The Wings of Dreams

others.” Kiwa looked around. “How in the world could people on foot transport all of this? Don’t you think so, Shushou?”
    Shushou agreed and similarly examined her immediate environment. The wagon was piled high with luggage. Kiwa sat solidly on a thick mat slung between the boxes. Because of the poor state of the road, the ride was anything but comfortable.
    “It would be quite impossible for your people to carry all of this.” All of this came to a horse-drawn wagon and three handcarts.
    Shushou nodded, but felt an uneasy qualm in her heart. She said, glancing at Kiwa, “You are carrying a lot of supplies. Why do you need so much?”
    Kiwa smiled. “I am a man who prefers to travel with a generous entourage. Simply feeding them takes an equally generous amount of food. I ask you, how could we otherwise carry the necessary water and food to cover an unknown distance taking several days?”
    Food for forty-plus people would indeed add up. But Shushou cocked her head to the side and asked, “Couldn’t the members of your retinue each carry their own provisions?”
    Kiwa waved his hand as if the subject was hardly worth discussing. “Perhaps if we knew how long it was going to take. To start with, we’re hauling our water in barrels, not the kind of thing a man could easily bear on his own. Even divvied up, there’d be no way to carry individual portions.”
    “Yeah,” Shushou mumbled. She looked over her shoulder. The curtains of the covered wagon were drawn back. She could see his men behind the wagon earnestly pushing and pulling the handcarts, packs strapped to their backs.
    “What’s the matter, Shushou? You seem unsettled. Are you afraid?”
    “Well, I don’t feel that way,” Shushou prevaricated. “It’s hard to say sometimes, you know?”
    There were youma around and they were headed straight toward a nest of them. She had good cause to feel uneasy. If that was fear then she was afraid. But having chosen this course over the disagreeableness of putting up with Gankyuu, she wasn’t eager to voice such complaints.
    What weighed more on her mind at the moment was traveling in a wagon. She’d been on foot since entering the Yellow Sea, gathering up firewood along the way and filling her canteen from springs. Traveling seated didn’t sit well with her.
    “There’s nothing to worry about, Shushou. Those trees indicating the presence of youma were cut down at the beginning of last winter, weren’t they? Youma have to eat. With the road blocked, nobody would be passing their way. They’d surely go elsewhere for food.”
    “Well, yes, that’s probably the case.”
    “Of course it is,” Kiwa proudly declared with a smile. “After spending this much time in the Yellow Sea, even amateurs can learn a thing or two. I’m not one to look down my nose at the accomplishments of others. That’s where Chodai and I differ. I’ve been watching what the goushi do, you see. But I couldn’t possible discard my wagon. It contains too many things a man like me can’t go without.”
    Like your luggage, Shushou thought, while nodding in wan agreement. “But doesn’t the problem come down to taking a full ration of water with you? What if, for the time being, you carried what you could and did you best to make it last?”
    “Not knowing whether there will be potable water waiting for us ahead?”
    “That’s true, except that Gankyuu and the koushu each carry a single canteen. If the koushu can make it work, surely you and your men could get by each carrying his own rations?”
    Kiwa waved his hand. “I’m afraid there’s where you can’t lump me in with the koushu. The koushu have those stones that purify undrinkable water.”
    “Ah, yes. Now that you mention it.”
    “I had no idea such things existed. So, of course, we have none of our own. That’s why we have to carry so much more water than the koushu.” As if those same koushu were still around, Kiwa lowered his voice to a whisper. “You hear about what happened back there?”
    “Back there?”
    “At the lake where you couldn’t drink the water.”
    Shushou felt a chill down her spine. “Um, well—”
    “The water in the stream flowing from there to the marsh is undrinkable too.”
    “Stands to reason. It flows down from the lake.”
    “And that’s why it you can’t drink it. But not everybody travels with a full supply of water like me.”
    “True.”
    “The goushi put the rocks into that water and make it potable.