“And as quickly as possible,” Master Den stressed his meaning with a shooing motion to get them up and over the side.
As usual, however, Tayy balked. “We’ve washed up on an island in the middle of the sea.” He flung his arms wide to take in the whole of their surroundings: sand, water, hills, and trees. “We need water and food and a wayback off again. How are we going to do that if we leave the ship? That old pirate is stranding us here, not freeing us. We might as well be behind walls for all the good the sea does us!”
No Harnishman tolerated walls for long. That he made such a comparison said more than any speech he might declaim about his feelings for the sea. Fortunately, things were not as dire as the prince made them out to be.
“I expect Kaydu will be here shortly. Right, Master?” Llesho cast a glance at his teacher to confirm Marmer Sea Dragon’s parting words. “We’ll just wait up on the shore until they arrive and continue on to Pontus with the rest of our cadre.”
Master Den scanned the horizon with a worried frown, though Llesho saw nothing to trouble him. Off in the direction of the rising sun he saw a speck growing larger in the sky, an osprey, he thought, but not Master Markko, whose questing mind sought Llesho from a greater distance. He thought it might be Kaydu on a scouting mission.
The trickster god agreed, squinting off in the direction of the rapidly approaching seabird. “Help is on the way,” he said. “If you want to be here when your rescuers arrive, I’d suggest you get off this ship before it leaves for less crowded climes.”
Llesho was thinking the very same thing. He picked up his weapons from under the rowing bench where his dream-self had laid them.
“Hey, then!” Alph tapped his wrist with the handle of the small whip he carried. “What’s this? And where did it come from?”
“You don’t want to mess with the spear,” Tayy warned the pirate with a too-casual air. “It’s magic and it likes to kill people. He sometimes has trouble controlling it.”
Alph took a breath: to scoff, Llesho figured. He’d been deadly with the knife long before he’d ever met the short spear, but Tayy was right. He didn’t always control the spear. Right now, however, he did. It was easy enough to will the weapon to life in his hands, and he let the blue lightning flicker faintly along its length.
“Is that from a dragon, then?” The pirate seemed more curious than frightened by the strange effect. He reached a finger almost to the point of touching the spear, then pulled away again, wiping his hand on his red-and-yellow pants as if the thing had burned his fingertips.
“No,” Llesho answered with the same false casualness that Tayy had used. “Her Ladyship SienMa, the mortal goddess of war, returned this heirloom of my family at the start of my quest. Sometimes I rule the spear, and sometimes the spear rules me.”
He gave the man a dire smile that made even Tayy shiver. It had its intended effect on the pirate, however. “Did anyone ever tell you that you travel in unlucky company, boy?” Alph asked Tayy with no real expectation of an answer. “Best get the thing off this ship, then. We want no bad-luck magics on this voyage.”
Alph backed away with his hands open in front of him to show he meant no threat. He tracked with a flicker of his eyes as Llesho wrapped his belt around his waist with his Thebin knife hanging by its small scabbard. If the pirate noticed the bag bulging with pearls that Llesho now wore around his neck, he wisely decided to keep the information to himself.
Sheathing the spear, Llesho gave him a nod to acknowledge that he intended to do just as the pirate instructed. Then he slid the strap carefully over his shoulder. It hurt where it rested against the lash marks on his back, but he couldn’t very well swim with it between his teeth. When he had it secured, he clambered over the rowing bench to lower himself over the side.
This far forward the galley was still in the water, which was deeper than he expected so close to the shore. He plunged in over his head and came up sputtering again, bobbing in place as he called for Prince Tayyichiut to join him. Tayy, however, remained where he was, blinking down at him as if his eyes couldn’t decide whether to widen in surprise or narrow in expectation of something nasty at the end of whatever had pulled him up short in the middle of the rowing well.
“Our cadre?” Prince Tayyichiut asked as if he suddenly found himself in the dream world without quite knowing how he’d gotten there. He’d always been the outsider before. This was something new and he half expected to have the words snatched back if he reached for them.
“Your uncle seemed to think you’d want to come along.” Llesho treaded water, hoping that Tayy would take as given the part missing from that statement, but the prince seemed to be having more trouble processing the unstated apology than he’d hoped.
“I’d scramble, if I were you.” Master Den urged Tayy forward with a little nudge between the shoulder blades.
Llesho remembered his own less than dignified entry into the sea at his teacher’s hands back the other side of the storm, and apparently so did Tayy. His long hours at the oar and cowering under the near approach of Master Markko’s storm hadn’t helped the Harnish prince’s fear of the water, however. He peered over the side with a grimace. Llesho waited patiently, but offered the encouragement, “Pinch your nose closed with your finger and thumb, like this—” he demonstrated with his own nose. “—Close your mouth and your eyes tight, and just jump. I won’t let you drown.”
“I’m sure Moll would be happy to have you if you wanted to stay,” Master Den answered the hopeful look passed his way.
The day before, he’d been ready to die quickly in the sea rather than linger slowly on the bench. The reminder of his fate if he remained on the galley was all it took. Prince Tayyichiut of the Harnish people, who for all his life had avoided all water wider than a teapot, clambered over the rowing bench and onto the side. Then, with his hand over his nose and his eyes tight shut, he took the last small step and fell, splashing, into the sea.
“Glug!”
It sounded something like that. Tayy hadn’t waited until he surfaced to scream. Llesho found himself holding the Harnish prince up by his collar with one hand while he pounded on his back with the other, all while treading water to keep them afloat.
“Stop thrashing around! You’re going to drown us both!” Tucking an arm under the prince’s chin, he gave a simple two-part command: “Shut up and stop moving. You can’t sink while I’ve got you this way.”
Which wasn’t entirely true, not if Tayy kept windmilling his legs and arms that way. Llesho figured assurances would work better than threats, though, so he took the positive approach, if not an entirely truthful one. “It’s impossible to sink in salty water. I promise. Relax your arms. Watch what they do.”
Tayy did what he was told. “Wow!” he said as they floated to the top.
Llesho gave him a smug smile. “Now relax your legs.”
He had the idea now. Tayy didn’t fight when he found himself tilted with the back of his head in the water. Slowly, his knees and upper legs floated into view on the glassy surface.
“That’s it. Now just lie there and think dry thoughts. Are you coming, Singer?”
The question seemed to take the oarsman by surprise. He looked over the side, then back toward where Moll and Alph had their heads together in fierce discussion. “It’s not the work,” he said. “The oar or the plow makes little difference. The conditions, however—with more food of better quality, and more rest. With a wage at the end of the day, or a share of the takings . . .”
“You’d rather be a pirate than a hero?” The trickster god, Chichu, asked. He was the patron of pirates, Llesho remembered, so wasn’t as surprised by the questions as he might have been.
Singer, however, seemed more amazed at his own answer. “Yes,” he said, “I think I would.”
“It can be arranged. I’ll be leaving the ship with our young royals; theShark will need a new captain. You’ve protected my interests well enough so far . . .”
Llesh
o didn’t wait to hear any more but took off for the shore with Prince Tayyichiut in tow. The sea was warm and the storm had stirred up the bottom very little in this protected cove. Comfortable, Llesho would have thought, if he wasn’t escaping from pirates while towing a prince of the Qubal clans, on his way to a soon-to-be-deserted island. That the pirates had agreed to let him escape took some of the danger out of the occasion. The presence of the Harnish prince and his fear of water balanced that scale however. Llesho almost would have preferred the arrows of the pirates, which he could avoid by diving, over the prince, who could drown him with a thoughtless grab at his throat. But if the prince stayed calm, he’d have to admit the day seemed to be improving.
Beneath them, fish darted on their own business through ribbons of seaweed that reached for them from the bottom. Tayy couldn’t see what was going on below, which was for the better. It was impossible for him to forget that he was floating in water deeper than the river that had killed both Qubal and Southerner during the battle on the banks of the Onga. When he didn’t instantly drown, however, the Harnish prince started to think beyond his fear of water. When he had lost hope of escaping the pirates any other way, Tayy had considered drowning himself in the Marmer Sea. To convince him not to seek his own quiet death in the water, Singer had threatened him with sea monsters. At some point, the prince would remember that threat.
Llesho could have told him that sea monsters were often very nice people. Pearl Bay Dragon and Marmer Sea Dragon were two such creatures who proved the point. He couldn’t be sure what lay beneath them in the caves that honeycombed the hills where they plunged into the sea, however. He kept quiet on that point and so they came to the shallows.
“You can stand up now.” Llesho dropped his feet to the shelf to demonstrate. When he stood, the water came only to his waist.
Tayy did as he was told, thrashing and sputtering as the rest of him sank with his feet. He managed to right himself in short order, however, requiring neither a thump on the back nor assistance getting his legs under him in the knee-deep surf. Overhead, the sea osprey Llesho had sighted before wheeled in a great sweeping circle overhead then banked in a slow glide to return in the direction from which it had come.
“Chewk! Chewk!” She was a female, as Llesho recognized from the markings, and it seemed that in her cries the sea eagle was laughing at them. Definitely Kaydu, he decided, and he’d hoped to keep this tale out of her ear until it was old news.
Now that they had almost reached the shore, Tayy was regaining his cocky assurance. He watched the osprey with a hunter’s appreciation of a great hunting bird, but he hadn’t put together yet that he might know her in another form. “What about Master Den?”
Too soon, Llesho allowed his guard to fall. “He’ll be up on the beach.” They both looked toward land, and that was when Tayy noticed what Llesho or Master Den could have told him from the start. TheShark had grounded with her stern up on the beach. That way her bow guns faced outward to the sea for defense. Her lowest and most vulnerable aft section stayed out of reach not only of attack, but also of storms like the one they’d just escaped. Pirate galleys were made for just such a maneuver, and offered easy escape to dry land for her pirate crew.
“There’s a gate,” Tayy said.
“It appears so,” Llesho agreed.
“And a ladder.” Tayy pointed to the sturdy ship’s ladder by which pirates and slaves alike left the stern for the shore.
“I suppose that’s how they bring on supplies and water.”
A search party returned then, bearing supplies scavenged from the island and confirming Llesho’s guess. He didn’t feel it was necessary to add that Master Den awaited them at the foot of the ladder. Or that the trickster god had reached the same beach without a drop of the lagoon touching even the cuffs of his billowing red-and-yellow breeches.
Moll watched from the deck above. She’d planted her hands on the rail so that she didn’t fall overboard as she craned her neck to watch them soggily drag themselves to shore.
“Did you have a nice swim?” Her laugh bounced off the hillsides, echoing in the air. Even the slaves hauling water from the stream hidden among the trees could hear, and their own laughter rippled back as the story was passed along.
“He tricked me!” Prince Tayyichiut had shown little of the haughty temperament of a royal since leaving the camp of the Qubal ulus on his adventure. Now he spluttered in outrage, his face growing very red under the streaming water from the lagoon that dripped from his hair. “I can’t believe he tricked me into jumping into the lagoon!”
Llesho figured he’d have to calm Tayy down soon or they’d find themselves chained to a rowing bench again. “He’s the trickster god,” he pointed out. “That’s what he does.”
He let Prince Tayy figure it out for himself, saying nothing about his own shaken faith in his teacher. Deciding a young prince needed a lesson in sinking or swimming was one thing. But the pirates had killed innocent travelers, children. He couldn’t forgive the old trickster for being a part of that, especially as he’d been present during the attack on theGuiding Star.
“That makes it all right, then? We are nearly killed, and the only answer you have is that he just does that?”
Stalling for time to sort his thoughts, Llesho reached down and scooped a bit of sand from the beach. Drying his hands on it, he gave the only real explanation he had. “It’s his way as a teacher. If you ask yourself why he played that trick at this moment, you will come to understand a little more of what he has been doing to me for the past three cycles of the sun, and to Shou before us, for that matter.”
“Well, not to me, he doesn’t. My people have fought wars for insults less grievous than his.”
“The pupil doesn’t choose the lesson.” They hadn’t been in danger of death at any point in their swim to shore, of course, but that wasn’t the part of Tayy’s rant that grabbed hold and refused to let go.
“Going to war over an insult put your clan in my debt!” The accusation brought Tayy’s chin up on the defensive, but slowly the meaning of the angry words they had said to each other sank in.
Tayy let go of his frustration with a long sigh. “I’m all wet,” he said.
“So am I. I never said he was an easy teacher.”
“The tales make adventures sound like so much fun,” Tayy complained, though with considerably less heat. “Storytellers never mention the cold and wet and hungry part, or the drowning part.”
“If they did,” Llesho pointed out reasonably, “no one would go on quests. Then where would the new tales come from?”
“Well, when they tell this one, I hope they leave out the falling in the water bit.”
“Don’t worry,” Llesho assured him, “Once they polish up the adventure with embellishments for art’s sake, you will have risked your life overboard in high seas to save a princess. There’s always a princess in tales. The embarrassing parts will be forgotten forever.”
“You’d better be right.”
“There you are!” Master Den slogged toward them through the sand, but Prince Tayy was in no mood for conversation with the trickster god just yet. He set his gaze on the trees above the sandy shore with distaste. “We’re going to need food and water.” He didn’t wait, but headed for the line of palm trees that marked the start of the forest.
“Was it something I said?” Master Den asked, innocently enough, though he had that twinkle that always made Llesho nervous.
“He’ll survive,” Llesho asserted. Tayy already had, but he wasn’t ready to tell Master Den that yet. “Others on this journey, innocents who did nothing to deserve their fate, have not. I need to think about that. Alone.” Throwing a disgusted look over his shoulder, he followed Tayy. He hadn’t gone more than halfway up the beach, however, when a ragged shadow dark as the deep of night blotted out the light of Great Sun. The creature, for Llesho could make out the line of outspread wings and the trailing darkness of its tail, let go a cry that thundered off the h
illsides and rattled among the trees. Pirates fled in terror, or fell on their faces in the sand, as if they could escape the terrifying presence that had invaded the island. Even the birds in the trees and the insects chittering beneath the carpet of rotting leaves fell still as if in silence they might escape notice of this terrible invader.
In a moment it was gone, but Llesho guessed what it must be and started to run toward the forest where it had disappeared. Master Markko, blown across the vast sea as they had been themselves, had fetched up on the same hopeful shore. And Llesho had sent Tayy alone into the forest to look for water.
“Ahhh!” A high, shrill, pain-filled cry startled the birds out of the trees who added their own dismayed calls to the afternoon. Tayy screamed again, a sound so terrible that it cut through the sudden cacophony of birds and pirates like an icy wind.
“Ahhh!”
Almost without thinking, Llesho drew his spear with one hand and his Thebin knife with the other. He started to run.
“What’s happened?” When the shadow didn’t return, oarsmen escaping the watchful lash of the pirates burst from the woods. They dropped their water kegs and their nets full of fruits and small animals as they ran, seeking the protection of the ship.
Master Den was running, too, faster than someone his size ought to be able to move. Llesho picked up his pace. Prince Tayy was his responsibility, and he would not let the trickster god arrive first at the site of whatever had befallen him. Because he wasn’t certain what Master Den’s intentions were.
Chapter Twenty-two
INTO THE forest Llesho followed that terrible sound. Animals had made a sandy path and he followed it, leaping over trailing vines that crossed his path and swatting with his spear at low-hanging branches that brushed his temples as he dashed by them. He’d done this before on Pearl Island, once trying to run away from his own life and then in long training sessions for the arena. The terrain was rockier here and the hills climbed more sharply, but he didn’t let that slow him down.
Curt Benjamin - [Seven Brothers 03] - The Gates of Heaven Page 29