Walk to the End of the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

closing hard. A yard ahead of them, Kelmz and the Endtendant dashed across the gangway onto the deck of the ferry. Someone kicked away the gangway, and gouts of cold water shot up over the rail.
    The two Rovers stood panting on the pier, eyeing their trapped quarry. Kelmz’ Rovers would have jumped the gap and made the enemy secure. It was a sign of the times that these Rovers did not do so, though Kelmz knew them (by their gear, knives sheathed on the left hip for a slicing crossdraw) to be products of a first-class training officer in ’Ware Company. They were slightly unsure of themselves and should have had an officer in charge of them, not the ’Ware Senior who stood far down the pier talking with another man.
    D Layo, ignoring the Rovers and their master, presented the newcomers to a ferryman who leaned stolidly on the railing. This man, bulky in salt-stiff clothing, studied them both from his single eye. The other socket was closed by a discolored veil of skin. He was a young man still, but nearing the top of Junior status by the look of him, nudging the crucial age of thirty years. His name was Hak. A salt-eaten Chester symbol was stitched crookedly to his cap.
    He stabbed his thumb in the direction of the two ‘Wares, who were striding toward the ferry now: ‘Friends of yours?’
    ‘Hardly,’ said d Layo.
    The white-haired Senior came emphatically first, though not in haste. Seniors never hurried.
    Hak looked Kelmz up and down. ‘What are you, man, under that
blank-coat?’
    ‘Hemaway.’
    The authoritative voice of the approaching ‘Ware Senior rang out: ‘You, on the ferry!’
    ‘Not Captain Kelmz?’ Hak said, with mild interest.
    ‘Yes,’ Kelmz said.
    ‘Right.’ The ferryman winked his eye and turned to gaze coolly up at the ‘Ware Senior. Apparently what d Layo had said was true: there were Chesters who remembered the work Kelmz had done for them once, to which they owed several recent skirmish-victories against their rival, ’Ware Company. Blandly, Hak said, ‘Do something for you, Senior?’
    ‘Give me those three men.’
    Hak looked thoughtfully down into the water. ‘My gangway got knocked overside, Senior. There it is, floating.’
    The Senior did not look down. He wore a beard in the fashion of Lammintown Seniors and had singed his eyebrows to make them grow in thick and spiky. Frowning, he looked impressively fierce. ‘This isn’t the first time we’ve had trouble with you Chesters this five-year. Your superiors will not be pleased.’
    ‘Never are,’ Hak said, sadly.
    There was a short pause. The morning wind plucked at the ferry cable that swooped down from the top of the pylon to the deck wheel. Two ferrymen lounged at the winch, looking bored.
    The Senior said menacingly, ‘This is no game, Boyo.’
    To this insulting term, Hak responded merely by spitting carefully into the water between the ferry and the pier.
    The other ‘Ware, a Junior, hung unhappily in the background, pretending to be blind and deaf for fear he would have to pay later for having witnessed the scoring-off of the Senior at a Junior’s hands. In theory, the Senior should not have entered into any game-point rivalry with the young man, since for anyone over the age of thirty the simple accretion of years measured personal worth on an absolute scale. But informally, fierce competition was the rule among Seniors as well as Juniors, though normally it was confined to verbal games like this one. Older men found in the accumulation of gamepoints (which they affected to despise) a way of unofficially offsetting the implacable order of the age-scale among themselves.
    This ’Ware Senior mastered his anger carefully to avoid further
losses in his encounter with the Chester ferryman.
    ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you’d better understand what you’re mixing into. There have been reports of unlawful use of my company’s work-turf. These are the offenders. They are two unknowns, probably Skidro drifters going home