Wheel of the Winds

by M J Engh

  As if that had been a signal, Broz stopped in his tracks, lifting his muzzle. Repnomar hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she strode on, clucking her tongue to call Broz alongside her. “Unless he growls,” she explained to Lethgro, “it's not worth stopping for. He's caught a little whiff of something, but it can't be very near. No use making the whole crew jittery.” Still, she pulled out her knife, to have it ready in her hand, and Lethgro did the same.

  “Or perhaps,” Lethgro added after a minute, “what he got a whiff of was a red wind from a belching mountain.”

  “Maybe so,” the Captain said shortly, and marched on.

  Now began an uneasy time. Broz was more and more restive, sniffing at the air and the snow, whining in his throat, and now and again giving one of those growls that Repnomar had said would stop them but which she now seemed to ignore. And it was not only Broz who sensed something outside the torchlight. Lethgro, straining his ears to listen through the sounds of their feet crushing the snow, through the breathing and rustling and low voices of so many people on the move, caught now and then (or thought he did) a faint chirping or whistling. Repnomar, staring into the dimness beyond her torchlight, saw too clearly for doubt the flash of silver-gray that she had been waiting for. And once they crossed the tracks of many little paws in the snow.

  Lethgro, who had only one good hand, put away his knife and drew his sword; and the sailors, seeing this, began to bring out their own weapons and to look about them suspiciously. Lethgro turned and shouted an order that no one should shoot or strike except on command; and the sailors of the Mouse and the Crow, who were accustomed to obey him, passed the word along till all were sure of it. And those in the rear crowded on the heels of those before them, for it was very dark.

  The Exile, somewhat short of breath from trotting beside Lethgro, declared that in his opinion there were Quicksilvers on both sides of them, keeping pace as they moved. Captain Brask now came up from the rear, puffing worse than the Exile (for she was stout and short-limbed), and they held council as they marched. Brask was for kindling more torches and staging a sudden rush to one side, that would scatter the Quicksilvers and teach them a wholesome respect; but the others, who knew better what they were dealing with, all spoke so vigorously against this proposal that in the end she was persuaded. The wisest course, they agreed, was to keep on as they were, making the best time they could manage and taking no hostile action. Sooner or later the Quicksilvers might conclude that there was no profit to be had and no danger to be feared from these travelers, and so leave them in peace. “And even if they follow us all the way, there's no harm in it,” the Captain said. “Except—”

  “Except that we have to sleep,” Lethgro finished. (For the Exile had told them his things were still several watches distant.) “And who knows what they may decide when they see us stop, or when they see half of us asleep and helpless?”

  “But it doesn't have to be half of us,” Repnomar said quickly. “We can make do with a little less sleep for a few watches. If three quarters of us are awake and armed at any one time, we'll still make a pretty good show.” There was more confidence in her voice than in her thoughts, for such a halfway measure did not well suit her nature; but she could think of nothing better. And they began to talk of camping in a circle, with only five or six of them at a time sleeping in the middle, and the rest on guard around them.

  “But better go on as far as we can, and give them a chance to lose interest first,” Lethgro said. “And with the snow as smooth as it is here” (for they had come to a level plain of firm snow without crevices or ridges worth mentioning) “it's easier going to drag our packs than to carry them.” Indeed some of the sailors had already begun this, tossing down their packs behind them and leading them along by a strap or rope so that they glided over the smooth snow like well-trained puppies on leash. “That way we can go on longer before we have to stop.”

  “Except that we don't have to stop at all,” Repnomar cried, and promptly stopped dead, waving her sword arm with such enthusiasm that the Exile shied away and Brask raised her own sword. “If we can drag packs, we can drag each other! Let's try it.” And she stuck her torch in the snow and her sword beside it, and began to pull out a blanket from her pack.

  It worked better than Lethgro would have thought possible. Indeed it would not have worked at all, in his opinion, with any sort of people except sailors. But sailors were accustomed to sleep on swaying, moving devices, with strange sounds of swishing and thumping and creaking in their ears. It took them a little while to rig litters of a sort from blankets and ropes and a few javelin shafts; but once that was done, there were more than enough volunteers to ride them, and much swearing and merriment as to who must pull them. They rode very smoothly (by nautical standards) over the snow, and one or two of the riders were soon snoring peacefully. So they tramped on, some of the sailors singing as they went, and all somehow cheered.

  But, as Repnomar observed inauspiciously, this was too easy. They might have gone on thus as long as needed, taking it in turn to sleep on the litters and eating as they walked, with the Quicksilvers flitting like ghosts beyond the torchlight on each side of them; or the Quicksilvers might have made up their minds to attack them with a shower of poisoned darts, or perhaps to turn away from them altogether. But none of these things happened. For when Repnomar decided to take her turn on a litter (having offered the chance first to Lethgro, who said that with such a vehicle he would sooner pull than ride) and Lethgro was stooping over the awkward business of getting his one good arm into a loop of rope, Brask suddenly yelled out, “Stop the toad!” and they all looked up to see the Exile disappearing into the dark.

  There was a burst of whistles and trills, quickly drowned by shouts from the column of sailors, and someone hurled a javelin haphazardly into the dark; but Lethgro roared out for silence and order, and a strained quiet followed. The Captain had sprung up again, grabbing back the torch she had handed to Anscrop (for she would not entrust it to Brask); and now she raised it slowly, shedding light a little farther into the darkness.

  “Do you see anything, Lethgro?” she demanded.

  And Lethgro, who saw only that the Exile had betrayed him once again, and that once again he had invited that betrayal by too much trust and kindness, blinked his eyes in answer.

  Broz, who before this had done no more than growl, began to bark fiercely, and for a minute the Captain was hard put to hold him back. But presently he ceased; and though she strained her ears hard, she could hear no sound from the darkness. After a little, “Do you hear me, Exile?” she shouted. “We're going on!”

  Here Lethgro protested that the whole purpose of this journey (aside from saving the Mouse) had been to help the Exile send his message. “But if he's told us nothing but lies, then there's no message to send, and no point in going further. He's taken what help he wanted from us, and scorned the rest. We don't know where those precious things of his are now, nor what to do with them if we found them. Why should we go on?”

  But the Captain declared ominously that there was always point in going further, and that they could send messages without the Exile. For the thought had come to her (indeed, it had been churning secretly in her mind for some time, like the undertow that churns below the surf) that if they could find the Exile's devices, they might contrive to work them.

  “And if his shipmates don't speak our language, at least they'll find out that we're here, and that we can speak,” she was saying a few hours later (for this was not an argument to be resolved quickly).

  They had gone not one step farther, Lethgro declaring he would not allow it till this matter was settled. They had made a kind of half camp, those who were weary sleeping on their blankets around the torches, but most of the sailors huddled in little groups and talking low. Repnomar, Lethgro, and Brask still sat on their packs beside Repnomar's torch at one end of the column. Whether it was head or tail of that column remained to be decided.

  Lethgro, clearing
his throat to reply, broke off suddenly. Two figures stepped into the torchlight.

  One was the Exile, his hands stretched out appeasingly. The other was large, for a Quicksilver, with great deep-blue eyes tike saucers of ink. The Exile began to say something in his usual way, like a child who hopes not to be punished, but Lethgro cut him short. “Are these your friends too?” he asked bitterly. And the Exile said that he hoped they were, for they had his devices.

  Now other Quicksilvers began to appear in the fringes of the light, prancing forward and back like dancers or skittish sheep. And the Exile explained (standing with open hands in the torchlight while Lethgro and Repnomar glared at him, and Brask and several of her crew rose up with weapons in their hands) that he had learned a little of the Quicksilver language when he was their prisoner; and though he had forgotten it for a time, it had come back to him, with other things. He was glad that the Quicksilvers remembered him and bore him no ill will, for they had the devices he had set up, or at least knew where they were. And he apologized for not having been entirely frank, since he had never mentioned before that he had already set up a station, which had been sending messages to his people all this time.

  Most of the Quicksilvers that the Captain could see had their little blowpipes in their paws, or even cocked upright from one corner of their mouths; and she looked askance at Brask, who had never felt a Quicksilver dart and so might not appreciate the value of peace. “What do you mean to do now?” the Captain demanded, fixing the Exile with a look more curious than unfriendly.

  But Lethgro interrupted, saying harshly, “Why ask, Repnomar? Is he any likelier to tell the truth now than ever before?”

  Here the Exile protested that he had told as much of the truth as he knew and thought they could understand, or almost as much; and that he was indeed likelier to tell the full truth now, since he had learned to use their language better—learned, too, to consider them more deeply his friends. As for what he meant to do now, it was first to make peace between Quicksilvers and humans, so that no one should be hurt or wronged, and then to hurry to his gear and send his message.

  “Go talk to your friends, then,” Lethgro said, “and let me talk to mine.” For he was bitterly angry, at himself as well as the Exile.

  The Exile bent his head and withdrew into the dark; and the big Quicksilver, after sweeping them all with a wide blue stare, gave a shrill whistle and bounded after him. The flitting shapes of silvery gray faded back from the light like dissolving shadows, and a twittering rose and died away.

  So they took counsel, Repnomar and Brask sitting on a blanket in the snow, and Lethgro pacing around them; for his anger would not let him rest. “He has us where he wants us,” Lethgro said, “which is at his mercy. He's lied to us from beginning to end, and there's no way now we can know which is worse, to stop him or to help him. If his message were as harmless as he claims, he wouldn't have run away from us to send it. No, he's gone to call down a devil-war on our heads. And yet—”

  “And how can we stop him,” Repnomar asked, “even if we should want to? Think of this, Lethgro: once he was loose in the dark with the Quicksilvers, he could have gone about his message-sending without our help. Why should he come back to lie to us?”

  “Unless these Quicksilvers forced him,” Brask said; “either to make peace for them, or to get us to drop our guard. And if I were trying to stop him, I'd light all the torches we have and make a rush.”

  “We don't even know if sending messages is what he really means to do,” Lethgro said with exasperation. “I grant you he may have told us some truth, but we don't know what. And rushing around in the snow with torches will get us nothing but a hailstorm of poisoned darts. The only good I can see is to get our hands on the Exile, and this time—” (he squeezed both his fists tight, though that was not easy to do with his wounded arm) “make him feel it.”

  “And wouldn't that bring another hailstorm on us?” retorted Repnomar. “And how do you propose to catch him, anyway?”

  “The question is,” Lethgro said, halting in front of them, “how close is this friendship of his with the Quicksilvers?”

  They discussed this (for Brask, it seemed, was not unwilling to give an opinion on matters about which she knew little) and all thought it likely that his friendship with the Quicksilvers was no more solid than his friendship with the White People, or indeed with themselves. But, as Repnomar pointed out, they could not be sure; and if they snatched the Exile under the Quicksilvers’ blue eyes, they might be very promptly in battle.

  “And when did you learn to counsel prudence, Rep?” Lethgro said, with a laugh of sorts. “Where we stand now, doing nothing is as much a risk as doing all we can. And the Quicksilvers don't seem to have weapons worth mentioning besides their darts. We're too many for them to knock down with one whiff; and it's a good bet that once they see what swords can do, they'll leave us alone. I say let's grab him when we can.”

  So at last they agreed to this, and all stood up, facing into the dark, while Repnomar waved her torch to signal to the Exile (for, as they remembered, Quicksilvers did not see light, or not the same light as other peoples). And almost at once they saw the shadowy form of the Exile, with gray gleams dancing around him, who stepped forward and became solid and clear in the torchlight.

  So Lethgro (moving to have the Exile between himself and the two captains) said firmly that the humans would make no move against the Quicksilvers unless they were first attacked, but that they reserved the right to march peacefully through the country of the Quicksilvers, doing no harm to them or their possessions.

  To this the Exile answered mildly that in his experience it was harder than might be thought to pass through an alien country and do no harm; but that he welcomed Lethgro's words and would explain them as best he could to the Quicksilvers. And turning to the Quicksilver beside him (who, Lethgro thought, was likely the same one as before) he began to squeak and twitter.

  Some of the sailors standing near could not contain their laughter at these uncouth sounds, and the Quicksilvers too seemed to find them strange; for while some bobbed about in the shadows, chirping among themselves, others addressed the Exile earnestly, upright on their haunches and gesturing with their little hands. But he spoke always to the large Quicksilver, who seemed to understand him best; and presently this one turned toward the darkness, whistling a high, sweet note. There followed a musical discussion among Quicksilvers, while Brask, showing signs, of impatience, made signals to Lethgro that he ignored. For he wanted the Quicksilvers to understand, when he seized the Exile (as he meant presently to do) that it was not an attack on them but a private quarrel among humans (for he still found it hard not to think of the Exile as human).

  Fortunately for his hopes, there was not time enough for Brask to resort to violence of her own before the Exile, turning back to them with a wan smile, announced that the Quicksilvers agreed to let the humans pass peacefully through their land, so long as they kept together and did no damage.

  At this Lethgro stepped forward and took him hard by the right arm, a little above the hand, saying very grimly, “Now tell them that you stay with us.”

  He was prepared to wrench that arm as cruelly as need might be (since he himself did not have two arms to grapple with). But the Exile, turning up his face to him with a look of such earnestness that it shook Lethgro to the heart, said very clearly, “I stay with you,” and then screwed his mouth into a strange shape and chirped out something in the Quicksilver tongue.

  Now the one who had been the Exile's companion and interpreter came nearer, laying a paw on the Exile's other arm and twittering softly. Lethgro looked over their heads to catch Repnomar's eye, for he thought that if they could get through this minute without fighting, they would have a good chance of keeping the peace thereafter; and Repnomar gave Brask a warning look.

  But the squeakings of the Exile seemed to reassure the Quicksilver, who turned and bounded away, whistling; and the others followed, as least so fa
r as the light showed. Now Lethgro was tempted to loosen his hold, for the Exile made no resistance and looked up at him like a sad child; but he hardened himself and said roughly. “You've lied your way to the bottom of a hole. The one certain thing we know is that you're a liar; and if we let you play with those toys of yours, what's to stop you from calling down on us a worse curse than any you've threatened yet? The best and safest thing we can do is to cut off your head and take it back to the Council of Rotl.”

  But the Exile made no real answer to this, for he began to talk of the comrade who had been with him when he first came to this world, and who had died from the darts of the Quicksilvers. He could not blame them for that, he said, since they had not meant to kill and had had no way of knowing that their poison could have so grave an effect on strangers. But he had just learned what had happened to his friend's body, something he had not known before this hour: the Quicksilvers had eaten it.

  Here he stopped, and they waited in some puzzlement for him to go on. Repnomar remarked (as he kept silent) that if he had stayed with the Quicksilvers long enough to learn their language, it was odd that he had not heard this news before.

  To this he answered that he knew very little of the language, and that he supposed they had not told him because they saw that he was distressed and did not want to distress him more by speaking of his friend. And here his voice broke, and he said chokingly that he wished he had heard it then, so that he would not have had to learn it now.

  From this they could only conclude that he was troubled not only by his friend's death but by the Quicksilvers’ very reasonable use of the body; which seemed so curious that no one knew how to respond. But Lethgro, who had not been Warden of Sollet Castle for nothing, was not to be distracted by this show of piteousness, and he shook the Exile's arm, asking him if he had anything more important to say before he died; and Brask fingered her sword-edge and called for a bag to carry the head in.