Wheel of the Winds

by M J Engh

  Indeed, the midges seemed to be gathering to the creek mouth, where before they had been few enough. The remains of some ill-tasting fish that the sailors had caught in the creek and made their meal of were furred all over now with ashy-colored wings; and inland and along the shore, the dunes in the hot light seemed to shift and smoke and change color, as the midges came crawling and fluttering along the sand, or flying in hazy swarms that drifted and floated on the breezes and yet somehow trended always toward the creek mouth.

  “Well,” said the Captain, “it's too hot anyhow to be sitting by a fire.” And she got up, calling all hands to come back to the Mouse.

  But one of the sailors, who had been on lookout at the top of a high dune a little inland from their fire, came running and stumbling, with her hands busy about her face, making a choking cry that sent a chill down the spines of all that heard it. And though the Warden, who was nearest, ran forward to meet her, with the Captain hard at his heels, she had fallen on the sand before they reached her. Then it was Captain and Warden who stumbled as they ran, dragging the drooping sailor between them, and threw their arms across their faces to try to breathe through their sleeves. One of the other sailors had wit enough to fling his own shirt on the dying fire, so that it sent up a great puff of angry smoke, and in the smoke they drew breath, and beat the choked sailor on the back and scooped and scraped midges out of her mouth and nostrils with their fingers, so that she gasped and breathed again. At the same time the Captain, looking up, saw one of the shipcrows that had come down from the rigging to eat midges suddenly stagger in midair and fall flapping to the sand. So she cried out to shut up the crows and lift anchor and get the Mouse under way, and with their hands to their noses they all waded into the creek and were helped on deck, where they found the wounded pirates praying ardently to Broz, who cared little enough for their worship.

  It was hard times for a while then on board the Mouse; for with what wind there was against them, and the creek current too feeble to help much, and little room for the oars, they had to pole the ship to the more open water behind the long sandbar Repnomar had marked, and with every minute passing, the midges swarmed thicker. All had to be done at once—the ship poled, oars run out, fires built on deck, a way found through the tangle of sandbars—and all with a short crew and everyone fighting for breath. Yet all was done, and done in time, and they rowed out into the open Soll, where breezes and the smoke of their fires soon cleared away the midges. “And,” said Repnomar, shading her eyes against the light and gazing offshore, “we're back to where we were, for there's our pirate waiting for us.”

  Indeed the stranger ship still hung offshore, and seemed now to be moving in the Mouse's direction. “Well, Rep,” said the Warden; and Repnomar answered briskly, “We'll head for the Outlet.”

  Now for almost a week of watches by the Captain's count (although she was willing to admit that things on board the Mouse had been upset by these late happenings, and the hourglass not turned, so that altogether three or four hours, or even as much as a watch, might have fallen out of the reckoning), they sailed along the Low Coast. They called it that, for lack of a better name, in mark of difference from the Coast they had known on the other side of the Soll. Bit by bit the look of the land changed, growing less sandy and more rocky and earthy, but still barren, with no life they could see except a sort of low gray scrub in places. Now food was very short (for the fishing here was nothing like what it had been in the Current) and tempers shorter, what with the death of Flitten and the abandoning of his body, and the pains and complaints of the wounded, and the troublesome presence of the prisoners (for though Repnomar got some good out of them by setting them to the oars, they had to be always watched and understood nothing said to them and yet must have their share of what food there was) and the unending light and heat and the fitful breezes that fell sometimes to dead calm, and the dreary course they ran between that hostile shore and that hostile ship.

  For watch by watch the other ship kept pace with them, sometimes barely in sight, sometimes so near they could see the faces of people on deck, till one watch when Repnomar was startled out of her sleep by a sailor bringing word that another sail had been sighted, coming from the other direction to meet them. Now they expected the worst, and made ready to defend themselves, the Captain looking out a spot on the coast to run to and steering closer inshore. The three wounded pirates were bound and stowed securely; but the two wounded sailors of the Mouse's own crew, being now well enough to fight, were given weapons and set beside the rail where they might be useful.

  “Both at once,” said the Warden, and nocked his arrow. Indeed the two ships seemed bent on coming together before they turned against the Mouse. The first ship especially, which had followed them so long, was flying down the wind (though it was only a skittering breeze) with a speed that made the Captain swear in admiration, and closing fast with the second. “We can't outsail that,” she said regretfully, “not if our lives depended on it.” ("'If'!” muttered the Warden.) “And we can't fight both at once. We'll have to go inshore, and trust to the midges to hold them off. Unless Broz—” But here she cut herself short with a cry, and all the crew began to yelp and chatter and shade their eyes for better staring.

  The two ships had met, and now drifted aimlessly like two fighting dogs that tumble down a hillside, clawing each other's bellies. Repnomar whistled low, and said to the Warden, “One has grappled the other"; and added after a little, “At that rate, they'll be among the midges before they settle their difference.”

  But in this she was wrong, though indeed the Mouse had rowed past unmolested and left them well astern before they broke apart. Almost within arrowshot of the land, first one ship and then the other trimmed its sails and turned, the one heading opposite the Current and away from the Mouse, while the other seemed bent on putting as much distance as it could between itself and any other vessel.

  “Did you see those people, Lethgro?” the Captain asked thoughtfully; for they had passed close enough to the fight to see that it was a fight indeed, and even to make out faces on board both ships. And when Lethgro said yes, she asked again, “Have you noticed anything peculiar about the Low Coasters—every one of them we've seen?”

  Now, Lethgro felt that there were several noticeable peculiarities of these people, and began to name them, as their piratical way of life (preying upon each other as well as upon strangers), their methods of fighting, their style of signals, their sailing rig, their uncouth language, and their curious awe of dogs, or at least of Broz, to whom their prisoners now offered prayers at the beginning of every watch. But Repnomar brushed these aside, saying, “Haven't you noticed their faces? All bearded.” And Lethgro, thinking back, concluded that this was so. They had not seen a woman in any Low Coast crew.

  They puzzled over this curiosity, trying to guess what it might mean, and the Captain said with a laugh that perhaps Low Coasters were like the folk of Perra (for in that remote district the custom was such that women and men did different work and even wore different clothing, as if they belonged to different nations, so that all along the Coast the joke ran that Perrans could not tell women from men without their clothes). But just then the lookout shouted for land to starboard, and all the crew scrambled for the rigging or the side to catch a sight of it, for till now there had been nothing in that direction but the open Soll. The Captain grasped the tiller, calling out orders, and the Mouse turned briskly toward the new land.

  “What is it, Repnomar?” asked the Warden. “Don't we have trouble enough to satisfy you, without seeking out more of it?” But she answered that they had not crossed the Soll and come so far only to turn their backs on every new thing.

  “And besides, Lethgro,” she added after a time, “we'll be in worse trouble yet if we don't find fresh food soon.” And since Lethgro knew this to be true, he nodded and made no more objection.

  Now they had come into the Current again (which they had been inshore of, to avoid the Low Coast s
hips), and the new land, ahead and still to their right, grew clearer with every breath. At first it looked no more inviting than what they had already seen of the Low Coast. But, “There are birds!” cried the Captain. “And there's green on that slope. We'll have a good dinner if we don't meet more pirates first.” And at this moment the lookout shouted for more land dead ahead.

  Indeed they had come, as they soon found, to a line of headlands or islands that seemed to stretch along the far side of the Current, opposite the Low Coast; so that for a time the Captain was in high excitement, believing they were in the Outlet. But when they left the Current and rowed in among them, they found they were islands indeed, and tiny islands at that, and the open Soll beyond them. Still, they were happy enough to anchor in the lee of one of them and go ashore, where they found birds’ eggs, and small game, and bushes full of berries, and made a feast. But the Warden, who did not like the eager looks and chatter of the prisoners, insisted that they be put under hatches, bound and even gagged to keep them from calling out; and this proved wise. For one of the Mouse's crew, who had been foraging for berries on the upper slopes, came down at a gallop, crying out that there were ships everywhere. In sober truth he had sighted three on the waters among the islands, and one anchored on the other side of this very island, so that likely enough some of its people were on shore and apt to come upon them at any moment. The ships, he said, were not like those they had fought and run from, but broader built and slower—a word that heartened the Captain.

  “And most likely they're a different folk altogether,” she told the Warden, when she had given orders to gather up all the food they could in haste and make ready to sail at short notice; “and maybe friendlier to strangers. I'm willing to hail one of these ships, once we're under way and close to the Current.” And while Lethgro tried to dissuade her from this, one of the sailors came running up with a hatful of eggs and a finger to her lips, and led them to a thicket from which they could see, not ten yards distant, a ragged person on the shore who seemed to be fashioning a raft out of brushwood and driftwood. The Captain whistled softly to herself. But the Warden burst forth from the thicket and thundered down the shore, half-choked between rage and laughter; for it was the Exile.

  6

  The Dreeg

  About the middle of the next watch, the clouds thinned, and the heat and dazzle were such that three fights broke out on board the Mouse in little more than an hour. They had rigged the spare mainsail in front of the cabin to make shade on deck, but it gave them little enough relief; for not everyone could lounge there at once (this was the occasion of some of the fighting) and the reflected glare that blazed up from the Soll was almost as bad as what blazed down from the sky.

  Now some were for laying in what food they could and turning back toward Beng, though it meant rowing or beating upwind all the way; but the Captain said there was nothing for it but to push on to the Outlet. To this, some objected that the farther they had come the hotter it had grown, and was likely to do so forever; but the Captain said that when they had reached the Outlet they could get out from under this burning region of the sky and find a more temperate country on the other side; and the Exile agreed.

  He had come back very docilely to the Mouse (indeed he seemed glad to see the Warden again), though he gave no good reason for his leap into the pirate ship, only saying, when questioned, that he had thought it was worth a try; and they were glad to have him, for it seemed that in the week he lived among the Low Coast people he had learned a good deal. He told them that both sorts of ship they had seen belonged to the same folk; only the swift sailers were fishing and fighting ships, which the men worked, and the slower ships, which seemed to stay close among the islands, were full of women and children. The Exile's opinion, so far as they could make it out, was that these people lived their lives on shipboard; that the whole occupation of the men was to catch fish and steal each other's catches on the open Soll, but that they lived together peacefully enough among the islands. Of one thing he was sure, that they feared the Low Coast very greatly—though, not having seen the midges, he did not know why. It seemed he had hoped to reach that coast on the raft he was building, and continue his journey on foot.

  “You can thank your gods, if you have any,” said the Warden, “that we found you first.”

  The Captain had questioned him eagerly about the Outlet, but he seemed to have heard nothing of it. At her urging, he questioned their prisoners, for he had learned a little of their language; but either it was too little, or they knew of no outlet from the Soll. All he could get from them was that they feared the Low Coast because of something they called Blaajan (which he took to mean the midges, now he had heard of them) and they feared the Current too, because of something they called Dreeg. But when the Captain asserted that this Dreeg would be the Outlet, the Exile disagreed, saying that from the way they spoke of it, he took this Dreeg to be a sort of god, and a very ferocious one. So the Captain had the prisoners gagged again, and left them bound on the shore of the island, though not bound so tightly that they might not work themselves free in a few hours; and the Mouse set sail again into the Current. And it was a little while after this that the clouds thinned and the fights broke out.

  The wounded sailors, though still complaining, were well enough to be put back to work, and the Captain set them to drawing buckets of Soll water and pouring it over their shipmates; and the Exile helped them, marveling at how quickly their wounds had healed (which both of them took amiss, asserting they were not nearly healed yet). So they sailed on, for the most part half-naked, cooled enough by the water and the puffs of wind to do their work, but not to be in better temper. Still the barren shore of the Low Coast lay on their left, with now and then a glimpse of an island on the right. They saw no more sails. And now the Low Coast itself seemed to fall away, as the Current swept them farther offshore, back again into the open Soll. On board the Mouse unhappiness grew, some of the sailors grim and silent, some speaking openly of seizing the ship and heading back to the last island they had passed. But the Captain promised they would not go utterly out of sight of land without first turning back for more supplies, and kept her eyes glued to the horizon, swearing she could still make out the Low Coast there. And in a little while the Current swerved once more, flowing now almost straight shoreward. But there was no shore. The Low Coast seemed to have vanished.

  Now even those of the crew who had spoken most fiercely for returning to an island were silent, for they hoped that Repnomar's luck was proving good again. When presently a shore came into sight again on the left, it was high and forested; and a little later it was Warden Lethgro himself (for all others’ eyes were following that shore) who sighted another long, dark line on the right. And Repnomar, her joy too great for much noise or movement, clasped his hand gravely and said in a hushed voice, “We're in the Outlet.”

  “From the look of it, we could be back on the Sollet,” said Lethgro, and at the thought found himself shaken by a great, shuddering sigh. But after all it was not so much like the Sollet, what with the burning light that blistered their skins, and what with the closing-in of the shores. For the river (as they had to call it now) ran ever swifter and narrower, between steep banks that were sometimes forested to the water's edge and sometimes bare cliffs of yellow rock. The Captain's brow was creased with frowning; for there was no wind at all, and the current of the Dreeg (as she had begun to call the river itself) was strong, so that it seemed to her she had little control of her own ship. Thus they raced on, till a little beach showed ahead at the foot of the wooded slope of the left bank; and with much slamming of the rudder and throwing of draglines they brought the Mouse to rest there, running her slantwise up onto the beach. She struck with a rasping shock, so that the mast and all the rigging pitched forward and nearly buckled, and for the next three turns of the hourglass the Captain had all the crew and the Exile busy testing and tightening and caulking. But there was no grave damage.

  Toward the end
of those three hours the Warden came back very well pleased from the woods where he had gone with Broz to hunt for food. His belt was hung with small game the size of young rabbits, and he carried on his shoulders a bigger beast something like a wild pig, so that when he had unloaded himself he sat down puffing and panting, but content. Indeed the woods were full of game, and he had lost only one arrow, broken in the pig's side when it ran through the brush. So they built a fire on the beach and ate well, and hung the rest of their meat in a tree at the water's edge. And the Warden and the Exile chatted comfortably, as they had used to do in Sollet Castle. The Exile said that in his own country (which he had long forgotten, but remembered better now) there were animals much like dogs, but of many shapes and sizes, none of them given to climbing trees. Likewise there were (he thought) birds similar to crows, but not so clever and useful; and creatures like sheep, but without fleece and so large that people could ride on their backs; and so with many other creatures. But where his country was, he could not or would not say.

  Now those whose turn it was to sleep stretched themselves on the gravelly sand, and all the others pursued what pleasure they liked, some in the shallows of the river, some in the shadows of the woods. For it was cooler here in the canyon of the Dreeg, with a new wind springing up (though it came perversely from straight downstream), and the woods were rich with flowers and vines and fruits that none of them knew, and there was no one but felt their luck had turned for the better. Only, by a kind of silent agreement, the Captain and the Warden kept close watch on the Exile. For though they had no warrant now to hold him prisoner, being beyond all law or concern of the Sacred League of Beng and Rotl, yet they did not intend to lose him again if they could help it, since he was a useful person close at hand and an unsettling one at large.