narrowed; two big rocks nearly met and pinched it shut. In the gap between them stood—what was it?
It was not a goat, but it was goat-ish. It was too large to be a goat; it had shoulders almost like a bull, but it had a goat’s horns and legs and fur. Black fur. It had terribly wild and pained red eyes. It stamped and pawed the earth with a hoof like a grave-digger’s shovel. It snorted and whinnied. It smelled of—weeds? Stale water? Loamy earth? It smelled terribly of it.
“Once upon a time,” the General announced, “there was a bridge over a river in a forest in a land ruled by three queens and in a forest in the mountains and over a river, and a goat lived under that bridge. In midwinter when the river was frozen and like a necklace of diamonds a traveler approached not in hopes of crossing the bridge but in search, you see, aha, of the bridge itself, the border itself, it having been foretold . . .”
The creature did not move; nor did Liv. She gripped her sharp arrowhead tightly and waited.
She was ashamed to hope desperately for Creedmoor’s return.
The creature’s fur was black, and the long hair that hung scruffily from its throat was stone-stiff with dirt. Its eyes were blazingly red. Its shoulders were huge and swollen.
“The traveler is driven forward by love of a woman,” the General continued. “The goat is fixed by mute love of his place, of his bridge. Before there was a bridge there was a mountain, and before there was a mountain there was a great city of the First Folk, and before that there was nothing.”
Liv wished she could silence the old man’s ravings, but she did not dare make any sudden movement. The thing stared at her and she stared back. She averted her eyes—it occurred to her that the animal might take her fixed stare as a challenge. When she looked back again, it was gone.
There was nothing there but a dark rock; and a stand of reeds; and moss crawling across the rock; and two red circles painted on the rock—spirals, rather.
“. . . the goat,” the General explained—excited; something about the incident had him more voluble than she’d ever seen him— “attempts to explain itself to the traveler, who is uncertain. There is a murder, and a change of costume. Goat? It was said of Sam Self, first Governor of the first colony at Founding, that he was known to transform into a wolf. Secrets are lost with the death, with every death. Nothing can be atoned for, but errors can be corrected and sickness cured. The moral lesson of this story is clear. It teaches . . .”
He had not inhaled for some time. A word caught in his throat and he began to choke. He fell forward and Liv caught him. She held his head back until he began to breathe again.
“General Enver?”
His eyes were frightened. She kissed his wrinkled forehead to calm him.
He said nothing further all day.
She did not mention the incident to Creedmoor when he returned.
CHAPTER 30
LOWRY IN THE WILDERNESS
The Linesmen were beyond refueling range for the Heavier-Than-Air Vessels—which were ferocious guzzlers of fuel, which was a proof of their spiritual excellence. The motor vehicles had all been left behind; they’d struggled in the mud of the downpour, and were nearly worthless anyway over the roadless untamed hills and valleys. That meant leaving behind the heaviest artillery. They now had three motor guns, one of which no longer worked but might conceivably be repaired. They had two light cannon. It took half a dozen Linesmen to push and drag each one of those huge wheeled weapons across uneven ground. The rest of the Linesmen slogged on foot in two columns, each 160 men deep—160 men on paper, that is. In fact, there’d been bears, and a fever, and a rockslide, and the patrols that hadn’t returned, and the actual numbers were rather lower, and uneven. Their marching form was decaying out in the wilderness. They were going ragged and wild. They looked like a bunch of slagging tinkers.
They’d marched through a field of tall grass, and the green stalks had followed them, straight-backed, in march formation, roots rustling and slithering, as if mocking them. . . .
And one of the riflemen had brought down a rabbit, and it had had the glittering glass eyes of a microscope, and the long black jaws of a spider, and