‘Very well.’ Titus lifted the ColU bodily, and set it at the edge of the blanket, facing an unmarked stretch of dirt. ‘Together, you and I will draw a map of this world – the parts I need to know about – so that I understand. Then I will take my daughter Clodia, with light packs, and we will follow the tracks of Earthshine, and Ari and Inguill, to scout out a route. Meanwhile you, Stef, will organise the preparations here. Get that cart ready to travel. Gather potatoes and beets. Grow more potatoes! It may be some weeks before we are ready to leave. And as for the dark side – let us get there first, and then we will plan anew.’

She saluted him Roman style, fist to chest and then arm raised. ‘Yes, Centurion! You’re right, you know.’

‘I am?’

‘If anybody can get us to that damn antistellar, you can. I have faith in you, Titus. Maybe not as much as you have in yourself … Tell me one thing, though. Why are you taking Clodia on this scouting trip?’

He grunted. ‘Isn’t it obvious? To keep her away from Mardina and the Xin slave boy. We’ve enough troubles already. Now then, ColU, tell me where to begin with this well-remembered map of yours …’

CHAPTER 63

In the end it was more like two months before Titus Valerius, having returned from his scouting expedition with Clodia, declared that they were ready to depart.

They broke camp. Everything useful and lightweight was loaded onto Beth’s cart, or was stored in improvised packs on the walkers’ backs. They loaded as much as they could of the food store Beth had begun, cooked and dried and packaged up. Titus had decreed that they would forage as they moved, saving as much of their store as possible. The ColU itself was placed on the cart to relieve Chu of his burden, bundled up in a blanket and lashed in place.

The camp had been Beth’s home since she had first come here through the substellar Hatch with Earthshine. Stef watched her regretfully closing down her array of homemade clocks.

At last Stef found herself helped up onto the cart, with Beth at her side. Titus handed Stef the lightweight ropes that constituted the cart’s rudimentary steering system.

‘Thanks,’ Stef said sourly. ‘So the old lady is just baggage.’

Titus scowled at that. ‘You’re the oldest. You’ll walk the least. Your job is to control the cart. But you will get off that cart and walk when I tell you, because I need you to stay fit and healthy.’ He had a sheaf of bits of parchment and paper on which he’d worked out his schedule for the trip, tucked under his damaged arm. ‘It’s all in the plan.’

Stef sighed. ‘I hate to be a burden.’

‘Just do as you’re told.’

‘Yes, Centurion!’

Beth held Stef’s hand. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. He thinks of you as a soldier, if maybe a wounded one, or he wouldn’t be so tough on you.’

Stef grunted. ‘Well, I was military myself. I guess you’re right. With men like Titus, it’s when they’re nice to you that you have to worry.’

‘And as for walking …’ Beth patted the frame of the cart. ‘Be careful what you wish for. This is my design, remember, and we’re not exactly overstocked with tools and raw materials, especially since Ari and Inguill took so much of the good stuff. If this gets us halfway to the terminator I’ll be impressed.’

‘Oh, I think we’ll do better than that,’ Stef said, though she spoke more in hope than expectation as she looked back at the cart.

The basis of it was the frame of ‘wood’ – actually split-open trunks of stem trees from the substellar forest – lashed together with rope and vines that Beth had begun to build. It rode on wheels of wood rimmed with tough nylon rope. Rims of steel or iron would have been better, but they didn’t want to take the time to build a forge to achieve that, and they’d brought spare wheels.

In addition, the ColU had ordered that sled-like rails should be fixed to the cart’s underside, an obvious preparation for the icy dark-side journey to come. And, under the direction of the ColU and Titus, the cart had even been made ready to serve as a shallow-draught boat. The sides had been built up and the whole had been made waterproof, with a coating of the marrow that you could extract from any stem or the trunks of the forest trees. The ‘marrow’ wasn’t marrow but a complex organic product in itself, capable of a kind of internal photosynthesis based on the abundant heat energy available from Proxima. The travellers disregarded this biological miracle, and were only interested in using it as sticky gunk to seal cracks in their cart.

Stef thought it was all a marvel of improvisation and ingenuity, but they could only hope their preparations were adequate to meet the challenges ahead.

At last they were ready to go. Under Titus’s rough direction, they formed up into a kind of column. The cart, of course, needed pushing and pulling, and Titus himself, Clodia, Mardina and Chu were assigned to that duty, two ahead, two behind. They’d have some help from Beth, but she was spared the worst of the work. In her late fifties she was being treated as another honorary old lady, to her irritation and Stef’s amusement.

‘This is it, then,’ Titus cried. ‘A journey around this strange world – a journey that begins with a single step.’ He drew his pugio, his dagger, and held it aloft. ‘Are you ready for war?’

‘Yes!’

‘I said – are you ready?’

‘Yes!’

‘Then we advance!’ He settled into his own padded harness, positioned his damaged arm, and leaned into the traces.

The cart jolted into motion, nearly throwing Stef off in the very first moment.

So it began.

Titus and Clodia had scouted out their route well. It roughly tracked the trail created by Earthshine and then followed by Ari and Inguill, but from the beginning it was almost all downhill – or at least on a gentle declining slope – and led them through reasonably open country, following the water courses that threaded away from the high ground of the substellar plateau. The ‘draught animals’ seemed pleasantly surprised to find that the exercise wasn’t as hard as they might have feared, although Stef kept her mouth shut about that, given that she didn’t have to share in the labour.

Titus called a halt after about a quarter of an hour, so that people could make minor adjustments to boots and harnesses and other bits of clothing. Then they pressed on for another half-hour, until Titus called another stop for water, and then another half-hour when he rotated the crew, with Beth slipping into the traces vacated by Mardina.

After just three hours – Stef guessed they’d gone only five or six miles – Titus decreed that they were done for the first day.

The rest were anxious to keep moving now they’d started, with the thousands of miles that lay ahead of them weighing heavily on their minds. But Titus was nothing if not an experienced marcher, and he knew what he was doing. He had them all strip off their boots, bathe their feet in a stream, and then slip into the loose, open camp sandals he’d had them make. This first day, unpractised, it would take them longer than usual to make camp, to get into the routine of digging a latrine ditch and gathering food and collecting water, and Titus wanted to be sure they did all this properly. Also Titus wanted to check over the cart, to see if it was passing this ultimate test of roadworthiness. They had spare parts and pots of marrow to fix up obvious flaws.

‘Come on, come on!’ Titus chivvied them as they got to work. ‘When Roman legionaries are on the march they set up camp every night—’

‘Sure they do.’

‘And you don’t hear a word of complaint—’

‘Sure you don’t!’

‘Why, I remember once on campaign—’

‘Save it, Titus Valerius!’

Once the labour of the camp-building was done, and they were gathered around the fire they’d built for the night, Stef could see the wisdom of Titus’s management. They’d all encountered unexpected difficulties, even if Stef’s had only been the lack of a cushion under her bony behind. And they were all more tired than they’d expected to be. But they’d got through the day, they’d done everything Titus had demanded of them, and they knew now they only had to repeat this routine in the days to come.