Trees and brush grew thick along the far bank. It was the dying time of the year, and as Hems walked along, the leaves of the trees fluttered through the air on every gust of wind. He strolled along the streambank, trying to keep quiet, but he could hear the frogs leaping for the shelter of the water as he approached, and now, even as he stopped and tried to seem no more than a tree, a big old turtle that was sunning itself on a snag in the middle of the stream plodded forward a few heavy steps and dove into the green water. Hems gave up trying to catch anything. He dropped flat on his stomach on the bank and sucked up the water, his lips to the surface of the stream, until his belly was full and cold.
Anyhow, Moloquin would catch them dinner. Already Moloquin had built a little weir, damming off the stream just below a deep pool, and soon there would be a fat fish to lay open and sizzle up on the fire. Hems sighed. He lay in the sun, dreaming of fish.
After a while Moloquin called him. They dug a pit on the higher ground near their cave, where the earth was soft, a deep-piled midden of the debris of the trees that grew on the hillside. While Grub lined this pit with rocks, Moloquin felled another tree.
For two more days they worked, cutting up the trees into manageable lengths, and making the pit ready. Then they threw all the wood into the pit, covered it up, and built a big fire on top of it.
“Now will we catch some fish?” Hems asked. “I am tired of eating nothing but grain.”
He had found a flat rock, which he scraped carefully clean and set into the ashes at the edge of the fire.
“Maybe,” Moloquin said. He lay on his back in the grass, still for once, his face to the sky.
They had brought some meal and some beer with them, but that was now nearly gone. Hems poured a handful of the meal into his bowl and mixed a splash of beer into it. This was a thing he had learned from the other slaves.
“The salmon haven’t begun to go upstream yet,” Moloquin said. “There are fish in that pool but we have no nets. Maybe the turtle would be good to eat, but there is only one of him that I can see, and I am loathe to kill him.”
Hems poured the mixture of meal and beer onto the flat rock, where it hissed and bubbled and puffed up fat and light, a little cloud. Carefully, he turned it over with two sticks.
“Come on,” Moloquin said, rolling to his feet. “Let’s go down to the stream—we can find something to eat, and I can look for rocks.”
“I am eating,” said Hems. The cooked meal made a flat circle on the rock. With his fingers he rolled it quickly up, gasping at the heat. “Ah—ah.” He put the rolled-up meal cake down to cool and popped his fingers into his mouth.
“Eat while you walk.” Moloquin came up behind Hems and urged him onto his feet, prodding him with one knee between the shoulder blades. “Let’s go.”
“Moloquin, why do you never stop moving around?”
“Grub. Why do you ever want to sit and do nothing? Come on!”
“Hems, Moloquin. Please call me Hems now? Wait! Wait for me—” He ran off after Moloquin down toward the stream.
They caught some of the fish in the pool, swimming slowly underwater to where the fish lay side by side in the deep hollows of the water; Moloquin especially was good at this, holding his breath as he stole closer to the fish, slipping his hands up around them as they slept. In the afternoon, as they sat by the fire cooking the fish, a light rain began to fall, which turned quickly into a deluge. They crept into the cave, and Moloquin dragged all the firewood in with them so there was hardly enough room to lie down. They kept the fire above the pit full of oak wood, and cooked the fish and sat in the cave. Hems told stories: he was good at stories, and had learned some of Karelia’s. Moloquin played with some stones in the soft dirt of the cave floor.
“What are you doing?” Hems asked him.
Moloquin was setting stones upright in rings, and trying with no success to put a little roof beam across them. He said, “I had a dream once, about the Pillar of the Sky—that it looked like this.”
“I hate that place,” Hems said. “Although I would give much to see it again.”
Moloquin took a stone in each hand and banged them together, trying to knock pieces off one with the other. Hems ate more of the fish. He watched the shadows the fire threw on the wall of the cave and the ceiling, pierced with trailing veils of roots.
“Hems, put more wood on the fire.”
“You do it.”
“I did it the last time, Hems.”
“Oh, what if the fire does go out? I hate this work.”
“You hate all work. If the fire goes out the wood will not cook, and if the wood isn’t ready when Harus Kum gets here—”
Hems grunted at that; he imagined the anger of the master, and unwillingly he got to his feet and gathered up an armful of the firewood. They had cut up the branches of the two oak trees for firewood, and buried the pieces of the trunks to cook in the pit. He grumbled loudly about Harus Kum and how he wished he were home again, where no one made another work as hard as this. Moloquin paid him no heed. He was balancing a stone on top of two other stones, his head down close to the ground to see. Hems lugged the wood out to the rain and fed the fire, and hurried back out of the rain. The cave was much warmer than the open air.
“I wish you did not like Harus Kum so much.”
Moloquin glanced briefly at him. “I hate Harus Kum.”
“Hate him!” Hems blinked at him, surprised. “But—then—why are you doing all this? Why are you making his charcoal here? Why are we waiting for him to come and drag us back to his roundhouse and make us work even more? Why can we not merely go home again?”
He gasped at that thought, and in his imagination the hills and forests and sucking swamps that lay between him and his home shrank away to a mere ridge and a few trees. “Let’s go now!”
Moloquin lifted his head and stared at him, his shadow lying on the little circles of stones. “We will go home. We shall be home again by midsummer. We shall go to the Turnings-of-the-Year and dance the midsummer dances, I swear.”
“Why then? Why not now?”
“Because there is much here that I must learn. And I will learn it. Harus Kum is a wicked man who cares nothing for us, but he has a wonderful power.”
He leapt up suddenly, his arms sweeping out around him, drawing the whole world in closer to him.
“Have you not wondered why we are doing all this? We dig up the earth and cook it and take tiny, tiny pieces from it, by such means that break our backs and consume our days until all we have to ourselves is sleep, and then Harus Kum takes the tiny bits carefully away into the storehouse! Why? What is it for? It cannot be eaten or drunk. No one makes baskets or jugs from it.”
As he strode up and down in the small space of the cave, his arms moving, the fire cast his shadow hugely on the wall. Hems watched him thoughtfully. He loved this passion in Moloquin even as he loved the fire’s heat.
“It is for making bronze,” Moloquin said. “It has something to do with the bronze. The axe with the bronze head—the little knives, the bowls, even the beads and rings, the littlest things—they have some magic in them, yes, some key to power. Even Ladon knew that—you saw how he used the power in the beads to defeat the other chiefs, although Ladon knows nothing at all of how the beads are made.”
He faced Hems, and his eyes were wild. By his feet, the little ring of stones had fallen over.
“Harus Kum knows. I mean to know. I mean to become a master of Harus Kum’s magic.”
Hems kept still a moment, impressed. He had never questioned why they did any of these things; it was merely work he hated, an obdurate fact of his life, like the sky above him.
“And then what?” he said at last. “Then we can go home?”
Moloquin nodded. He sank down on his hams and put his stones into their ring again. Abruptly he wheeled and strode out of the cave, to thro
w more wood on the fire. The rain fell popping and hissing into the flames. Hems watched him thoughtfully. He loved Moloquin but he was relieved not to be like him. Lifting a bit of the fish carefully from the ladder of the bones, he fed himself, although he was already full.
Harus Kum brought the rest of his slaves over the hill and through the forest and found the camp where Moloquin and Hems were cooking the oak wood into charcoal. They had made a good deal of it when he reached them, and he was pleased. Being in a hurry, he did not waste any time in praise of Moloquin, but with his whip and the whip of his tongue he got his men to load the charcoal up on their backs and carry it away down to the stockade.
He walked along behind them all, swinging his coiled whip in his hand. They went ahead of him in a single file, lugging their baskets of charcoal on their backs or balanced on their heads, a winding train of men, and he congratulated himself on having Moloquin.
Knowing Hems, he knew that the slave had done very little of the work. Moloquin must have done all the important parts, the cutting and the digging and the tending of the fire. It was a great delight to Harus Kum, who always before had had to come up here and supervise the charcoal burning himself, leaving the mines unworked. He wondered what Moloquin thought to gain by his labors; if he expected to wheedle his way into Harus Kum’s favor, he was mistaken. So Harus Kum told himself.
Now Moloquin walked at the head of the line, where his long stride and tireless strength would bring a fair pace from the rest of them. He carried a great basket of charcoal on his back and another on his head. He was a savage. He was all muscle and bone, like a brute, and he fed on work as other men fed on meat and meal and beer.
A savage, a dirty savage.
Now they were twining down the path through the hills by the sea, and occasionally, through the gap ahead of them, the trader could see the flash of the sunlight on the water. The downhill walk was easy, especially since he carried nothing but his whip, and the brisk fresh sea wind braced him; he found himself smiling.
Maybe he would let Moloquin have one of the women, as a reward. After all, while the dirty savage was cutting and cooking the charcoal, Harus Kum had mined out a whole pouch full of the tin. He was not a boy any more, although Hems still seemed a boy. Let him take one of the women, just for a while, that would please him.
The men were singing. He had never known them to sing before, especially not while they were working. It was Moloquin who had started it. Harus Kum listened, his benevolence curdling, wondering what he should do about this.
There were no real words to the song, only some gibberish in Moloquin’s tongue.
La li la la li li la
Sam-po, sam-po
The sounds fit the rhythm of their walk, and in fact now they seemed to be walking a little faster. Harus Kum thought of forbidding the song. At least Moloquin could sing in real words. Certainly he would not get a woman now. Anyway, the two women were of Harus Kum’s people, from across the sea, and too fine for any dirty savage to possess.
Then, lifting his gaze beyond them all, back to the flash of sunlight on the sea, he saw that which swept all else from his mind.
“The boat!”
He leapt forward, brushing past the slaves, to a place where the trail wound down past a steep spire of rock. This tower he scaled like a lizard, on all fours. From the top he looked out over a wide swath of the coast, the wrinkled water, the path the sun made over the sea, and there, rocking and dipping in the grip of the waves, was the long brown shape of the boat.
Harus Kum let out another shout. He sprang down from the rock and ran up through the midst of his slaves, bumping into Hems on the way so that the boy almost fell. Reaching Moloquin, Harus Kum stopped and hastily put on his dignity again, staying the master.
“Bring them all down. Don’t let any of them tarry, or I’ll have it out of your back, do you hear? Move!” He slapped Moloquin on the shoulder with his whip; his buoyant excitement broke through the threats and commands in a broad smile. Moloquin’s face was expressionless. Dumb brute, he knew nothing. Harus Kum raced away down the trail.
When he reached his stockade, the boat was just appearing around the point of land to the west, creeping up along the coast, battling the driving surf and the wind. Harus Kum climbed up onto a rock on the beach and waved his arms, and on the boat several arms shot up in answer. He could not make out any of the faces, they were still too far away, but their mere presence on the water got him dancing and leaping up and down.
The women had followed him down onto the beach, and he yelled at them to go back and make a feast ready.
Now the boat was wearing its way through the violent water where the stream poured out into the sea. The oars dipped and swayed and strained to drag the long black hull over the lashed foam and leaping waves. Harus Kum waved his arms again and shouted encouragement. He strained to see who sat in the bow.
It was a good-sized boat; there seemed eight men or more in it. The hull was made of hides stretched over a wooden frame, and it rode on the sea’s back like a little pot, rocking back and forth. The thrust of the seaward stream drove it off, but then it rounded the surge, and the incoming waves bore it rapidly onto the shore, mocking the puny work of the oars.
“Watch out!” The onshore surf dashed the boat precipitously forward, toward the rocks. The men used their oars to fend off these perils. Harus Kum roared. It was his brother who stood on the bow. He ran into the foam, his arms outstretched.
His brother howled. Climbing up onto the bow of the boat, he balanced precariously a moment on bent legs, and sprang forward into the arms of Harus Kum.
“Hah! Hah!”
“In Hortha’s name,” his brother cried, “I did not think to see you, not now, or ever.”
They embraced. Their arms around each other’s shoulders, they walked up out of the surf while the other men bounded out of the boat and dragged it up through the last curling waves to the shore. The boat was piled up with sacks of goods; Harus Kum craned his neck to see.
“What have you brought me? I hope you have given me much food— I don’t like relying on these natives for my supplies.”
His brother straightened, smiling, shorter than he, barrel-chested. “You know, we cannot bring you grain, it takes too much space. Here are other things—cloth, copper. How has your harvest been?”
“Fair enough. I uncovered a new vein, very rich, you will take much wealth back with you, we shall be far-famous. Your travel was harsh, I gather.”
His brother walked up and down, stretching his legs and his back. The wind blew salt against his cheek. “It was a terrible voyage. A storm blew us off the coast of home, and we were two whole days out of sight of land. I thought we would be swept away. Then we saw gulls, and followed them to the shore.”
He sighed, caught in his net of memory, and turned with purpose toward the boat.
“Prayers to Hortha saved us. We must repay what she has given us.”
He went to the boat, now lying half on its side, sleek and black as a huge water beetle. In the sharply beaked front hung a wooden image, and reverently Harus Kum’s brother unfastened it, and called the others of his crew after him. They gathered around the image and kissed it, and lifting it up over his head the brother bore the image reverently up the shore and into the stockade.
Harus Kum followed. The women stood waiting at the door of the big house, and when they saw the newcomers smiles broke across their faces and they bowed and bent and waved, laughing. The boatmen ignored them at first. They carried their wooden image into the house and set it down near the fire, and all knelt before it and thanked it for saving them from the terrors of the open sea. Harus Kum himself got a little bowl of meal and brought it to the image, and his brother set the bowl down at the wooden feet.
“She is wonderful,” his brother said. “When the storm came, I thought we should be overturned, but when I praye
d to her she gave me new strength and confidence.”
The others murmured in agreement. They crowded around the image, touching it, speaking to it, and Harus Kum laid his hand gratefully on the thing’s head, glad to have his brother here, even if he had brought him no grain.
Now, relaxing, the boatmen spread around the room, drinking the beer the women brought, and laughing and telling stories to one another about the voyage, reminding one another, now that they were safe, how perilous their journey had been—Harus Kum imagined how in the depths of their danger, they would have turned to one another and said that things were not so bad. He saw a few of them take the younger woman away into the back of the house. Drawing his brother nearer the fire, Harus Kum sat down with him on the hearth.
“How goes it, back home?”
“Oh, the same. The fishing has been very bad, all summer. You don’t fish here.”
“Not much.”
“Maybe we should bring you some nets and a few hooks.”
Harus Kum made such a face that his brother laughed. “You said you needed more food.”
“I have food enough. I have the cattle for meat, and the savages inland of here grow grain and beans, and make cheeses from goats’ milk, and that I have in plenty, because they are in awe of me. But they are a wicked lot, and I am unhappy dealing with them; the last time I barely escaped with my life.”
“What is your suggestion, then?” his brother asked. “Is this place so rich that we should bring more people, and the tools and goods to make a life here for them?”
Harus Kum reached for his beer. The women had been malting the barley all afternoon and the room smelled richly of the steeping grain. He faced his brother again.
“Do you think the king would consider it?”
“I don’t know. This has long been a place of profit for us, but, you know, people say the more you put into a mine, the less you take out. And you know, whenever he hears your name spoken, the king still gets angry.”
“In Hortha’s name,” said Harus Kum, and stirred, restless. “How long must I suffer here? Am I to live out all my life in this place, surrounded only by slaves?”
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