Wheel of the Winds

by M J Engh

  The skipper (who was a meager, sour-faced man) looked narrowly from Repnomar to Lethgro to the pirate captain and said that there was no need to swear anything, since he was already under Lethgro's command; at which the pirate, smelling treachery to come, loudly agreed that oaths were useless, and suggested that the best solution would be to weight the council skipper with a ballast stone or spare anchor and drop him overboard, so as not to excite the Soll gods with blood, which sometimes led to storms. This argument had a strong effect on the skipper, who after a little more discussion agreed to be put ashore in a cove where the cliffs were lower and not undercut by the waves.

  The sailors in the boats, who at first were much disturbed to see their skipper put into a pirate's dinghy, were soon reconciled, for Lethgro shouted to them the cheering news that they were not to be either marooned or murdered. They were still more comforted when he promised that all who sailed with him would be well paid, so that in the end only two decided to be put ashore with their skipper, and the others rejoined their crewmates on the Council ship. And the Exile came out from his hiding place and greeted Lethgro warmly, thanking him for all the risks he had run.

  Now they steered slantwise away from the Coast, hoping to pick up the Current before they passed Beng, and so be making good speed in the event that anyone gave chase. But they expected no pursuit, for it would be some time before the skipper's news could stir up any action. Repnomar had taken over as captain of the council ship and was busy learning its ways, while the crew learned hers. Lethgro had decreed that the Council insignia should remain on the rail so long as they were likely to be seen; while the pirate ship, unable to look so respectable, kept on their Sollward side, like a gaunt pickpocket skulking in the shadow of a pompous councilor. The Current had shifted since they last came this way, but they found it a little beyond Beng (no one having challenged or followed them) and let it carry them in a long graceful curve into the heart of the Soll.

  25

  Of the Difference between

  Meadow and Desert

  When the long smudges of the Low Coast came in sight, the pirate captain (whose name was Brask) would not at first believe it. She was a stout, choleric person, with little patience for what she took to be nonsense; and what Repnomar called Low Coast, she said was only the darkness of the clouds on the horizon. Most of the sailors on both ships were inclined to accept this opinion. Repnomar scoffed at their disbelief, saying they should never have agreed to cross the Soll if they could not recognize the far side of it when they saw it. The pirates for the most part did not care which side of the Soll they were on, nor whether they would ever come home again; but the sailors of the Council ship (which was called the Blue Crow) were anxious, and some of them said openly that they hoped what they saw would not prove to be land; since if it was not, there would soon be no choice but to turn and sail homeward.

  But Lethgro reminded them that the longer their voyage, and the more countries they passed through, the more they would be paid at the end of it; so that there was only a little grumbling when it became clear to all that what lay before them was land indeed.

  Repnomar and Lethgro and the Exile had all been straining their eyes in the glare (by which the Exile was the least troubled), trying to decide if the Current and the winds had brought them to the same part of the Low Coast as before. But presently the Captain declared that she recognized the dismal point of land near which they had first met and fought the Low Coasters. This time they saw no sails; but as the Current carried them near the shore, they saw something stranger.

  “I was wrong, Lethgro,” the Captain said, shading her eyes. “This can't be the same coast we saw before. Look at it.”

  “If it's not the same,” Lethgro answered, “it has at least the same shape to it.”

  It had the same shape, low and marshy, without a landmark; but whereas the first time they had seen only bare dunes and lifeless pools, now the land spread before them like a bright garden, all fresh green and flower colors, and birds danced above it. Lethgro clicked his tongue as he caught sight of what seemed a distant herd of animals moving slowly across the rolling meadows, with flocks of birds rising and settling again about their feet like a many-colored mist.

  All this was so inviting that they turned shoreward out of the Current; for though they had begun this voyage well supplied, they were ready for fresh food, and ready for solid land beneath their feet. So they anchored along a curving shore where the waves ran gently to a sandy beach, and sent in boats, the sailors having cast lots to decide who should be of the shore party.

  Even the beach was flushed with the colors of tender grasses and bright flowers, scattered over the sand to the water's edge, so that the last fingers of the waves ran among their stems and stirred them; and dainty insects hummed about them. But strangely they saw no midges, nor any other hurtful thing. There was game to be had for the taking; small creatures, some furry and some naked, that bounded or slithered through the grass, or stood with lifted heads to watch them approach, and seemed not to know what arrows were.

  Repnomar, seeing this bounty, could not believe that they had come to the same section of Low Coast as before, and talked of changes in the Current's path; but Lethgro stooped to run his hand through the lush grasses and feel the naked sand beneath, saying in puzzlement, “This is all new growth.” And not long after that, the Captain stumbled over something in the grass beside a winding creek, and went down on her knees to bend aside the flowers and stems. But at once she jumped up, calling for Lethgro and the Exile to see what she had found. For there in the rich grass lay all that was left of their first camp on the Low Coast: the blackened sticks and ashes of a burned-out fire, and a leather cup that someone had dropped in their flight from the midges.

  So they walked marveling through this paradise that last year had been a desolation. And when the hunters had brought in meat enough to supply their present needs, some of the sailors ran races and played games in the meadow, while others prepared a feast on the shore. The Exile was much interested in how the land had changed, and went about plucking up plants to look at their roots and trying to get close to the flocks of birds. In this pursuit he wandered off across the meadows, and Lethgro followed him, for he had vowed that henceforth he would know everything the Exile did.

  There was a herd of beasts grazing on what last year had been the barren dunes inland from the creek. They were larger than any animal between the Mountains and the Soll, for a sheep's head, or a dog's, would only have reached to their withers. The birds, busily pecking about their feet, seemed to be feasting on insects stirred up by their passing. Lethgro and the Exile neared them slowly, stopping and moving as the herd did, so as not to alarm them.

  All at once, the grazing beasts flung up their heads, poised for a moment, and began to run—not away from Lethgro and the Exile, but across their path and close in front of them. Lethgro, who carried his bow in his hand, snatched out an arrow, for one of these creatures would feed many a hungry sailor. But they fled so fast on their long and slender legs that half the herd was past before he could shoot, and his first arrow missed. The second struck the throat of a racing beast but did not bring it down, and he got off a third as quickly as he could, that caught the same beast in the flank, so that it began to stumble and slow. Before he could do more, the Exile tugged at his sleeve and pointed.

  Lethgro's neck prickled. Bits of the meadow itself seemed to be rising up to chase the herd—green things, spotted with red and blue and yellow and shades of violet, invisible against the flower-spotted grass except that they were in swift motion, following with a leaping gait on the flying heels of the herd. It was hard to grasp their size or shape (except that they were large) or even the number of them, though they seemed much fewer than the animals they pursued.

  All this was what Lethgro saw in the first moments. Then one of the flowery beasts passed close in front of him, and with a great spring it struck the haunches of the animal he had shot, knocking it
down in the grass, and Lethgro ran forward to defend his quarry and his arrows.

  That was a mistake. He had pulled out his knife as he ran, ready to cut the herdbeast's throat if it was still alive. But before he was close enough to make sure of that, the green thing burst at him out of the grass, slashing and shrieking, so that he stumbled back, flinging his arms over his face. In another moment, a second green monster shot past him like a breath of hot wind, and the two began to raven at the fallen beast, while Lethgro staggered hastily away. He was streaming blood from arm and side, where the creature had cut him with claws or teeth—it had happened so swiftly that he did not know which. The Exile, much distressed, helped him back toward the shore, and others came running and eased him into the boat.

  Repnomar, when she returned (for she and Broz had gone off in another direction to scout the land) inspected Lethgro's bandages very severely, and redid some of them to her better liking. “Well, Rep,” Lethgro said wryly, as she was finishing one of these, “I thought I knew how to hunt.” Indeed he had half expected her to chide him for his ineptness, of which he was badly ashamed; for he had lost both his game and his arrows, and made a casualty of himself into the bargain.

  “And I thought I knew how to navigate,” said Repnomar, tightening a knot. “But what's the use of finding the same place if it's changed to a different one?”

  “It's a better place now than it was then,” Lethgro said with a grimace (for his wounds were tender). “The midges were worse than any meadow monsters. And since when have you been sorry to see a change, Repnomar?”

  So they laughed, and agreed that if all the countries they were to travel through were as much altered as this one, and in similar ways, it would be a good journey. “For,” said Repnomar, “we can stay out of the way of a few monsters.” And the pirates and the other sailors made offerings to various gods on the shore.

  Now for some watches they voyaged along the Low Coast—not uneventfully, for in the second watch after their first landfall they met a Low Coast vessel, which tried unwisely to grapple the pirate ship, and ended fleeing before it. But the Low Coasters, to Brask's disgust, were too swift to be caught. After that they saw sails often enough, but had no more meetings. The land continued green and flowery, and from time to time they went ashore to hunt, very cautiously and without accident. The Exile marveled at what he called the rapid healing of Lethgro's wounds, though to Lethgro it seemed tediously slow.

  In a while they came to the islands where the Low Coasters moored their ships, and there saw two or three of the family ships on which the women lived with their children. Captain Brask had to be restrained from attacking one of these; but if she cared for nothing else, she cared for the pay and pardon that Lethgro had (perhaps rashly) promised her, and did not want to lose them before she had enjoyed them. Besides, she was easily convinced, from the look of them, that these ships held no booty worth taking.

  They sailed close under the brow of one of the larger islands, and there saw the first sign that Low Coasters could work on land, as well as fight on water. “If I saw that in a civilized country,” Repnomar said, “I'd call it a wooden god.”

  Indeed it seemed to be a painted statue, larger than human size and not human in form, bright green and spotted with other colors, its hands or forepaws raised to threaten across the water toward the Low Coast. Quarreling birds and a drifting smell told of dead fish heaped around its feet. So they sailed on, glad to be past it.

  Beyond these islands the Current turned away from shore. But here Captain Repnomar proved stubborn, saying that they no longer needed the Current, and should stick to the shore till it led them to the Outlet (or, as they called it now, the Dreeg). For she wanted to know more about the neighborhood of that great gateway into the land—whether there was good anchorage there or anything that might be called a harbor, or if on the contrary there were shoals or sandbanks or other hazards. And when Lethgro pointed out that such things were of little interest, since no one was likely to make this voyage again, she only snorted and said he should speak for himself, not for others; which made him uneasy.

  As for Brask, she cared little which way they went, and said that coasts and currents alike were fields that could be reaped. But the Exile was anxious, urging them to choose the swifter route, which he judged to be the Current. This, however, Repnomar disputed, claiming that with sails and oars, and the comparative shortness of the coast route, they could be in the Dreeg as quickly as the Current could have brought them there, so that Lethgro, who always felt his ignorance in matters of ships and sailing, agreed to follow the shore. Besides, he wanted to try his luck in another meadow hunt; for his wounds were nearly healed now, and the crew were eyeing the greenness ashore and talking of fresh meat.

  So they left the Current, and anchored both ships under a rocky headland (having come to that part of the Low Coast which was not so low). This gave them shelter from waves and wind gusts, so that most of them could go ashore, climbing an easy slope from a broad shingle beach to the top of the headland. Repnomar and Lethgro led the way eagerly.

  But at the top they stood speechless, gazing at what spread before them, till Captain Repnomar let out a long, low whistle. “Ask your gods what happened here, Lethgro,” she said coarsely. “Themselves never made such a desolation.”

  Indeed it was still more desolate than their first Low Coast landing a year ago. There they had seen at least some sickly grass, weeds in the pools, and no lack of midges. Here there seemed no living thing at all, and the naked earth was more obscene than bare rock and sand, for it should have been clothed with life. It was strange to see the raw soil gullied and wind-worn, after those lush and flowering meadows full of game; and strangest of all for Repnomar and Lethgro and the Exile, who remembered barren and dreary dunes where now those meadows flourished.

  “It's not as if everything died here,” the Captain said. “It's as if nothing ever lived.” Indeed they saw not so much as a bone, nor the dried or rotting stalk of any plant. But the Exile, whose point of view was nearer to the ground, stooped over a shallow puddle that had formed in the hollow of a rock, fingering the silt at its bottom, and reported that there were certain scraps there of what had once been living things—scales and the stony fibers of certain plants. And when they had walked on for a little, the Captain, stooping in her turn, lifted a handful of something like fluffy dirt, saying, “Look at this, Lethgro. What do you make of it?”

  “The wind has piled them behind this rock,” Lethgro said, when he had held up a pinch of the stuff, and dug the toe of his boot into the little drift of it caught by a boulder. For the stuff was not dirt, but the dead bodies of little wormlike things, soft and shriveled, the biggest hardly half the length of the Exile's middle finger (which was his longest).

  Now the Exile, studying these things closely and slicing several of them open with the tip of his knife, said that because of their dried condition it was not easy to be sure, but that they seemed to have no mouths or stomachs, and asked the others if such creatures were common in this world. And when they told him they had never heard of such (for all creatures must eat), he grew excited, saying that in some worlds there were animals that took it turn and turn about, either to eat or to breed, and could not do the one when they were fit to do the other. But while they were discussing what he meant by this, some of the pirates, who had wandered off to the right, began to make a racket, calling boisterously on Lethgro to bring his arrows; for here, they said, was game he could safely shoot.

  This, Lethgro felt when he had reached them, was a bad joke; for not even the crows cared for such game as the pirates had found, and he was not accustomed to be mocked by thieves and murderers. Yet it was a sight worth seeing; and gradually, by twos and threes, the whole shore party gathered till all stood side by side, looking down at the ground before them and now and then moving forward a step.

  That very ground seemed moving, a steady shallow churning as if the skin of the world had loosened and were creepi
ng slowly forward. Yet it was only a patch, a few yards each way, and it was not the ground that moved, but the worms that covered it. These, as the Exile declared with excitement, were clearly the same sort of creatures as those they had found dead. They moved as if held together by strings, side by side and nose to tail, all the same way and at the same pace, hunching their little bodies along over whatever obstacles the ground offered, for they could climb straight up the side of a rock as if it were level pavement. In this way, however, sections of the mass must fall behind, when they had to climb over boulders while their mates were advancing on flat ground; and the Exile suggested that perhaps this whole patch had been separated from a still larger mass in just such a way.

  Repnomar, squinting ahead for any sign of such a crawling troop, saw something more attractive instead; for before them the land was as green as it had been behind them. So with Lethgro and Brask and a few others she went forward to investigate; and the Exile (who had been eagerly occupied with the crawlers, trying what happened when two or three were separated from the mass) came trotting after them at Lethgro's call.

  There was no sharp line between the desert and the green, for as they walked they came upon solitary clumps of grass and forlorn flowers, and these grew more and more common till ahead they merged into a lush cover that seemed to Repnomar like that of the meadows where Lethgro had been wounded. In the uncertain zone between lifelessness and plenty they saw more dead crawlers, gathered by the wind at the base of grass clumps or rocks, and one smaller mass of live ones, doggedly humping over the ground.