Nameless: Bones of the Earth I-III

by J. C. Hendee

  “What are you trying here?” he shouted in rage. “You think I am some dotty old fool?”

  And his tirade went on and on, and the big barbarian began shouting back. Through all of this, the smaller man tried desperately to translate curses, accusations, and outrage both ways.

  “Get down here,” Gän’gehtin whispered.

  Karras turned and then hesitated.

  “He is not sick,” Gän’gehtin repeated, “at least not with anything catching.”

  That a mere shirvêsh knew this was doubtful, but Karras crept in to crouch on the prince’s other side.

  “Fiáh’our will somehow get us to the midpoint,” Gän’gehtin went on. “There will come a moment when I will say ‘time’ in Numanese. You will help me get the prince off this boat and onto the dock.”

  Karras blinked, stiffening upright. “How? They will not let us—”

  “We will throw him.”

  “What? And what about us? You are as mad as that old—”

  Gän’gehtin snatched the split of Karras’s vestment and hissed in a low voice.

  “Either help or jump overboard and sink!” he warned. “The latter at least adds credence to the prince being no more than a plague victim. Nothing matters here except keeping his identity in doubt long enough to get him to safety.”

  Karras wobbled as the Gän’gehtin released him. He was no coward, but thinking of that plea he had whispered upon first sighting the shirvêsh…

  That was the first and last time he ever begged help from the Bäynæ!

  “I want to see him with my own eyes, or no barter,” Fiáh’our shouted. “I do not trade for biscuits in a bag, you over-grown bear-baiter!”

  Karras groaned at more of the old blusterer’s… bluster.

  “Prepare,” Gän’gehtin whispered.

  The shirvêsh reached out and pulled away the bearskin covering the man to take hold of him. Gän’gehtinstalled and sucked a breath, and Karras was startled, as well.

  The prince was tied up with leather lashings from shoulders to feet. His arms had been fully crossed so that, in being bound to his waist, he could not use his hands to free himself. And he was dress in nothing but a plain linen shirt that clung to his slight form and canvas pants not suitable to nobility. He also had no shoes or boots, though perhaps he had kicked them off to swim.

  Almost as disturbing as the bonds, the man did not shiver. That was worrisome, for perhaps he had chilled so deeply that he had lost too much inner heat in being adrift in the cold sea.

  Gän’gehtin’s head twisted as he glared back along the vessel toward the barbarians.

  Karras thought he heard the shirvêsh’s breath quicken in fury as it rushed through clenched teeth. But all he thought of was why someone had bound a sick man. He reached out tentatively, trying to see any knot in the leather that he could undo.

  The prince’s eyes opened fully and aware, fixing on him.

  Karras’s hand froze a finger’s breadth from the lashings.

  The prince’s mouth gaped as he squirmed weakly. Amid the gurgle and choke that escaped from his throat, Karras caught only a few clear words in Numanese.

  “…my water…ocean…my people…”

  Karras flinched when Gän’gehtin’s hand closed suddenly on his wrist.

  “We must leave him bound or rouse suspicion,” the shirvêsh said, and, when he looked down upon the prince, he quickly dropped his gaze. “Forgive me, Highness.”

  Then Gän’gehtin took hold of the prince’s upper right arm and looked to Karras.

  “We get him up now. Fiáh’our is waiting.”

  Karras, his gaze still locked on the prince’s face, had lost track of whatever the old thänæ had arranged. The words he had heard the prince utter were still stuck in his head. They made no sense, so he must have heard wrongly. He took hold of the prince’s other arm and helped to hoist and hold the slender man upright. Inching along, he and the shirvêsh half-carried, half-dragged the man down the longboat.

  The prince was a head taller than either of them, but with his feet still bound, it took time to approach the midsection. The closest pair of barbarians quickly shifted out of the way, the second one pressing all the way against the vessel’s bayside.

  That one’s face flooded with panic as he eyed the sickly captive. Karras’s skin crawled in gripping the prince’s elbow and lower back, and he looked up.

  The tall man had twisted his head aside, looking out to the vast ocean. Those strange eyes were locked open, glassy and vacant, as if he saw something out in the dark that Karras did not.

  “Closer!” Fiáh’our shouted. “I want to see his face.”

  As they reached the midship, the little translator ducked behind the big one in the white fur. The leader inched back as well and almost stepped on his smaller companion.

  “What have you done?” Fiáh’our demanded, his outraged voice growing louder. “You tie up a sick man, like some pig hauled off for a feast?”

  The scrawny one was too busy staring at the prince, and the leader elbowed him sharply.

  “He sick here,” and the little man slapped his chest. “Sick more here,” he added, touching his head. “He try go…”

  The translator sighed amid a frantic pant, clearly at a loss for the next word. Instead, he motioned with his hand over the longboat’s far side.

  Karras frowned, looking to Gän’gehtin, but the shirvêsh shook his head in confusion. He then glanced upward again, and even in facing the dock’s end, the prince still twisted his neck trying to peer beyond the longboat and out to sea.

  “You think I believe he tried to jump overboard, after you pulled him out?” Fiáh’our barked at the big leader. “Well, maybe he had a reason… maybe you gave him one!”

  A flurry of bellowing began again, but as Karras irritably eyed the thänæ, he noticed too many little oddities.

  All three of the watch were crowded close behind Fiáh’our. In place of the one clan warrior who had followed them, another stood behind the watch. The warrior that had joined them up the dock now stood a step to the right, just behind Fiáh’our. Karras grew even more anxious, though it was not the oddest detail of all. That one clan warrior still held his spear, but its head now rested on the dock instead of being upright.

  “Psst!”

  Karras found Gän’gehtin eyeing him.

  The shirvêsh purposefully looked down and tucked his hand in below the prince’s bound arms. He gripped the prince’s belt and nodded sternly. Karras groaned and did likewise.

  Whatever was to happen was coming fast, and Fiáh’our made a squinting fuss in peering at the prince.

  “A’ye’ous! My old eyes,” the thänæ grumbled.

  Rubbing them, he half turned to hand off the coiled rope to the watch. The left one swallowed audibly, and Fiáh’our snagged the grappling hook in his broad belt before turning back.

  Karras heard the barbarians shifting. The big one reached for his sword again, and the little one pointed at the thänæ.

  “What?” that one demanded.

  Fiáh’our leaned back slightly, blinking in bafflement.

  “This?” he said, twisting in a glance at the grappling hook before he shrugged. “I… do not care for a dunking… if I am to get a closer clear look at this man.”

  At the translation, the big leader sneered and pointed at Fiáh’our’s belt. The thänæ rolled his eyes, took out both war daggers with blades like elongated triangles, and handed those off to the watch. When he pulled the great axe over his head, he laid it beside Gän’gehtin’s cudgel on the dock, handle outward.

  Karras tensed even before the squeak of leather as Gän’gehtin tightened his grip on the prince’s belt. Karras did likewise, though that did not make him ready for whatever nonsense would come next.

  8. Fishing for a Kitten

  Before Fiáh’our's first step, he locked eyes with Gän’gehtin.

  Freeing the prince was not all there was to this. They still had to get him away
for here and back to those searching for him. And that meant this longboat could not leave the port to follow. Everything depended on successfully replaying an old prank.

  As Fiáh’our started to step, Gän’gehtin barked, “Sál!”

  The shirvêsh and the young one took a fast step and heaved the prince into the air.

  Fiáh’our slammed his boot down on the longboat’s edge with all of his weight.

  The vessel rocked sharply.

  He ducked low, pressing down as the prince went sailing overhead. He did not look up or back, as he had already instructed those behind him to catch the prince at all costs. No, he looked down with a smile to the longboat’s edge under his boot.

  On that long past morning, out fishing with Tratna and a much younger “acolyte” Gän’gehtin, he had been in aweful mood when they returned to the little dock on one highland lake. He half-pushed the younger shirvêsh ahead of himself off the broad, flat-bottomed rowboat, and then, as he had made to step up on the dock’s end himself…

  Fiáh’our had stomped on the rowboat’s edge.

  Its side sank under the water as he joined a flabbergasted Gän’gehtin on the dock.

  Old Tratna screamed like a seagull with its foot caught in a dock’s hole. He kept screaming as the rowboat swamped. It took half a dozen more shrieks before the elder shirvêsh realized the boat had bottomed out in the lake’s shallows. Tratna sat there white-faced in chest-deep water, but at least he was silent after a long fishless morning!

  Fiáh’our’s smile turned to a grin over that fond memory, but when he looked down, he stopped ginning at all.

  “Ah, bloody guts!”

  The longboat’s rim stopped well above the water. And big as it was, it snapped back up, rocking the other way.

  Fiáh’our wobbled in shock, one foot on the longboat’s rising rim and the other on the dock’s end. He flailed his arms, trying to keep his balance.

  The lead Maksœín reached for his sword, but the vessel’s sudden rock the other way toppled him against the far rail, where he teetered on its edge. Gän’gehtin was already in mid-leap, but as Karras tried to follow, the little translator grabbed the back of young one’s vestment. The shirvêsh landed on the dock’s end, and Karras backhanded the littlest Maksœín amid a desperate rush for the longboat’s near side.

  Fiáh’our heard the mooring line snap.

  Someone had cut it as planned. His legs spread even more over the widening gap between the boat and the dock. He flailed even more, trying to keep from falling, and before he could shout out a change of plan...

  Lêt’vöulsat brought down the high butt of his thick spear.

  It cracked the head of a Maksœín rushing in to cut off Karras. The young one had to duck aside again as that big human fell across his path. Lêt’vöulsat rocked the spear back, taking hold with both hands.

  “No, no, not yet!” Fiáh’our finally got out, but it was too late.

  Lêt’vöulsat slammed the butt of his spear against the longboat’s side. At his grunting shove, Fiáh’our’s legs began spreading like a pulled chicken’s wishbone after a feast.

  Truly, he had not wanted a cold salty bath this night.

  “Pull, you old grunts!” he shouted.

  Only one of the watch still held the rope for grappling hook on his belt. The other two had been busy with one warrior in catching the prince. Two more warriors tried and failed to get around that cluster to help. And the one watchman’s boots slid across the planks toward the dock’s end under the pull of the old thänæ’s teetering bulk.

  Fiáh’our’s outer boot slipped off the longboat’s edge.

  It was a pitiful respite that Tratna was not here to see the Bäynæ take revenge for him. Then a hand latched on Fiáh’our’s forearm. He quickly gripped likewise as his boot grazed the water, and Gän’gehtin shouted at him.

  “Finish this!”

  Fiáh’our bent his dockside leg and snatched the haft of his axe. He had one chance to fix this mess before the rocking longboat drifted beyond reach.

  Straightening, he swung the axe high with one hand, but he did not arc it fully over his head. He would have to swing back down and low to strike the longboat’s planks at the waterline.

  And there was a wide-eyed Karras, clinging to the wobbling longboat’s edge. Two more Maksœín struggled to stumble toward him.

  “Jump, you halfwit!” Fiáh’our shouted.

  He let the axe’s huge head swing back and down before his spread legs. And it cracked against the longboat’s side, biting deep… and it stuck.

  Fiáh’our could not pull it back. Under the impact, the longboat drifted a little farther, pulling his outer foot with it, but he refused to release his precious axe.

  A shriek of shock rose from the one of the watch as the rope slipped. Fiáh’our began to drop, and his overlapped grip with Gän’gehtin broke.

  The only good thing was that his weight pulled the axe out of the longboat’s side. He heard two splashes as he made a third one himself.

  One had to have been Gän’gehtin, even for the unshirvêsh-like curses that were heard. The other was hopefully Karras. And Fiáh’our lost sight of everyone.

  Beneath the dark cold water, he wrapped his free hand around the rope and quickly thrust his axe down, out, and deep in hope. The weapon’s haft suddenly lurched in his grip under a great weight. In turn, he heaved on the rope until his head broke the surface.

  “Get me out!”

  By the Bäynæ’s mischief, Old Tratna got his revenge and would likely hear of it soon enough. And there was Gän’gehtin, shivering with a glower and shoulder-deep in the water where he clung to a pier post. Before Fiáh’our could heave up his beloved axe, and what he had caught with it, someone clawed up it and his arm to break the surface.

  Karras sputtered where he hung on Fiáh’our’s arm, gasping through chattering teeth, “Y-you… y-you…”

  “Ah, you needed the bath,” Lêt’vöulsat said wryly from above.

  Fiáh’our’s old comrade extended the butt of the spear, but Fiáh’our cocked his head toward the young one. At the shift of Lêt’vöulsat’s spear, Karras grabbed it, and Fiáh’our glanced out toward longboat.

  The vessel was drifting and foundering too fast to be beached. He sighed with relief, for Maksœín were already jumping over the longboat’s side. By the time Fiáh’our was up and dripping on the dock, most of the Maksœín were swimming for the dock’s end. And there was the sickly prince, still trussed up in the care of two warriors and the watch.

  Not the kind of night Fiáh’our had envisioned, and though it all had come out in the end, it was not over yet.

  “Fish out the Maksœín and disarm them,” he told Lêt’vöulsat. “But wait until dawn before you favor them with a lift back to their Witenon friends.”

  Lêt’vöulsat grinned and waved forward two more warriors toward the dock’s end. As a dripping Gän’gehtin approached the prince, Fiáh’our sloshed in following, eager to empty his swamped boots as he eyed the slender human.

  While in Calm Seatt now and then, he had twice glimpsed Prince Freädherich from afar during public appearances by the reskynna. The youngest of the three heirs had hung back behind the family, reluctant even when his wife, a duchess of neighboring Faunier, took his hand to pull him into events. Being much closer now, what Fiáh’our saw disturbed him enough to forget his scheme concerning Karras.

  Prince Freädherich indeed looked sickly, but that could be from having drifted in the ocean until found. Fiáh’our was a little chilled himself from only a quick dip. Aside from bondage, the prince did not appear ill-treated, but…

  The prince titled his head, not looking at anyone but only down the dock. Fiáh’our glanced over his shoulder to see Lêt’vöulsat with two others waiting for the Maksœín to come in. He turned back as Gän’gehtin reached for the prince’s arm lashings.

  “Highness, forgive us,” the shirvêsh said. “We will free you at—”

  Fiáh’our
swiped Gän’gehtin’s hand away. “Pardon, Highness, but best we get you out of reach, first.”

  When he looked for Karras, the young one stood nearby, incensed, shivering, and panting.

  “Is that your family ship?” Fiáh’our asked.

  Karras blinked, seawater dripping down his face as his gaze drifted to the fat-bellied, two-masted vessel.

  “What of it?” he snapped.

  “That is as good as a yes,” Fiáh’our replied. “And I have need of it.”

  “It will do,” Gän’gehtin agreed, though he looked in a foul mood at being foully drenched as he ushered off the warriors who bore the prince.

  “What?” Karras shouted. “You cannot take my family’s ship.”

  Fiáh’our ignored him and turned to the three of the watch, retrieving his daggers from them.

  “Get a message up to Seattâsh to rouse the drums,” he instructed. “Signal the searchers that we have found the one they seek and are on our way. And get someone to wake the household of the Iamílchlagh. Tell sire Uinseil that we need a crew and quick.”

  The watch had barely hurried off when the young one started spitting and hissing again.

  “You… you bulk!” Karras hollered. “You drag me into the middle of this mess, and now you think you can take my family’s resources at a whim?”

  Fiáh’our rolled his eyes with a rumbling sigh.

  “You keep off that ship,” Karras ranted on, “you walking disaster, you… you bellowing—”

  Fiáh’our snatched the young one’s face and shoved.

  As he headed off toward where Gän’gehtin called out for the ship’s ramp to be lowered, he heard Karras’s shocked squeak as the young one toppled off the dock. Of course, Fiáh’our had noticed the skiff tied there.

  At the sudden thump and clatter, and the slosh of water against the skiff’s rocking hull, Fiáh’our lifted up his great axe and eyed it with sudden remorse.

  “Oh, my good Burskâp” he said to it. “Forgive me, old friend, for what you suffer this night in service. We shall get you dry and soon.”

  Fiáh’our kissed the blade with great affection, ignoring the fussy thrashing and shouting behind him. Nor did he wait for any hurried, pounding footfalls. The kitten would follow quickly enough.