passage of a craft on inland waters, the whole gang could cease hauling and leave two or three to keep her moving. Naturally, I took my turns at hauling. We were all busy at locks. Then we would sweat and haul until our muscles cracked and
Dancing Talu
was under way once more. Then young Wil would go haring off to close the paddles down and shut the lock gates, and then come racing back along the towpath to take a wild flying leap onto the deck. If young Wil with his wild mop of hair and his agility had been unable to drink the canalwater he’d have been a dead rascal inside a day.
We were going south!
We were riding the Vomansoir Cut and going south toward Vondium. I knew a man, a Chuktar, the Lord Farris, who came from Vomansoir. I had met him once, briefly, aboard the Vallian Air Service airboat
Lorenztone.
I did not think I would make inquiries and look him up. He knew me as Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, and the man who aspired to the hand of the Princess Majestrix.
I needed to be a lot closer to Delia than Vomansoir when I revealed my identity.
Vallia is riddled with canals. Traffic flow remained dense and constant. The local authorities of towns maintained the cuts, under the Emperor’s personal fiat, and they had put into operation a system of traffic control at intersections. Every lock worked and was efficient, and did not lose too much water. The suns shone, the sky remained clear, I hauled at the tow ropes, operated the locks, fetched and carried, and all the time we rode on southward and I was drawing nearer and nearer to my Delia. I think I achieved a kind of tranquility. I had always underestimated canals, I now realized. Also, I observed the strong fellow-feeling of the canalfolk, and as I absorbed their language and its peculiarities, a task made easy by the potency of the genetically-coded language pill given me in Aphrasöe by Maspero, I reached the understanding that they considered themselves not only a people apart from ordinary Vallians, but a cut above the rest. I was not going to give them an argument on that.
The weather grew warmer as we progressed south, although with the much greater band-spread of temperate climate on Kregen the differences between Vondium, in the south, and Evir, in the north, are nothing like what one would expect on Earth. The Mountains of the North are cruelly cold, as I had discovered.
Winding lazily southward through the center of Vallia flows the Great River, the Mother of Waters, She of Fecundity, which empties into the Sunset Sea where Vondium is situated. Because of the lazy windings of the river, which bears many names along its length, canals sometimes use it when convenient; most often they have been cut by men with a disregard of the river’s course. Once we crossed the Great River on a long-striding aqueduct, like twenty Pontcysylltes rolled into one.
Through the low-rolling hills to the south we traveled past tree-hung banks where the mirrored reflections gave a strange duplicating effect of aerial navigation, as though we floated in air. The water changed color occasionally as minerals washed down from the hills; generally it reflected the sky and the clouds, the overhang of trees, the grasses, wild flowers, and rushes of the banks. In a glass it sparkled silvery pure, clean, sweet, refreshing, and — if you were not of canalfolk — deadly.
Between towns the thread of water ran through open country, vast sweeps of moorland, or massy forests, through tangled byways and past the outskirts of magnificent lordly holdings. Sometimes there were no traffic arrangements at crossings, where cut met cut.
Yelker roused himself on an afternoon of lazy sunshine and drifting cloud, and consulting with Rafee, the bulky-shouldered man who acted as his second-in-command, shouted an order to ’vast heaving. He jumped lithely to the bank and with Rafee strode ahead to where the canal curved beyond a clump of missals, leaning over the placid water. Only one other
Dancing Talu
was under way once more. Then young Wil would go haring off to close the paddles down and shut the lock gates, and then come racing back along the towpath to take a wild flying leap onto the deck. If young Wil with his wild mop of hair and his agility had been unable to drink the canalwater he’d have been a dead rascal inside a day.
We were going south!
We were riding the Vomansoir Cut and going south toward Vondium. I knew a man, a Chuktar, the Lord Farris, who came from Vomansoir. I had met him once, briefly, aboard the Vallian Air Service airboat
Lorenztone.
I did not think I would make inquiries and look him up. He knew me as Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, and the man who aspired to the hand of the Princess Majestrix.
I needed to be a lot closer to Delia than Vomansoir when I revealed my identity.
Vallia is riddled with canals. Traffic flow remained dense and constant. The local authorities of towns maintained the cuts, under the Emperor’s personal fiat, and they had put into operation a system of traffic control at intersections. Every lock worked and was efficient, and did not lose too much water. The suns shone, the sky remained clear, I hauled at the tow ropes, operated the locks, fetched and carried, and all the time we rode on southward and I was drawing nearer and nearer to my Delia. I think I achieved a kind of tranquility. I had always underestimated canals, I now realized. Also, I observed the strong fellow-feeling of the canalfolk, and as I absorbed their language and its peculiarities, a task made easy by the potency of the genetically-coded language pill given me in Aphrasöe by Maspero, I reached the understanding that they considered themselves not only a people apart from ordinary Vallians, but a cut above the rest. I was not going to give them an argument on that.
The weather grew warmer as we progressed south, although with the much greater band-spread of temperate climate on Kregen the differences between Vondium, in the south, and Evir, in the north, are nothing like what one would expect on Earth. The Mountains of the North are cruelly cold, as I had discovered.
Winding lazily southward through the center of Vallia flows the Great River, the Mother of Waters, She of Fecundity, which empties into the Sunset Sea where Vondium is situated. Because of the lazy windings of the river, which bears many names along its length, canals sometimes use it when convenient; most often they have been cut by men with a disregard of the river’s course. Once we crossed the Great River on a long-striding aqueduct, like twenty Pontcysylltes rolled into one.
Through the low-rolling hills to the south we traveled past tree-hung banks where the mirrored reflections gave a strange duplicating effect of aerial navigation, as though we floated in air. The water changed color occasionally as minerals washed down from the hills; generally it reflected the sky and the clouds, the overhang of trees, the grasses, wild flowers, and rushes of the banks. In a glass it sparkled silvery pure, clean, sweet, refreshing, and — if you were not of canalfolk — deadly.
Between towns the thread of water ran through open country, vast sweeps of moorland, or massy forests, through tangled byways and past the outskirts of magnificent lordly holdings. Sometimes there were no traffic arrangements at crossings, where cut met cut.
Yelker roused himself on an afternoon of lazy sunshine and drifting cloud, and consulting with Rafee, the bulky-shouldered man who acted as his second-in-command, shouted an order to ’vast heaving. He jumped lithely to the bank and with Rafee strode ahead to where the canal curved beyond a clump of missals, leaning over the placid water. Only one other
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