“Harp country lies up there,” Watershank said, pointing beyond Second Falls to the Kobberjobble escarpment. “But chief says this plateau is now their—our homeland. Last year’s harvest was poor and many died in Great Hunger Month, and so he has led us down to find glory here. The Gorgeous have been driven off the clifftops, and the Tooth of the Bear chased into Telarnak Valley. No other chief of the Harps has ever conquered so much territory.”
“He is a regular Alish Bo Wanameer,” agreed Donovan; and Méarana remembered that the young Zorba de la Susa had assassinated the People’s Hope.
When the war canoes had been packed, the Harp chief had the children of the Gorgeous lined up, and his men drew their swords. It took Méarana a moment to realize what the Harps meant to do.
“No!” she cried. “Ye cannae!” Donovan grabbed her arm, but she shook it off and stepped out between the boys and the men with swords.
The chief did not understand Gaelactic, but he understood a negative when he heard one. But because she was a harper, he explained.
“Chief says,” Watershank told her, “that these children will grow to men, and these men will seek vengeance for their fathers, whom they saw slaughtered. When they do, they will fall beneath our swords as their fathers did, so why wait?”
“Because,” Méarana said in the loora nuxrjes’r, “they cannot fight back.”
The chief nodded. “Yes. That will make the work easier.”
“Harper,” said Billy Chins in Gaelactic, “this is not worth risking our lives. Their fathers were preparing to come downriver and slaughter us. We owe their spawn nothing.”
Méarana did not look at him. She said, “I will sing of this.”
A gasp ran through the Harps, as those who knew scraps of the imperial tongue told those who did not. The chief looked perplexed, unsure if he was to be honored.
“I will sing how the Harps so trembled before a band of children that they killed them, though they could not strike blows for their own honor. I will sing this in the City on the Hill toward which we journey. I will sing it in the wharfside taverns of Rajiloor; in the palaces of Nuxrjes’r. I will sing it on the shining path! On Harpaloon and Die Bold, from Ramage to the Dancing Vrouw. On worlds where they know nothing of you, they will know that you are killers of children.”
Watershank trembled and fell to his knees. “She sang a satire on the rivermen,” he told the chief, “and all but a remnant died.”
The chief sneered. “Aye. Because we came and killed them for their gold.”
“Can you deny that her singing brought you to her? The Weird twists like the river.”
“So,” said the chief, pale but determined. “If we must not kill them because they are unarmed, then we will arm them. Unless,” he added as he turned to give the orders, “you will fight in their name?”
A voice behind her said, “I will be their champion.”
Méarana turned and saw Teodorq Nagarajan grinning at her. “It’s what I do, babe. Start thinking of the stanzas you’ll sing about me.” Then he faced the chief. “I will fight your champion alone; or I will face five others who are not champions, for I have not eaten since noon and I am weak with hunger.”
The chief smiled as Watershank translated. Here was someone he understood! “I will fight you myself!” he declared.
But Teodorq declined. “I cannot deprive your people of great leadership. Your people will need your strong hand to comfort the widows.”
Chatter among the Harps rose and fell while the chief tried to decide if he had been praised or mocked. Méarana heard Donovan, sotto vocee: “I hope he is half as good with a sword as he is with a boast.”
Eventually four men stepped forward; then, after his name was called, a fifth. They stood in a row, each with sword in hand. Teodorq looked upon those swords, and smiled.
“Them are what we called ‘gladius’ back on World,” he said to Méarana. “They use them in sports matches.” Then, to the men facing him, he said, “Are those your own blades, dedicated to the gods in your name and blood?”
They frowned, uncertain of the custom to which he referred, but Watershank explained and they began to nod. “Yea, mine own.” “None other holds this!” Teodorq nodded.
“Then I claim the right to use my own blades, which for fear of them, they was taken from me and now lie in your canoes.”
The chief smirked. “You seek to delay your fate, starman.”
“Oh, no,” Teodorq said, “but it may take me a moment.” Then he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Goodhandlingblade! Gutripper! Your master calls you! There is work to slake your thirst!”
Everyone stood transfixed by this performance. Mouths spilled open and in the silence that formed, a high voice could be heard. “Here I am, boss! Come and get me!”
Debly Jean Sofwari closed his eyes and looked to heaven. “Holy Dear Wisdom! He put voice-activated amshifars in his sword hilts!”
Teodorq glanced sidewise. “‘Course I did, wallah. I ain’t fresh fallen off a bumboat. Done it on Gatmander. Those blades cost a pretty ducat, so I wasn’t about to lose none.” He was already striding to the canoe from which the voices came. “I’ll use both,” he decided at top lung, but as if talking to himself. “I will slay three with Goodhandlingblade in the right hand; two with Gutripper in the left.”
When he had extracated both swords from their bundles and turned again to face the group, there were only two swordsmen facing him. The other three had melted away, and most of the Harps were on their knees or hiding their faces from the talking swords.
Teodorq frowned. “It doesn’t seem hardly fair, there being only two of you. But I tell you what. All Lady Harp wants is that these boys not be killed. Is that so unreasonable?” He waited for Watershank to translate this.
One of the warriors could not take his eye off the blade called Gutripper, the one which, if they fought, would be his to converse with. Teodorq saw this and offered to introduce them, but the man shook his head. “It seems honorable to me, now that it has been explained.” And he, too, melted back into the throng.
“And that leaves you,” Teodorq said to the remaining warrior, who stood trembling, sword-naked, but the point aimed at the ground.
The man sighed. “It is as fair a day as any to die.”
When Watershank had rendered this, Teodorq nodded. “It is that. And you are right. Honor requires that one of you fight and that I defend. That is how the courts proceed in my homeland. It will be an honor to kill such a brave man as yourself.”
“Well,” said the other, hefting a round wooden shield to protect his left side, “one should not presume on honors. The Weird bestows honor, and winding are her ways.”
“As you will.” He held his two swords crossed before him. Watershank ran to the sidelines.
The Harp swung and Teodorq danced.
That was the only term that did him justice, Méarana decided. He danced. He leapt and spun in a display that was as much art as mere battle. When he caught the Harp’s sword in the V of his own two swords, he actually paused for effect before spinning and flinging the sword out of line and swooping low with Gutripper to slash at the man’s calf.
But his opponent was no mean swordsman, either. His people made their living by cutting up other people, and it would be hard to show him a trick that he had not already seen. He avoided the cut, though with less grace than Teodorq.
His return cut was overhand and aimed at the spine Teodorq had exposed. Méarana sucked in her breath, but she heard Paulie mutter, “One-two-roll.” And as if in time to the mutter, Teodorq spun against the man’s knees and brought him to the ground.
Both scrambled to their feet and stood again facing each other, this time out of reach. Paulie said, “They got their measure now and can start fighting. The idea ain’t to hit the other guy’s sword. The idea is to hit the other guy. What you’ll see are a few set moves and countermoves, then disengage.”
And so it went. Sometimes the sw
ords flashed so quickly Méarana could not see the strokes clearly. She also learned that the big round shield had an advantage beside the obvious one, and a disadvantage. The unexpected advantage was that it could be used as a weapon itself. The disadvantage was that it was heavy, and over time grew heavier.
As the shield dipped lower and lower, Teodorq’s sword flicked up and over its rim more and more often. Slashes began to appear on the Harp’s torso and arms. Once, on his thigh.
Paulie grunted. “So that’s how he wants it. Better not ever try it on me.” But Méarana did not understand what he meant.
And then Teodorq made a mistake.
Méarana had not seen a single slip or error in his performance. He spun his two swords, slashing and poking with left hand and right in an intricate ballet with no misstep.
Now he was open, and the Harp lunged with his point. Teodorq danced back, but it was not enough and the point pierced his arm. He did not drop Goodhandlingblade, though he backed away another two steps. He grinned at his opponent, and his opponent grinned back. Then, he stuck both his swords in the ground. And the Harp, after a moment longer, did the same.
“Boss!” Theodorq called to the chief of the Harps. “I cannot kill this man of yours, because that would deprive your people of a mighty champion! You must melt honey and butter on his head, and put mead in his mouth! He must have a new name from this day forward! I will call him Sword-friend and, should he ever come to my country, I will feast him and we will spar once more for our honor!”
When this speech was translated, the longest Méarana had ever heard the Wildman utter, the assembled warriors broke into an ululation. Dovovan whispered, “I told you Teodorq was more clever than you gave him credit for. Did you like how he handled that warrior?”
Méarana nodded. “I liked how he handled the other four.”
Paulie, standing behind them, spoke up. “That poor savage never stood a chance. He ain’t never seen men like Teddy or me. He knows how to use a sword, that one does; but he don’t know how to use his tongue. So the one was sharp, but the other dull; and it was the weapon he did not look for that skewered him.”
“But,” Sofwari pointed out, “there are worlds where that trick with the locator unit would have gotten him burned as a witch. There are cultures where putting down his sword would have gotten him killed. I saw some, out along the Gansu.”
The Wildman shrugged. “A man learns to sniff out the ways of other men.”
“How?”
“Experience.”
Sofwari thought about that. “That’s a hard teacher.”
“Yah,” said Paulie. “You only get to see the graduates.”
The captured boys were given food and drink and set on the path back to their own country. The oldest, a lean scar-faced lad who looked to be about fourteen standard years, turned about before they left. “We will come back to this place. And then we will kill you for the deaths of our fathers and the rapes of our mothers.” But the Harps only jeered him, although some nodded and extended a welcome.
“It is only right,” the war chief said, “to return the seeds to the ground in the hope of a future harvest.” His henchmen drew their swords and waved them about, in case anyone was unclear on the scythes that would mow that harvest.
After that, Méarana and her people were led to New Town, where they were feted and praised, and where Méarana improvised a lay celebrating the sword fight between Teodorq and the Harp, whose name she learned was Crow-feeder. Those who had been there added color commentary for the benefit of friends and women. Méarana changed the ending a little bit. She had both men recognize at the same moment the heroism of the other, so that both plunged their swords in the ground at the same time. It made a better story that way, and flattered Crow-feeder. In her version, too, the other four warriors had not shrunk from fear of the talking swords, but because Crow-feeder dismissed them in order to fight alone. The war chief of the Harps recognized the alterations and gave an approving nod. In another year, when the song had been sung enough times, even the participants would believe it had happened that way.
A week later, a party of Harps escorted Méarana and her companions up past Second Falls onto the Kobberjobble Escarpment. The Harps called the peaks the “shining mountains” because the snowcapped peaks still caught the sun’s rays even after he had set over the horizon. Having no notion of the geometry of spheres and rays, they believed the glow to be a property of the mountain peaks themselves.
Here, the party transferred to yet another set of canoes, lighter than the war canoes they had been using. This was the ancient homeland of the Harps and the villages and stockades were more substantial and showed evidence of long habitation. The walls were more than a fence of poles, but were plastered over with something like stucco, which gave them an ochre appearance especially striking in the setting sun.
The utility of the lighter canoes was demonstrated the first time they had to make a portage. The Multawee ran over numerous cataracts on its journey across the high meadows, and each time, the canoes had to be unloaded and carried around the obstacle.
Crow-feeder led the escort, which consisted of his personal following, now swollen because of his performance in the Fight at First Falls. Also with them was Watershank, because his knowledge of the loora nuxrjes’r was their sole channel of communication, and a young woman named Skins-rabbit. She had been captured from the Emrikii of Dacitti in an earlier war and was being returned to them now as a tactical offering of good will. She knew both the tanga cru’tye of the Harps and the murgãglaiz spoken by the Emrikii.
“What a tangled path when we find these Emrikii,” Sofwari said. ‘We have to think in Gaelactic, our earwigs will render that in the loora nuxrjes’r, Watershank will translate that to the tanga cru’tye, and Skins will translate that to murgãglaiz. Any rabbit of thought that makes it through that bramble will surely be skinned by then.”
Some of the villages they glided by were abandoned, and Méarana recalled that Harps were moving down into the Foothills, driving out the Bears and others who lived there. Méarana thought that a great injustice on the Bears, but Watershank told her that the Tooth of the Bear had earlier taken the land from the Tooth of the Raven, who now lived in a valley farther to the east. “It is the way of the world,” he said. “One day, your people will come, and will drive out even the mighty Nuxrjes’r.”
“That might be a very long time,” Méarana said.
But Watershank shook his head. “In my time, or my childrens’ childrens’ time. But come, it will. Beside your might, we are as nothing. And those who have power, use it; unless stayed by fear or impotence.”
Méarana would have argued further, but Donovan said, “Once the Ardry learns that a forgotten road runs from the Confederation into the Wild, can he afford to stay out? What if the Confederation rediscovers the road? In the end, the choice is not whether these folk remain free to slaughter each other’s children and cut the throats of travelers, but whether they will be ruled by the Ardry or by Those of Name.”
They had portaged around any number of cataracts and falls as they wended their way through the old Harplands, but when after a week, they came to the base of the Longfoot, they saw why none of those had possessed even so much as a number. Longfoot Falls was called Third Falls because there was nothing else on the river to match her, save her two downstream sisters. Unlike Roaring Falls and Second Falls, however, Longfoot did not tumble straight down. Here, the mountainside was steep but, save near the crest, not sheer. Instead, the Longfoot sluiced half a mile down the mountainside, jouncing and splashing and leaping from its bed like a child on an amusement park waterslide before plowing into the Gryperzee at its base. The rocky slopes were barren, save to the south of the slide, where twisted “crumb-wood” trees grew no more than chest high and slewed their limbs toward the east.
“It’s a fairy wood,” said Teodorq, uneasily. But Paulie only laughed and called him a “prairie dog.”
Crow-fe
eder pointed toward the peak. “The Emrikii live up there, where none may molest them. They descend from their mountain only to take vengeance over what they call ‘injustice.’ But they never hold the lands of the people they defeat, being weaklings as well as cowards.”
Méarana stared up the long slide of the mountain. It did not sound cowardly or weak, but merely prudent. But there comes a time, Bridget ban had once told her, when there is no difference between them.
It was a strange thing. She had not thought of her mother in many days, and now her remembered voice was so true, so real, that she almost turned, expecting to see her by her side. She took a deep breath. Let it out. The air would be even thinner atop the mountain. They must watch their supply of cocoa leaves. “How do we get up there?” he asked Crow-feeder.
“The canoes will be of no more use to you,” said the Harp warrior.
Tell me something I did not know. But she smiled. “I did not ask how I might not reach the top, but how I might.”
The man waved vaguely. “There is a trail. We will leave the yaams.”
The yaams were a strange sort of hairy jamal, peculiar to the high mountains. They were ill-tempered and spat a lot; but they were surefooted on mountain trails. A raft bearing two of them was being poled up the Multawee and would probably arrive in the morning.
It is no favor to abide by the terms of the agreement, she thought, but aloud she said, “Your openhanded generosity is widely known.”
“And may the Weird be less strange on your journey.”
“You’re not coming with us.” She did not make it a question.
“It is not our journey. Our journey is to the lower lands, where glory and pasture may be won. The Emrikii are savages and poor, and they do not know honor. There is no glory in entering their country. We will leave you one bag of the gold with which to bribe them, and the food of your own that you brought with you.”
Up Jim River Page 37