The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,160
deep to cross. I didn’t think it was the Calder, for we was going south and Calder was surely at our backs.
The sky was full of scudding clouds with the sun coming and going between them, but the slope was stony scree and there was no trees rooted in it, only weeds and scrub and gorse bushes that might scratch but would offer us no other harm. We limped down to the water’s edge, slipping and sliding from time to time on the loose stones.
The river was in spate, but when we come to it we could see that it was shallower than it looked. We held to the drudge’s sides as we waded through, and its weight kept us from tripping and being swept away. It was hard going still. The water was so cold it was like knives stabbing into us. I had got to hold one hand up over my head the whole time to keep the DreamSleeve from getting wet – for Monono had told me long before that water would void her warranty, and that was a thing I did not mean to test. I remember thinking the water would at least wash the smell of piss out of my clothes, and being not much consoled.
We come up on the other side at last, shivering and exhausted, and Ursala suggested we stop and rest for a while. There was a bank of sand and mud and pebbles that was about twenty paces wide. The forest took up again after that, but the nearest trees was not close enough to get to us. I said a rest sounded good to me, only we needed some shelter from the wind and some wood to make a fire. I did not relish the idea of venturing in among the trees to collect twigs, but there might be driftwood enough along the bank to get us started.
“Oh, we can make shift as we are,” Ursala said. “Drudge, give us basecamp.”
The drudge stopped walking. Its four legs went straight, and braces come down out of its body to lock into them and hold them steady.
The side of it opened up just like before. Only it was the other side and instead of the dagnostic I seen the greens and browns of Ursala’s tent. It spilled out from the drudge’s side, but not like it was falling. It was more like it was building itself right in front of us without us even touching it. There was things that held it on a right line as it unfolded, the way your bones is wont to do inside your arms and your legs, and whatever they was, they sort of pushed the tent into the shape it was supposed to have. I could maybe of finished a count from one to ten, and there it was.
“Go on inside,” Ursala said. “I’ll get the heater and see if there’s anything to eat.”
I crawled inside the tent and lay myself down on the ground. I was glad to rest, though I was soaking wet and freezing. Then Ursala come and went a few times. The first time, she brung the thing I seen before in her tent that I said was like three burning sticks on a fire. Only now they was just three bars of silver, near as thin as wires. She set it down and the bars gun to glow until they was so hot you couldn’t touch your finger to them.
The second time, she brung a kind of a cloak or blanket made of soft cloth that was slippery when you touched it and was puffed up somewhat like a pillow.
The third time, she brung the jug that heated itself up without no stove. She must of fetched some water from the river, for it was full when she set it down. She busied herself with the walls of the tent a while, and they gun to glow like they did the first time I seen them back in Mythen Rood. “Field’s up,” Ursala said. “We’re safe now.”
There come a sound like a molesnake’s hiss that made me jump. I looked down and seen it was the jug. The water in there was already boiling. Ursala used some of it to clean out the wound on her face, which did not look so bad once the blood and crust was washed away. The eye was not altogether gone. It might heal with time, at least some of the way.