Anderson, Poul - Novel 18 Read online

  “How did you get aboard?”

  “Through Casiru. He was absent when the Imperials came.”

  “Yes, I heard that afterward. But he and you were both hunted. He would hide. How did you find him?”

  “Well, of course at the time I didn’t know he was loose, but I figured he’d have told what he’d been doing, to associates in the Rattlebone Brotherhood. And probably most Knife Brothers of whatever outfit could locate a member of that gang for me. After dark, I mugged the first man I came on, disarmed him, and put my question. If I’d failed with him, I’d have kept trying; but he proved out. Casiru was informed, and had me brought to him. Naturally, then I admitted I was what he suspected, a foreign agent. He gave me the news, including what soon became general gossip about you. In every way, he was spitefully glad to help me.”

  He sketched the rest. They went on to a few more words, a bare few, not plans at this stage, but hopes, cautions, arrangements for occasional rendezvous and for emergency communication. He described his times on and off duty, and two ventilators on deck which would cany a loud noise, one to the engine room, one to the black gang’s sleepyhole. “If you need me bad, yell down whichever stack is right for that hour, and I’ll come boiling up.” He touched his sheath knife, and reflected that on watch he could likewise snatch a wrench or crowbar.

  “I can do better,” she told him. “Sidfr frets about my being endangered, like by a lightning guerilla raid. He hung a whistle around my neck. I’ll give you three blasts. Right?”

  “Right,” he said. Kissed her goodbye and went aft surprised at the jealousy of Sidfr that seethed in him.

  CHAPTER 8

  Rains dogged the army till the ninth day. Next evening, stars glintered around a gibbous moon in an ice halo. Its glade shivered over swirling, chuckling darkness. Beyond the riverbanks, land sheened pale: hoarfrost on grass, here and there a diamond twinkle, here and there a murky stand of cottonwood. Campfires and sentinel lanterns spread widely. But they were sparks, lost amidst night and miles, as were fugitive sounds from the host, a man’s call, a horse’s whinny, a flute’s loneliness. Breath smoked in the chill.

  Having dismissed the last man who needed conference with him, Sidfr climbed a ladder from his office to the upper gallery. For a moment he paused, filled and emptied lungs, tensed and untensed muscles, seeking ease. A day at a desk tied him in knots. Would he ever again have a day in the saddle?

  Yes, by the Outlaw God! he thought. Stay patient. The jaguar waiting for prey does no more than switch his tail. His mouth bent wryly. Trouble is, I have no tail to switch. In search of calm in eternity, he let his gaze travel above the boat, dappled blotches that were bollards, hatch covers, winches, gleams off guns and guardian pikes, upward among the constellations. He knew them well, the Ocelot, the Swordfish, Baghrol’s Lance____ But some like the Trumpeter were below his horizon, and others stood strange to him in the north. He found Mars aloft and dwelt on its bluish brilliance until, he didn’t know why, a memory swam from the depths of him, a thing he had heard in Nafs from an astrologer who sought out forgotten records and pictures in tombs of forgotten kings. That man claimed Mars was formerly red; thus had they seen it who lived before the Ice came.

  A sense of measureless antiquity blew through Sidfr. I would truly lead armed men into Unknown Roong, built so long ago that the very heavens have changed?

  He stiffened his shoulders. The barbarians do, and ransack for metal.

  That brought Donya’s image before him, the knowledge she waited in their cabin. Sudden heat awoke. He swung from the rail and strode around the gallery, past a dull-yellow window to his door, and flung it wide.

  The room was cramped and austere save for its bed. She sat thereon, long legs crossed, arms folded under breasts, back straight and head high. Despite the cold, she wore merely a beaded headband and his whistle. A chain lamp, feeble, slightly hazing the air with oily smoke, nonetheless brought her forth aglow from shadows she cast on herself and grotesque great blacknesses that wavered in the corners.

  Sidfr closed the door. His pulse broke into a trot. His mind took firmer hold on reins. Go slow. Be gentle. Not like last night.

  “I, um, regret I’m late,” he said in Arvannethan. A book lay open on the dresser. She had read much in that language, evidently seeking to master its writing, while the expedition crawled along. But the light here was too poor.

  She had also practiced much on a kind of lyre he found for her, which she said resembled a little the Rogaviki harp. And she had enjoyed the passing scene, tossed questions at everybody, eaten and drunk lustily, played board games with dash and rising skill, chanted songs of her folk over wine. Once she danced at a palace feast, but that was too inciting; thereafter she danced for him alone. And in this bed—

  Till the past two or three days. Then more and more sullen. Or is “sullen” right? She went behind a mask, anyhow, spoke nothing except what she had to, sat moveless hour after hour. Joined, she gave me small response, nothing like formerly. Last night she told me no. Should I have seized her as I did? She endured me. Any slave girl would have been better.

  The nearness of her smote him. No. Never. Not after what we have had. I couldn’t help myself. I’ll win her back to what she was.

  When she kept mute, he went on, “I was detained by a courier just arrived from Berrydown.” That was an Arvannethan translation of the local name for a site where he had left the first of his detachments to establish a base, day before yesterday. “Since we’ll plant our second garrison here, naturally I wanted to know what’s happened there.”

  “What has?” Though she spoke leadenly, she did speak. He wished he could give a pleasant reply.

  “A patrol ambushed.” He grimaced. ‘Two men lost, three wounded. At dawn, a picket found strangled by a cord.”

  Did she smile? “Good,” she murmured.

  “Krah?” He checked his outrage. “Already?” he demanded.

  “Why not? They are no laggards in the Yair kith.”

  “But—” Sidfr braced legs apart, flung arms wide, sought to make her reasonable. “Donya, it was senseless. Those ambuscaders left four dead behind them. Two were women. The rest must have seen they couldn’t win, but kept trying till our men’s horns had called in tenfold reinforcements. That was the start of their madness, an attack so near our encampment.”

  “Well, they got two, and a third later on. They will get more.”

  “We haven’t even invaded! Our location is right on the trade route.”

  “It’s clear aplenty what you intend.” She leaned forward. A touch of concern softened her coolness. “Won’t you now believe what I’ve warned you over and over, Sidfr? You can’t take the Northlands. You can only kill Northlanders. In the end, a part of you will go home— leaving how many brave bones?”

  He stood silent a while before he murmured, “Mars was red when the Ice came.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing endures forever, no life, no shape, no condition.” By her response he dared hope he had pierced the flint encasing her. I’ll lead the way from talk of this to talk of us. He stepped to the dresser. “Do you care for a stoup of wine? I do.” She didn’t refuse. He gurgled claret from carafe to goblets, gave her one, lifted his in a Barommian gesture, and took a mouthful. It was from the coastal plain of eastern Rahfd, as far north as grapes would ripen, tart on his tongue.

  “Donya.” He sat down on the mattress edge. His eyes sought hers. His body longed to, but he held his pulse to a canter. “I pray you, listen. I know why you’re unhappy. When we crossed the frontier of the southernmost Rogaviki along this river, aye, that started you brooding. Did it start you fully grieving, though? I can’t say. I’ve asked and gotten no answer. Why won’t you tell me what you feel and let me try to help?”

  Her look might have been a lynx’s. “You know why,” she said somberly. “Because you make war on my land.”

  “But I never denied I would. Yet in Arvanneth—yes, and our early d
ays journeying—”

  “Your act was in the future. It might not happen. When it did happen, things turned into different things.”

  “And yet—oh, we’ve been over this ground often enough—and yet—you admitted yourself, the Rogaviki have no single nation. Here isn’t yours. Your home territory is far off.”

  “That is why I can hold myself quiet, Sidfr. But still it hurts to know what the Yair and Leno are suffering today, and the Magla will start suffering tomorrow.”

  “They need simply acknowledge they’re subjects of the Throne, and keep the Imperial peace. Nobody will tyrannize over them.”

  “The grazers and plowmen will move in.”

  “Paying them well for land.”

  “Forced sale, on the pretext it can’t really belong to anybody because nobody has a stupid piece of paper calling it his. And what payment can bring back our great game beasts?”

  “It’ll take long to settle so big a country. You’ll have generations to learn new ways. Better ways. Your grandchildren will rejoice that they’re civilized.”

  “Never. Impossible.”

  Her stubbornness angered him. This was indeed a well-trampled realm between them. He gulped another draught. The wine soothed a trifle. “Why? My own ancestors —But I remind you of what I offered. You, your Hervar, you cooperate. Make no resistance. Give no help to kiths elsewhere, except helping persuade them to accept what must be. Then no soldiers will cross your boundaries without leave, and no settlers ever be let in until your descendants themselves desire.”

  “Why should I believe that?”

  “The Devil Mare kick you! I’ve explained! Sound policy to have native confederates—” He drained his cup.

  She took a sip herself. Did her tone milden? “I would have hated you sooner, had you not made that offer. It can’t be—I foresee too well how matters would go—but thank you for meaning it honestly, Sidfr.”

  Encouraged, he put his vessel aside and leaned nearer her. The wine glowed through his veins. “Why shouldn’t it work?” he urged. “Strong, able folk like yours can rise as high in the Empire as they choose. You and I—fit together like bow and arrow, don’t we? The South needs to share more than your land, it needs to share your blood.” He dropped his left hand across her right, which rested on the blanket, and smiled. “Who knows? We may be the ancestors of an Imperial dynasty ... you and I.”

  She shook her head. The thick locks rippled. She returned his smile, no, grinned, no, showed teeth. “That most surely not,” she said, far back in her throat.

  Wounded, he swallowed before he protested, “You mean—what people say—Rogaviki can’t have children with outsiders? I’ve never believed it could be true.”

  “It isn’t always.” Her voice turned impersonal. “Aye, mules might get born rather often, were many of us not able to will that a seed put in us shall not take root.”

  He stared. Ho-ah, what? Mind can make body go strange ways.... Shamans I've watched—He veered to a more immediate ugliness. “Mules?”

  “Old stories tell how such crossbreeds, if they lived, were barren. I don’t know, myself.” Her lips pulled back again as she finished, slowly, like drawing a fishhook across his flesh, “Nowadays their mothers always leave them at birth for the buzzards.”

  He sprang from her, to his feet. “Rachan!” he cursed. “You lie!”

  “Did you think I would nurse a whelp of yours?” she jeered. “No, I’d throttle it at its first yell. With glee.”

  His pulse stampeded. Through smoke-haze and shadow he saw her big tawny form taut on the bed, through thunder he heard, appallingly steady: “Reckon yourself lucky, Sidfr, that I haven’t yet ripped your maleness off you.”

  She’s as crazy as the rest, rocked in his skull. She simply hid it better. A race of maniacs—His palm cracked across her cheek. She hardly moved at the blow; her bosom rose and fell as before.

  What she had been to him—pretended she was— smote him with axes. In his pain he threw her cruelty for cruelty. “Yaih!” he shouted. “Do you know why they’re done for, your filthy savages? I didn’t tell you this, because—because I hoped—” Air sawed his gullet. “Well, listen, bitch. If they don’t surrender, we’ll kill the game out from under them!”

  He half heard a wail. A hand flew to her mouth. She scuttled to the far bedside and crouched.

  He struck harder: “Aye, Bison, moonhom, bronco, antelope, deer, wild burro up in the hills, caribou on the tundra, moose and elk in the woods ... farmers couldn’t do it, infantry couldn’t, but Barommian horse archers can. Five years, and the last herd rots on the prairie, the last Rogaviki crawl begging for scraps off our cattle. Now do you see why they’d better quit their murdering— while they can?”

  She gasped in and out. Abrupt pity washed through his rage. “Donya,” he mumbled, and reached toward her, “darling, I beg you—”

  “Yee-oo-oo,” came from her. “Yah-r-r-r.”

  Hunched on all fours, hands bent into claws, gape stretched wide, eyes flat green encircled by white and encircling two tiny pits, she swayed. Inhuman, her noise ripped down his backbone. He edged away, hand on dagger hilt. “Donya,” he stammered, “what’s wrong, be calm, take care.” The cabin bulkhead stopped him. “Rrra-a-ao-o!” she screamed, and sprang.

  He saw her fly at him, crooked fingers, distorted bleach-white face, teeth ready to be fangs. His knife jumped forth. Before he could stab, she struck. They crashed to the deck. She rolled herself on top of his belly. Her nails raked after his eyes. Blood flowed loose. He kept his knife, brought its point toward her ribs. Somehow she sensed that nearness. Weasel-swift and limber, she writhed about, caught his wrist, turned his thrust. He clung to the weapon, strained his full strength inward. His free arm beat around to ward off hers. She closed jaws on the knife wrist and gnawed. Her right hand found his throat and started digging. Her left sought his groin. Her thighs pinioned a leg, held down his entire threshing body. Her vulnerable breasts were jammed too close against him to reach. Her back took the blows of his left fist.

  He knew she could kill him.

  He yelled. A guard burst in. He choked at what he saw. He couldn’t jab his pike into that embrace without danger of hitting his chief. He clubbed the butt across Donya.

  She let go, launched her weight, toppled him, and passed across, out onto the gallery. Those below saw her soar under the moon to the main deck. Most who made that leap would have broken their bones. She rebounded. Her whistle shrilled. Soldiers tried to box her in a comer. They couldn’t. She flitted, hit, kicked, and yowled.

  A bellow answered. A huge dark man erupted from below. Sidfr lurched outside in time to glimpse the scrimmage that followed. The dark man sliced one Rahfdian fatally. His fist broke the neck of another. Between them, he and the female left four more hurt. They reached the port bulwark. They sprang. Water fountained on the river. They were gone.

  Lanterns bobbed among shouts and feet, great lunatic fireflies.

  His hurt, shock, horror drowned in Sidfr; he knew only his loss. “Donya,” he mourned through the cold. Blood from his brows dripped to blind him.

  Then, a swordthrust: Why do I call? What is she to me? A witchsprite in truth, and I spellsnared?

  1 thought about last night, “I couldn’t help myself.” That never happened before, that I could not help myself.

  CHAPTER 9

  The sun was well up when Josserek awoke. Memory slammed his dreams out of him. The alarm; the fight; getting to a shore half a mile off in a strong current, his swimmer’s muscles aiding Donya; eluding troopers whom horn and light signals had roiled into alertness, her hunter’s craft aiding him; trekking death-long hours in a direction she got from the stars, until dawn let them halt by a congealed waterhole without themselves freezing; tumbling into an embrace for warmth alone, and exhausted sleep. ... He surged to his haunches.

  “May this day gladden you,” she greeted him in the soft Rogavikian tongue. When had she come astir? She was using his knife to cut gras
s.

  He stood erect and stared around. Light poured from an unbounded blue. Its warmth soaked through his bare torso, dissolved aches, anointed creaks. To the edge of that sky reached the plain. Waist-high grass covered it, stiffly yielding when brushed against. Like the sea, it showed infinite hues under the sun, deep green close at hand, silvery in the distance. Like the sea too, it ran before the wind in long waves. Wildflowers swam in it like fish, far-scattered stands of elder and giant thistle heaved forth like islets, remotely westward a herd of homed beasts—hundreds upon hundreds, he guessed—moved majestic as whales. Butterflies flitted gaudy. Above went many wings; he could name just a few kinds, meadowlark, thrush, red-winged blackbird, hawk, homebound geese that made a spearhead beyond them. The wind hummed, stroked, streamed smells of growth, loam, animals, sun-scorch.

  No humans in sight. Good. He slacked the wariness of the hunted. Except, of course—

  Donya ceased work and trod closer. Nothing remained of last night’s man-eating tigress, nor of the silent, relentlessly loping vixen afterward. A woman flowed toward him, clad in air of early summer, hair aflutter around her smile and above her breasts. By Dolphin! he exploded in his loins. I—Common sense closed fingers on him. She’s not inviting me. And she has my knife.

  She gave it back, though. Automatically, he sheathed it. The trousers which his belt upheld were his sole garment, what he happened to be wearing while he diced with his messmates below decks. His feet were cut, bruised, sore. Hers seemed untouched, and she unwearied.

  “Are you hale?” she asked.

  “I’ll live,” he grunted. Most of his mind still wrestled most of his body. “You?”

  As if released from a trap, joy swooped upward. “£y- ach, free!” She leaped, raised arms, pirouetted, whirled across yards of rustling stalks which now hid, now showed fleet legs and exultant hips. “Salmon-free, falcon-free, cougar-free,” she chanted, “where sun roars, wind shines, earth dances, about and about the heart at peace—” Watching and listening, he forgot himself. A piece of him did wonder whether her song was traditional or sprang straight out of her. It slipped into a dialect he couldn’t quite follow, so he guessed the latter.