Skeen's Leap

by Clayton, Jo;

  “No sweat,” he said; he scowled at the slime on the blade and called one of the crew to take it below and scrub it clean. “That going to happen again?”

  “I doubt it. Min don’t like dying.”

  “Who does.”

  So it went, Min and Kalakal Ravvayad attacking in turns or together, attacking and dying. Aggitj and Min, Scholar and Thief, Skirrik boy and Chalarosh child … those encounters shaped them, made them a formidable fighting band. And as the days passed, what the Aggitj and Chulji and even Pegwai had joined in a spirit in a spirit of careless adventure, the search for the Ykx and the opening of the Stranger’s Gate became something taken very seriously indeed. Otherwise Timka and the Boy had no future at all. Even Skeen who had never quite believed in this business, but started on the trek because she had to do something or go crazy sitting around and stagnating, even Skeen found her attitude changing; the Key to the Gate was just about her only way of sloughing the responsibilities she’d collected. And Tibo, Tibo, where are you? What are you doing now? Who are you with? Where, where is Picarefy?

  Port to port to port. Round the curve of the Tail peninsula. The ports gradually changed, turning orderly and more open, the people in them colonists rather than outcasts, families and clans of the impatient and the landless. At the first of these towns Maggí called the Crew together and warned them to remember what happened the last time they hit this place, and any fines she had to pay would come out of their hides.

  Port to port to port along the north coast of the Halijara sea until they reached Karolsey at the mouth of the Vraditio River. Lake Sydo was a huge irregular body of water in the geographical center of the Suur Yarrik; a number of rivers wound south from that lake, one of them Shemu (the river Perinpar Dih traveled up when he took his rescued Ykx home). The Vraditio was much shorter, but it was a cranky river with a lot of low falls and boulder strewn rapids and it curved around a vast coastal swamp filled with hostile Nagamar. The Company planned to ride up the Vraditio River to the Lake and talk the Ykx into sending them down the Shemu to Cida Fennakin.

  IT’S WINDING DOWN, THE TRAVELING IS ALMOST DONE, THE QUESTION WAITS ITS ANSWER.

  or

  DON’T TALK TO ME, I BITE.

  Maggí took Skeen and Pegwai through Karolsey to the sparsely settled North Hills section and pulled the bell rope at a large compound; over the clangor of the bell they heard children’s laughter, shouts, a name called over and over. A wicket opened in one leaf of a massive double gate, showing the side of a man’s head as he yelled over his shoulder for silence. He faced around (there was a slight diminution of the noise behind him) presenting a smiling Balayar face. The smile broadened to a beaming grin. “Maggí Solitaire! A moment, a moment.” The wicket slammed shut and a moment later the gate opened enough to emit a short rotund man. He bounced over to Maggí, hugged her, bounced back, moved his eyes from Skeen to Pegwai, raised his brows.

  Maggí chuckled. “May we come in, Sogan?”

  “Oh. Yes, yes, don’t mind the children; Zenica’s at the market yet with Mai and Lanco.” He backed through the gate, gesturing for them to follow.

  The enclosure burgeoned, teemed, swelled with life; trees, shrubs, flowers, small furry animals, almost as many birds as there were leaves, and children everywhere. They followed Sogan, wading through waves of vigorous life, as he led them into the house and out again into a smaller sparer garden. He got them seated on benches and offered them wine cider tea fruitade herb tisane until Maggí stopped the flow of hospitality with a lifted hand. “Later, friend,” she said, “there’s plenty of time for that. Now is the time for listening.”

  She introduced Skeen and Pegwai and rapidly sketched out their quest, the dangers they brought with them and what they were going to need to continue their journey. “So,” she finished, “What do you say, my friend? Can you help them?”

  “Magí, Maggí, you never could make much of a story. What a story this is. Ho, what a story, I have to know it all, every nuance.” He leaned forward, focusing all his intensity on Pegwai. “You must, you must tell me the end, oh Scholar, so Nanojan can sing the whole.” He bubbled over with laughter at the blank astonishment on Pegwai’s face. “Nanojan Sogan is who you see, my dear, Nanojan the ancient and decrepit, dependent on the charity of children and the joyous strength of Zenica the Pallah dancer. You will tell me, say you will.”

  Pegwai opened and closed his mouth but no sound came forth; awkward in a way he’d never been before, he came all anyhow to his feet, stumbled across the short space between the benches and fell to his knees in front of the startled old Balayar. He dipped his head to the tiles then straightened. “I have read … I have read everything the Lumat has of yours, oh Master. I have … I had never hoped … no one said.…” He swallowed and after a moment achieved coherence. “I would be honored, oh Master; whatever happens, I will try to see you have my notes and if I reach the Lumat safe, I’ll send you everything from here to there.” He got to his feet, his natural ease returned, and laughed a laugh to match Sogan’s. “Nanojan the Singer. I begin to think young Chulji is wiser than he knows; he said when he joined us that poets would sing about our quest.” He settled himself back on his bench. “Maggí, we can’t.…”

  “Endanger the ancient poet?” Sogan made his soft bubbling chuckle. “Oh Scholar, oh Pegwai Dih. No no, I will not have it. I will talk to you all, especially the Boy. The children will love him, yes yes. Two? Yes, two are Chalarosh also, orphans out of the Tail. He’s a nice boy? He won’t bite? Then that’s settled, you’ll stay here until your gear is ready and Zenica can find you a proper guide.”

  Maggí cleared her throat. “Perhaps we’d better wait for Zenica, old friend; she might not want a handful of strays landed on her without warning.”

  Sogan sighed and shook his head. “Oh Maggí Solitaire, oh Solitaire, you miss too much.”

  “Now, Sogan, who’re you trying to push on me this time? Give it up, my friend. What I miss, I don’t miss, if you see my meaning. And to return to more apposite topics, it’s not only the old poet who’d risk danger. What about the children? Ravvayad out to kill a six year old would hardly spare another.”

  He made a tossing gesture with both hands. “Lifefire burns as well as blesses; if it be, so be it.”

  Maggí got to her feet. “Well, old friend, we will spend the night on my ship and come again tomorrow this time. Think over what you’ve heard and talk this over with Zenica. We want your aid in finding a guide and outfitting the Company, but there’s no need to do more unless you are sure you know what you are doing.”

  MARCHING ON TO APODOSIS.

  or

  OH MY ACHING SADDLE SORES.

  Dinner in Maggí’s quarters. Maggí and Skeen making last minute plots. The others are elsewhere eating at Ship’s Table with the half dozen traders now occupying the other cabins.

  “Cida Fennakan,” Maggí murmured. “I’ve never made it that far west. Not a good place, Skeen, you want to watch yourself. Funor run it. Rogue males.” She looked thoughtfully at her glass. “Might make a new market. I don’t know. Couldn’t be much worse than Kulchikan. The thing is, I’ve got no contacts there. Not yet.” She smiled at Skeen. “Friendship is friendship, but I’ve got a ship to consider. So, same price to meet you there as to bring you here.”

  Skeen tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “Why not. I’ll have to work anyway once we get there.”

  “It’s more than the ship, Skeen.” Maggí gazed at the wall, eyes unfocused. “I’ve got a place,” she said softy, “a beautiful green valley where no one, comes but me. Where my daughters live. I’ve got a flock of children there. Like Sogan and Zenica. And two of them are daughters of my body, got because I wanted them; their fathers know nothing about them. They depend on me, the children and the quiet folk I found to live there and take care of them.” She blinked, sat straighter. “I know I don’t need to ask you not to say anything.” She sighed. “There are times when I want desperately to lay all this
down,” she waved her hand in an including circle, “when one more fight is that fight too many, especially when it’s something stupid like some man trying to tromp me just because I’m a woman. Ah well, that feeling doesn’t last long. Soon as I’ve had a good night’s sleep, a hot meal, and the hangover has settled to a dull throb, I know very well I’d last maybe six months before I had to get out and do something.”

  Next afternoon, before she left the Company at Sogan’s house, Maggí took Chulji aside. “Come along with me, young Min, join the Crew and work for shares as well as five coppers a day flying fee. This is the smoothest trip we’ve had down the Tail, and the most profitable. And I know Hammorianet who’s High Mother of the Nest at the jet mine. With a little maneuvering there’s a good possibility I can get you a discount on the jet she produces.”

  Chulji’s antennas fluttered and his mouth parts clicked together; he jittered around, watched the Boy and the Beast for a moment, swung back. “I really wish …” he started, reached out and touched Maggí’s arm very gently. “I can’t come with you now, Captain.” He clicked his mouth parts in frustration. “I can’t leave until I know whether the Ykx will give Skeen the Key to the Gate. The Boy.…”

  Maggí took his gripper and smiled at him. “Loyalty isn’t something to be ashamed of. We’ll be glad to have you soon as you’re free.” Her smile widened to a grin. “Not a surplus of Min about willing to run around with a mixed bunch like my crew. We aren’t exactly respectable, young friend.”

  With Nanojan’s reservoir of good will and Zenica’s energetic efforts and Skeen’s bag of gold (rapidly depleting), the Company collected supplies and mounts for the trip upriver and in two days were ready to leave—except for the guide. Few on the coast had much idea what lay inland. The Plains Min were up there somewhere and did not welcome visitors; in the fringe lands of the Hill Country between Min and coast colonies were outcasts, hunters and trappers, hermits and mountain men, and bands of raiders who swept down on outlying farmsteads and mining settlements. And on the far side of the river was the Great Swamp; everyone but Nagamar who tried passing through there went down with fever or died from the bites of the poisonous leggy serpents, or had their flesh stripped from their bones by any of a hundred variations of the kirrpitts that were such a menace along the Tail, or had eggs laid deep in their muscle by bore-worms and were eaten alive by the larva that hatched from these. Not a place to explore for the pleasure of it. In spite of the dangers of Swamp and Hill Country, there were men in Karolsey who’d go anywhere there was a promise of trouble, excitement, and profit.

  On the third day Zenica produced a possible guide. He’d been to the Lakelands before, he was one of the semi-wild wanderers moving from wilderness to town and back, trading for furs with trappers who couldn’t get into town for some reason, touching the fringes of Plains Min territory and trading with them, now and then wheedling something out of the Ykx. He confirmed the existence of a filled Gather on the eastern shore of Lake Sydo (Pegwai nearly flew out of his skin with the news, but Skeen was more ambivalent). The man was irritated that someone else knew about the Ykx, but was reconciled to it when Pegwai informed him that the Tanul Lumat know about that Gather before he arrived in this world. Zenica sent him to the Quiet Garden to talk with Skeen and settle the terms of his employment.

  He came in silent and stiffly hostile, a small man covered with honey-amber fur that darkened in a mask about his eyes and over his ears; he stared at her from behind the blue foil eyes of a high bred cat. Another singling Pass-Through. There were more of them about this place than Skeen had expected. She wondered why the Honjiukum didn’t realize there was something funny about that valley … hunh! Maybe they did. Maybe I really did manage to fox them with the hijjik stampede and they headed for the valley just in case. She looked up as the man stopped in front of her. “Sujippyo?”

  His expression didn’t change. “Torska?”

  Skeen smiled. “Now that we’ve got that settled, what’re you going to cost me?”

  “Maybe nothing.”

  “True. We wouldn’t have to pay the river and it’ll take us where we want to go. But a river’s got no tongue to tell us about snags ahead. It’d be worth something to know about those. Not all that much, we’ve got two Min to fly scout for us. And a scholar for strategy and me for all round meanness. This Pass-Through plans to pass back, sujippyo, and she’d tromp flat anyone who tries to stop her.” She stopped talking and let him think it over. Silence stretched between them. After a few minutes he got to his feet and started toward the door into the house. At the door, he turned halfway back to her as if to say something, but without warning he flipped something at her.

  She plucked from the air a slender sleeve knife, meant to hit her hilt on. She’d caught the hilt. She held it up, raised a brow. “Well?”

  His smile was a slight tightening of his lips, a rippling of fur over his bold cheekbones. He crossed to her and took back the knife. “You read muscle damn well.”

  “Because I caught the hilt instead of the blade?”

  “That, yeah. Zenica didn’t name you.”

  “Skeen.”

  “Ship Picarefy? The Rooner?”

  “Got it.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow morning just before dawn.”

  “Got it. You providing the mounts?”

  “Karynxes. One extra available for a guide.”

  “Ten gold. Now.”

  She laughed. “Why not. That’s what Zenica said to give you and I expect if you ran out on us life would get uncomfortable for you here. Maggí and I are excellent friends.” She bent to one side, caught up a small pouch and handed it to him.

  “Meet here?”

  “No. The Esher Gate. If the Ravvayad follow precedent, they’ll hit us between here and the gate. They’ve failed every time they’ve tried that, so I suspect a double attack this time. You might take a look about the gate for anything that smells suspicious. Be careful.…” She broke off, shook her head. “Sorry about that, I’ve been around the Aggitj too long. By the way, you want to tell me your name? Or do we just call you guide.”

  “Britt’ll do. It’s enough.”

  “Britt it is. Tomorrow, Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  The attack came half a stad before they reached the gate—four naked twisting forms. Pegwai cracked one skull, Skeen broke a kneecap with the staff she’d taken to carrying, the Beast bit the downed man and leaped away, Hart’s spear skewered a third, and the last started backing off, mouth gaping, poison glands swollen ready to spit the corrosive deadly fluid at anyone who got too close. Skeen darted him, the Beast scurried over and bit the Ravvayad in the face, then curled up in the Boy’s arms. The housefolk from Zenica and Sogan who were leading the karynxes some distance behind the Company came up with them, handed the leadropes to Skeen, calmly ignoring the bodies splayed out on the street. “Lifefire tend your journey with Bona Fortuna,” the taller man said; he inclined his head, then walked off with his associate who hadn’t said a word the whole time.

  “Well.” Skeen made a face at Pegwai when she saw his silent laughter. “Were they afraid we were going to ask them to come along?”

  Pegwai poked at one of the corpses with the end of his staff. “They don’t approve of the company we keep, that’s all.”

  Britt was waiting just inside the gate. “I took a short walk along the road,” he said. “Nothing obvious, but just this side of the crescent bend I saw a flock of gurdjis fly up from one copse and settle in another.”

  Skeen nodded. “Chul, see what you can see without being obvious about it.” As the Min-Skirrik boy fluttered off, a soft gray mourning owl, she swung round, scowled at the karynxes. The Aggitj, Timka, and probably the Boy were expert riders, though karynxes might be strange to them, but she was merely adequate and Pegwai not even so good as that; his legs were too short and plump to get much purchase. “Ders, take care of my karynx, will you. I’m walking for the first bit. Peg?”

/>   “I’d rather have solid ground under me if I have to swing this.” He banged his staff against the dirt.

  Chulji came fluttering back, shifted to Skirrik. “Three of them,” he said. “And three on the other side of the road.”

  “Djabo’s bleary eyes. How far from the road?”

  “On the left, two karynx’s length, a little closer on the right.”

  “Bows or spears?”

  “Both.”

  Skeen rubbed her chin. “Boy, you know their constraints. Will they sit in the trees and try to skewer us long distance?”

  “Yah, em. They’s room out here. If they can’t get me, ul try fo’s many a you’s they can get.”

  “I see. Hm.” She turned to Britt. “Two choices. Fight or go round. Me, I’d rather go round. Can we?”

  “Roundabout and a lot of time, that’s all; easy to find riding room down here.”

  Skeen ran her fingers through her hair (hair that was mostly dark brown now, with only the tips pale and stiff). “If there were just the three,” she said, “I think I’d try taking them out. Six, though.… I don’t know. I’m not happy at the prospect of them creeping up on us some night when we’re deep in the mountains.”

  Pegwai leaned on his staff. “Forgetting whether it’s six or three, if you were alone without us on your mind, what would you do?”

  “Go round now and take them out one by one when they followed.”

  “Well?”

  Skeen slapped her hip. “All right, why not. Britt knows the land and they don’t. Let them sit and sweat.” She smoothed her hair down, moved the few steps to Ders and took the leadrope from him. “Seems I ride after all. Let’s go.”