The Deep Gods (4 page)

“I was not thinking of any other woman at all,” he said.
“And certainly not then.”
He made a playful grab and laughed. “As if any man, with you, could have time or wish to think about another woman.” Suddenly her mouth came to his. When he could, he added, “Or strength enough, for that matter.”

Later, Ammi said, “I do not care, Daniel.”

“About what?”

“If you have others,” she said.
“As long as I am your woman.”

“I told you,” he said. “It wasn’t that.” He stared at the window; the light was growing now. “I thought… about the place I came from. Not about… Sheila.
Other things.”

“Do you wish to go back there?” Ammi said in a low voice.

“I think it’s probably impossible,” he said. “No. I’m here. This is my
world,
and you…”

“You must go to the Morra-ayar,” she said.

He sighed and sat up. “Maybe,” he said, pulling at his black beard; flakes of salt came away in his fingers. “I’ll go looking for these gods when I’m ready to. And for some part of the earth that’s a little less frozen.
Trees,
and birds… I’m beginning to miss them, suddenly.”

“I have seen only the small trees, in the gardens,” the girl said.
“And the stumps, where the greater ones were, out there.
And there are few birds here.” She sat up, watching him. “Where you lived; was it as they say it was here, in Eloranar, before the ice came?”

“Some of it was,” he said. But not much of it, he thought. He looked out into the light. “Northward, there’s land of all kinds. People, too, I’d guess. And soon there will be no one left here.’

“We could go with Gannat and the others,” Ammi said.

Daniel laughed.
“In a tiny shell, with hardly room to turn around?
Two more aboard Gannat’s boat would sink it, I think.”

“There are a few other boats,” she said.

“Like Gannat’s,” he said. “Well… if I’m going to risk open ocean… and the South Atlantic, at that… I could be better pleased with something more strongly built. Nor depend on dolphins to navigate, or get me out of bad weather. I knew a bit about boats, in my world.” He rubbed a hand across his tangled hair.

“A large, strong boat?”
Ammi said thoughtfully.

“Large enough,” Daniel said. “There may be a few others who would wish to sail with us.”

“The young man you saw me speaking with, Banar…” And she laughed. “The one you feared would take me. He said that there were fine boats, four or five of them, still in Tavis.”

“Where is that?” he asked, turning.

“Tavis?
It was a village, a day’s walk along the coast,” she said. “There was a river, frozen now; and many fishermen. Banar said that he had gone there once and that there were still boats, in a covered place. But he said that he could not pull any of them to the water alone, and that there is much snow in the way.”

Daniel chewed his lip thoughtfully. “It may be worth having a look, anyway,” he said.

Banar, a round-faced, curly-headed young man, seemed to accept Daniel and Ammi’s new status without a trace of annoyance at his own rejection. From time to time he looked a trifle enviously at Daniel, but he was vastly pleased to hear of the idea concerning the boats.

“Ah, they’re fine boats!” he told Daniel. “Better than any we had here; big as two of ours, and made of a strong black wood, something that does not rot at all. They were on a platform, so.” He shaped it with his hands, expressively. “And there were sails of cloth, rolled up. They would not even need to be caulked! But there was ice, everywhere,” he concluded, looking worried.

“Could we walk there in a day?” Daniel asked.

“I think so,” Banar said. “And my friend Galta, he will help, too.” He called out and a strong-looking youth came, grinning shyly.

Ammi insisted that she must go, as well, and the four of them made ready with all the furs they could collect, heavy wrappings on their feet, and such tools as Daniel thought might help. They went up along narrow trails that led zigzag through the cliffs; and finally, out onto a ragged plain of snow. A bitter wind blew, and they could see the whitecaps of the whipped ocean, far below. “Brr,” Daniel said, looking seaward. “Do you see that, Ammi? Now, that’s why I’d want the best boat I can find.”

Banar, ahead of them, laughed over his shoulder.

“Let’s not stand and freeze, you there!”

They walked on and on; the snow, reasonably hard packed, made a fair footing most of the time, though there were difficult places. Inland, the ghostly skeletons of a forest showed on the higher ridges; sometimes they passed heaped shadowy shapes that Banar said had once been villages.

“Many lived here, once,” Banar said sadly. “Here, where we are, there was a great road.”

The wind had dropped and they made even better time now. The sun was still up when Banar cried out and pointed ahead.

Here, a valley had curved toward the sea; the trace of the buried river still showed. In the bend there were shrouded roofs, a snow-cloaked village of many houses, and where the frozen river’s ice still showed, there was a long, barnlike structure.

Banar led them down and they managed, with difficulty, to dig the snow away from an entrance. Within, enough light filtered through roof openings to illuminate the place with a grey glow; the boats were there, six of them, on a beamed platform.

Daniel stopped, looking at them with a pleased grunt
They
were big enough; the largest was fifty feet or more, he thought, and wondered momentarily how they would be able to move that huge hull. Damn it, I’ll move it, he thought fiercely, if it takes me a year.

Ammi and Galta busied themselves getting wood together; there were broken pieces everywhere, as if the place had been a boat-building workshop. While they built a fire under an open part of the roof, Banar showed Daniel the boats as proudly as though he had built them himself.

They were double-ended, high in prow and stern, very like the pictures Daniel recalled of Viking longboats. The wood was strange to him, a very dark, close-grained stuff that reminded him of black walnut. Within, the frames were made of what he thought to be oak; there were copper nails studding the sides. It was beautiful work, obviously done with skill and affection.

They were all single-masted, the masts lying down with their booms along the flush deck; frozen canvas was rolled about each boom. Daniel, attempting to pull a corner loose, found it too tightly icebound to move, but the material resembled canvas, at any rate.

Under the deck there were spaces obviously meant for sleeping, and a dozen long oars of white wood; there were empty chests and frozen coils of line. It was as if the builders had gotten everything ready for sea only the day before, and then stepped out of the building, never to return.

Banar, at first, took it for granted that they would try to move the smallest of the boats, a craft about thirty feet long. But Daniel had set his mind on the big one, and was determined about it.

“It’s no harder to move one than another,” he pointed out. “Once it moves, it can slide. On rollers, do you see?” He indicated the round logs that leaned against a wall. “I think they used those to do it.”

The fire burned well now, and there was food in their packs. The four gathered around the blaze, warming
themselves
and eating, talking in low voices. In the ancient building, it was as if the ghosts of those old builders still listened; maybe deciding if these were worthy recipients of their work.

The heat spread slowly through the place; there were odd creaking sounds and the dripping of water. The sun had set; in the darkness a wind had risen, keening on the roof.

“Once we have it down on the ice, it will slip along,” Galta said, looking up at the big hull. “There’s open water, farther down.”

“We could fall through the ice and drown, of course,” Banar said cheerfully. “Daniel, do you think we will be born again, in that future world of yours?”

“Not if you’re lucky,” Daniel grunted.

“Lucky?” Galta looked puzzled. “But, Daniel, you told us strange stories… wonderful things.
Men who flew in the air like birds.
I’d like to do that, I think.”

“Would you?”
Daniel said, his voice edged.
He stared at Galta. “Would you like to throw fire at others, while you flew over them?”

“Why would I want to do that?” Galta asked.

“I wish I could tell you,” Daniel said. He stood up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Let’s begin.”

The log rollers were placed under the hull and ropes tied to it; then, with hours of effort, the doorway was cleared of the piled snow. It was evident that the boats had once been launched in the same way, into the river; but now the water was a sheet of solid ice at the foot of the launching way.

But, as the sun rose, the black hull was moving slowly down toward the ice river. As it moved, drawn by Daniel and Banar, Galta and Ammi seized rollers and ran with them, ahead of the moving bulk. On the ice, it moved more rapidly; but there was an ominous creaking as the weight pressed the ice.

Ahead, the open water glimmered, and beyond it, the sea. Now, the ice underfoot crackled; a terrifying sound came, like a gun shot, and a great crack opened ahead.

“Wait!” Daniel cried out. The hull stopped; walking carefully, the four gathered at the boat’s prow.

“Ammi, climb in; the rest of us will shove hard,” Daniel said. “If it goes as far as the water, and floats, turn it toward that ice edge, there, where we can climb in too. All right, now!”

As the girl clambered into the boat, the others put their shoulders to the hull, and thrust. The black hull slid forward, gathering speed; the ice creaked explosively under it. With a great splash the boat met the water, and went on out into the flood.

But Ammi had gotten an oar over and was thrusting at it; the boat swung around and moved slowly toward the ice again. The men ran, grasping at the thwarts as the ice buckled under them; and then they were all in, tumbling on the deck and laughing.

The sail was thawed, now; the fire had done that the night before. They spread it out, Banar and Galta marveling at the material. It was a simple sort of sail, a triangular affair such as Daniel had seen on Arab dhows; they got it up without too much trouble.

The oars, however, would be more useful just now. Galta and Daniel took one each, while Ammi roped a third aft, to act as a rudder. Banar grasped a line of the sail and braced himself against a thwart as the boat rolled in the deepening swells. The sea was visible now where the ice-choked river poured out; the white teeth of the ocean glittered in the low sun.

I’m an idiot, Daniel thought; taking this thing out into
that,
a boat I’ve never handled. And a boat that’s lain in an icebox for nobody knows how long. But, as the sea wind came, he felt a crazy joy, and hauled harder on the long oar. The boat moved swiftly now, riding up over the combers and out.

“It will leak!” Banar shouted from where he stood braced.

“Let it!” Daniel bellowed over the increasing sound of the wind. “Bring the sail round! The wind will help now!”

The boat heeled and Daniel hauled his oar in; Galta followed suit. There was a growing flash of white foam under the prow as the wind took the triangle sail, and a vast snarling and groaning as lines stretched taut.

The jagged white line of cliffs lay uncomfortably close along the boat’s course, but Daniel did not know what the entrance to Alvanir’s bay might look like, and he did not wish to miss it.

There was a heavy, long swell, but the black-hulled boat took the waves like a floating sea bird; the wind was exactly right, too. Daniel grinned exultantly, gripping the steering oar beside Ammi; the girl’s hair flew wildly in the wind, like a banner, as she laughed back at him.

It had taken them nearly a full day to walk the distance, but the sun was still high when the boat sailed through the gap in the cliffs and into the smoother water of the bay. Ahead, through the mists, the higher roofs of the town showed. And just ahead, anchored, Gannat’s smaller boat rocked; one of his sons peered, wide-eyed with amazement, over the bows at the approaching boat.

In another minute the beach became visible; Daniel lowered the sail. The boat coasted slowly in and gravel grated under the keel; Banar splashed into the water and then the others after him, tugging to draw the boat higher. Seeing them, several people were coming out from among the houses, running to help, calling out in wonder at the size of the new boat.

“I’m going to sleep,” Daniel said, standing back at last and staring at the beached boat He yawned enormously.
“For… three or four days.”

It was actually less than a day that Daniel slept,
then
the work began. There would have to be much more done to that boat before it was ready for sea, than Gannat or the others had to do to theirs.

One by one the others sailed out into the open sea; tiny boats, jammed with people who laughed and waved as they went. But some of the older folk wept, too, quietly.

Others said that they would stay; usually the oldest of the people, though a few younger ones would also remain. There would be plenty of food still; and there was always warmth in the burning earth and the hot springs. Most of them felt that the ice would not swallow the ancient city in their own lifetime, and that they could not leave the only home they knew.

Meanwhile, Daniel continued to work, aided by a slightly puzzled Banar and Galta; and a young woman named Lali, who had attached herself to Galta, to his pleased surprise. Banar had shrugged resignedly, and wondered aloud about whether there might be at least one good woman in one of those mysterious lands across the sea.

Some of Daniel’s ideas were understandable enough to the others; a fixed rudder, weights along the keel, a better rigging of the sail. He built a tight water container on each side, too, so that there would be enough fresh water for a long trip. There was no way to tell how long it might be, Daniel knew.