"Wagon wheels."

"Excuse me?"

"Wagon wheels and dirt roads."

"He's off his nut again."

Actually there were only two sets of wagon wheels in the dust at the time. Nearly everyone in the motley troupe rode on horseback, wagons and wood for such wagons being a precious commodity. The only one who actually sat in the wagons was Garrick, and only because he was the only one who could drive them. He pushed his stringy pale hair out of his eyes as they pushed onward.

"Is it just me or is it getting brighter out here?"

"It's just you. It's almost dusk, anyway."

Garrick ignored the bickering of the troupe with his habitual calm. They always did this when the road had been too long between watering holes, or when their reception in the previous town had been less than warm. This time it was the former reason, and he was looking forward to tonight's camp. They'd reach a watering hole by evening and, if they were lucky and Senta was in a mood to sing, they might even have entertainment. Provided that Sal wasn't right and their magician, Alric, hadn't gone off his nut again. He had an annoying tendency to do that, Garrick had noticed. No one knew his story, and no one cared to spend enough time and energy trying to keep him coherent enough to hear it.

"I'm telling you, it's getting brighter."

"Shut your face."

"Both of you shut your respective water-traps. We'll reach the next watering hole when we reach it. And it's almost dusk, Ritter, it's not getting brighter. The sun's addled your brains again."

Ritter, the youngest of the group, settled back in his saddle and muttered something unappreciative about Garrick's mother.

"What was that, Ritter?"

"Nothing."

There was a few minutes of blessed silence.

"Wagon wheels make tracks in the roads..."

"Shut up."

Garrick and Senta exchanged a look, and Senta smiled a little. Garrick almost had to laugh at that last one; for some reason Alric was in one of his child-like moods. When the troupe wasn't stressed beyond toleration for each other, Alric's moods usually made at least most of them laugh. Never Senta... Garrick had only heard Senta laugh twice, and both times had been in much lighter circumstances than they were in now. He had always wondered what had brought her to their troupe, showing up at their tents one night outside of town after they had finished a show and were preparing to leave the next morning. Like Alric, no one had ever asked.

"Are we really that close to the watering hole?" Dolf asked as he rode up, his equally malformed twin brother keeping pace with the wagons behind them.

"Another few hours should see us there. We'll camp there for the night... with a bit of luck another traveling family will be there, and we can trade news of north to south. It's been a while since I've been up to the northern coast towns, and I've little idea of what things are like up there now."

"They chased you out the last time you were up by Westport?"

Garrick smiled a particularly nasty smile. "They chase me out of all the towns. The pretty men don't like it that even a dock whore should prefer me to their well-dressed cruelty."

Dolf gave the man an equally hideous grin. He, too, was familiar with the egotism of the townsfolk. "I take it you gave them just retributions for their trouble?"

"I extracted the price of my wergelt from their hides, yes." He looked over at Senta, who seemed to be paying no attention to the conversation, although he knew better than to think that there was anything about the troupe she didn't hear of. "It doesn't matter anymore. We'll be there eventually, and likely enough the circumstances will have changed. There wasn't a town raised that didn't welcome our family of oddities, and the entertainment we bring."

His voice was laced with bitterness. Born with twisted limbs, lanky and pale, he had been shaped from his early childhood to think and act like the sort of monster that everyone in the town had thought him to be. It had taken the traveling snake-oil salesman, Javier, to pull him out of the slums of the dock town, and turn his deformity into something that at least brought cries of awe rather than fear. When he had next visited the town of his birth, years later, they had seen him only as the mysterious acrobat, not remembering the angry child writhing in the dust. Garrick was much slower to forget.

"Westport will certainly welcome the entertainment we bring," Dolf said, changing the subject delicately. Everyone in the troupe had mastered this skill before they'd spent a fortnight in the company, with the possible exception of Alric, who was nearly entirely mad and didn't know any better.

Except at some times.

"How long till dusk?" Alric's voice called over the sound of low-voiced bickering and horse hooves. Dolf and Garrick exchanged a look; he actually sounded lucid. What a wonder.

"Another hour till early dusk," Garrick called back. "Soon enough till we stop that you can rest in the wagon if you like."

"No..." Alric called, although he seemed to be talking more to himself than to Garrick. "No, I can stand it."

Garrick looked back at the madman. He'd pulled his hood entirely up and over his face, and his hands were barely visible under his sleeves. The reins were drawn up into the folds of cloth. Alric had always had a prodigious fear of the sun, although Garrick wasn't entirely sure whether the spell-siguls embroidered into the cloth were a ward against the sun or just the meaningless drawings of a deranged man. Isabel had done it for him, and he supposed that it didn't matter to her one way or the other. And speaking of whom...

"Isabel... would you like to spend the next day at the watering hole, or are we clean enough for the moment?" His voice was gently teasing, and she looked up at him, startled out of her sun-dreams.

"Mmm? Yes, I would, actually, thank you. We could all use a rest from the road, I think, and you're all starting to smell like horse." Her nose wrinkled. For a whore, she was remarkably fastidious. Garrick suspected she had been something else in better times, something more highly thought of.

"I'll have Wolfgang draw water for cleaning, then."

She said something in response, but he didn't hear as he rode up to separate Ritter and Kay. Those two were going to tear each other to shreds if he wasn't careful. Garrick sighed. "Wolf, can't you keep an eye on the boy?"

"Hmm?"

Garrick sighed. "Never mind." It was too hot, and he was too tired. He withdrew into himself and let the others go on bickering. At least Ritter wasn't yelling at Alric again. That, he didn't think he could have stood for another three hours. Dusk would fall soon, and then everyone would be too busy slowly trying to keep warm to banter with each other. It would be a welcome respite from the day's bickering.