The Reavers of Skaith-Volume III of The Book of Skaith

by Leigh Brackett

  Now, at last, they had reached the sea; and had discovered a particularly nasty village plastered to the cliffs below the place where the Fallarin perched. Tiny round houses, whitened with the droppings of a million flying things until they looked like lumps of guano, clung to the naked rock on both sides of a narrow cleft, climbing up from a little harbor on a series of shallow steps. At the foot of the steps, on the harbor side, was a minute inn that looked villainous even though Alderyk could see nothing of it but its peaked roof. He was not versed in the lore of harbors, but this one seemed adequately deep and was sheltered by a curving mole. Only one thing was visibly wrong with it: it had no boats.

  Alderyk spread his wings wider. A damp and sluggish breeze was moving inward from the sea. He caught it in his wings and it pressed against him, ruffling his fur. It smelled of salt and fishy things. It was a lazy breeze, and stupid, but it could talk. He stroked it, and listened.

  Vaybars, beside him, was doing the same thing. So were the four other Fallarin, strung out along the cliff wherever their fancy took them. The breeze talked to them all, glad of the company; small, soft, indolent talk, in which they could hear the lapping of water against hollow hulls, the slatting of idle sails and slack cordage.

  From a little distance, Halk watched them and waited with scant patience.

  The rest of the party, concealed in the fringes of the jungle that grew almost to the cliff edge, lay and eased their weary bones—all but Tuchvar, who fussed with the hounds.

  The tropic heat made the Northhounds miserable, and there had been a lack of proper food. Tuchvar caressed their coats and told them how all would be well as soon as they were at sea aboard the boat. Boat was an entirely strange concept to them. Sea they had looked at and sniffed at from the edge of the cliff, and they had not liked it.

  Gerrith sat beside Halk, her eyes closed, her hands lax. Perhaps she slept. Perhaps she saw things behind or beyond the closed lids.

  Halk had been reared, in the ancient tradition of his city-state, to regard the wise woman of Irnan as an infallible oracle, or at least one to be taken very seriously. He had done so in regard to the prophecy of the Dark Man made by Gerrith's mother, and in spite of his doubts and bitter despair the Citadel of the Lords Protector had fallen, the siege of Irnan had been lifted, and the gates of the stars had been opened—almost. Almost. Which was worse than not at all, so that the prophecy had at last been proved false, a waste of labor and bloodshed and dying. Now this Gerrith had prophesied, and he could neither quite deny that prophecy nor quite believe in it. If the mantle of truth had descended upon Gerrith's shoulders, and there was still a chance that Irnan might be freed from the tyranny of Mother Skaith and her Lords Protector, then he must do all within his power to bring about that end.

  On the other hand, Gerrith was a woman in love with a man, and who could say how much that love might color her visions?

  Holding his sword across his knees, Halk polished the long blade with a bit of silk and thought about his shield-mate Breca, and how she had died with Thyra's cold iron in her belly, and how the Thyrans had tossed her to the Outdwellers as one tosses offal to hungry dogs.

  Stark had led them to Thyra. Another man might have found a better way to the Citadel. He, Halk, might have found a better way, if the prophecy had named him as the savior of Irnan—and why not he, rather than a stranger, an alien outsider from the gods-knew-where among the stars? This had rankled in him from the beginning, so that he was torn between a desire for Stark to succeed because of Irnan, and a desire for Stark to be defeated because he had no right to be what he was. He blamed Stark for Breca's death. He had wanted a hundred times to kill him, and each time had been forced to stay his hand for the sake of Irnan. This time, if the prophecy was false and Stark should fail again, nothing but the death of one of them would save Stark from the weight of this blade.

  Gerd lifted his head and growled, taking the thought from Halk's mind, and Halk glared back into the demon eyes and said, Not even you, hellhound. If Stark can withstand you, so can I. And he ran his thumb along the cutting edge.

  Alderyk came in from the cliff. "There are boats," he said. "Mostly small, but one is big enough for us."

  "Where is this boat?"

  Alderyk gestured vaguely. "Out, with the small ones. It leads them. They're on some kind of hunt."

  "Fishing."

  "Very well, fishing. They will not return to the harbor before nightfall."

  Gerrith said, "Ours must return now." She opened her eyes and looked at Alderyk and said again, "Now."

  "We are too few to call great tempests," Alderyk said. "But we will do what we may."

  He returned to the cliff. The six Fallarin went apart and gathered themselves into a close group, with the Tarf standing guard about them. They spread their wings, gleaming red-brown in the sunlight, and began to sing to the little breeze that blew so soft and sluggish from the sea.

  Halk could barely hear the song, but it had a quality of command, a compelling insistence that stirred deep wellsprings somewhere within his unimaginative soul. He disliked the Fallarin, as he disliked most things that forced him to stretch his mind a little wider. His passionate attachment to the cause of emigration had been purely pragmatic, based upon hatred of the slave's life his people led under the Wandsmen and the belief that life somewhere else would be better. His desire for the star-roads had held nothing of wonder. When he thought of the actual physical business of taking himself bodily to another world, he was filled with loathing.

  Now he could not repress a slight shudder as the breeze began to strengthen.

  Out at sea, beyond a jutting headland to the south, the fishing fleet felt a change. It was slight at first. The folk in the small boats, spread out with weighted nets dragging between them, did not notice it at all.

  On the large boat, pride and protector of the fleet, the rowers snored on their benches and the master and his mate played languidly at dice beneath an awning.

  The boat was designed for a twofold use—as a fighting ship to defend the fleet from marauders, human and otherwise, and as a transport ship to move the catch to market. Like most compromises, she left much to be desired in both departments. Still, she floated. She carried her own little skiff, and she had a splendid figurehead in the shape of a guardian spirit, who fronted the waves so defiantly that she appeared to have a rudder at both ends.

  The big lugsail, which had been flapping listless as a bedsheet in the light breeze, began to fill. The yard swung. Cordage snapped taut, rattling through the blocks.

  The master took a long pull at a stone bottle and considered whether he ought to rouse the crew and go through the tiresome business of lowering the sail—which would mean that it must then be raised again later on, an even more tiresome business. He decided to wait. The breeze might drop again. If it did not, he could simply slack off on the tackle.

  The breeze did not drop. It became a wind.

  The boat began to move.

  The master shouted. The crew roused up. The rowers woke.

  The wind was like a great peremptory hand, pushing. They could see the mark of it across the water, a cat's-paw a mile long and straight as an arrow, riffled with whitecaps. They looked at it and were terrified, because it was aimed solely at them and did not so much as brush even one of the small craft.

  The boat quickened. Her thick mast creaked with strain. White water began to break beneath her heavy forefoot.

  Master and crew cried out upon the Sea-Our-Mother and rushed to get the sail down.

  The wind split itself into whips and clubs and drove them off the deck, to cower in the fishy stink below. Rowers struggled with their sweeps and were knocked from the benches. Like a demented thing the boat galloped through the water, flinging up spray and burying the guardian figurehead above his pride.

  The fisher folk sat in their small craft with their nets, in a calm sea, watching their flagship rush away in the grip of the eerie wind. They watched the long, wild cat
's-paw follow on behind, so that all the sea was still again after it had passed. They cried out very loudly to the Sea-Our-Mother, and at each other. Then they hauled in their nets, dumping what catch they had as an offering, and began to row quickly for the nearest shore.

  On the cliff above the harbor, Halk and Gerrith looked out to sea. The wind whipped their clothing and tossed their hair. Away to their left the Fallarin continued to sing their hypnotic, commanding song, beating their wings to the cadence.

  The boat came in sight around the headland, with its pregnant sail and its wake of whitecaps.

  It set straight in for the harbor, and Halk warned furiously, "If they're not careful, they'll pile her onto the mole."

  Below, in the village, someone shouted. People ran from the houses, an ill-favored folk, and dirty, for all they wore ornaments of sea-pearls. They stood on the harbor steps and stared, their voices rising shrill like the clatter of seabirds disturbed in their nesting place.

  The wind quirked and shifted, sending the boat staggering safely into harbor.

  The Fallarin ceased their singing. Their wings closed. The wind dropped. The boat drifted peacefully. A straggle of oars began to splash, working her into the mooring place by the mole.

  The villagers began to stream down the steps. Men ran out along the mole to catch the mooring lines. The boat was made fast.

  "Now," said Halk, and the company went down into the cleft, leaving the riding animals behind. The Northhounds led the way. They came to the topmost of the wide steps that made the village street, and went down between the ugly little houses that stank of guano and old fish and less fragrant things.

  Some time before they reached the mole, the villagers forgot the ship and the strangeness of the wind, and made a great confusion of screaming and scattering, of rushing and hiding, away from the terrible hounds and the winged men and the not-men and the cloaked men and the men with bright swords.

  No one hindered these from boarding the boat.

  They cast off and worked her—painfully, for none of them had ever handled oars before—into open water, while the master and the crew watched open-mouthed from the mole or splashed in the water where they had taken refuge overside.

  Gerrith spoke to the Fallarin. "Take us south, my lords, as swiftly as your winds can blow," she said, and her face was white as bone. "They have almost reached the sea."

  13

  The river had widened, spreading itself into a number of channels running between muddy islands. There were more villages and more traffic. Stark and Ashton had managed to stay with the main channel by watching where the bulk of the traffic went and following it. They kept as far away as possible from other craft, and no one had paid them much attention, but by midday the river had become busy enough that they decided to haul out on one of the islands and wait for quieter times.

  "There should be a town ahead somewhere," Ashton said. "Probably at the mouth of the river. We need a proper boat. This hollow log will never get us down the coast."

  When Old Sun had gone to his rest, they set out again, in the brief darkness before the rising of the first cluster. The brown water, black now with a glimmer of stars in it, carried them smoothly. Here and there were boats with lanterns in their bows, where men caught whatever moved by night. Villages were scattered along the bank and on some of the larger islands. The smoke of cooking fires lay in bands across the water, and the sounds of voices came to them, and the evening cries of animals.

  The dugout rounded a bend and suddenly there was nothing—no fishermen, no villages, no lights, no sounds. The men drifted in the silence, wondering.

  The smell of salt water mingled with the river smell, and presently Stark could see an opening-out of the darkness ahead, marked by a spreading fan of turbulence where the rush of the river was blocked by the immovable mass of the sea.

  At the very end of the jungle bank, a black bulk loomed very strangely against the stars.

  "There's no town," said Ashton. "Nothing."

  "That looks like a temple," Stark said. "Perhaps this is all sacred ground."

  Ashton swore. "I counted on a town. We must have a boat, Eric!"

  "There may be boats at the temple. And Simon, keep a sharp eye ahead."

  "Something wrong?"

  "There is always something wrong on Skaith."

  Stark laid the heavy sword ready to hand and made sure the knife at his belt was free. The thick, wet smells of jungle and water imparted nothing to him but their presence, and yet behind them, under them, through them, subliminally, he sensed a faint rankness that stirred his memory and set the hairs prickling at the back of his neck.

  The current slowed as it met the sea, but turbulence tossed the dugout roughly. They paddled in toward the bank.

  "Lights," said Ashton.

  The jungle had thinned. They could see the whole of the huge structure at the land's end. Low down in it were openings where pale lights glimmered. High above, shadowy pinnacles leaned crazily like the masts of a stranded ship, and Stark realized that part of the temple had sunk down and broken away, tilting toward the sea, toward the white water that quarreled and foamed.

  He looked at that white water because he could see now that things moved in it, dark bodies leaping, rolling, frolicking. And he knew why this final stretch of the river was deserted.

  Ashton was searching the bank. "I see a landing, Eric, and boats—two boats."

  "Never mind," said Stark. "Get ashore."

  He dug his paddle deep, fairly lifting the dugout with each stroke.

  Asliton did not question. He bent his shoulders to it. Spray broke over them, soaked them to the skin, filled the bottom of the dugout. The bank was low and bare above the temple landing, but the jungle offered cover not too far away.

  If they could just get ashore, if they could run for it—

  The dugout went over as suddenly as if it had struck a rock.

  It was pitch black under the water, which was filled with a great boiling and thrusting of powerful bodies. Stark fought his way to the surface and saw Ashton's face not ten feet away. He lunged toward it, drawing the knife from his belt.

  Ashton vanished with a strangled cry.

  Other heads appeared in a bobbing circle. They were earless and smooth as the heads of seals, with vestigial noses and the mouths of predators. They looked at Stark with eyes like pearls and they laughed, these bestial Children of the Sea-Our-Mother, with a dreadful echo of lost humanity.

  Stark dived and swam, blindly, furiously, searching for Ashton and knowing that he was not going to find him. The creatures played with him. He was a strong swimmer, but they were better, and there were many of them. And he could not reach them with the knife. They let him up to breathe three times, and they let him see Ashton again, flung up bodily out of the water, still alive. Then he saw nothing more. Webbed and taloned fingers pulled him under. He lost the knife.

  He had once killed a Child of the Sea with his bare hands. Now he tried to do it again, in the roiling dark, grasping at slick-furred bodies that slipped effortlessly away, until his lungs were bursting and the darkness had turned red behind his eyes. This time they did not let him up to breathe.

  He came to lying on hard stone, vomiting water. For a while all he could think of was the need to get air into his lungs. When he was finished strangling and could think again, he saw that he was on the temple landing and that Ashton was retching in a puddle a few feet away while a man in a blue robe pounded on his back. The mutant Children of the Sea-Our-Mother, to the number of a dozen, crouched along the landing, their fur streaming.

  More men in blue robes came from the temple; some of them bore torches. The first of the Three Ladies had risen, so that it was light enough to see by. There was something peculiar about the blue-robes—priests or monks as they might be—something brutish. They shambled in their gait, and their shaven heads showed curious shapes.

  Ashton was breathing again and the man ceased to pound on him, turning to Stark
. His eyes were like the eyes of the Children, milky pearls, and his hands had webs between the taloned fingers.

  "You are off-worlders," he said. "You robbed our temple."

  "Not we," Stark insisted. "Other men." His limbs felt heavy and his body was a hollow shell. Nevertheless, he gathered himself, looking at Ashton. "Why did the Children not kill us?"

  "All who come this way belong to the Mother and must be shared with her. As you will be shared."

  His speech was thick because of the shape of his lips and teeth. He smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile, with the dog teeth sharp and shining.

  "You wish to run, off-worlder? Try. You have two choices—the water, or the land. Which will it be?"

  The Children dripped, laughing, on the stones between Stark and the river. Several of the monks had produced long, thin tubes of carved ivory from beneath their gowns, and the tubes were pointed at Stark. Ivory, wood, or metal, and ornamented or not, a blowgun was a blowgun wherever you found it, and blowguns shot ugly little darts, generally poisoned.

  "It is a safe drug," said the blue-robe. "You will be alive and conscious when the Children share you—for the greater pleasure of the Mother."

  Stark measured his chances of breaking through forty monks unscathed, and decided they were thin. In any case, he could not take Ashton. If he did escape, he might or might not be able to come back and rescue his foster-father. But if he got himself knocked out by a drugged dart, there would be no possibility of escape for either of them.

  He remained where he was, and did not protest when a monk with a human face and no ears came to bind his hands.

  "What are you?" he asked the blue-robe. "Hybrids? Throwbacks? The Children's blood is in you."