Rain Wild Chronicles 02 - Dragon Haven

by Robin Hobb

  Tarman had let him know about the major tributary before he saw it. No change in the river took him unawares. Tarman had felt it early in the day, when he had tasted a change in the water and had informed him. Tarman always preferred a shallow channel, and as the river began to deepen, he had once more hugged the eastern bank. Hours before they reached the junction of the tributaries, long before he actually saw it, Leftrin began to hear it and feel it with Tarman’s senses. When they finally arrived at the merging of the two rivers that fed the Rain Wild River, it was clear which one of them had been the source of both the acid and the wave that had nearly destroyed all of them. The western tributary presented a wide open channel that was littered with debris to either side. Down that chute had rushed the deadly wave, destroying all in its path and leaving the trees and vegetation on its banks festooned with all manner of torn and broken branches and grasses. Sunlight sparkled on the grayish river, and it presented a welcoming vista of straight open waterway.

  A lush delta of tall reeds and bulrushes separated it from the more sedate eastern tributary, a meandering shallow river overhung with vines, the edges choked with coarse grasses and rushes. Without hesitation, the dragons had followed the open channel, staying as close to the shore as they could. They were well ahead of the barge, as always, but the straight river allowed Leftrin to see them, strung out in a long line as they paced on. The hunters had proceeded ahead of them. There in the open waters, the sunlight glittered on the dragons. Golden Mercor led, with immense Kalo right behind him. The other dragons, green and scarlet, lavender and orange and blue, trailed him in a brilliant parade. Relpda the copper dragon and the aptly named Spit brought up the tail end of the dragon’s procession. The straight open channel was sunny and inviting. Easy sailing ahead, and Leftrin suddenly had the feeling that Kelsingra was not that far away. If an ancient Elderling city was to be found, surely it would be up that sunstruck waterway.

  He was anticipating a long afternoon of easy travel when, with a sudden lurch, Tarman veered toward the delta and ran aground. Leftrin stumbled and caught at the railing to keep from falling. A chorus of startled shouts rose from the throats of everyone aboard. “Damn it, Swarge!” Leftrin shouted, and “Wasn’t me!” the tillerman shouted back at him, a tinge of anger in his voice.

  Leftrin leaned over the railing and looked down. There was almost always a sandbar whenever two bodies of moving water met—always a delta of some sort. Tarman knew that, as did every riverman aboard him. Tarman knew it, and Tarman never ran aground. Hadn’t for years, even before Leftrin had had the opportunity to modify him. Yet there they were, stuck fast in mud, with the ship making no effort at all to free himself. It made no sense.

  He leaned on the railing, growled deep in his throat. “Tarman. What are you doing?”

  He felt no response from the ship that he could decipher. He was well and truly wedged on the muddy bottom.

  “Captain?” It was Hennesey, confusion all over his face.

  “I don’t know,” he replied quietly to the mate’s unvoiced question. He gave an exasperated sigh. “Get the extra poles out. The keepers may as well earn their keep today. Let’s get off this mudbank and back on our way.”

  “Aye, sir,” Hennesey responded and began to shout his relay of the orders. Leftrin gave the ship’s railing a brief squeeze. “We’ll have you off this bar and under way again soon enough,” he promised Tarman quietly. But as he lifted his hands away, he wondered if he felt assent or amusement from his ship.

  THE KEEPERS GATHERED on the forward deck, summoned by Hennesey’s shouted orders. Thymara had been working in the galley, trying to scrub ancient burned-on residue from the bottoms of the ship’s pots, when the sudden lurch had tossed her against the galley table. She’d hurried out to see what the fuss was about and was shocked to find they were stuck. It had never happened before: they had passed numerous small tributaries feeding into the Rain Wild River. Some had been small streams wending through the trees and out to dump into the river. Others had been wide rivers cutting their own boggy paths through the forest before adding their waters to the river. Tarman never got stuck in any of their deltas. But this was different.

  To the left was an immense river with a wide, free-running channel down its center. It was obvious that it had recently been a flood channel. Damaged trees with dangling limbs and mud-daubed debris lined the shores of it. The color of the water was definitely lighter as it fed into the main channel and dispersed. Up that river was the source of both the torrent that had nearly killed them all and the acid that colored the waters of the Rain Wild River white. The river and the forest that bound it to either side ran off into an unimaginable distance. A bluish shadow against the sky at the far horizon might have been mountains, or her imagination. The dragons were silhouettes against that horizon as they made their way upriver.

  As Thymara watched, a flock of birds with yellow-barred tails rose as one from the trees, fluttered for a distance, and then resettled. The angry yowl of a frustrated hunting cat followed them. She smiled. The lush and untouched vista attracted her. She suspected both hunting and gathering would be easier there. She wished they were staying here for the night. If they were, she’d explore in that direction. With no weapons or fishing gear of her own left, fruit and vegetables had been the best she could offer her fellows. She longed to borrow gear from Greft’s hoard, but he hadn’t offered it to anyone and she would not ask.

  Thymara had found a spot along the bow railing to survey the divergence of the waters. Now she turned back to look at the company assembling on the forward deck to look over the side. Hennesey and Swarge were bringing out the spare poles and passing them out to the stronger keepers. Tats received his grinning. She suddenly suspected he’d always wanted the chance to try his hand with one.

  For an instant, she saw them all as strangers. There were ten keepers instead of the dozen they’d begun with. All of them were more ragged and weathered than they had been. The boys had all grown, and most had the shape and muscles of men now. They moved differently than when she’d first met them; they moved like people who worked on water and land rather than as tree dwellers. Sylve, she realized, had grown and was acquiring the shape of a woman. Harrikin still was her shadow; they seemed content with each other’s company despite the disparity in their ages. Thymara had never mustered the courage to ask Sylve if she knew that Greft had arranged the match. Over the last few days, she’d decided it didn’t really matter. They seemed well suited to each other; what did it matter who had decreed it?

  Jerd stood to one side, watching the activity. Her face was pale. Despite Jerd’s frequent patting of her belly and posturing, she was not showing much of her pregnancy yet, save in her temperament. She had become unpleasantly bitchy to everyone of late. She had near-constant morning sickness and complained of the way the boat smelled and the food tasted and of the constant motion. It would have been easier to be sympathetic to her, Thymara thought, if she were not so insistent that everyone else’s concerns should give way to her whining. If her pregnancy were typical of the state, Thymara wanted nothing to do with childbearing. Even Greft had begun to weary of Jerd’s constant nipping at him. Twice she had heard him reply to her roughly, and each time Jerd had been both furious and tearful. Once he had turned on her almost savagely, asking her if she thought she was the only one in pain from a changing body. Alum had stood up and Thymara had thought he would interfere. But before it came to that, Jerd had run off wailing, to cower in the galley and weep while Greft had sourly declared he’d rather face a gallator than “that girl” right now.

  The crew of the ship had changed almost as much as the keepers had. Thymara had become more aware of both Skelly and Davvie as people. It was often obvious that they longed to socialize more with the keepers; they were, after all, of an age with most of them. Captain Leftrin had tried to keep those boundaries intact, but there had been some breaches. She knew that Alum was infatuated with Skelly, and that both had been rebuked for
fraternizing. Davvie’s growing friendship with Lecter appeared to be tacitly ignored by all, which did not seem fair to her. But then, she thought with a wry grin, Captain Leftrin rarely consulted with her on what she thought about how he ran his ship.

  Alise had come out on the deck. She stood on the roof of the deckhouse with her sketchbook, capturing the moment. Thymara looked at her and scarcely recognized the fine Bingtown lady she had first seen at Cassarick. She had abandoned her wide-brimmed hats, and her smooth and gleaming hair was a thing of the past. The sun and wind had tanned her skin and multiplied her freckles. Her clothing showed plainly the hard use she had put it to. There were patches on the knees of her trousers, and the hems were frayed out. She wore the cuffs of her shirts rolled back now, and her hands and arms had browned in the sun. For all that, even during the days when she seemed quiet and sad, she seemed more alive and real than when Thymara had first met her. Her companion, Sedric, however, reminded Thymara of a bright bird in a molt. All his lovely colors and fine manners had dropped away from him. He said little to her anymore, but he cared for his new dragon with a clumsy sincerity that Thymara found touching. The little copper was blossoming under his care and had become something of a chatterbox when he was not around to occupy her. Her language and thoughts came clearer now, and cleansed of her parasites, she was growing as rapidly as her limited diet allowed.

  She was not the only dragon who had changed since the big wave. The silver, Spit as he now called himself, was almost dangerous. Quick-tempered and fully venomed, he had already accidentally scalded Boxter. Boxter had not done anything to provoke him, except to be in the area when Spit became angry with one of the other dragons. Mercor had descended quickly, roaring at Spit. Luckily for Boxter, he had only received a drift rather than a direct spray of dragon venom. His arm was burned, but he’d torn his shirt off quickly enough that he’d avoided worse injury. Restraining his own dragon from going after Spit had demanded most of his effort. It was only later that the other keepers had treated and bound his arm for him. If he had not already been scaled, the damage would have been much greater.

  Some of the dragons were discontented and weary of traveling, others as determined as when they had begun. Their attitudes to the journey varied as much as their attitudes toward their keepers. Some seemed to have grown very close to their keepers. Mercor and Sylve reminded Thymara of an old married couple. They knew each other well and were very content with each other’s company. She and Sintara had still not resolved their differences, and with every passing day, she wondered if they would. The dragon seemed angry with her, but she could not decide what the original basis for it was. Sintara still asserted the right to order her about, to command her to groom her or remove parasites from around her eyes. Thymara, true to her contract, cared for the dragon. Despite Sintara’s annoyance with her, she felt their bond had grown stronger; she was much more aware of the dragon’s needs, and when Sintara spoke to her, the meaning went far beyond words. Something stronger and deeper than affection bound them to each other. The linking was not always comfortable for either of them, but it was real. Why it existed was a conundrum. Alise still visited the dragon, but Sintara was even less attentive to her. Strange to say, Alise did not seem to take it to heart. Thymara sometimes wondered what had distracted her from the dragon, but most often took it to mean that Alise had realized, as she had, that she was simply not that important to the dragon.

  Baliper was a lonely soul without Warken. The keepers took turns grooming him, but he spoke little to any of them and took small interest in any of the humans. Some of the other dragons seemed to understand his mourning; others seemed to find him weak because of it. Jerd’s Veras was not pleased with her keeper’s lack of attention to her and didn’t care who knew. Greft tended Kalo still, but in a perfunctory way, and Kalo had been in a period of black temper for almost a week. Something, Thymara felt, was brewing among the dragons, something they had not shared with their keepers. She dreaded what it might be. When she let her thoughts wander, she considered every possibility from the dragons simply abandoning them to the dragons turning on them and eating them. By day, such imaginings seemed silly. Not so in the dead of night.

  “You! Thymara! Think you’re decorative? There’s a pole left. Get on the end of it.”

  Hennesey’s order jarred her from her daydreaming. She felt a blush rise as she hurried forward to pick up the last available pole. Jerd still stood to one side, a hand on her belly. Sylve stood near her, arms folded, mouth set in disapproval. Obviously she had expected to be part of the pole crew despite her diminutive size.

  Hennesey was still barking orders. “I don’t expect you to know what you’re doing, but I expect you to help. It’s pretty simple. Shove the pole down into the mud. When I yell, everyone pushes. It shouldn’t take much to get us off. Once we’re clear of the mud, bring your poles back on board without braining each other, and let the crew take over. Ready?”

  Thymara had found a place alongside Skelly. The deckhand grinned at her. “Don’t worry, sis. This ought to be easy. Then you can get back to those pots in the galley.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m longing to do that,” Thymara assured her, returning her grin. She looked at Skelly’s hands, copied her grip on the pole and her stance. The deckhand gave her an approving nod.

  “Now push!” Hennesey shouted, and they all strained.

  The boat rocked, shifted, rocked again as they grunted and strained.

  And the Tarman settled in deeper.

  THE LONG AFTERNOON passed very slowly.

  The crew and the keepers manned their poles. They shoved, the barge moved slightly and dug in again. Long after it was apparent to Leftrin that Tarman was opposing their efforts to free him, he stubbornly kept his crew at work. First Hennesey called him aside, then Swarge and Bellin together approached him. Skelly read his humor and left him alone. His replies to each query were terse. Yes, he could see that the barge was deliberately digging in. Yes, he could tell it was not accidental. No, he didn’t want to stop trying. And no, he had no idea what was upsetting the ship.

  In all the family history of Tarman, Leftrin had never heard of him directly defying his captain’s will. He couldn’t quite believe this was happening. “Ship, what ails you?” he muttered as he clutched the aft railing. But there was too much going on around him. The clustered and chattering keepers, the anxious crew, and Leftrin’s own frustration clouded his ability to read his ship. Tarman conveyed by turns agitation when they tried to move him and determination as he dug in deeper.

  More than once that day, Leftrin had silently set his hands to the railing and tried to find out what was troubling his ship. Demanding to know what was wrong only brought an echo from his ship that this is wrong.

  At one point, he bellowed aloud in frustration, “How is it wrong?”

  All heads turned to him, Skelly gaping in shock. The only response he felt from Tarman made no sense. Water wrong, river wrong. It made no sense. So Leftrin dug his heels in as firmly as Tarman’s claws were set in the bottom and kept crew and keepers busy at trying to rip the barge free. Twice the barge swung wide and almost came free, only to suddenly dig in at the other end. It was oil on the flames of his frustration to sense his ship’s amusement at the humans’ puny efforts.

  He had given the pole handlers a break when Swarge and Hennesey came at him together. “Cap, we think it might have something to do with the new, uh, hull design.”

  That from Swarge, and then Hennesey added, “And if it does, we might be better off to find out what’s troubling Tarman before we insist on having our own way.”

  He was still formulating an answer to that when someone shouted, “Keeper boats are coming back, hunters, too. And the dragons are headed back toward us.”

  He glanced up at the sky, and then at the approaching boats and dragons. The dragons and hunters must have finally realized the barge wasn’t following them. They were returning. They’d lose most of a day’s travel at a time when
supplies were running low. He wasn’t pleased. He looked over at his crew. This was probably the hardest day they’d put in since the barge had been modified. They were exhausted and worried. The keepers looked weary. He gave in.

  “Put the poles up. Even if we got free tonight, we’d just have to find a good place to overnight. So, we’ll stay here. Keepers, you can go ashore, see what you can find for firewood, make a blaze. Let’s all take a break, and I’ll have a fresh look at things in the morning.” He turned and walked away from their puzzled stares. It did not help that he sensed Tarman’s profound satisfaction at getting his own way.

  ALISE SAW THYMARA clambering over the railing and called out to her hastily, “May I go with you?”

  Thymara stopped, startled. She had a bag slung over her shoulder and her hair, freshly fastened into long black braids, had been tied in a bundle at the back of her head. “I’ve already been to check on Sintara. I’m going to use what’s left of the light to look at the other tributary.”

  “I’d guessed that. May I go with you, please?” Alise put a bit of emphasis on the last word. She’d already seen the girl’s reluctance.

  “If you wish.” Thymara sounded more resigned than welcoming. She was still missing her friend, Alise supposed.

  She followed the Rain Wild girl to the railing and climbed down after her to the muddy shore. The dragons had taken refuge for the evening on the delta between the two rivers and were rapidly trampling the vegetation into oblivion. Even so, it was the most pleasant place they had stopped at for a while. Scattered white trees with papery bark grew on almost dry land. Behind them a forest grew that looked almost familiar to Alise—a woodland of smaller trees with open spaces between them.