The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (49 page)

Slowly, slowly, he turned, feeling the twilight.

There. To the west. The centurion had called on the Power yet
again.

MICHAEL SHEA

Long hast thou lain in dreams of war—

Lift from the dark your eyeless gaze!

Stand beneath the sky once more,

Where seas of suns spill all ablaze!

—Gothol’s invocation of his long-drowned father, Zan-Kirk

I

F
rom
L
ebanoi

Nifft the Lean, traveller and entrepreneur at large,

Salutes Shag Margold, Scholar.

I am to ship out to the Ingens Cluster, but it seems the craft I’ve
passage on is finding the refitting of a gale-damaged mast slow work.
Writing—even to you, old friend—is tedious toil, but since the
alternative is the restless fidgets, write I will. And in truth, what’s
passed here merits some memorial.

Well then—I disembarked here at Lebanoi from a Lulumean
carrack a fortnight ago. I know you are aware that for all the lumber
towns along this forested coast, and all the flumes you’ll find in them,
Lebanoi’s Great Flume is justly preeminent. Standing at dockside,
staring up its mighty sweep to the peaks, I gave this fabled structure
its due of honest awe.

Then, bent on some ale, I repaired to a tavern, where I found out
right quick about the native fiber of some of these lumbering folk!
They can thump a bar, and bray and scowl with the best, these logger-
lads! No dainty daisies these, be sure of that, when they come down
the mountain for their spree!

I sat with a pint in the Peavey Inn—an under-Flume inn, one of
countless grog-dens built high up within the massy piers which prop
that mighty channel of water-borne timber. In many of these inns
and taverns—clumped up right against the Flume’s underbelly and
reached by zigzags of staircases—you can hear just above you, through
the ceiling, the soft rumble of rivering timber as you sit imbibing.

And thus sat I, assaying the domestic stout, till a bit of supper
should restore my land-legs for the long ascent to Upflume—Leb
anoi’s smaller sister city on the higher slopes halfway up the Flume’s
length.

But here came trouble, a come-to-blows brewing. For behold,
a bare-armed lout, all sinewed and tattooed—axes and buck-saws
inked upon his arms—stood next to me at the bar, and he began
booming gibes at me which he thinly guised as jests.

“Your braid’s divine!” he cried. “Do they not call that style a ‘plod’s-
tail,’ honest traveller?”

My hair was clubbed in the style of the Jarkeladd nomads. I keep
it long to unbind in polite surroundings to mask the stump that’s all
that remains of my left ear—lost, as you know Shag, down among the
Dead.

Soon, I knew, after initial insults, the lout would mock my ear,
for his eye already dwelt on it. I decided that this slur, when it came,
would trigger my clouting him.

Beaming in his face, I cried, “Why thank you! Your own dense
curls, Sir, merit equal praise! Sawdust and shavings besprinkle your
coiffure! How stylish to resemble—as you do—a broom that’s used to
scour a saw-mill’s floor!”

He sneered and plucked a phial out of his vest, tapped dust into his
cup, and drank it off. Even swamp-despising woodsmen buy swamp
spices—this one “whiff,” unless I missed my guess, productive of raw
energy, no more.

“Another thing, fine foreigner,” brayed my lout, “that I adore your
doublet, and your hose! Garments so gay they would not shame a
damsel!”

This bellicose buffoon would blanch to face such men as wear the
Ephesian mode I wore. I grant, the costume does not shun display. The
snake-scale appliqué upon my hose, the embroidered dragon coiled
upon my codpiece, my doublet harlequinned with beadwork—all my
clothes artfully entertained the cultivated eye with rich invention.

Of course, I would straightway don self-effacing garb once
I should find an inn, and stroll the town to learn its modes. The
seasoned traveller travels to behold, not be beheld. But, until I did
so, a bustling port like Lebanoi might sanely be expected to extend
sophisticated sufferance to the modes of the far-flung cultures whom
her trade invites!

“No doubt,” I said, “your celibate sojourns in the woods make
even stumps and knotholes seem to sport a womanly allure. No doubt
even alley curs arouse your lust, so be that they have tails to wag, and
furry arses.”

Oddly, though his mates looked to be loggers like himself, they
seemed in the main unmoved by our exchange, and unconcerned
by gibes from me that mocked their trade. Their cool interest set my
nerves on edge.

“Where did you hear,” brayed Lout, “we lacked for lasses? You
were mis-told, or likelier mis-
heard!
Yes, half-heard with your half-
a-brace of ears! ’Tis very meet that you should mention arses—that
puckered hole you sport athwart your head resembles one!”

All knew my blow was coming, yet showed no concern beyond any
man’s casual interest in a developing brawl....

Well, I clouted him, and brought him down, then backed away a
bit, and let my hand hover in the general direction of my sword-hilt.
An older, gnarlier woodsman, giving a sardonic eye to my stunned
adversary on the floor, addressed me.

“Think nothing of it, stranger! Here now my lads—someone prop
him at a table and pour him another flagon.”

“Please!” I interjected. “Permit me to buy his drink—by way of
amends!”

This was generally well received. The older man, Kronk, stood me
a flagon. “Wabble’s not a bad sort, but he’s dim, and in his cups. He
took you for a spice magnate, merely by your costly gear. Too dim to
see that your style—no offense—is much too lively even for an Up-
flume entrepreneur.”

We talked. I learned that tree-jacks dabbled in spice trade even
as Up-flumers did, in the long years since the Witches’ War had
damaged Rainbowl Crater, and reduced the output of Lebanoi’s mills.

I took a thankful leave of him, keen to have some daylight left to
learn the city a bit more, and to dress myself less noticeably.

Stairs and catwalks threaded the maze of under-Flume construc
tion. I made my way a good half mile farther inland from the dock
side, or farther “up-flume” as the saying is here. I mounted a level
rooftop, scooted well back into the Flume’s shadow, and disrobed.
I stowed my gaudier gear, and donned a leather jerkin and woolen
hose. Bound up my hair, and hid it in a Phrygian cap.

I rested and enjoyed the view, the golden sinking of the day. Above
me hummed the Flume’s boxed flood, the softly knocking bones of
trees that colossal conduit carried down to the wharf-side mills. I
looked upwards along its mighty sweep, ascending on its titan legs the
skorse-clad mountains....

All Lebanoi was bathed in rosy westering light. Her mills and yards
and manses and great halls glowed every mellow hue of varnished
wood. Her houses thronged the gentler coastal hills. And they were
so etched by the slanting sunbeams that I could trace the carven
vines and leaves that filigreed the gables of even the more distant
buildings.

The rumble of the rivering logs above me, the shriek of saws
from the mills, the creak of tackle, the shouts and thumps of cargo
from the shipyards—all blended in a pleasing song of energy and
enterprise. Despite her wounds from the Witches’ War, the city still
prospered.

But I’d just tasted the tensions at work here. Where factions are at
odds, outsiders best go lightly. Best to head inland to the town of Up-
flume, obtain my spice, and ship out tomorrow. It meant harvesting
at night, but by all reports spice-gathering went on in the swamp at
all hours.

And so, I mounted from the Flume’s underside to its top. This, of
course, forms a wide wooden highway which streams with traffic up-
Flume and down, and in the late sun its whole great sweep showed
clear. Far up I saw where the Flume’s high terminus lay shattered, just
below great Rainbowl Crater’s fractured wall—Lebanoi’s two great
wounds, suffered in the Witches’ War...

My own goal lay but half as far—just four miles up, where Lebanoi’s
smaller sister-city filled a shallow valley under the Flume’s crossing:
Up-Flume, where the spice swamp lay.

I flagged a dwarf-plod shay. “Are spicers ready-found at night?” I
asked my teamster, a white-haired woman, as she sped us up-flume.
She slant-eyed me, wryly marking an innocent abroad. “Readily
found, at double rate, and like to take you roundabout if you don’t
watch ’em close.”

I tipped her for the warning.

As we reached Up-Flume, the full moon was just rising as the red
sun sank to sea. At Up-flume, one took ramps that zigzagged down
through a three- and four-tiered city of dwellings densely built amid
the Flume’s pilings, and jutting out an eighth mile to either side on
tiered platforms. Down amid the swampwaters themselves could be
seen here and there the bow and stern-lights of spicers’ boats out
harvesting amid the darkening bogs.

Descending, I was accosted on the stairs by more than a few would-
be guides, and courteously deflected all of them. It might behoove me
to try them later, but first I meant to try my hand alone.

On the swampside docks, a punt-and-pole was readily rented for
a high fee and a hefty deposit, and in this narrow vessel I set off
cautiously along the swamp’s meandering shoreline, where my pole—
with careful probing—found mucky purchase.

No accident my being here at the full moon’s rising. A full moon is
prescribed, both for one’s searching and for the spices’ potency, which
is held to peak when bathed in lunar light.

But the density of vegetation here—big shaggy trees all spliced
with scaly vines, overarching a boskage of glossy shrubs and dense
thickets—provided an eerie matrix for all the furtive movement
everywhere about me. The swamp teemed with spicers all hunting
discreetly, taut, intent, and sly. On all sides the feculent waters
chuckled and tremored with their stealthy investigations. Foliage
flustered or twitched or whispered here and there, and you glimpsed
the sheen of swift hulls crossing moonlit patches of black water and
then ducking quick back into the darkness again.

But soon I knew
I
could not move so discreetly, however deftly I
poled through the shadowy margins. My punt was rented, and the
sight of it drew defter boatmen gliding to my gunnels.

“What spice, what spice, Sir? Five lictors in my pocket brings you
to it!”

At my outset, I firmly declined their insistence. Before my coming
to Lebanoi, costly consultations with two different spice connoisseurs
had provided me with sketches of the herbs I sought. These drawings
had looked detailed enough on receipt, but proved useless compared
to the intricate, moonlit weeds and worts I scanned.

So at length, I named to these solicitors the growths I sought.
“Sleight Sap, Spiny Vagary, and Obfusc Root.”

The spice-hustlers showed me knowing smiles at this, and their
price rose to twenty or even thirty lictors. What I sought were inducers
of trance, confused logic, and ready belief. All these herbal attributes
inescapably pointed to thievery as their seeker’s aim.

I resolved to search on solo, and stoutly forbade myself to be
discouraged. The full moon neared zenith, which made my sketches
easy to scan, but did nothing to improve their correspondence to the
jungled growths around me

And then, a new difficulty. I became aware of a furtive follower—
that sensation one gets of cautious, incremental movements at one’s
back. Now astern of me, now to my right or my left, it seemed that
something in the middle distance always moved in concert with me.
Thrice I diverged, at ever sharper angles, and each time, soon sensed
him once more astern.