Beneath an Opal Moon (18 page)

Howling gusts of wind buffeted the sails, giving the men great difficulty. But they were very good and their course held true. Still he shouted encouragement and they redoubled their efforts.

Beside him, the helmsman had begun trembling. In just a few short moments, the two bow waves would be mingling. It was going to be that close.

“Steady,” he crooned into the wind. “Steady as she goes.”

Masts bending in the gale. A sharp cry along the maindeck. Ignore it.

“Keep her bow on!” Moichi cried. He pulled the shaking helmsman from his post; he had done as much as could be expected.

The yards creaking. Howling like the hounds of hell.

“Steady now!” he told himself, his fingers gripping the helm, guiding it. He felt the thrill of the ship wash over him then, knew she had recognized his competence, acknowledged his leadership. She acquiesced, truly his now to command.

The men sweating, hauling on the lines, heels trying to find a no-slip purchase on the tarred deck.

“Right there.”

Felt Chiisai close beside him, welcoming her warmth and support.

“Right here.”

The rain rushing toward them like a vast funereal shroud, a waterfall of black liquid metal, thick and blinding.

“Yes, right here!”

The other lorcha, big and dark, looming over them like a gargantuan tombstone, blotting out even the oncoming storm with its bulk, with the ebon of its spread sail, taut and leathery as a bat wing.

Abrupt wetness beginning and the helmsman crying out in fear because he thought it was the first onrush of the other ship's bow wave washing over them; and Moichi crying,
“Ahora!
Now! Now! Hard to starboard!” He spun at the wheel, but the seas were already so heavy that there was enormous resistance. Chiisai leaned into it with him and then the trembling helmsman, his teeth chattering and his eyes rolling wildly so that the whites showed all the way around. “Heave! Heave!” The helm began to turn. “By the Oruborus, put your weight into it! Heave!”

The lorcha bucked, swung to starboard.

A solid wall of water rose up and the helmsman was screaming again because he could already feel the titanic death shudder of his vessel as the other lorcha hit it.

“Don't let up! Heave!”

And they were into the squall, another world, crossing the threshold. The downpour obscured everything and they hung on to the wheel, all three of them, lest they be washed overboard. But Moichi was already turning his head toward the port side, watching, watching through the clouds of hissing water, seeing, as if through some magic viewer, the smudge of the other lorcha, made dark and bulky by its angle and proximity, turned broadside into the storm in its attempt to veer away from their charge. It was breaking up. He heard the splintering even above the crash of the storm, thought he could even discern cries in a strange language, guttural, cuneiform writing come to life in speech, dying now amidst the torn spars and splintered hull.

He heaved with them, bringing them out of their starboard arc, back onto a straight course.

He relinquished the helm to the helmsman and turned to find Chiisai staring at him. She put one small hand, fingers outspread, on his chest. His shirt had blown open and she touched his bare skin. Rain drove at them relentlessly, filming their faces, running down their necks. They were drenched to the skin.

Mer-Man's Tales

During the long night he dreams of home. Of waiting Iskael, baking in the swollen summer's sun. It is the season when nothing moves along the vast tracts of the desert; not caravans which, in the fall, will journey forth, laden with spices and cedar; not pilgrims making the arduous trek to the holy sites at the foot of the mountain built, so it is said, by the hand of God. It is the time when the desert is ruled by the scorpions and sand snakes during the day and the fleet pack rats at night.

It is the time when he is a boy, already tall and muscular, when he rides his father's land on horseback, supervising much of the work. He is accompanied by Al'eph, his tutor, a man of indeterminate age who is present in order to assure Moichi's father that the boy's secular and religious studies do not suffer because of his work.

“My boy,” Al'eph calls to him, as they rein up, atop a low bluff, “it is time for your midday lesson.”

“Not today, Al'eph,” he says. “Please.”

“Moichi, I cannot force you but I am constrained to point out that your father is already most anxious about the slow progress of your studies. This will do nothing to assuage his anxiety.”

“It is my life, Al'eph,” Moichi says. “I know you understand this even if he does not.”

The other nods. “This is quite correct, my boy. But neither am I the one with the ferocious temper. You are not the only one brought on the carpet if matters are not to his complete satisfaction.”

“I know what you put up with,” he says, “and I appreciate it. But today the sun is hot and the shaded waters of the brook in the northwest quadrant seems irresistible.”

Al'eph sighs. “All right. Go take your swim. But in return you must promise to rendezvous with me here just after sunset. We shall return home together, as your father would wish it.”

Moichi lifts a hand in assent, digs his boot heels into his mount's flanks and he is off, galloping down the far side of the bluff, over the rolling fields of wheat.

In the manner of dream movement, he finds himself at the brook, dismounted, staring through a gap in the dense greenery. He sees the frothy water, so inviting. But this day the brook is not deserted, despite its distance from any major or minor roads.

Within the stream stands a girl with short auburn hair. He moves slightly to get a better view and sees that she is in the process of disrobing. Already she is without her blouse, and her skin, clouded with freckles, is tanned almost to the color of teak. Lithe muscles ripple as she bends, placing the blouse on the far bank, and he catches an all-too-brief glimpse of one breast, firm as a ripe apple, the nipple hard. Then she turns her back and he sees the deep groove of her spine, shadowed all the way down to the tops of her buttocks, so unutterably erotic that he feels his legs begin to tremble with the force of his longing.

The water rushes onward, hiding her feet and ankles, the bottoms of her calfs. She wears only a pair of cut-off pants now and her bare legs, like the bifurcated stalk of some exotic flower, hold his attention. They are beautifully formed, so full of a hidden excitement that, for a moment, he imagines himself to be a desert explorer who, after seasons of searching, at last comes upon a previously undiscovered mine of precious gems.

His breath comes as hard as a bellows and he is terrified that she will hear his stentorian wheezing. The blood, pounding through his veins, sounds like hammer blows upon his inner ear and his head seems to jerk with every pulse.

As if in terrible confirmation of his thoughts, the girl turns, looks directly at him. He freezes, not even daring to breathe. He stares, mesmerized, as if seeing an ethereal faerie creature come to life. Her eyes are enormous and as green and bright as polished jade, long sooty lashes giving them a highly mysterious aspect. A broad forehead, small nose and generous lips. Her face is captivating.

Then she turns away, miraculously without having noticed him and he feels a kind of chill after that hot, hot stare, as if a cloud had passed before the face of the sun.

Her hands are working now in front of her, hidden from him, and this, too, increases the eroticism of the moment. Then, incredibly, she sways slightly back and forth as she works her pants down her hips. And she is completely naked.

She begins to turn again but he can stand no more. Moving back into the deep shadows of the foliage, he feverishly tears at his clothes. He is sweating. Buttons catch at the material of his shirt, cloth sticks to his back and arms as he tries to pull it off.

At length, he is ready and, moving to the gap, he thrusts himself through and, without pause, hurls himself into the water of the brook.

It is like ice and his flesh is raised in goose bumps. He lifts his head from the water, shaking the droplets from his brows and eyelashes, but he is alone in the brook for as far as the eye can see.

They sailed into the port of Corruña on the wings of fair weather and a stiff fresh wind out of the southeast quarter.

Far from the sprawling splendor of Sha'angh'sei that tended to awe the initiate, Corruña was nevertheless a beautiful sight. The Daluzan port was comparatively small and perfectly compact. Stone jetties, mostly man-made, thrust out into the blue water, amply accommodating the many swift lorchas that, as Rohja had indicated, plied Daluzan waters on short-range trade.

Immediately to the northeast, a deep lagoon was sheltered by a narrow curving peninsula, like a welcoming cape to weary travelers in larger craft. Near the bow, Moichi could make out seven three-masters at anchor there.

The city itself was laid out in a wide crescent, the arms of its extremities encircling the port. Corruña was a swath of white cubicular buildings built around spectacular circular plazas whose centers were invariably filled with beautifully sculpted fountains or small arboreal sanctuaries. Bells seemed to peal almost constantly, emanating from the blunt towers of myriad iglesias.

The Daluzan culture did not use brick in its constructions, perhaps for aesthetic reasons; used only wood paneling and stippled stucco in its interiors. Almost without exception, the buildings of the city were made of a kind of fired adobe that was meticulously sealed against the cold of the winters, then thickly whitewashed to a matte finish.

If the houses of Corruña seemed at first colorless, the citizens were just the opposite, for their clothing, in which they took inordinate pride, was of the most brilliant colors; every shade and its harmonic was represented amid the tight formalism of the men and the swirling ruffles of the women.

The lorcha nosed slowly alongside a jetty and fore and aft lines were thrown to waiting hands. Moichi, awaiting their docking, was watching Armazón. He had made an enemy there, he knew, when he had knocked the bos'un down in front of his crew. He shrugged mentally. There had been no help for it. But he knew that, while he was here, he would have to keep a weather eye on the man. He had told Chiisai the gist of his talk with Armazón but nothing further was said of the matter.

They bumped against the wharf and Moichi, moving back to midships, stepped off the lorcha, followed by Chiisai. As they stood there, breathing deeply, adjusting to being on land once more, Rohja came up.

“You will, no doubt, wish to go to the house of the Seguillas y Ori-wara,” he said. “Allow me to be your guide.”

“If you give us the directions, I am quite certain we will find our way,” Moichi said. “If you would be amenable, I would ask you to do something for me.”

“If I am able, I will be most glad to help.”

“Good. I want you to hang around here. Do whatever you normally do. I want to know if any ship coming in on the same line as we did docked here. It would be, oh, either early this morning or late last night. Do you think you can do that?”

Rohja grinned, adjusted the purple headband. His eyes were bright. “Aye, piloto. It will be easy.”

“Do not make the mistake of taking this lightly, Rohja,” Moichi cautioned. “This man we follow is most dangerous and he is certain to have confederates here. I do not want to place you in jeopardy—”

“Please do not trouble yourself on that score,” Rohja said. “I can take care of myself. No one will know what I am about.”

“That includes Armazón,” Moichi said pointedly.

Rohja snorted. “I need no reminder on that score, piloto. There was no love lost between the two of us long before I sided with you back there.”

“Just be careful.”

“Armazón is an old man. He will cause me no trouble.”

Rohja was about to go but, on impulse, Moichi held him back by asking, “Do you know anything about the duel in which the Senhor was killed?”

The sailor thought a moment, then shrugged. “Not much, piloto. I did not myself see it—I was not in the employ of the Seguillas y Ori-wara, then—but I was told that the Senhor was overmatched from the outset.”

“Was the Senhor an expert swordsman?”

“By all accounts he was. But there is an ancient Daluzan proverb: ‘Excellence is fleeting, for perfection does not exist; there is always someone better.'”

“A most sobering thought,” Chiisai said. Rohja was one of the few Daluzans Moichi had encountered who had a true grasp of the common tongue. They had used it now not only for her benefit but to ensure privacy in this public place.

“Indeed,” Rohja agreed. “Most melancholy. But we Daluzans believe that it teaches one humility.”

“Do you know, Rohja,” Moichi said, “whether it was a fair duel?”

“All Daluzan duels are fair, piloto, by definition.”

“Armazón seems to think otherwise.”

“Ah, Armazón. Well, I cannot say that I am at all surprised.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, he loved the Senhor, piloto, yes, as if they were brothers. But something transpired during the last year of the Senhor's life. I do not know what—none of the men, I suspect, do—but perhaps four seasons before the Senhor was killed in the duel, he ceased to use Armazón's lorcha.” He turned and pointed. “This one, in point of fact. The Senhor's fleet is vast, you no doubt know, but he steadfastly sailed with Armazón until—” He shrugged. “It happened very abruptly, you know. Very strange after so long a time.”

“Did they have a fight?”

“If there was one, it did not occur in public. And, of course, Armazón would never speak of it.”

“But what has this to do with what Armazón suspects happened in the duel?”

“Just this. Ever since the Senhor's death, he has changed.”

“That is understandable, given—”