Deep Water

by Pamela Freeman

  “That I am not ready for marriage.”

  He grinned, his blue eyes shining. “How did he take that?”

  “He grumbled. But he can’t actually force me.” She paused, looking at the knife. “Can he?” Bramble could feel the fear rise up in her, scalding.

  Acton shook his head. “Not while I’m around,” he said comfortably.

  She relaxed immediately, as though his word was solid rock to lean on. “How are the boats coming along?” she asked.

  Acton’s face lit up. “They’ll be finished by spring, I think. We’re having some trouble getting pitch, but Baluch has heard there’s a natural source by a lake somewhere to the east. He’s leaving tomorrow to see if we can trade for it with the lake people. Once we have that, we will be ready.”

  “More people will die,” she said, not looking at him as she said it, then glancing over.

  “Those who die in battle go to feast with Swith the Strong,” he said. “I feel no sorrow for them. We all die. To give a good death to another warrior is a boon.”

  He looked up and met her eyes and Bramble could see that he meant it.

  “What about the ones who aren’t warriors? What about the women? The children?”

  “I will try, Wili,” he said softly. “I will try to protect them.”

  “Hmph. Try hard,” she said.

  Bramble wanted to hear his response, but the waters were a solid slap in the face, knocking her backward into darkness.

  The waters were rushing over her, around her — no, under her filling her with the sound. Water splashed in her face and she shook it out of her eyes and held on tight to… to what?

  “Yeayyyy!” the man whooped as the floor fell out from under him and he crashed down, then pulled himself upright again by the prow of a boat. They were in a boat, and she was with Baluch, unmistakable from the blare of horns in his head, the beating of drums that rose every time the boat shifted. He clung to the high, carved prow and peered ahead, one arm above his head. He moved his arm as he saw rocks approaching and the boat turned to avoid them. Bramble realized he must be signaling to the steersman.

  It was a frantic race through white water, boulders rising up out of the fast-flowing river like demons, ready to rip out the bottom of the wooden boat. Bramble couldn’t help thinking that the reed boats of the Lake People would be much better suited to this river, riding high on the water as they did. This boat dragged too much; had too much of its keel under the surface, where rocks could, and did, grab at it.

  On either side of the river, forest crowded the banks, a lush summer green, with ferns and wild roses and blackberries spilling over the banks to dip leaves in the stream. They poured down the river as fast as the current itself. Plummeting down small cascades, swinging the boat wildly around to avoid being smashed to pieces, scraping along ambushing rocks, wind in Baluch’s face, water splashing in his eyes, bouncing and rocking and jumping over the lip of the rapids like a runaway horse. It was wonderful — the best thing that had happened so far.

  Baluch laughed and whooped as they went, and behind him she could hear Acton doing the same. Baluch cast one quick look back and they exchanged glances, eyes bright with shared laughter and a kind of joy. Risk, Bramble thought. They love it; and so do I.

  It was over too soon. The boat tilted over the lip of the last of the rocks and swung wide into a shingled pool formed by a beaver dam. The stumps of the narrow birches they had felled to make the dam surrounded the pool, and further back there was real forest; birch and beech and oak and alder, rowan and one large, dark holly tree on the very edge.

  Acton called out, “Beach her here, boys,” and the men, about twenty of them, four to a bench, dipped their oars in the water and rowed the boat to shore, driving it up onto the shingle with one last huge thrust. They scrambled out with some relief. One man, a tall red-head with a slight squint in one eye, grumbled all the way.

  “No life for a warrior,” he said to a shorter blond man with very broad shoulders. “I want to die with a sword in my hand, not an oar.”

  The man clapped him on the back and the red-head smiled at him involuntarily, as one smiles at a very old and beloved friend.

  “There’ll be swords enough even for you soon, Red,” Acton called across to him and grinned. “They won’t give up the port without a fight.”

  Red smiled sourly and pointedly took off his jerkin and squeezed a stream of water out of it into the pool. The men laughed.

  A moment later a second boat arrived, a little more slowly. Asgarn stood at the prow. He raised a hand in greeting and the boat came to land next to Acton’s.

  His men dragged the boat up the shingle and Asgarn leapt off. He didn’t look like he’d enjoyed the trip much. “We can rest here, then. Good,” he said.

  Baluch left them to unpack food and wandered upstream, to a point above the beaver dam where the forest met the stream. He stayed, looking into the shadowed green, his mind making music with flute and pipe, a wistful, calling music that brought an ache up under his breastbone.

  Acton joined him and sat on a rock at the edge of the stream, jutting out over the rushing water. “I still can’t get used to it,” he said, looking at the dense forest. “So many trees!”

  Baluch nodded. “It’s a rich land. The forest stretches all the way to the Lake.”

  “You’ll have to take me there, one day,” Acton said comfortably.

  Baluch bit his lip. “Once you have T’vit, I’ll be going again,” he said.

  “Going where?”

  “Back to the Lake.”

  Acton stood up and faced him. “Something happened there, didn’t it?” His face lit with a teasing smile. “Did you fall in love with one of the Lake girls?”

  Baluch ducked his head. Bramble thought he was embarrassed, but his heart was beating in its normal pattern. There were memories moving in his mind, just under thought, but she couldn’t catch them.

  “Not with one of the girls.” He paused, as though searching for the right words. “Something… calls me. Even now, I can hear it. Like music, or a whisper in the night. The Lake calls me. I have to go back.”

  Acton frowned. “Not by yourself,” he said. “Come on the first trip to the Wind Cities with me, and when I get back I’ll go with you.” Baluch made a face, and Acton punched him lightly on the shoulder. “You can’t trust strange women who whisper to you in the night, lad. You need your uncle Acton to look after you and protect you from hussies and enchantresses.”

  Baluch smiled at that. “You just want some for yourself!” he said. They laughed.

  “Come with me to the Wind Cities, Bal,” Acton said, almost wheedling. “Then I’ll go with you to your lake.”

  Baluch sighed. Bramble could hear the music in his head grow fainter, as though he had turned his thoughts away from it, but it didn’t entirely fade. “All right,” he said. “I suppose someone has to look after you, too.”

  They went back to the others and ate smoked trout and pickled onions and brown bread. Two of the men had a belching contest. The red-head’s friend, whose named turned out to be Geb, won.

  “Should have bet on me, Red,” he said, laughing, as the red-head handed coins over to one of the others.

  Red grinned and nodded. “Should have known you were full of hot air, you mean,” he retorted.

  The men laughed and joked as they packed their supplies away and launched the boats again. Acton and Baluch watched them from the bank, chuckling, as Red tried to duck Geb in the river. Geb pushed him away, mock-scowling. Red hoisted himself into the boat and held a hand out to Geb.

  “Oh, no!” Geb said, standing alone in the stream, thigh-deep, half-laughing. “You’ll let me get halfway up, then you’ll let go.”

  Red shook his head. “No, I won’t. Truly.”

  “Get moving,” Asgarn called impatiently from the other boat.

  Geb took Red’s hand and began to pull himself up. Sure enough, halfway up he fell back into the water. The others laughed,
but Red shouted, “Geb!” and grabbed for him, pulling on his shoulders. Then Geb started screaming — a high, disbelieving scream like a child in a nightmare.

  There was blood in the water. Water sprite, Bramble thought, they’re probably in every major stream in this time.

  “Pull him up, pull him up!” Red shouted, and the other men rushed to grab Geb’s shoulders and haul.

  Acton stood to jump into the water, but Baluch held him back. The music in his head was warning, now, harsh and clamorous, full of fear. “No,” he said. “There’s something down there.”

  The men pulled, and pulled again, and suddenly Geb came free of the water. Something was clinging to his legs, but as they watched the water sprite dissolved into air, like mist, like fog dissipated by wind. It cried as it went, a thin, mournful cry that set the hairs up on the back of Baluch’s neck.

  Geb was bleeding hard, the big veins in his legs pumping the life out of him. Red cradled him, trying to put pressure on the worst wound, but there was no hope. Geb gripped Red’s jacket and said, “Meli . . .”

  “I’ll look after her,” Red promised. Geb nodded feebly, once, and died.

  Acton and Baluch climbed into the boat from the shingle, careful not to let their feet get in the water. Red looked up at Acton with accusing eyes. Wild eyes, full of grief.

  “You didn’t even try to help,” he said. Then he bent his head over Geb’s body and began to weep. Acton stared at him, his mouth grim. Bramble thought he looked older, that the lines in his cheeks showed more clearly than they had a few moments ago.

  “Come with me, Baluch, Den, Odda. We’ll gather wood in the forest for his pyre,” he said. He leaped from the boat as though glad to leave it behind. The others followed him. One splashed in the shallows as he landed and stumbled, terrified, up the shingle, almost crawling in his haste to get away from the water.

  “This land is cursed!” Red said.

  Baluch made the sign to avert evil and moved closer to Red. “Acton tried to help. I stopped him.”

  Red glared at him. “No one stops him doing what he really wants to do.”

  Bramble thought that was a fair comment. No one stopped Acton. Baluch turned away to follow Acton.

  Red raised his voice. “When we go on, I’m thinking I’ll be in Asgarn’s boat.”

  Baluch paused. He didn’t turn around, but he nodded, then jumped for the shore. In the middle of the jump, in midair, the waters came sideways and swept Bramble away in a flurry of foam and bubbles.

  She was playing a drum in a simple, repetitive rhythm. In her head, another rhythm echoed and flicked in counterpoint. It has to be Baluch, Bramble thought. Coming back to Baluch at least had the virtue of familiarity; she could relax a little, read his thoughts a little. He clung to the prow with one hand and beat the drum with the other.

  He began to whistle, and with the sound her vision cleared and she saw that they were on the river and his drumbeat was keeping the oarsmen in time. The river was calmer here than in the rapids, but its surface was deceptive — the boat was traveling very fast. They were rowing because the river was about to join another big stream and they would need to make their way against the crosscurrents and eddies that the confluence created.

  Between the two rivers was a sheer clay bluff that came to a ragged point with a tiny beach where several small round boats were tied down. Baluch looked up and Bramble could see a village on top of the bluff; smoke came from drying racks with rows of fish tied to them; some laundry was spread out on bushes to dry.

  The bluff was lined with women watching, children crowded between their mothers’ legs to peer over at the strangers. Baluch waved to them and a couple of the children waved back. Then the men appeared. Some had slingshots; others carried head-sized rocks.

  “Row!” Acton called. “Head for the bank!”

  They bent their backs to the oar as Baluch increased the speed of the drumbeat, marking the time strongly. The boat seemed to pause and then leap away from the village toward the near bank. But stones were raining down on them already. One from a slingshot, about the size of a fist, hit Baluch in the shoulder and spun him around onto the deck. It knocked the wind out of him and for a moment all Bramble could see was the rough-finished boards of the hull, all she could think about was the aching desire to breathe… then he gasped and dragged a breath in and hoisted himself up.

  The large rocks were mostly falling short but one had caved a hole in the side of the boat, just above the waterline. Several men were bleeding from the ears or nose. One nursed a broken hand. It was clear that the slingshotters could send their stones right to the bank — there was no safety there.

  “Back!” Acton called. “Backwater!”

  The unharmed men reversed themselves on the bench and spun their oars around. Baluch sprang down to a bench to replace an injured man and they rowed strongly until they were out of range. The men on the bluff shook their fists in the air and cheered. Their women hugged and kissed them. Bramble wanted to cheer with them. No one ever told this story, did they? About the ones who fought back. Oh, no, the stories were all about massacres, not about brave villagers who repulsed the invaders.

  Asgarn’s boat, following theirs, was keeping still in the water, rowing against the current just enough to let Acton come level.

  “We need to find a place upriver to come ashore,” Acton called to him. Asgarn nodded and ordered his men to reverse oars, then they rowed hard until they came to a sand beach on the far bank of the river.

  Careful not to put their feet in the water, they lifted the wounded off the boat and tended them. One man had been hit in the head. There was no split in his skin and he said he was fine, but a few minutes after he sat down on a rock he began to bleed from the nose, and a moment after that he was dead.

  Acton looked at his body with tight lips. Baluch’s mind was full of mourning music, low and solemn.

  “Elric,” he said. “He was named for my father.”

  Looking down at the man, Bramble recognized in his features one of the boys who had played with Baluch and Acton the first time she had come into Baluch’s mind. She remembered him, too, as one of the boys who had showed off, trying to attract Acton’s attention.

  “We would have done them no harm,” Acton said angrily.

  “They didn’t know that,” Baluch said. “We’re strangers. Maybe they’ve heard some story about what happened to Hawk and his people.”

  Acton was stone-faced. Asgarn put his hand on Acton’s shoulder.

  “We have to take the village,” he said, “or we can forget about getting to T’vit.”

  “Yes,” Acton said. “Tonight.”

  “Night?”

  “Oh, yes. They won’t expect it. We land upstream of them and go in, hidden by darkness. We make noise. We threaten. We let them leave, if they want to.”

  “What if they don’t?” Asgarn said, loud enough for the others to hear.

  “Then we kill them all!” Red exclaimed, and the men cheered.

  Acton took a breath, and then let it out. Baluch, even Baluch, was nodding.

  “They challenged us,” he said. “They killed first. There are consequences to murder.”

  “The women and children will not be harmed —” Acton began.

  “Unless they fight,” Asgarn concluded. The men nodded.

  “Unless they fight,” Acton conceded.

  Bramble really didn’t want to be present for the raid on the village. But the gods decided otherwise. She waited with Baluch, feeling his heart beating faster, in the darkness outside the village, until everyone was in bed except the single lookout. She watched Asgarn slit the lookout’s throat. She crept with Baluch and the other men until they had surrounded the quiet houses and, as Acton nodded, she felt Baluch’s throat contract and release in an unearthly, high-pitched scream. In an instant, all the men were screaming, a terrifying ululation that sounded completely inhuman.

  In the houses, there were shouts and cries and clangs as pe
ople tumbled from beds and peered out of windows and doors. Acton raised a hand and the men stopped screaming.

  “People of this village,” Acton said, in the language he had learned from Gris. “You have killed one of my men, and for that your punishment is death.”

  The cries rose again but now they were human voices, Acton’s men cheering, villagers protesting.

  “But I am merciful,” Acton shouted over the top of them, and they fell silent. “If you choose to leave this place forever, taking with you whatever you can carry, I will let you live.”

  “Never! We’ll never leave!” an old woman’s voice shouted back. “This is our place, you thieving bastards!”

  There were shouts of agreement from men and women both.

  “I will even let your women and children go before this battle, if you refuse to leave.”

  “We’ll stay!” a younger woman’s voice came. “We’ll fight by our men and we’ll see your souls to hell!”

  Baluch stood close by Acton, as if worried about him.

  “Well, Wili, I tried,” Acton muttered. He turned to Baluch. “You’ll tell her I tried, Bal?”

  Baluch nodded. “They’ve chosen death. It’s their right.”

  That seemed to comfort Acton, which annoyed Bramble. He was about to kill a whole village, and he wanted to feel good about it, to feel good that he had given them a choice between losing everything they had, everything they’d worked for, and dying. He had no idea what he was asking! She was angry again, and she welcomed the anger, because it strengthened her against what she knew was coming.

  “For Elric!” Acton cried aloud, and his men echoed the cry as they rushed forward.

  There had been men with torches hidden in the undergrowth. Now they threw the torches onto the thatch of the roofs and the houses came alight with a whoosh of air, the sudden heat on their faces, sudden light almost blinding them. The village men came out of the houses waving slingshots, with hatchets, with spears, with staves, but without a sword between them. The women came behind them with anything they could find, from a cooking pot to a kitchen knife. Some of them had babies tied to them with shawls. The children followed them, with little knives, with small slingshots, with bits of wood snatched from the kindling. “For the River Bluff!” they cried as they attacked.