by M J Engh
By this time Repnomar had come back with Broz, who capered strangely around her, whining and almost laughing in his joy to be down from midair and free of his sail and out of the roar of the waterfall, yet still trembling with the backwash of those horrors. And Repnomar, though in his gambols he bumped against her knees and got between her feet and almost tripped her, would not so much as speak harshly to him, but contented herself with swearing mildly and softly. She had meant to bring her sail downstream with her, considering that there was always some use to be made of good sailcloth; but in her weariness she had dragged it only a little way and left it lying. Nevertheless, she brought a good omen; for Lethgro's crow had neither drowned nor flown back to the Mouse, but come to join Repnomar's on the river bank where she had left it with Broz, and the two crows rode now on her two shoulders, complaining whenever Broz made her stumble.
So they made a fire, for the Exile was chilled through and shaking very miserably, and dried their clothes a few pieces at a time, and rested. Here they were still in sight of the waterfall, and when the Exile was strong enough they stood all three in a row by the fire and waved their arms, so that Anscrop and the rest of the Mouse's crew could see them from the island and know they were all living. And they found shellfish in the river's shallows, and slept a little, two at a time.
But when they were all awake and stirring again it was a different story, for they found themselves full of excitement and congratulation. They talked of nothing except their flight, but they talked a great deal of that, comparing and arguing with such vigor that scarcely a sentence was finished without interruption. The Exile was sure that he knew now how he could have made the sails better for this flight, and the Captain was sure that her towing of Broz's sail had made them both fly better, and the Warden (who on this point spoke from good experience) was sure that the harnesses should be made for easier escape. All these matters required them to study the two sails that were left to them, and for a while they ranged up and down the shore, dragging the sails this way and that, trying the harnesses, and drawing lines and arrows in the mud of the bank, while Broz and the two crows watched without approval.
But at last they packed up Broz's sail (as being the less cumbersome) to carry with them, and left Repnomar's folded and stowed under brushwood, and set off downstream at a comfortable pace, waving farewell toward the island, in case any of the Mouse's crew were watching.
Journeying like this, they followed the watch plan of land travelers, which to the Captain's thinking was a poor way of arranging the time, though while they were on foot she could offer no better. So they would travel for a watch (only pausing to rest or eat) and sleep for a watch, taking it each in turn to stand guard till all had had their sleep, and then travel on for another watch. The Captain's thought was on building a raft, or some such vessel, to carry them down the river. But here luck was against them, for downstream from the waterfall there was no more forest, but open grassland sparsely dotted with trees, and these for the most part gnarled and twisted. The Exile viewed this new country with some surprise, saying that the lowland was like a highland and the other way about; and Lethgro and Repnomar looked at him curiously, considering that if they were coming to a place he knew, it was odd that the country should be strange to him.
Still the Captain held that they might have contrived a raft, if they had only had proper tools to cut what trees there were; but they had none, for the Exile had insisted that they carry no dead weight beyond their clothes and the Warden's bow and arrows and some few small things in their pockets. “But if we don't have axes,” the Captain added, “we have crows. We can send word for the crew to cut logs and toss them over to us.” And she had to be persuaded by studying the current that there was no way they could catch such logs if they were thrown. So in the end she resigned herself to walking, though she kept a keen watch for anything that might serve to carry them on water.
For a time the river still ran swiftly; but when they had waked twice and slept twice and were in their third watch of walking, the Warden remarked, “We'll be coming to reedbeds soon.” And when they asked him how he could know, he said this country was like the Lower Sollet, where the great river broadens in the flat floodland and flows slowly through many channels. And indeed he was right, for the Dreeg too widened and slowed, and broke into winding streams, and tall reeds grew on the wet flats and in the broad shallows of the river. “Now,” said the Captain, folding her arms and planting her feet solidly, “we've gone far enough with this nonsense. You can splat and puddle in the mud if you like it; but I'm building a boat here and now, for Broz and me.”
“Building it of what?” said Lethgro. “Mud, or reeds?” For one seemed to him no likelier than the other, so that at first he thought she was joking when she said with a smile, “Reeds.”
But it was reeds she meant, and reeds she began to gather. And indeed they all saw quickly the sense of it, for the reeds were thick and stout, and so buoyant that they shot up like arrows from a bow if you tried to hold them underwater. “And you can bend them however you like,” the Captain said happily, for she was well pleased to think of having a vessel under her feet again, if it was only a scrap of a raft plaited of rivergrass. “And we can weave them together, or tie them with smaller stuff. And I told you we were right to bring a sail!”
So they camped on the mud flats, and labored among the reeds for the rest of that watch, and the next, and into the third, taking it now in turn for two to work while one slept, a system the Captain found more seemly. It was not altogether child's play; for the largest reeds, that grew here higher than Lethgro's head, were too tough to cut with their knives, however much they honed them. But this, as the Captain said, was all to the good, for it meant that their craft would be sturdy; and all but the very toughest could be broken easily enough at the knot you found by groping down a little way into the soft mud. And by trying every kind of grass and weed that grew thereabouts, they learned to use a sort of long-stemmed sedge for their cordage, which was thin and pliant and yet tough almost as rope. With this they bound armfuls of reeds together into bundles, and wove the bundles together with other reeds, till they had a raft broad enough to hold them all in some comfort and yet so light that the Exile could carry it alone, though awkwardly. When they had set it on the water and climbed aboard one by one, it settled low but still floated securely.
“It's not a Sollet cargo ship,” the Captain said at last, when she had tried and tested everything twice or three times, “and it's not the Mouse; but it floats.” It did more than float, for they had set certain reed bundles upright and hung Broz's sail between them—a clumsy contrivance, but by shifting the sail from one bundle to another the Captain was able to make some use of the wind, so that they were not all at the mercy of the current.
Now for a while they voyaged easily between flat banks that were forested with the great reeds, and past long islands flat too and reed-crowded like the shore; and banks and islands and raft alike were half awash in the quiet river. It had begun to rain; but this, as Lethgro observed, was no surprise, since it was high time for the Rains to begin. The light was well behind them now, and the air cool, and the wind gentle, rippling the dark face of the Dreeg and soughing in the reeds; and there was little for them to do but fish and talk under the shelter of a reed mat which the Exile had woven. “And we've come a long way,” the Warden said, “and lost two lives and a few lesser things, not to know yet what we're journeying for.”
Now the Exile, when it was pointed out to him clearly that this remark had to do with him, fell into despondency, telling them that the death of those two sailors was a grief and a reproach to him, and hoping earnestly that he would bring them into no more trouble. To which Repnomar replied testily, “Tell us where you're bringing us, and we'll tell you if it's trouble.” And Lethgro seconded her in this.
But what the Exile now told them, with all signs of frankness, was not well calculated to produce either belief or ease of mind. For he claim
ed to have come from nowhere in the world, but from another world entirely, beyond the sky, and pointed out its direction to them (though of that, he admitted, he was not quite sure); and he believed (or said so) that he had been sent here for a purpose, and that precious things had been left for his use somewhere ahead of them, and now not far ahead, and that it was to seek these things that he journeyed so eagerly. But he seemed very cloudy in his mind as to what that purpose might be. For, as he explained it, all he knew was that he had waked on a riverbank, as ignorant as a baby of himself and his whereabouts, but feeling everything he saw about him foreign and somehow wrong, the very clothes on his back outlandish to him. Making his way along the river, he had come to a logging station, where the loggers had seen fit to detain him and hand him over to the next ship (for it was the Upper Sollet he had waked beside), and the shippers on their way downstream had handed him over, as was due, to the Warden. Bit by bit some knowledge of himself had come to him, but none of this world, so that he understood that it was indeed new to him, and he to it. But how he had come to where he first found himself, or what he was to do in this world, he could not yet say. (Or, thought the Warden, would not.) It was when he remembered the precious things left for his use that he had determined to escape from Sollet Castle. But when the Warden asked him how he knew where these things were, he was hard put to answer, seeming not to find words for his meaning, though for all else he had been voluble enough. At last he said that he remembered knowing that these things had been left in the darkness—close to the edge of the darkness; and that was all he could tell them.
“It's what I've always thought of gods,” said Repnomar, with a laugh. “They have all they can handle taking care of themselves, let alone anybody else.” The Exile protested that he was no god, only an outlander; but Repnomar scoffed at this, saying that persons from other worlds could hardly be human. But the Exile, confessing readily enough that he was not human, yet stuck to it that neither was he a god, and said that there were many worlds beyond the sky, each with a sky of its own and many with their own peoples; which incomprehensible talk only seemed to confirm the likelihood that he was either a god or a liar.
Now the light was far down in the sky behind them, and all was in shadow from the tall reeds they mazed among. The sighing of the wind and the whispering of the rain made a quiet music that was melancholy to hear; but the tallness and closeness of the reeds protected them for the most part from wind and rain alike, so much so that the sail hung almost useless. The Exile, though he shivered somewhat with the coolness and the wet, kept a cheerful face; and Broz, who found this life not too different from rainy times on board the Mouse, dozed placidly under the awning mat. But the tempers of the others were wearing thinner, as still they voyaged and still no way opened out of the reed beds. The current had grown so weak that they had to pole themselves along with stout reeds, that were not stout enough but broke again and again.
“Why not admit, Repnomar,” said the Warden, “that we don't even know if we're on a river any longer?”
“There's still a current,” said the Captain, leaning to her work as she poled. “And water still runs downhill. Besides, we have the crows.” For as the reeds closed in and the river raveled out into a skein of intertangling channels, she had begun to send out the crows.
“Yes, and look at them,” said Lethgro, and the Captain grunted. Indeed one crow sat hunched and muttering on the Captain's own shoulder, balancing itself with a bad grace against her movements and flicking its head to throw off the raindrops, while the other circled aimlessly in the drizzle above them, returning always to croak its displeasure and then fly off again, so that the Warden, though not expert in the ways of shipcrows, felt confident that the crows were of his opinion.
“You see the kind of channels we have here, Lethgro,” the Captain said obstinately. “These crows grew up on the Coast and the open Soll. You can't expect them to like this river, nor to see where the water runs between the reeds. I don't doubt that it all looks like land to them. But they'll tell us when we're coming to open water.”
“What makes you think we'll ever come to open water?” said Lethgro.
This was badly timed; for, the Captain's poling reed breaking at that moment, she lurched and almost fell, upsetting her crow, which dug its claws into her shoulder and squawked in indignation. So that, when she had smashed the broken reed against the side of the raft and sworn at it and at the crow, it was somewhat testily that she turned to the Warden and answered, “Water flows into water. This is a river, Lethgro, and it's on its way to the Soll, or—”
But here she stopped, and stood looking with grave displeasure at the wall of reeds that loomed dark green and blank before them, for the last thrust of the poles had brought them around a turning of their sluggish channel.
“Or what, Rep?” the Warden asked heavily, when they had all gazed as long as they could well bear (for the Exile, whose watch it was to sleep, had waked when the raft ceased to move).
“Or something like the Soll,” Repnomar finished through her teeth, and giving him such a look that he thought best not to pursue this question. “Water flows into water.
“Only,” she added more temperately, “it may be very shallow water. And full of reeds.”
Lethgro sat down thoughtfully, resting his poling reed across his knees. He had believed heretofore that both land and water could be traveled, this by ship (or, if need be, other vessel) and that by foot; but what were they to make of this shallow Soll of reeds where neither vessel nor foot could pass? “Though if it comes to that,” he said aloud, “we could wade it.”
The Captain looked at him with revulsion, and even the Exile seemed saddened by this idea. But the Warden stood up again, measuring himself against his poling reed. “It's not more than waist deep,” he said. “And we're wet already with the rain.”
The Exile pointed out that waist deep for some meant chin deep for others; but the Captain, though the notion of walking through water rather than sailing over it was to her uncouth and unseemly, said only, “I'll send up the crows again. There's no point in wading ourselves into deep water.” With which the Exile heartily agreed.
So the crows, squawking resentfully, were flung upward, and took the air with angry wingbeats, for they had formed their opinion of this country already, and saw no need to confirm it. Nevertheless, they circled off, rising high to see as far as might be (for Repnomar would have no crows on her ship that did not know their business) and in due time returned and paced sulky and aggrieved around the Captain where she sat by the raft's edge, so that it was clear they had seen nothing of interest.
“Remember it was your idea, Lethgro,” the Captain said somewhat grimly, and she swung her legs over the edge and slid into the water, so that the raft bobbed and shook, and Broz whined uncertainly. An expression of grave distaste spread across her face, and she added, “I hope those are good boots you're wearing.”
Indeed the bottom of this Reed Soll, as the Captain chose now to call it, was blanketed thickly with ooze, so that they waded through water above and muck below. As the Warden had predicted, it came little more than waist high for him and the Captain; but the Exile, when he had lowered himself into it with a shrug and a grimace, was constrained to keep his chin lifted and his mouth shut. Broz swam behind the Captain till he grew tired, after which she and the Warden took it in turns to carry him.
“Not that he couldn't swim it,” the Captain observed, “if it were clear water. It's these cursed reeds that wear him out.”
“Not only him,” said the Warden, who at that moment was carrying Broz, hung dripping around his shoulders like a heavy scarf. And the Exile grunted.
Indeed the worst of their wading was neither water nor ooze, but the reeds that grew here thick as grass blades on the prairies of the Lower Sollet. They went in single file, the Captain first now (since it was Lethgro's turn to carry Broz), spreading the reeds aside and trampling them down as she plowed a slow way through, and the
Exile last, where the trodden reeds gave him somewhat higher footing through the muck, like a springy carpet full of loops and tangles. He had said very little for some time, not choosing to open his mouth to the mucky water they stirred up, but now he declared that they were almost there; and Repnomar agreed with this, saying somewhat darkly, “One way or another, we're coming to the end.”
It seemed to Lethgro that the reeds grew ever taller; but it was hard to be sure of that, for they showed uncouthly tall in any case, looking straight up at them thus and into the rain, and (worse yet) there was no light worth mentioning at all now, only a blackness of reeds and water and a grayness of sky. But taller or shorter, it was certain that the reeds here were more slender, and flattened like narrow swordblades; so that the going was easier in one way (for these grassy blades bent or broke with no more resistance than the rottenest wood) but harder in another, for they were like swordblades in the nature of their edges also.
They went on doggedly now, and with few words, and the Warden took care to break as many reeds as he well might in their passage, so that if the time came to turn back they would find a clear trail to follow. Indeed it was not easy to know whether or not they kept a straight course in this slicing darkness. Only, as Repnomar remarked, so long as things changed, however slowly, they could be sure they were making progress.
And it was true that things were slowly changing. Not only were the reeds of a different shape, but they grew now more sparsely; and, as the Exile remarked, the rain had stopped, though the wind was stronger. There was a difference, too, in the feel of the muck about their feet, stickier but not so deep. And when the Exile offered to take his turn at last in carrying Broz, it was clear that the water itself was shallower, for he had his arms above the surface. The crows had long since fallen silent, hunched now on one shoulder, now on another.