I thought of a particular slave. If I owned her, I thought I would keep the name Alcinoe upon her. It is a nice name. Too, I thought it appropriate, as the women of Ar, or the most beautiful of them, at least, are worthy only to be the slaves of such men as those of Cos.
To be sure, she would be worth much in Ar. I wondered if she would be worth more at the foot of a man’s couch.
I supposed that would depend on the man.
I would have to give the matter some thought.
I then, weak, and miserable, fell asleep.
I awakened to a gigantic crashing noise, deafening, almost like dry thunder, and thought the ship was done. Thassa had claimed her. She had lifted her and broken her apart in her mighty fist. Surely, any moment now the great vessel would settle, water pouring in through broken timbers. Then, too, I was suddenly terrified, because the sand glass had emptied. I had missed my watch! I had not been summoned. One can be flogged, with the snake, under which men have died, if a watch is missed. Men have been cast overboard for such an omission. But no one had come for me, calling out, shaking me, pounding on the door. Had there been more desertions? Had the last watch, mad with hunger, sought the ice? Then I heard much shouting. I could make little out of it, and, as I tried to piece together the shreds of my confusion, my fear, the noise about, it became clear to me that the shouting was a shouting of joy, and I heard hundreds of feet hurrying down the low corridor and up companionways. From somewhere I heard a number of voices raised in an anthem of Ar, and, but moments later, I heard its answer, a lusty song of Cos. I fled from my quarters, half-clad in furs, and hurried up the nearest companionway, and the next, continuing until I reached the open deck, and saw hundreds of men, many gathered near the bow. I climbed a bit up the forward mast, and was not alone, for some clung to it before me. On the deck, men were pointing forward. Before the ship, as far as I could see, the ice had broken.
The Waiting Hand was done.
Today, I realized, was the first day of En’Kara, the first day of En’Kara-Lar-Torvis, the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring.
The world would begin again.
Too, in the distance, I could see a spume over the water, like a thread of vertical fog, like a line, then drifting apart, like a cloud, where a whale had emerged. And then another. The Red Hunters, I had heard, hunt such beasts in skin boats. On both port and starboard, I heard, too, the opening of the galley nests, and the extension and rattling of davits. Galleys would be lowered to the ice, and slid toward the open water. In a few Ehn I saw the first galley, to shouts of gladness, slip into the open water. Many soldiers were on board, with ropes fastened to spears.
On the stem castle I saw the small, crooked, frenetic figure of Tersites dancing, lifting his hands to Tor-tu-Gor, and going to the rail, from time to time, to shake his fists down at Thassa.
I did not think that was wise.
Eyes had not even been painted on the ship.
Suitable ceremonies had not been performed.
But even Thassa, it seems, could not alter the orbit of a world.
The Waiting Hand was done.
The world would begin again.
Chapter Eleven
“Look,” said Cabot, pointing abeam. “Four of them!” He handed me the Builder’s glass.
I was familiar with this instrument because I was one of several regularly sent aloft, to the platform and ring, that the horizon might be scanned, that large sea life might be noted, that land or a ship might be sighted. To be sure, we had seen no land since the farther islands, and the last of those, Chios. And how might one expect to see a sail this far at sea, for we had come farther than any vessel had formerly come, at least to our knowledge. To be sure, many ships had ventured beyond the farther islands. It was only that none, at least to our knowledge, had returned. Were there ships at World’s End? The Pani had insisted that regular watches be kept, from the platform and ring, even at night. Perhaps there were ships then, which might come forth, from the World’s End?
“Tharlarion,” I said. We had seen such things before. But they were unusual tharlarion, unlike those with which I had hitherto been familiar, prior to the last few weeks.
“They approach,” said Cabot.
I had never seen them come this close. I think they followed the ship for garbage, usually a half pasang behind, in the great ship’s wake.
They had learned no fear of us.
And we, as it happened, had learned no fear of them.
Never had they been this close.
“Look,” said Cabot, pointing down.
There was a shimmering in the water, like fluttering candles.
“Parsit fish,” I said. It was a large school. The passage of the ship had divided the school, and its motion had drawn several to the surface. Schooling protects fish. It is difficult for a predator to single out prey. One target replaces another. They flash in and out; they appear here and, in a flicker, there. Who could concentrate on a single flake of snow in a blizzard, a particular grain of sand in a Tahari wind? The predator is distracted, and confused. It flies at the mass but how shall it snap shut its jaws on the single victim it might manage, which it can scarcely note for less than a tenth of an Ihn, before another appears, and another. It will lunge into the mass, to break it apart, that single victims may be separated and tracked, but the schooling instinct, like that of flocking birds, swiftly returns the fish to the group. The school, of course, may be, and is, preyed upon. But the matter, as there are many fish that school, seems to be one of averages. One supposes that the school must increase the likelihood of the survival of any given fish. To be sure, the school is vulnerable to the nets of men. In such a case, the school, so obvious and visible, so large and slow moving, becomes a most perilous habitat.
“Parsit! Parsit!” cried several men, rushing to the bulwarks. Some mariner’s caps were flung in the air.
Many times we had launched the nested galleys, though not of late, in pairs, nets strung between them. Our concern was less with food than fresh water. He who drinks the water of Thassa, with its salt from a thousand rivers, from the Alexandra, to the Vosk, to the Kamba and Nyoka, soon dies, of misery and madness. Still, there was little danger at present, for the great casks, taller and wider than a standing man, were scarcely tapped. And spread sails, formed into great basins, given the frequency of spring rains, had supplied more than enough water for tarns and slaves.
Several of the men were striking their left shoulders with the palm of their right hand. Others were cheering.
Their elation had not to do, however, with the possibility of augmenting the ship’s larder, but with something, at least at the time, of much greater interest.
We were joined at the rail by Lord Nishida.
“The men are pleased,” said Lord Nishida.
“They see Parsit,” said Cabot.
The Parsit, as many similar fish, require vegetation, and vegetation requires light, and thus, typically, such fish school off banks, in shallower water, where light can reach plants tenaciously rooted, say, some dozens of yards below in the sea floor. The banks are usually within two or three hundred pasangs of land masses. Thus the jubilation of the men.