by Jude Fisher
It was no longer a surprise.
She pushed the realisation of what this might mean away as hard as she could and, setting her jaw, picked a path gingerly across the reef to check the fishlines Erno had set the night before. Three mackerel had attached themselves to the northerner’s well-made hooks. They lay quiescent in the dark water below the rocks, their cat-striped skins flickering as the waves passed over them. Selen felt a moment’s pang of misery for their doomed condition; then she hauled the cold, wet lines in hand over hand and carried their catch back to the beach.
By the time she returned, Erno had moved away from his stance on the far rocks. She scanned the cove, and was surprised to find him dismantling the shelter. He had pushed the faering off the stones and onto its keel so that it now lay the right way up on the shingle, a boat again rather than a roof. She had been so immersed in hauling in the fish, so determined not to think her own thoughts, that she had not heard the noise this must have made. Now he was engaged in kicking the stone wall down, giving to the task rather more energy than it required. Rocks skittered and bounced off one another. The dry, thick sound of them echoed off the cliff walls. Moss and furze scattered in the wake of his flying feet.
Their belongings – few as they were – had been piled up separately.
Dropping the lines and the mackerel, Selen covered the ground towards the northerner in an awkward, lurching run.
Behind her, the mackerel flopped helplessly, drowning in the air.
‘What are you doing?’
Her tone came out more imperious than she had intended. Erno spun around. The effort and the chill wind had brought a hectic flush of red to his cheeks. His blue eyes looked wild and hazed. There was a determined set to his jaw she did not like.
‘I’m leaving,’ was all he said.
Then he turned his back to her and picked up his sack, his knife and his fishing kit and stowed them under the crossbench at the stern of the faering.
Selen felt the blood drain from her face. Hastily, she gathered her own pathetically small pile of acquired possessions – the cloak, purloined from another washing line; the underwear she had fashioned of strips torn from a stolen shirt; the belt-knife Erno had given her for gutting fish with; the long spoon he had carved for her after she had complained at having to eat with her hands – and bundled them into the other end of the boat. Erno stared at them, then at her. Then he bent and fished the things out, and tossed them down onto the beach.
‘Alone. I’m leaving alone.’
This pronouncement flew past her like a bird, barely regarded. He couldn’t possibly mean what she thought he had said. She frowned, tried to form a question: failed; then watched as he shoved the wooden boat with tremendous force down the shingle and into the shallow water. For a moment, the faering grounded itself on a raised bank then, as he splashed after it and pushed at it again, the muscles in his arms and back ridging under his thin shirt with the effort, it sailed off into clear water.
Erno waded after it until he was up to his waist in the waves. Then he grasped the far side of the boat, threw a leg over the gunwale and began to lever himself aboard. The faering rocked in protest and threatened to capsize, but Erno waited until the little vessel found its equilibrium, then completed his manoeuvre.
Without a look back at the shore, he settled himself on the rowing bench and unshipped the oars.
He was abandoning her. Leaving her here, miles from anywhere, without conscience, without a thought.
‘No!’
The outrage she felt was astonishing. Adrenalin flooded her system, lending her determination, speed, aggression. Grabbing up the bits and pieces he had cast down on the shingle, she stuffed them under her arm and began furiously to wade after him. The water cleared her shins, her knees, her thighs. She felt its resistance as a momentary irritation and ploughed on, still shouting.
‘Come back! How dare you leave me, Erno Hamson! You are a coward, a cur, a barbarian!’
In the faering, Erno braced himself against her words and began to scull away. Selen forged on. The waves lapped at her waist, her breasts, tugged at her robe, made her suddenly buoyant. A moment later, she felt her feet lose contact with the seabed. She kicked in panic, struck out with her arms, lost the bundle of belongings. The fabric of the cloak tangled her thrashing arms. White water sprayed up around her, soaked her hair, filled her mouth. She spat out the water and yelled again:
‘Will you let me drown? Will you row out to sea and never once look back?’
She saw the figure in the boat ahead stiffen and she thought he would turn around, but then a wave came over her head and for a moment she could see nothing of the sky but a terrible watery light. Then it was gone, taking the cloak with it, and she was out of her depth, the red robe floating up around her like a pool of blood. She struggled to stay afloat, kicking hard and splashing out with her arms.
‘I am pregnant, Erno! If you leave me now you will not just be responsible for the death of the woman you blame for causing Katla’s death, but that of a blameless infant, too!’
Down she went again, the water cold and heavy around her. She felt it close over her head, seal her off from all contact with the air, claim her as its own. She sank. Her arms flapped uselessly; her feet scrabbled. The pressure of the sea against her chest felt like someone forcibly pressing the air out of her. Water rushed into her mouth. She felt its cold passage, a horrible invasion, felt herself losing the warmth that made her human and alive. As she began to drown she felt a sudden pang of empathy for the poor mackerel she had left to perish on the beach, drowning in a hostile, unnatural element.
Then the light faded and she felt nothing at all.
Instead of the usual fleapits they stayed in, this night the mercenary troop had been treated by Mam to rather splendid accommodation, which boasted a common room as well as sleeping quarters above the stable belonging to a good inn, close to the smartest whorehouses Forent had to offer; which was saying something. This being Rui Finco’s town, the brothels were plentiful indeed, their women famed the length and breadth of Istria for their beauty and their clever tricks. Forent was where the women came to avoid Falla’s vengeful fires – for adultery, for impiety, for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to their fathers, their brothers or their husbands. Rui Finco was known to have a somewhat laxer attitude to such misdemeanours than the other Empire lords and that, in addition to his prowess behind closed curtains, made him popular with the women of Forent, as Doc had learned to his cost.
‘All I said to her was that I bet his nose was bigger than his cock, and she kicked me out of bed there and then and refused to take a cantari from me.’
‘And had you done the deed with her?’
Doc smiled reminiscently. ‘Several.’
Dogo looked contemplative. ‘What did you say her name was?’
‘Sestrina.’
‘And which whorehouse was this?’
‘The Tower of Earthly Delights, second left past the market square: has a pair of pink pillars either side of the door. Knobber introduced me to it.’
Dogo patted his pocket and took out his money-pouch. Fat with the coins Mam had earlier doled out among them, it swung smugly back and forth on its leather thong. ‘Shan’t be needing this, then,’ he grinned. Then he tossed it up, snatched it out of the air with his other hand and stuffed it back into his tunic again. ‘Still, who’s to say I might not wear her out and need to take myself off to another establishment later?’
Joz Bearhand, seated on a bench off to the side where he was engaged with a complicated system of whetstones and assorted cloths in sharpening his many weapons, snorted contemptuously. It was rare that he accompanied his companions on these nocturnal excursions, and when he did, rather than going in to avail himself of the services on offer, he would stand outside the premises, leaning on his sword and eyeing visitors as they went in, ‘in case of trouble’. Although the only trouble that came their way tended to be when brothel-owners took excep
tion to Joz’s presence giving their customers such pause for thought that many turned away and decided to visit an alternative establishment where they were less likely to be scrutinised by a man who looked like some vengeful giant out of legend, ready to lop their heads off for their lewd intentions. And then Doc and Knobber and Dogo would have to bundle Joz away before he got stuck into his customary lecture on the evils of paying women for sexual congress. It was curious really, that a man who was happily prepared to murder for money would draw the line at the idea of spending a little of his hard-earned coin on having a pretty girl make him forget the troubles of the world for a while, but there it was.
‘You be careful with that money,’ Mam warned. ‘You don’t want to be flashing it around too obviously in a place like this.’
She said this wherever they went. Sometimes it was like having your mother along, which felt very bizarre when you were about to go off and visit a whore. Dogo rolled his eyes at Doc, who shrugged. They got used to it.
Dogbreath tapped his left thigh. ‘Got me knife,’ he said. He tapped his right calf. ‘And me other knife.’ Then, with a flourish, he produced the two he had secreted down his boots. ‘Oops, nearly forgot these.’
‘For pity’s sake just go!’
‘I’m coming with you.’ Knobber appeared in the doorway, gleaming and pink from his annual bath. His hair, which he normally wore tied and knotted in a dozen braidlets around his head, to keep it out of the way in a fight, was unbound and still damp and beginning to frizz around his shoulders. He wore his best shirt, the one he had bought off a nomad stall at the Allfair, a pale blue affair with gaudy green and silver piping at the collar. It looked as if he had even passed a hot stone over it to take out the worst of the creases. His pendant lay nestled in the opening of the tunic amongst his copious chest hair. He looked about nineteen, rather than the thirty-odd years he owned to, and about to visit his sweetheart.
‘You’ve taken your cap off,’ Doc observed with surprise, glancing down at the truncated stub that was all that remained of Knobber’s left hand. Without the stained leather wrapping which the sell-sword usually wore to cover the wound, the appendage looked as vulnerable as a newborn pup: all hairless and puckered and pink. The conjunction with the dark, weathered skin of his forearm was almost shocking. Looking at the soft, pale flesh of the stub, you could almost believe that Knobber might once have owned a childhood away from all the violence and harshness of a mercenary’s world.
‘It’s been itching me,’ the tall man said uncomfortably. ‘Gia soothes it with her hands.’
‘Is that the same girlie you’ve been seeing all week?’
Knobber blushed to the roots of his beard. ‘Aye.’
Dogbreath guffawed. ‘I’ve got a little stump she could soothe—’
‘Shut up, Dogo.’ Doc cuffed the little man around the head, made him yelp. ‘We’ll be moving on soon,’ he reminded Knobber. ‘It doesn’t pay to get too tender-hearted about any one of these whorehouse girls. Better to spread your money around, I always think.’
‘Sample the full range,’ Dogo grinned, unabashed.
Knobber looked offended. ‘Some of us know when we’ve found a good thing. Just because I don’t feel the need to find out what’s under every skirt in Forent doesn’t make me soft in the head. Besides, she’s a nice girl: only working where she does out of the worst sort of adversity and ill chance. We’ve spent a fair while talking, she and I. It’s amazing how much we have in common.’
Dogbreath guffawed. ‘Aye. Like lying down and humping like rats in a sack—’
This time it was Mam who caught him a whack. ‘Shut your hole, Dogo. There’s nothing wrong with treating a girl like a human being rather than just a convenient place to stick your tool. Now get out of here and leave me and Joz in peace so’s we can make some decisions. Someone’s got to do some planning that involves something a little more constructive than deciding which whorehouse to visit next.’
The chill outside took them by surprise and Dogbreath and Doc had an entertaining time teasing Knobber for his refusal to spoil his appearance by wearing his manky old cloak over his fine shirt, or even wanting to crease the thing by the addition of his swordbelt.
‘Fine sell-sword you are!’ Doc admonished.
‘It’s only a couple of streets away, and Gia doesn’t like to see me wear a weapon. Besides, what’s to fear with a couple of bodyguards like you two with me?’
None of them noticed the pair of shadows that detached themselves from the alley behind Cutter’s Lane as they passed, nor the movement of another pair in the opposite direction.
Erno gazed down at the body of the woman lying in the bottom of the boat and felt hot tears prick his eyes. It had not come easily to him to abandon Selen Issian, nor to hear the understandable fury in her voice as he had rowed away, but it was all he could think to do at the time. Reasoning with her had achieved nothing and every time he began to think about the sort of life that awaited her return to her family, despite the survival of Tanto Vingo, he felt his mind shy away. It was hardly fair that women in the southern continent should be bought and sold and passed from the hands of one man to another in the way they were, to endure lives of misery and servitude without an iota of choice in the matter, but it was the way life was in Istria; likely the way it had always been and always would be, and therefore not, as he kept reminding himself, something he could change. The situation was not his fault: all he’d done was lend a helping hand.
But if it was not his fault, then why did he feel such guilt? For it was guilt that had driven him to leave with barely a word that morning, guilt that had pushed the faering out into the water; guilt that had made him row away without looking back, without realising that she had waded after him so far that the sea had taken her.
The truth of the matter was, he admitted to himself now (now that it was too late) he had known she was with child for several weeks. He had known it in the way any lad brought up in a large family on a farm would know such things, and without giving the matter a second’s conscious thought. Something in him had recognised changes that were taking place in Selen that even she had probably not recognised in herself: in the way she seemed to luxuriate, seeking ever more food and warmth and comfort, as if the tiny life that grew inside her were making a nest of her body. Something in him had noted how her breasts ripened without a lascivious eye, seen how her curves took on ever lusher proportions, and yet had intuited that her gradual expansion was not simply due to the food that kept disappearing, had understood, somehow, that those provisions had not been taken out of simple greed. For he had never once chastised her for stealing from their store, nor for singing her strange little nursery songs, nor for sleeping late and taking over all the cloak in the night. He had certainly been wary of her sudden changes of mood – her temper with him and with her situation – but that he had put down to the way of all women, and particularly to being noble-bred. But when she had cried out to him as the waters closed over her that she was pregnant and that if she drowned he would responsible for two deaths, not one, he had known it to be no more than the simple truth.
Even then, he had hesitated. It was remarkable how much could pass through your mind at such a crucial moment. He had seen himself a year hence, a stranger in a strange land, forced to dye his hair and shave his beard and speak the language of his enemy so that he might be hired to carry out menial jobs in order to provide for a woman and child not his own. And then he thought how things might have been in a different world a year from now, a world in which Katla had not perished and it had been because of no Footloose charm that he had won her love. In his mind’s eye, he had seen the sun shining on a smallholding on North Isle, a group of turf-roofed houses at the head of a cove in which fishing boats bobbed at anchor and a fine longship lay in its winter cradle on the strand. On the hills around the hall, sheep and goats cropped grass and grew fat. And in the doorway of the biggest house stood a slim woman with long red hair braided about her
head, a baby nursing at her breast. He saw all this with such hallucinatory clarity that for a moment it seemed it might be a true vision of the future and not some impossible dream, but then reality rushed in at him and he realised firstly that even if Katla had not burned, she would never want such a life; and that just thirty feet away from him, a woman was drowning.
He had covered the space between them in three powerful oarstrokes, determining the location by the dim red shadow of the gown that sank with Selen into the depths. And then he had hurled himself overboard and, grabbing that fateful robe, had hauled it up until he was able to catch the Istrian woman by the arms, and though she had hung there, limp and unresponsive, he had somehow fought them both up through the water till his lungs were burning and ready to burst.
It had been a desperate struggle to get her into the faering without overturning it, but terror had lent him immense strength. Then she had lain in the bilges like a great, wet, dead seal, while he remembered how Thoro Twistarm had nearly drowned off Sand Isle the winter before last, and Gar Otterson had roughly pressed the water out of him on the beach there till he had choked and coughed and had the strength to curse the lot of them. A lot of water had come out of her, in big gushes and spurts to begin with, then in weak trickles. And still she did not stir, nor seem to breathe. But when he had touched her neck and her wrist in a terrible panic (all the time a tiny voice chanting in his guilty mind, you did this, you did this, you did this) there had been a small flutter of life there, and so he had taken off all his clothes, saving one rag for his modesty, had wrapped her in them as close as he could and had chafed her hands, her face, her feet. Even in these dire circumstances, even knowing that the core of a body’s heat resided in the chest and belly, he could not bring himself to put his hands on the more intimate parts of her. And so he sat there, shivering in the chilly wind, watching over her as if the power of his will might bring her back to the world, and fearing all the while that she might be allowing her spirit to simply drift away rather than face the dreadful alternative that coming back to life offered.