Moving Water (28 page)

“Sure, sir!” Amver shot up ten feet. “You want a swamp punt. Two, three, maybe. We'll make 'em on the edge.” He grew pensive. “ 'N . . . we better boil up some salgar as well.”

Around noon we abandoned our ponies, took a final backward glance to be sure no zealous Phaxian had sighted us, and tramped, with varying shades of reluctance, across the last soggy field, over the first swamp branch, and into Stirsselian.

It was much as I remembered. Steaming wet, peculiarly airless, not only because of the smothering trees and the sun that stewed miles of water, jungle and mud, but with a listening pressure that is the most unnerving of all. It is as if Stirsselian itself were sentient, and resentful, and at any moment the ambush will be sprung.

The mosquitoes struck instantly, backed by stinging flies, sticky flies, leeches, and some odd bees that like the taste of sweat. Our march flushed an army of birds, gray hisyrx, the northern heron, black and white waders, all kinds of duck, red-billed slithillin, pouch-billed pelicans, tiny water-runners and tree-dwellers as well, which attracted the raptors, morvallin, rienglis and so on. Once a perrilys glared from a whitened stump, gold-rimmed eye, mottled white and brown six-foot wings, but he was a fish-eater and little concerned with us. The morvallin were another matter. They thought it a hunt, and expected scraps, and in the end Beryx needed Wreve-lan'x to be rid of them.

By then we were on an eyot conveniently infested with emvath bush and hooky quennis vines, with a small fire to boil up the first salgar infusion while Amver supervised the making of punts. This meant wading, often thigh-deep, to the stands of smooth pole-like thrithan trees which are the swamp-dweller's staple, and which were inevitably barricaded among helmyn clumps. They are palms whose leaves grow in spirals, are lavishly barbed, and when stepped on rattle like the drums of a general alarm. Amver, however, said we would grind the nuts for flour.

He also treated the quick-mud patches with cavalier unconcern, merely bidding us prod with a stick if we left others' tracks. A wide slide-mark down a mud bank made me shy in real alarm, but he discounted that too. “Fresh water sort. They don't eat men.” Resolved that Zem and Zam would be confined to camp, I struggled on, wrestling my queasy stomach, picking off leeches, and finally, like Amver, repulsing the mosquitoes by daubing all my exposed skin with mud.

The punts were festooned with vine-ends like a botched haystack, almost unmaneuverable, but they floated, they held two or three people, and they had a bare six-inch draught. Amver took command of the first. Sivar, on the strength of his brother the fisherman, was allotted the second, and Beryx, boasting, “I may be one-handed and never have sailed in soup, but I can bully you lubbers around,” installed himself in the third. The twins promptly joined him. Callissa, still red-eyed and bitterly mute, gave them a savage glance and pointedly made for Amver's craft.

I let her go, since there seemed no alternative. We renewed our mud masks, downed our salgar draft, manned our paddles, and blundered away west into the labyrinth.

* * * * *

I must admit that to tackle Stirsselian by water, with a competent pilot, is far better than to wallow along in an army patrol, with the nerve-wracking chance of a Phaxian ambush round every bend. Before camp Amver reckoned we might have made eight miles, and since we had struck west on land, this put us near Kerym Cletho, the first of the gigantic basins that fill Deve Gaz's rift from march to march. We camped among helmyns over a deep channel. There were no mud slides, but fish showed in the amber water, and also lilies, anchored flotillas of a deep vivid pink, closed for the night. Beryx gazed at them a long time, with an expression of revived and poignant if not happy memories.

Stirsselian soon routed the past. We had hardly lit our fire when Evis cocked an ear. Amver stopped, listened too. Then nodded. “Drums,” he said.

They muttered on in the hush, a just-audible irregular pulse. Zyr looked behind him. Zem and Zam closed up on me. Beryx raised his brows to Amver. “Do we make a peace sign? Or leave it to them?”

Amver pulled his wide lower lip. He sounded a trifle unsure. “I think . . . we just go along quietly and wait. When they're ready . . . we'll know.”

Beryx nodded. “Like Hethox. Look you over first.” And he turned to choosing a bed-spot, unperturbed.

For three days we paddled deeper and deeper into Kerym Cletho, the only sign of other human life those evening drums. We acquired a helmyn nut grinding-quern, a net of pounded vine fibre, a bow built by Evis to shoot arrows with fire-hardened points which eventually, amid general triumph, felled an unwary duck. Like Zem and Zam we began to replace clothes with mud, more practical for wading, easily repaired, far more leech and insect proof. No crocodiles, Phaxians, or quick-mud appeared. At times, as we wobbled down some convoluted deep-water channel, roofed by a mesh of sun-shot clethra leaves, walled in arches of clethra roots, pleasantly cool in the watery shade, with white dashes of sun on amber water, helmyn fronds dangling harmlessly overhead, lilies sliding safely underneath, mud to foil the mosquitoes, Amver to steer us, and Beryx, if necessary, to get us out, I almost enjoyed myself.

It was not mosquitoes that roused me the fourth day. It was a sound that hurled me back to those awful dawns when the Phaxians made a surprise assault: the grunt of a man struck down and out.

Plunging from my cloak I clawed for a sword—or would have, had a vise not pinned my hand and Beryx rapped,

I sat, every muscle over-taut, tightened further at what I saw.

The camp had been overrun. A ring of small coal-black men with helmets of mud-packed hair watched us from behind drawn arrows with dull, smeared heads. My blood ran cold. More were among our baggage, at the punts, the smoored fire, watching the rest wake. Zyr, the sentry, lay face down, motionless, while a nuggety warrior with cicatrices on his breast tucked a short bludgeon back in a twisted hair belt. It was impossible to deduce anything from those small, shut, wildcat faces. Thankfully, I saw Amver rouse.

His mouth sagged open, but he kept his nerve. After a moment, still supine, he spoke to them.

It was some Gjerven dialect, too corrupt for me. He sounded conciliatory, but like a man among strangers of his own blood. None of the archers reacted; but at length the sentry-feller approached.

There was an exchange. I caught, “Assharral,” and, “Phaxia,” and, “alsyr”—peace. Then, rather impatiently, the small warrior asked something else.

Amver's face changed. More talk. His surprise became wonder, incredulity, something near to awe. He gestured at Beryx. The warrior glanced round, then issued a command.

Amver rose. They both came over to Beryx, still seated in his cloak with his empty left hand prominently displayed, and in a very queer tone Amver said, “He wants to know if—you're the rainmaker, sir.”

Beryx did not hesitate. “Tell him, Yes.”

The warrior had understood. He squatted down in that boneless way, knees in armpits and hands dangled between, staring into Beryx's face. His small eyes were pitch-black, bright as coals, and as intense. He might have been trying to read the mind behind the face as well.

Silently, Beryx looked back at him. His own eyes were barely awake, just a hint of motion in the irises, the twine of deep currents in a green-stained stream. But no human eyes move like that.

The camp was dead quiet. For a moment I wondered if they were exchanging thoughts. Then the warrior reached out one small pink-palmed hand and delicately, but without timidity, laid it to the scarred side of Beryx's face.

Beryx did not move. Withdrawing his hand, the warrior looked at the crippled arm. Beryx shrugged it from his cloak. The warrior put his hand on the wrist. Carefully, withdrew. His eyes moved. With a small grin Beryx murmured, “I'll end in my skin,” and began to unbutton his voluminous Phaxian shirt.

It was half-open when the warrior, with that same intent, unoffensive decision, intercepted his hand, kept the grip an instant to be sure it was not misunderstood, then gently eased the shirt back until he could see the edges of the scar.

Beryx waited. Even more gently, the warrior re-adjusted the shirt, then watched closely as ever while Beryx did it up. After that he squatted a long time and once again studied Beryx's face. I could not decide if any change showed in his own.

Finally, not turning his head, he addressed Amver in a level, dead-pan voice.

Amver's brows shot up. He wrought with emotions. Then he said, “He thinks, sir, that our fishing net must have been made by a—a—sheep-butcher from Kemrestan.”

I had just worked out that this came to an insult when Beryx showed me its real nature by replying in the same straight-faced formality, “Tell him that should please him. We'll miss more of his fish.”

Amver translated. A sparkle warmed the black eyes. A silent laugh rippled round the perimeter, and before I knew it the warrior was talking full gallop to Amver, hands flying, emphasis in his face, Beryx was saying, “Take it quietly, all of you,” and a crowd of small, respectful but thoroughly searching rank and file were all over us.

Ulven are not content to use their eyes. Pink-palmed hands tested our bow, assessed our cooking pot, felt the texture of my cloak, my sword-hilt, my hair, my very fingernails. Zem and Zam got on famously, for they touched with equal freedom in return, but after Callissa's first shrink and squeak they avoided her. In any case, it was Beryx who was the real cynosure.

They clustered round him six deep, putting out their hands with that odd, intense concentration that held neither fear nor captor's insolence, but was not, as with us, plain curiosity. It was as if they already knew what he was, and were driven to make the closest possible contact with what they saw.

His dialogue over, Amver forged into the crowd, more agog than anyone. “Sir, they know about wizards—aedryx, I mean!” Beryx nodded, unsurprised. “Lisbyrx, they say, rainmakers, there are old stories handed down, so when you made it rain at the Taven they knew what you were, they've been trailing us since Phaxia, that was the drums, of course, because there's a prophecy—I've never heard it!—that a crippled lisbyr'll come to Stirsselian, this is the headman's son and the old folk sent him to find us because,” with rising urgency, “there's troops coming in from Assharral!”

Beryx's look of confirmation had become a kind of wariness. Now it sharpened. “How far? How many?” He was the general again. “On our track?”

“Nossir, there's four or five patrols at the end of Kerym Cletho but they're just probing 'n in trouble with the swamp, the Ulven're shadowing 'em all 'n they reckon no problem to get rid of 'em—if you want. . . .”

With a glance at the bows Beryx emphatically shook his head. Amver nodded as if he had expected it and was off again. “So they came to warn us and they'll hide or help us or whatever we want because you're a lisbyr and because”—he assumed a thoroughly mystified tone—“the prophecy says the crippled wizard will end the Assharran drought.”

Beryx sighed in candid relief. “Just so long,” he said, “as I'm not expected to make yams and kanna fall from the sky.”

“But what's it mean, sir? There's no drought in Assharral. Unless they mean Axaira, 'n it never rains there anyway.”

“No?” Beryx shot him a piercing glance. “How long have they been ‘wild'? And why? Not been hunted, by any chance? Nobody thought they were dangerous animals and tried to wipe them out?”

Amver stammered, confounded. “B-but—we—they—it's always been like that! They are dangerous! They raid crops—kill cattle—burn farms, sometimes! My father sort of knew them 'n he still had to pay a bullock a year peace price 'n—everybody thought we were low going near them at all. . . .”

He tailed off, finding, as I had, shame in what had once seemed reputable. Beryx nodded sadly, his eyes on the naked crowd.

 “Primitive,” he said. “Driven back on poor land, then punished when they couldn't live on it. Made more backward by the hunts. Just primitive, and the stories warped to a cross between demons and beasts.” There was pity in his eyes.

He looked back to Amver. “Not your fault,” he said more gently. “You were bred to the thinking. But . . . no wonder they want to end the drought.”

Amver rallied a little. “But sir, the prophecy. How did they know?”

“They don't. It's a hope. A lot of us live on them. Or perhaps there's a foresighted strain, there often is with people like this. And your headman's son doesn't know Ruanbrarx, but he could follow my mind. He only knew about this”—he touched his side—“when I thought of it.” His smile was wry. “Empathy. Like a higher form of beast.”

Amver retired hastily on the tangible. “Do we go with them, though? 'N what about the troops?”

“Go with them, yes, if they can get us round the patrols.” He frowned. “But not to their village. When Moriana gets serious she might destroy it. I don't want any surplus hostages.”

“No problem, sir.” Amver's face cleared. “They don't have a village, just season camps. They live on the move, in their boats.”

Beryx's face cleared too. “At least,” he said, smiling, “they might teach us how to fish.”