The First Riders

by David Ferguson

  Baby chanits were intensely curious. Within a day of emerging they could run, and it was a great problem for the parents to prevent them from running off into danger. They built an enclosure for them, but this only sufficed for the first few days for they grew prodigiously. The youngsters had to be fed and watered and watched continuously. The octet had never been busier - or happier.

  The days seemed to fly by, it seemed to Eln-Tika. One day the youngsters were tiny hand-sized morsels, the next they were small chanits and starting to talk. Eln-Tika found the process miraculous. Language was a complex affair, far beyond the learning capacities of a baby, you would have thought. But they mastered it. Within six months the youngsters could take part in the discussions.

  Eln-Tika loved this time. The ten youngsters were as curious as she was about the world and wanted to know everything. They listened intently to everything she said, then they asked incessant questions, many that she had asked herself but had failed to answer.

  The sea, of course, was a great puzzle to them all. Did it mark the end of the world? Was there more land beyond the horizon? And if so, how far away was it? Why did it rise and fall twice a day? Why was it blue when water was clear? Was it really water when it tasted so bad? They had asked the questions but had received no answers.

  During this time Eln-Tika became aware that one of the youngsters was different from the others. Rasslan-Pa seemed quieter, more inward-looking, as if he was living in his own world. One day, he and Eln-Tika were sitting in the shade of a fern at the edge of the campsite idly watching Wath-Moll and two of the youngsters making arrows - the stock had become somewhat depleted of late.

  Rasslan-Pa asked, ‘You are very happy, aren’t you, Eln-Tika?’

  Eln-Tika smiled. ‘Oh yes, this is the loveliest place I have ever seen.’

  Rasslan-Pa persisted. ‘But it isn’t just the place, is it? You are mostly happy because we are at peace. Hunting is easy, yet Wath-Moll is happy, even though he thinks life is a little too easy, that there isn’t enough excitement.’

  ‘Really? Wath-Moll has never said.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to. His thoughts tell me.’

  Eln-Tika looked at Rasslan-Pa in astonishment. ‘You can sense his thoughts? Is that what you are telling me?’

  ‘Of course I can. The other youngsters can’t, but that must be because they haven’t learned yet. You can, can’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes, but no-one else can, Rasslan-Pa. Just you and me. Tell me, what am I experiencing now?’

  ‘Wonderment.’

  Eln-Tika laughed, then called to Wath-Moll. After she had told him of her discovery, he too felt a great joy. The group now had another telepath.

  During the following months, Eln-Tika discovered what it was like sharing thoughts with another telepath. They knew, of course, each others emotions all the time, but as Rasslan-Pa matured, and his telepathic powers increased, they discovered that they were sensing actual thoughts, the pictures and words that lived in the other mind. It was a very strange experience, and one that required great control. Once, when Rasslan-Pa fell out of a tree, Eln-Tika felt a sudden flood of fear obliterating her own thoughts. She staggered against Sil-Jeve who had to prevent her from falling.

  ‘It's Rasslan-Pa!’ she exclaimed. ‘He's in trouble - over to the west.’

  They found him quickly, bruised and dazed, but essentially unharmed. He simply needed a talking to on the dangers of trying to balance on a tree-branch while being egged on by the other youngsters.

  Sil-Jeve found the whole incident intriguing. ‘I think I now know why a group can only support one telepath. You affect each other too much. If this goes on much longer you will both find life intolerable.’

  ‘Luckily it won’t be going on much longer,’ Eln-Tika said drily.

  ‘No, that's true.’

  The group lived on the bluff above the bay for a year before it split up. During that time two of the youngsters died, leaving a group of sixteen. This almost always happened. After rearing the youngsters to near-maturity the group invariably doubled in size - no more, no less. Nobody knew why, but it was so.

  After a year a new octet was formed. As always, it consisted of four adults and four youngsters. It was obvious one of the youngsters would be Rasslan-Pa. The two telepaths needed to be split, and it was an easy decision to place Rasslan-Pa in the new octet. The four adults were Dalu-Mai, Ci-Nam, Larri-Vo, and Fen-Pauli, with Dalu-Mai, the former silent, as the leader. They had the members, now they needed the equipment. There was only one item that was unique: the lens they used for making fire. Eln-Tika and Wath-Moll did not know how it had been made but it transpired that Dalu-Mai did.

  ‘You heat sand until it melts, then you pour it into a mould and allow it to cool down. You need a very hot fire for which you need bellows - which we could make quite easily from skins - a container for melting, and the mould, of course.’

  ‘The sea shore is all sand!’ Rasslan-Pa said excitedly.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Dalu-Mai said dispassionately. ‘The raw materials are all around us.’

  The whole group took part in the making of the lens. The bellows was made from the stomach of a flathead and a piece of the hollow stem of a reed which grew by the stream, the mould was made from baked clay in a difficult operation, while an old cooking pot provided the container for heating the sand. The hot glowing liquid was poured carefully into the hole in the mould then left to cool down overnight. In the morning they gently broke through the baked clay and there it was: a glass lens. They immediately tested it in the morning sun on a handful of dry fern leaves. Within seconds the leaves burst into flames. Fen-Pauli made a pouch for it and in a small ceremony the lens was presented to Dalu-Mai. The new octet had its talisman and now it could depart.

  The members of the two octets hugged each other in a rare display of affection. Eln-Tika hugged the eight members of the new octet, thinking as she did so of the time when, as a youngster, she had left with the new octet. The occasion had been almost identical. She had an overwhelming sense of time circling upon itself, of the great succession of life and death, and of an inevitability that was beyond their control. The splitting into two octets could not be avoided. Hunters could no more stay as sixteen as they could fly. In the towns they never split up like this, but stayed together, the group always growing, but as hunters they had to follow this predetermined path. It was the same with the blenjis. Now that the group had eight more members, they needed eight more blenjis. They could, of course, have captured wild animals, which would have been an easy enough task, but their blenjis mated too, taking advantage of this period of quiet, and they too raised eight young. It seemed that chanits and blenjis had been together for so long that they could satisfy each other's wants without those wants even being expressed. The blenjis could run away, but they did not. They knew that they were comfortable where they were. The process was one of the many mysteries that she could not solve. It was like the stars. They were there, because they were part of the world, but why were they there? She was uncomfortably aware that there may not even be a question to answer. They did what they did because that was the way things were.

  She embraced all the members of the new octet then watched them ride away to their new lives. They may meet again, or the progeny of the two octets may meet again some time in the far future, but it was quite unlikely. It was a very large world of which they were a very small part.

  It would be another year before the youngsters could mate, so the octet was free to move on, if it so wished. But they decided to stay. It was a wonderful place, the best in the world. When the ship came, they had been there for another four months.

  Chapter 15

  It was just after dawn and they were eating the previous day's kill and the berries they had picked in the afternoon. There was silence apart from the chomping of food and the spitting out of berry pips. Eln-Tika was idly looking at the sea when she saw something that had not been there before.

  ‘Can yo
u see something in the bay?’ she called. ‘A black dot with something pale above it?’

  They stared in the indicated direction and saw what Eln-Tika meant.

  ‘What is it?’ Voi-Til, one of the youngsters asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Wath-Moll said wonderingly. ‘How did it get there?’

  ‘Shall we ride down and see?’ Gre-Hann, another youngster asked.

  ‘Yes. Four of us will go. Sil-Jeve, Eln-Tika, you, and Voi-Til. Do not do anything without being told,’ he said sternly to the two youngsters.

  The four hunters rode down to a bluff just above the shore. The object on the sea was much closer now and they could make out the details. It was in two parts: a lower part which floated on the water, and may have been made of wood, and an upper part which seemed to be made of several huge sheets of paper. It was moving very slowly into the bay.

  ‘I think I know what it is,’ Sil-Jeve said carefully. ‘I think it's a ship.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A ship. The people of the ports use them to travel on the sea. I've heard of them, but I thought they were rather small, not like this.’

  Eln-Tika was concentrating hard. The thoughts from those on the ship were reaching her. They puzzled her.

  ‘I don’t understand what I'm feeling. These thoughts are strange. They are unlike anything I've felt before.’

  ‘Are they dangerous?’ Sil-Jeve asked, inevitably.

  ‘I don’t know. They aren’t thinking about us at all; they don’t know we are here. They are happy, relieved, rather excited, and that's all I know.’

  Then the pale paper sheets folded away and disappeared. The ship came to a stop. Across the sea they heard a faint metallic rattling sound.

  ‘I can see chanits, they're moving about!’ Voi-Til shouted excitedly.

  They watched as a small object was lowered onto the water. Chanits were climbing down the side of the ship and into the small object, which then started moving across the sea towards them.

  ‘That's a boat,’ Sil-Jeve said. ‘I imagine they are going to land where the river flows into the sea.’

  ‘They're collecting fresh water.’ Eln-Tika said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They're collecting fresh water. You can’t drink the sea.’

  ‘Ah.’ Sil-Jeve said in understanding. ‘You're right, I'm sure.’

  They watched the strangers drag their boat onto the beach, pull out containers from the boat and roll them towards the river. There were ten of them, all rather larger and darker than themselves. Unbelievably, they were wearing clothes that were not made of skins. The clothes seemed to have a dull texture and were patterned intricately with dark red and blue. Each wore a leather belt that crossed from a shoulder to the opposite hip. They watched the strangers walking to the river where they rushed into the water and began drinking.

  ‘That is foolhardy,’ Sil-Jeve observed. ‘There are snappers down there - big ones.’

  But the strangers seemed to come to no harm for all ten emerged from the river and began to fill the containers.

  Voi-Til asked, ‘Do we kill them?’

  Eln-Tika looked at him in shock. ‘Of course we don’t kill them. We’re not savages. Anyway, they're going away. We'll never see them again.’

  ‘Supposing they do not go away? Do we kill them then?’

  ‘Bloodthirsty, isn’t he’ Sil-Jeve said to Eln-Tika. ‘No, we do not kill them, Voi-Til, not unless they're an enemy.’

  Eln-Tika said, ‘They're not. They don’t know who or what we are. They've never met us before, I'm sure of it. They're strangers - neither friends nor enemies.’

  ‘Really? Then where have they come from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  They watched as the boat returned to the waiting ship. They rode back to the camp and studied the activity in the bay as the sun began to rise. Two boats moved slowly over the sea towards them. The newcomers beached their boats and began unloading packs. The octet counted twenty newcomers. Their alarm grew to consternation as they watched the newcomers carry the packs on their backs up the valley. They stopped when they reached a flat open area that the octet had once briefly considered as a campsite. Eln-Tika knew exactly what they were about to do before they did it.

  ‘They're going to make a camp, and they're going to stay. I can feel it strongly. They are tired after a long journey and they intend to rest, then to explore our land.’

  Are they dangerous?’ Wath-Moll asked.

  ‘I don’t know. They are wary, but confident of their ability to defend themselves. That means they must have weapons.’

  ‘I don’t see any bows,’ Sil-Jeve commented.

  ‘They're bound to be armed,’ Wath-Moll said grimly. ‘Only fools would came to a strange land unarmed, and somehow these people do not look like fools.’

  ‘They're not fools,’ Eln-Tika said. ‘Anything but.’

  ‘We must discuss this,’ Wath-Moll said tersely.

  While Voi-Til and Gre-Hann watched the newcomers' camp, the other six discussed what they should do. They had only two choices. They could ignore them, which would be sensible only if the newcomers were leaving very soon. Or they could confront them, find out what they wanted, what their plans were. Passive decisions were not the way of Wath-Moll or Eln-Tika, or Sil-Jeve for that matter. Confrontation was the decision.

  They decided on a dawn encounter. There would be a party of four - Wath-Moll, Eln-Tika, Sil-Jeve, and Gre-Hann. The others would remain in the camp listening for whistles. They would be outnumbered four to twenty, but that scarcely worried them. The octet had handled slashers, stripehorns, and speed-dragons. Any counter-attack by these strangers would be met by ultimate force.

  As the sky was lightening the four hunters rode slowly and cautiously towards the camp. The newcomers had posted lookouts. One, sitting under a large bush, stood up and called loudly. Wath-Moll raised his bow and the lookout became silent.

  The hunters rode into the campsite to find turmoil. The strangers were picking up oddly-shaped metal and wood sticks, ready to fight. The four hunters stopped, aimed, and drew back their bows. The strangers froze. One - who was perhaps the leader - dropped his stick and raised his hands, palms upwards. He spoke, but the words were unintelligible.

  Wath-Moll asked grimly, ‘Who are you?’

  ***

  PART 2

  The Sailors+

  Chapter 16

  The King's waiting room was smaller than he had expected. Somehow Reffurio had assumed that he would be awaiting his interview in surroundings of some luxury. After all, he was in the palace, a building that was sufficiently impressive from the outside. But he had been wrong. Instead of walls draped in tapestries and a floor covered in deep carpeting he was waiting fairly patiently in an austerely plain room of dull cream painted walls, a highly polished wooden floor, a few simple chairs, and a plain wooden table. The only concession to the needs of those who had to wait was the stringed musical instrument leaning on the table. This, Reffurio knew, had been placed there to be played by any who chose to do so. Reffurio enjoyed playing the flyra, and could do it well, but today he did not have the desire. His mind was occupied elsewhere. In a few minutes he would be meeting the King, and he did not know why. The message brought by an irritatingly supercilious and uninformative lackey had merely requested his presence at this time and this place.

  At the moment Reffurio's conscience was reasonably clear. He had not been involved in a brawl for ages, and he owed no money, including taxes. What then? If the King did not want to punish him then he wanted to use him. He had skills, but he was not aware that the King would like to learn to sail a ship, or learn to fish, or play the flyra. So he sat and waited, trying to think of nothing, for speculation was futile, particularly when the questions would soon be answered.

  A lackey, similar to but probably different from the one who had delivered the message, appeared from behind the newly opened door.

  "You can come now," this creature said.


  Reffurio followed him down a short corridor and into another room, larger and distinctly more luxurious than the one he had just left. It was a room designed to be a place where one could be at ease with its quiet colours and soft furnishings. The statue of the forest god Rhethyis in the corner seemed out of place, but then Reffurio never had much time for statues of gods. The King was sitting in a large comfortable-looking chair, a minion on either side. He was wearing his navy uniform, a grandiose affair of pale blue and red picked out with gold. The flunkey on his left wore a similar uniform of blue and red, but without the gold. The flunkey on his right, by contrast, wore the dark green of an administrator. In the face of all this elegance Reffurio was glad he was wearing his best uniform, the grey and dark blue of a civilian captain. The King waved Reffurio to the remaining empty chair.

  For some moments there was silence while the King stared intently at the newcomer. This ship’s captain was quite tall, broad-shouldered, probably very fit, and had an air of ignoring rules and regulations which the king found refreshing. He could well be very suitable for the task in hand.

  Reffurio stared back at the King and was quite impressed. He had of course seen representations, but this was the first time he had seen him close up. He had been on the throne for as long as Reffurio could remember and was elderly now. He was nearly as big as himself and carried an air of authority. This was to be expected, of course, but the authority appeared to be the result of ability and not because he was the eldest progeny of the previous King.

  "You are not working at the moment, I believe," the King asked.

  "No, sir" Reffurio said shortly. His last ship had sunk in a sudden violent storm and he had been lucky to have escaped. Reffurio did not like his ships sinking under him, even when it had been the result of a chance event and not the result of stupidity or carelessness. Since then he had been a kind of jobbing ship's master, taking work where he could find it, which mostly consisted of taking small traders up and down the coast. He could do with a big ship again, and with that thought came a growing hope.