Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

“Could we hide it somewhere?” asked Umbo.

“Maybe,” said Olivenko.

“No,” said Loaf. “I know what I would do as a soldier tracking somebody, and there’s no chance you could hide it where I couldn’t find it.”

“True enough,” said Rigg. “Father and I were both good trackers.”

“You with your paths,” said Umbo.

Param spoke up then. “I think Umbo is right, we have to hide it.”

“And then what will you do, Param?” asked Rigg. “Have you ever ridden a horse?”

“As a little girl, I remember once,” said Param, and then she smiled. “I know I’m the reason we’re going so slowly and being so obvious—the carriage is for me because I couldn’t even run a hundred steps without panting, back there in the city on the day we escaped.”

Rigg nodded with a shrug. “We are what we are, Param. No one gave you a chance to build up any stamina.”

“But build it I shall,” she said. “And the carriage is no help to me. So hide it.”

“Where?” asked Olivenko.

“How?” asked Loaf at almost the same moment.

“In the past,” said Param.

Rigg was disgusted that he hadn’t thought of it himself. “Far enough in the past, and either somebody finds it and steals it, or it sits there and rots in the rain and wind for a hundred years and Citizen’s men are sure it isn’t the one we’ve been using.”

They picked a place where the road led along the crest of a gentle hill, sloping down a mile or more to streams on both sides. Soon the horses were free of the traces and hobbled in the meadow on the left side of the road, grazing peacefully, three of them loaded with their provisions, expertly bundled and tied to their backs by Loaf.

“Sorry I don’t know how to do any of this,” said Olivenko. “In the city guard we didn’t have much need for loading and unloading animals.”

“As Rigg said, we are what we are,” said Loaf.

“All right, then,” said Rigg. “The four of us will go back into the past and push the carriage off the road. If we can get it rolling free down toward the stream, it’ll look like an ancient accident. Param can stay with the horses.”

“And I’ll stay with her,” said Umbo.

“You’re not very big, but you can still do your share,” said Loaf.

“I’m not going into the past with you,” said Umbo. “Not if we mean to get back to the present where Param will be waiting for us.”

Rigg was surprised. “Why would that be a problem?”

Umbo looked at Loaf. “Remember what happened when we dug up the stones? At O?”

Loaf nodded. “That’s right. When Umbo goes himself, and handles things in the past, he doesn’t go right back to where he was. He was a day off, a day early.”

“And that was after going back only a few months,” said Umbo. “Who knows how far off I’ll be if we go back a hundred years. Or two hundred. What if I miss by a month?”

“So you wait here with Param,” said Rigg. “But that raises another question. When I pushed Param into the past, I put her hand into the hands of people to whom that time was the present. Whom will we be giving the carriage to?”

“Can’t we just take it back there and then let go of it?” asked Loaf.

“This sounds so crazy,” said Olivenko. “Straight out of the Library of Nothing.”

“I don’t know,” said Rigg. “I’m not even sure if we can ‘take’ something that’s bigger than we are. Why not put our hands on a mountain, go into the past, and then leave the mountain there? Why doesn’t the ground come with us every time we move through time?”

“Our clothes come with us—which I for one think is convenient,” said Param.