by David Bell
“I will help if you pledge me one thing,” said Kanesh.
Luzar’s strange dark eyes looked through him but Kanesh knew he heard.
“When we have done here what you want and when you have led us to your land, you will come back with me to Keftiu, to the lady’s house, as I have sworn you will. Once there you are free to do as you wish.”
“It must be done,” said Luzar.
The mouth of Isteru at Kanub in the Black Land was no grander than this river, thought Kanesh, as the Davina turned in from the sea and steered for the middle of the stream where the blue waters of the ocean were beginning to surge down the throat of the Kharron. They must go in on the flood, Luzar had said, and the current would carry them faster than they could row, or sail, until they were far inland. Potyr ordered Kerma to stand with Typhis at the tiller and all oarsmen to be ready more to help steer than drive the ship on. Foaming and tumbling at the front, a wave raced up from astern making the Davina shudder as it struck, and passed on. The ship was picked up as if by a great hand and swept upstream, pitching and yawing at first and then skimming smoothly as the wave speeded ahead, swirling across mudflats and marshes that formed the distant banks of the river. When the first rush was over, the crew settled down to a long easy stroke and began to joke and laugh as they felt their work being done for them by the Lord Potheidan forcing the river back with the waters of his ocean. Low-lying, tree-covered islands slid slowly past and the colour of the water gradually changed to that of ripe barley. Late in the afternoon the tip of yet another island, sharp as an arrowhead, came into view. The lookout called that he could see the mouth of another river to larboard opening into the great one, but Luzar signalled for the ship to stay on course. Before the sun set they had left the island behind, rounded a great bend in the now narrower stream and found an anchorage near a long sandbank lying near the shore.
“The place where we will go is that small bay, near the river mouth, where the smoke was rising, is it not?” said Kanesh.
“Night is best when water is slow. I will know when we must sail,” replied Luzar.
“The trading post; how far from here?”
“Ship will be there when the sun is high.”
On a bend in the river where the land was low-lying and marshy, they came upon houses built of rough logs and roofed with reeds standing clear of the bank and raised above the water level on stout poles like legs, each house with its net drying in the sun and its small fishing boat or canoe tied to one of the legs. They passed close enough to hear excited chatter coming from the houses as the strange ship glided past. Farther on were more huts on the shore and then a wooden jetty stretching out from a cluster of larger buildings, that looked like warehouses, into water deep enough for the Davina to approach carefully and stand clear but close, waiting for an exchange of words with the men standing at the end of the jetty and watching them with interested but suspicious eyes. They were all short men with round heads and strong limbs and wearing knee-length tunics made from coarse, brown cloth.
Potyr called to them first.
“Davina, cargo ship, many days out of Keftiu. I need safe anchorage and water. I have goods to trade.”
His words started a lively argument among the men, with attempts to pronounce Davina as Potyr had said it and much repetition of the name Keftiu, but it was clear that no one had understood Potyr’s greeting. Eventually the youngest-looking was sent running back along the jetty towards the warehouses, evidently to fetch someone of more authority.
Kanesh saw Luzar looking keenly at the man walking along the jetty. He wore a loose-fitting grey smock with a leather belt round his waist. He was taller than the others, who shuffled aside to make way for him.
“This man is rich trader,” said Luzar. “See his gold earrings. He will know me, so I go below. You talk to him. You have the tongue. He is Berexo, head man of this place.”
Kanesh made his way forward and climbed up to the bow deck. He put one hand on the top of the Lord Potheidan’s horse’s head and pushed back the tail of his soft leather jerkin to reveal the sword at his hip. He straightened up to his full height and thrust out his bearded chin towards the group on the jetty and said in a loud voice:
“I am Kanesh. Listen to me carefully. I have crossed the other sea and the Endless Ocean to come to your place of which I have heard interesting things. Look at my ship. You have seen no ship like this before. The captain has given you her name: Davina. Remember this name: Davina. The captain has given you the name of our land, where there is a great city, a city of rich palaces. The name of this great city is Kunisu. Remember these names: Keftiu and Kunisu. We come in peace and we come to trade. You, sir, I see from your bearing that you are the headman of this place and so I have the honour of speaking with Berexo. With your permission, sir, we will come ashore to talk about trade and other matters. We have fine cloth and wine and many other goods and I know that you have rich stores whose fame has reached the land of Keftiu, on the other side of the world. What is your reply?”
“That you are welcome to come ashore. Then we shall see what we shall see,” said Berexo.
“It is a shrewd man who waits to see before he decides,” replied Kanesh, nodding his head in a show of solemn approval.
“They plague us like a nest of vicious wasps and their women are among the worst,” said Berexo. His fellow traders sitting on their stools at his side nodded their heads. “Your ship is the first to reach here in almost a year. All others, if there have been any, have been taken or frightened away by those robbers and murderers who lie in wait near the mouth of our river. They have become too strong. There was a time when they would be satisfied with taking a ship and, knowing nothing of how to sell on their plunder, would trade it with us. We know the roads across the mountains to the other sea. We have the guides and the porters. We have the donkey trains and their keepers.”
“We have some knowledge of your practices,” said Kanesh. “One of our crew was taken as a slave by your people and sent with a donkey train to the port on the shore of the other sea.”
“What of it? He may have been enslaved but he lived, did he not? No doubt all his companions died. Now he is with you and free. It is a harsh world made worse by these pirates. They are strong but stupid. They convinced themselves they could seize ships and their goods and force them on other people along the coast or inland but they do not have the sense or skill of bargaining. They demand more than any merchant could ever pay and threaten death to anyone who refuses to trade. They could set a toll on all shipping that would pass into our river and live well enough off that, but they want everything for themselves and they will kill anyone to get it. Worst of all, they have killed the trade and with it the only means of living they know. It will not be long before they turn their attention to this settlement and then we shall all be lost.”
“As to that,” said Kanesh, glancing at Potyr and receiving an imperceptible nod of assent, “we have some experience in dealing with such people and would be prepared to use that experience on your behalf. In return, of course, for services that you can offer us.”
“How can we be sure that you have the means?” asked one of Berexo’s companions.
“The Captain of Archers here will show you all you need to know after we have finished our talks: now, more wine and then to business. Let me show you one of the things that we are interested in.” Kanesh brought the piece of glittering tinstone from his wallet and held it up by its cord for all to see. He started to swing it slowly from side to side and soon all eyes were following the movement.
“Their wine is good but would be better if they were to mix the Halaba grape juice with it.”
“They have been offered some in exchange for cotton. Luzar tells me it would be welcome in Crakluz and a good trade for tin.”
“They have little else to offer. The pirates have stifled the trade in tin. All that comes in now is the odd load of black river sand from Sapanim. It is landed somewhere in the bay whe
re we anchored two days ago and then packed on donkeys across the marshes to here.”
“Why concern ourselves with the merchants in this place?” said the Captain of Archers. “If we can ship the tin and tinstone from the Tin Islands through the Strait ourselves, we have no need of their donkey trains using the roads over the mountain pass. All the trade would be ours.”
“In time perhaps so,” said Kanesh, “but until we have more ships and have proved the passage and know the watering points and where we have friends and where there are enemies, we shall need their services.”
“Keep in mind the sea itself,” said Potyr, “and the seasons. You may be sure that if ships can sail safely only in the season we know well in our own waters, it will be no different in the Endless Ocean. It will have its seasons. It may be that we can load our one ship with tin that would strain the backs of three hundred donkeys, but we have only one ship and until such time as we have more to pick up this trade there will be need of those donkeys and their drivers and these merchants to see that the tin is kept moving when the season keeps all ships in port.”
“Are we then agreed that destruction of the pirates is as necessary for us as for this trading post?” asked Kanesh.
Potyr nodded in assent. “These are not men like the ones whose ship we burned when we were making for Gubal.”
The Captain of Archers had a hard smile on his face. “It worked well then. It will work well here.”
Sharesh appeared at the door of the warehouse. “The headman sends his greetings and says that the feast is ready and we are welcome.”
“My old captain told me that a good soldier should fill his stomach and empty his bowels whenever the chance offers,” said the Captain of Archers. “It allows him to concentrate his mind on the fight to come.”
They had never seen a fish like it. It was longer than a man, both Namun and Sharesh agreed, longer even than Kanesh. Leptos and Leptos had helped the other fishermen to catch it, using hooks and harpoons and it took six men to drag it in a net up from the river to the roasting pit in the middle of the settlement where now it lay, succulent and steaming in its thick parcel of leaves on the coals where it had been baking slowly since midday. It had a long flat snout with thick whiskers underneath and a very long tail and its skin was made of big hard scales. When Sharesh asked the fishermen about it they said it had no real bones and no teeth so it had to suck its food up from the mud it shovelled up with its flat snout.
Berexo made it clear that it was an honour to be served with such a noble fish.
“The people call it the lord of fishes,” he said. “They say some have lived in the river since the Old Times when it was worshipped by the Old People who left their own bones and stone axes in the dark caves on the other side of the river downstream from here.”
The sun was going down as everyone, village people and crew of the Davina, save for lookouts left on board ship, sat on stools or squatted on the sand, waiting for the feast to begin. It was a long wait, so long in fact, that Sharesh began to think the fish would burn and spoil. At last he saw Berexo lean towards Potyr and Kanesh and heard him speak.
“She who serves the Lady will come when the sun goes down. She will say the words and the fires will be started to give us light.”
No one had seen her coming but suddenly she was there, white robe shimmering from shoulder to feet, slender yet ripe in body, with hair as black as the burnt logs in the pit and a face of such beauty as to bring despair to the heart of any young girl and the throb of desire to the loins of any man. Sharesh heard a drum beating, breaking the silence that had fallen. He realised it was the sound of his own heart. She who serves the Lady, the man had said. Could this be a priestess and not the Lady herself? He saw all the women he knew in her, their faces passing across her face, their bodies through hers. How could this be, how did she make him see this if she were not the Lady who could do anything, he knew. He wanted to rise to his feet and go to her and kneel to her and if she said so, walk across the pit of hot coals to her but he could not move. A soft voice spoke inside his head.
When my moon is high lift your pipes to your lips, singer of songs, and let them sing of me.
Namun was jogging his arm, telling him to wake up, stop dreaming. The feast was about to start. He asked where the priestess was.
“You mean the old woman in the black shift? She’s gone. Croaked a few words I didn’t understand, threw some dried-up flowers onto the fish and hobbled off. What do you mean where is she? You must have seen her. Sometimes I wonder about you.”
The head of the fish was carefully cut off and placed on a large shallow dish, made of tin, Kanesh noted. All eyes then followed two women whose duty it was to place the offering on the Lady’s altar in a sacred place near the river. As soon as they were out of sight the feast began. Everyone had a taste of the fish, women first, then honoured guests, and lastly men of the settlement and the ship. Namun and Kerma complained afterwards that all they got was a suck of the bones but there were other fish and roasted rabbits and buckets of honey-sweetened porridge as well as barley cakes to fill their stomachs. Women poured the wine and beer, re-filling beakers and pitchers as soon as they were emptied.
Sharesh hardly touched his wine. He watched the games and the contests that followed the eating without remembering what took place. He was still in a state of bewilderment over what he thought he had seen and what he had been told he had seen. But as to the soft words that were spoken in his head, he was quite clear because the more he repeated them to himself, the more he knew what his pipes would sing when the moon rose high. Their music made the women sing as they danced and made every watching man see his woman as he, Sharesh, had seen her, she who serves the Lady. He played until only he was left near the pit filled with dead ashes and then he played on until the moon began to pale at the first reddening of the dawn sky. All the time he played, Luzar watched and listened from the shadows and, when Kanesh left the feast, it was to watch Luzar from the shadows.
“Seems everything sacred is handled by the women here,” laughed Kerma when the crew were talking about the feast as they were getting the ship ready to sail.
“After you won the stone lifting, I saw you go off with one of them for a bit of sacred handling,” said the chief rigger.
“A widow,” said Kerma, “I keep telling you. I only make friends with widows. Then there’s no trouble. Not like him,” he went on, pointing to Namun. “Up to his tricks again, he was; still hardly more than a deck lad and he goes for the headman’s daughter. He’ll get his sacred parts sliced off one day.”
“She ran away,” protested Namun.
“And you after her.”
“Do you want to know where she went? It was a place in the woods near the riverbank, a sort of clearing with an altar in the middle. It’s not far away; you could hear Sharesh playing his pipes back near the fire. It was where they’d taken the head of the fish. We weren’t the first to get there. Half the village seemed to be there, to celebrate the end of the feast, she said.”
“After all the eating and the drinking and the music and dancing, you don’t have to tell us how they were doing that.”
“Well I didn’t. I couldn’t, not with all the others lying about. I went back to listen to Sharesh.”
“Now that was your second mistake. First you get the daughter of somebody important in the mood and then you disappoint her. You’d better keep out of the way when they come to see us off. Now, listen, let me tell you lot about stone lifting, not that any of you has the legs or the backbone to do it right. It’s all a matter of how you breathe.”
When Berexo stepped from the doorway of his house just before dawn, Luzar was there holding a net.
“I came here to make a slave of you with this net as I was made a slave by you and put you to work in the mines in my land. The lord Kanesh says that now we are allies. He has saved you from slavery, but you will bear the mark of a slave.”
Before he knew what was happenin
g, Berexo felt a sharp pain in his brow and blinked as drops of blood ran into his eyes. Luzar stepped back, slipping the knife into its sheath. The wound that ran down Berexo’s forehead between the eyebrows would heal but leave the scar signifying a slave.
“They will have dogs,” said Potyr. “Pray that they do not have geese.”
“The dogs may wake but they will not bark,” said Kanesh. “As for geese, let us hope that the archers’ aim is true.”
In the dark time before dawn Kanesh went in first to make sure the dogs did not bark. Luzar followed. It did not take long. The biggest house was ablaze and the boats, save one, set adrift before any man had risen from his bed. When they did emerge from their huts they were clubbed or hacked down by Kerma and the Taphians. Those that managed to run had arrows in their backs before they reached the water. The rest threw down their knives and lances and grovelled on the sand at Kanesh’s feet. The shrieking women clutching their wailing children and the youngest man were gathered together, taken to the shore and put into the last boat followed by jars of water and a sack of barley loaves. A single steering oar was thrust into the man’s hand and the boat shoved out into the stream by Kerma. The current was almost at the turn and with its single oar at work the boat began to drift slowly upstream. Sharesh and Namun watched it go.
“If they reach the shore they will be enslaved, or wander in that wilderness,” said Sharesh.
“Either way, it is a life.”
Ten men, each expecting death, were dragged to their feet, made to wade out to the Davina and forced on board. There was a small island far enough out in the stream for it to be a very dangerous swim to either bank. There they would be put ashore with water enough for a few days, if they were careful with it, and left to live or die, as the sun, or a storm, or, some thought, the Lady of the River would determine.