism, friend Elric, but primitivism of the finer type. This is mere xenophobia. Scarcely a national epic …”
—But which the Rose found charming.
While Elric, lifting his head as a dragon might, to scent the wind, caught sight of a boy running at unseemly speed from beneath the wheels of one of the gigantic platforms and over to the banks of refuse (now being freshened by every settlement that rolled slowly by). The boy was trying to scramble up armed with pieces of board on hands and feet which were meant to aid his progress but actually only hampered him.
He was wild with terror now and screaming, but the chanting crowd marched by as if he did not exist. The boy tried to climb back to the road but the boards trapped him further. Again his cry was piteous over the confident chanting of the marching gypsies. Then, from somewhere, a black-fletched arrow flew, taking him in the throat to silence him. Blood ran from between his writhing lips. The boy was dying. Not a soul did more than flick a glance in his direction.
The Rose was forcing her horse through the people, shouting at them for their lack of concern, trying to reach the boy whose dying movements were burying him deeper in the filth. As Elric, Wheldrake and the Rose arrived it was clear that he was dead. Elric reached towards the corpse—and another black-fletched arrow came from above to bury itself squarely in the child’s heart.
Elric looked back, enraged, and only Wheldrake and the Rose together stopped him from drawing his sword and seeking the source of the arrow.
“Foul cowardice! Foul cowardice!”
“Perhaps he committed a fouler crime,” cautioned the Rose. She took hold of Elric’s hand, leaning from her saddle to do so. “Be patient, albino. We are here to learn what these people can tell us, not challenge their customs.”
Elric accepted her wisdom. He had witnessed far crueler actions amongst his own people and knew well enough how an outrageous deed of torture could seem like simple justice to some. So he controlled himself, but looked with even more wariness upon the crowd as the Rose led them on towards the next rank of moving villages, creaking with infinite slowness, no faster than an old man’s pace, along the flesh-coloured highway, their long leather skirts brushing the ground as they advanced like so many massive dowagers out for an evening stroll.
“What sorcery powers those settlements,” murmured the Rose as they moved, at last, through the stragglers, “and how can we get aboard one? These people won’t chat. There is something they fear …”
“Clearly, madam.” Elric looked back to where the boy had died, his sprawled corpse still visible upon the piled garbage.
“A free society such as this must pay no taxes, therefore can pay no-one to police it—therefore the family and the blood-feud become the chief instruments of justice and the law,” said Wheldrake, still very distressed. “They are the only recourse. I would guess the boy paid for some relative’s misdemeanour, if not his own. ‘Blood for blood! groaned the Desert King, And an eye, I swear, for an eye. ’Ere this day’s sun sets on Omdurman, the Nazarene must die!’ Not mine! Not mine!” he said hastily, “but a great favourite amongst the residents of Putney. M.C. O’Crook, the popular pantomime artist, wrote it I was told …”
Believing the little poet merely babbled to comfort himself, Elric and the Rose paid him little attention, and now the Rose was hailing the nearest gigantic platform which approached, its skirts scraping and hissing, and from which, through a gap in the leather curtains, there strolled a man in bright green velvet with purple trimmings, a gold ring through his earlobe, more gold about his wrists and throat, a gold chain about his waist. His dark eyes looked them over, then he shook his head curtly and returned through the curtain. Wheldrake made to follow him, but hesitated. “For what, I wonder, are we being auditioned?”
“Let’s discover that by trial,” said the Rose, pushing her hair back from her face and flexing a strong hand as she rode towards the next slow-moving mass, to find a head poked out at her and a red-capped woman glancing at them without much curiosity before turning back in. Another and another followed. A fellow in a painted leather jerkin and a brass helmet was more interested in their horses than themselves, but eventually jerked his thumb to dismiss them, making Elric murmur that he would have no more to do with these barbarians but would find some other path and fulfill his quest that way.
The next village sent out a well-to-do old gypsy in a headscarf and embroidered waistcoat, his black velvet breeches tucked into white stockings. “We need the horses,” he said, “but you seem like intellectuals to me. The last thing this village requires are trouble-makers of that sort. So I’ll bid thee fare-thee-well.”
“We are valued neither for our looks nor our brains,” said Wheldrake with a grin, “and only a little, it seems, for our horses.”
“Persevere, Master Wheldrake,” the Rose was grim, “for we must find our sisters and it’s my guess a village that will admit them will also have something in common with a village that will welcome us.”
It was poor logic, reflected the albino, but logic, at least, of a sort, and he had nothing better to offer.
Five more villages inspected them and five more times they were rejected until, out of a village that seemed smaller and perhaps a little better-kept than most of the others, sauntered a tall man whose somewhat gaunt appearance was tempered by a pair of amused blue eyes, his attention to costume suggesting a pleasure in life belied by his features. “Good evening to you, gentlefolk,” he said, his voice musical and a little affected, “I am Amarine Goodool. You have something interesting about you. Are you artists, by any chance? Or perhaps story-tellers? Or you have, possibly, some affecting story of your own? As you see, we grow a trifle bored in Trollon.”
“I am Wheldrake, the poet.” The little coxcomb stepped forward without reference to his companions. “And I have written verse for kings, queens and commoners. I have published verse, moreover, in more than one century and have pursued the vocation of poet in more than one incarnation. I have a facility with metre, sir, which all envy—peers and my betters, sir, as a matter of fact. And I also have a certain gift for spontaneous versification, of sorts. In Trollon, elegant and slow, dwelled Amarine Goodool, famed for his costume and his wit. To friends so valuable was he, they even saved his—”
“And I am called the Rose and travel upon a quest for vengeance. My journey has taken me through more than one realm.”
“Aha!” said Amarine Goodool. “You have followed the megaflow! You have broken down the walls between the realms! You have crossed the invisible barriers of the multiverse! And you, sir? You, my pale friend? What skills have you?”
“At home, in my own quiet town, I had some reputation as a conjuror and philosopher,” said Elric meekly.
“Well, well, sir, but you would not be with this company if you had not something to offer. Your philosophy, perhaps, is of an unusual sort?”
; “Fairly conventional, sir, I would say.”
“Nonetheless, sir. Nonetheless. You have a horse. Please enter. And be welcome to Trollon. I think it very likely you will find yourselves amongst fellow spirits here. We are all a little odd in Trollon!” And he raised his head in a friendly bray.
Now he led them through the skirts of the village, into a musky darkness lit by dim lamps so that first it was possible to perceive only the vaguest of shapes. It was as if they had entered a vast stable, with row upon row of stalls disappearing into the distance. Elric smelled horses and human sweat and as they passed up a central aisle he could look down the rows and see the glistening backs of men, women and adolescents, leaning hard against poles reaching to their chests and pushing the huge edifice forward, inch by inch. Elsewhere horses were harnessed in ranks, also, trudging on heavy hoofs as they hauled at the thick ropes attached to the roof beams.
“Leave your horses with the lad,” said Amarine Goodool, indicating a ragged youth who held out his hand for a small coin and grinned with pleasure at the value of what he received. “You’ll be given receipts and so on. You’ll be at ease for at least a couple of seasons to be sure. Or, if you are otherwise successful, for ever. Like myself. Of course,” he lowered his tone as he swung up a wooden stairway, “there are other responsibilities one must accept.”
The long staircase led them, spiral by spiral, to the surface until they clambered out into a nondescript narrow sidestreet from whose open windows people looked idly down without breaking their conversation. It was a picture of such ordinariness that it contrasted all the more with the scenes below.
“Are those people down there slaves, sir?” Wheldrake had to know.
“Slaves! By no means! They are free gypsy souls, like myself. Free to wander the great highway that spans the world, to breathe the air of liberty. They merely take their turn at the marching boards, as most of us must for some time in their lives. They perform a civic duty, sir.”