Chapter VII

The spindly towers of Ottonia rocked back and forth in time with the wagon. Soon even tallest spires would disappear from view. Pio shifted awkwardly on the narrow and uneven bed of the small wagon trying to stretch. His back and legs were tingly from sitting in an awkward position for too long. He had paid the old cabbage seller almost a full day's wages to sit on the back of his wagon while he drove his greying sway-backed mule home. The wagon was empty save for the rotten cabbage heads the old man had not managed to sell in the city. The price of the wagon ride was akin to robbery, but Pio had paid without haggling and without hesitating -- no sentry guard would think to stop an old man and his ramshackle cabbage wagon.

He toyed with the white ring on his finger and wondered how he would get rid of it. The ring had stopped burning coldly; it now sat tightly but inertly around his finger. Maybe it would fall off on its own accord if he got far enough from the man with the slightly bent nose, Pio thought to himself as the dew fell; the glistening droplets on his wool cloak a herald of the coming night. The thought was like a little bright flame keeping him warm. The cold eyes of the man with the slightly bent nose still haunted him but soon Pio and his heavy gold coins would be impossible to find, a shadow in the night. Pio nodded to himself as if to affirm his own fragile hope.

"End of the road."

Pio looked up. Ahead a small collection of rickety houses had come into view. A little village like the one he had grown up in. A dozen or so homes of people and animals built on mud and toil and held together only by the resignation of the people who lived there.

"Stop here," said Pio.

"We are not there yet." The old man said.

"Stop here now!"

The old man pulled the reins of the mule lightly and the slow plodding of the beast and the gentle swaying of the wagon came to a halt. Pio climbed down the wagon and stretched his tingling legs.

"You can go now."

"Mmm," the old man answered and flicked the reins. Reluctantly the mule resumed its labored plodding.

Pio looked around. He was still in the open land. Fields stretched out in every direction it seemed, but he could not see very far in the dim light of dusk.

In the village a few hundred yards away, the old man parked his wagon and let his mule into the house and then began unloading the rotten cabbage heads which Pio had sat on. Pio wondered who the old man was going to feed the foul-smelling cabbage heads, himself or his animals. In the pit of his stomach Pio knew the answer.

Pio was tired. Involuntarily Pio touched the ring on his finger to his head as wondered what to do next. His own resolve had surprised him but now the enthusiastic haze of his rash decision was lifting and he was faced with the consequences. He wanted to get as far from the city with as few people seeing him as possible. A difficult task but not an impossible one, he thought to himself. And he was well under way already.

A cat mewed anxiously as Pio walked through the village but no one else seemed to mind the stranger in their midst. There was no light in any of the houses; the villagers were poor people and could ill afford to burn candles idly in the night. This suited Pio well. He kept his head down and hidden inside his cloak until the village was far behind him. If he was lucky, the old man who had driven him this far would not mention his passenger to anyone. Pio had thought about paying the old cabbage seller for his silence, but such a payment would only have illicited interest from the greedy old grouch.

Soon it was very dark, and Pio had to be careful to stay on the road which was little more than stamped dirt. Ottonia's trade came not over land but on the water that endlessly flowed through the city; therefore, only the roads closest to the city were well-maintained. The night was starless and bleak and soon Pio began to wonder if he had made a mistake not staying with the old cabbage seller for the night. He would likely have been able to buy himself a bed in the village for little money, another day's wages perhaps which meant nothing to him now. But then trouble would have come in the morning when the other villagers would have seen him and started asking questions. No, he had to endure until he had put many more miles between him and the man with the slightly bent nose.

He was traveling south, and this was by design. The village he had grown up in lay to the north of the city, a few dreary days' worth of travel by foot. This meant, Pio reckoned, that if anyone hunting him looked up his origin in the city's ledger books, they would be sent in the wrong direction. And with any luck his hunters would find his father -- if he was still alive -- or more likely his oldest brother, whom any pursuer could inflict as much suffering upon as they could muster without learning anything at all. The thoughts of his brother's round doglike face and dull cow eyes twisted in pain and agony made Pio smile into the night. The only defect in his plan was that he knew little of the land he was now venturing into. He had never looked at the maps in the library with much interest; a lack of interest he sorely regretted now. Somewhere to the west of him of course would be the great river Wota, which ran through Ottonia and fed the city fresh water each day before finding its way to the Beltsea, and if he continued straight south he would eventually reach Grimwood and then somewhere in the deep of the forest one of Wota's tributary rivers which he would likely not be able to cross and so be forced further east. Pio tried to picture it in his mind's eye but the map before him was blurry and full of terra incognito. It mattered little at the moment. Grimwood was still many weeks of travel south. Pio adjusted the straps of his bag and pressed ahead into darkness.