After the Campfires by Per Jorner

Tim woke up from a state of dreamless unconsciousness. The world was swaying soothingly beneath him, but he felt slightly sick. He wondered where he was, but also felt cut off from reality, as if nothing actually concerned him. If the world wanted to sway soothingly beneath him, there was nothing he could or should do about it.
He thought about Vos, Dina and Tenet, and hoped they'd managed to fix something for breakfast. He had the impression there was something waiting impatiently for his attention, that there was something he must come to grips with. There was money to be counted. No, he'd better go and look for that statuette. Everybody was relying on him.
He woke up again, and now he started to approach reality. Why in the name of all that's peaceful was the world swaying soothingly beneath him? And why was he so sure there was something terribly wrong?
He opened his eyes. That was a big step forward.
He was lying on a swaying wooden floor. Next to him was a girl, apparently knocked out, dressed in greyish-green leather and with her honey-gold hair in a mess. On two sides he could see glimpses of the sky through openings in a big piece of cloth.
The rest of the puzzle soon fell into place. He was in a covered, four-wheeled wagon. He had left Tātir. The girl lying beside him was a thief from Tātir, and she was the one with the magic statuette. On the coach-box must be sitting a...
"Good morning," said a cat-like creature in a light grey fur coat, leaning backwards into the wagon.
Tim gave a start. He stared with half-open mouth at the creature looking down at him.
"A little confused, perhaps?" wondered the cat. "I'll leave you to wake up properly. Let me know when you're ready for a little chat." With that he disappeared from the opening.
Tim kept on staring, but now at the girl. He was trying desperately to work out what all this meant.
They had lost Kimrin.
Kimrin was still in Tātir. Tim had left -
It was too awful to be true. Tim had left him with a gang of mad priests, fighting in a dark square. He'd disappeared without trace and even if Kimrin was still alive, he would have no idea where Tim was.
The next thought came before Tim had even had time to work out the full implications of the first one. He'd lost his friends. Vos, Dina and Tenet, all of them were still in Tātir and knew less than nothing about where he was. If they found out about what had happened to Kimrin, why shouldn't they believe that Tim had been taken away and killed or locked up?
Tim tried to stand up, but only succeeded in rolling round on to his back. By all the bones in the Abyss, what was going on? He buried his face in his hands, and in doing so managed to poke the girl with his elbow. He heard her grunt softly.
The thoughts were racing through his mind. Where were they going? How had they got out of Tātir and how long ago? Would the girl keep her word and chop him into little pieces, now that it was perfectly obvious he had no intention of stopping following her? Did she know any more than he did about what had happened? Would Tim's friends wait for him in Tātir, for how long, and what would they do next? How incredibly worried could they get, he wondered? Was he in danger, were they being chased, how difficult was it to hunt down a wagon driven by a cat man? Was there such a thing as a cat man? How much longer could he lie immobile on the floor of the wagon, formulating questions that wouldn't just answer themselves in any case?
The world was swaying soothingly beneath them. He decided to fight against his dizziness and sit up, at least. As he did so, he made sure of not disturbing the girl, if she felt as bad as he did, she'd need all the rest she could get.
When he sat up, leaning back against the cloth cover, he could see a landscape swaying away on the other side of the opening at the back, and his feeling of sickness slowly passed. They seemed to be travelling through flat, cultivated countryside, with small copses, straight lines of trees and long ridges shielding the horizon. There was too much cloud for him to be able to work out the time from the position of the sun, or which direction they were going in, but there were easier ways of finding out, if he really wanted to know. He could ask.
Tim tried to remember what the fairy tales said about cat people. In at least one of them, he was sure, they were barbaric semi-humans who attacked travellers in distant lands and bit through their throats. Still this particular cat hadn't bitten his throat just yet, and no doubt wouldn't do so for some time to come either.
Great, one problem less. The remainder came down on him like a black fog. "Kimrin," he moaned to himself. "Why?"
Nobody answered. The girl was moving restlessly.
For a few seconds he wondered if the girl might be persuaded to take the statuette to Kimrin's teacher. Then he brushed the thought aside. He had no intention of worrying about Kimrin's plans any longer. He would think about himself now. Statuettes here and priests there and cat people everywhere, the only thing that mattered now was being reunited with his friends. Simply reaching that decision made him feel better already. Everything would turn out all right.
He looked around the wagon. There wasn't much there apart from the girl and himself. There was a pile of blankets in one of the corners at the back, and in the other was a little cask and a light-coloured cloth bag. Food and drink, with any luck. Maybe he'd feel better with a bit of food in his stomach. He no doubt needed to build up a bit of strength before confronting the cat. He stood up. At the same time the wagon made a loud creaking noise, and the girl opened her eyes.
She immediately got up on one knee and looked out of the rear opening. Tim gave a start. Like lightning she felt inside her leather tunic and grasped hold of something with a gasp of extreme relief. Just as suddenly she withdrew her hand again and stared up at Tim, questioningly. "Where am I?" she demanded curtly.
"You're safe," replied Tim just as curtly. "We've left Tātir."
"Good," she said. "I'm off now," she added, and started climbing over the back of the wagon.
Tim hurled himself forward, grabbed hold of her shoulders and forced her back down on the floor. "You can't run away!" he said emphatically. "We're in a moving wagon on a country highway."
"Listen, you!" she yelled. "You're mad! Get your hands off me or I'll kill you!" She struggled to break free, but obviously hadn't yet recovered all her strength.
"You can't just run away! Listen to me," said Tim softly. "We've left Tātir. This fellow saved us. He got us out of Tātir because it wasn't safe there. If he's still driving away from there, it's because we're still not safe. You don't know what might happen to you if you leave this wagon."
She looked up at him. Her eyes were still wild, but not desperate. She wasn't resisting quite as angrily. Even so, he reckoned that if she really wanted to hurt him, he wouldn't be able to stop her.
"Promise me you won't try to run away," he said.
"I'm not promising you anything," she snarled.
"Don't then! Just say you're not intending to."
Her eyes narrowed. "Of course," she said.
"Good." He let go of her, drew back and looked towards the opening at the front. "All we have to do is to keep calm. Things will turn out all right." He thought for a moment. "I think there's some food in that bag over there. If you get it, I'll try and sort out a few things."
That very moment the coachman stuck his head into the wagon. "How's the waking up going?" he asked.
The girl flung herself at the opening again. Tim grabbed her and pulled her back inside.
The cat took his pipe out of his mouth and seemed to be smiling. "I know and accepted long ago that I'm no beauty, but there are some who might be offended by the way you act."
"He is going to gobble us up!" howled the girl.
"Shut up!" roared Tim. "Are you going to?" he asked the cat.
The cat man eyed him patiently.
"Is it true," asked Tim, "That cat people bite through human's throats?"
The cat looked down at his pipe. "I knew one that did bite through a human being's throat one day," he said. Then he smiled to himself. "He said it wasn't nearly as satisfying as the fairy-tales make out."
"Terrific," said the girl, trying to clamber out of the wagon once more, with Tim preventing her yet again.
"Will you stop that?!" he shouted.
"Stop it yourself!" she shouted back at him.
"I can see that my appearance is a problem here," said the cat. "Try to keep your nerves under control and you'll find that many problems will solve themselves." He turned back to face the front again, and concentrated on the horses.
"Just a minute!" shouted Tim. "Stay here," he said to the girl. "And don't try jumping out again, because if..." He struggled to his feet, crouching down, and made his way towards the coach box.
"I can hear your windpipe snapping already," he heard her say behind him, but he wasn't sure if she believed that, was joking, or just being nasty. He got to the front of the wagon and stuck his head out of the opening. A cool breeze blew into his face.
"Er..." he said.
"Come on out and sit down, my boy," said the cat. "The coach box is wide enough for both of us, my size."
Somewhat embarrassed, Tim clambered out of the wagon and sat beside the cat, who was holding both sets of reins. There was open countryside on all sides, but Tim seemed to have more important things to stare at. For the first time he was able to take a closer look at the cat man and his clothes.
The cat was no taller than Tim, perhaps but at least twice as broad round the waist. Nevertheless, he didn't give the impression of being particularly fat, just of being large. He was wearing a pair of elegant leather boots, a pair of grey trousers, a battered dark-blue jacket and had a bright red belt round his waist. On his head was a broad-brimmed green hat that was drooping slightly.
His face was fascinating to look at, to say the least. It was completely alien and yet familiar at the same time. It looked like a cat's face, but was broader and flatter; whiskers were sticking out on each side of his flat, black nose. Overall, it gave a gentle and possibly even sympathetic impression. It wasn't a man's face, Tim reminded himself. Even though its facial expressions seemed human enough, it could well be that Tim was imposing his own interpretation on them.
"People generally react in one of two ways when they first meet me," said the cat placidly. "They either stare hard at me for a while and have done with it, or they keep glancing at me out of the corner of their eye when they think I'm not looking. I prefer the former, on the whole."
"Hmm." Tim concentrated on gazing at the road ahead. He suddenly seemed to have forgotten all the cunning questions he'd thought up.
"I take it you have a number of questions you'd like me to answer," the cat continued in his deep, resonant voice.