Wings cannonaded, made gusts of air, eclipsed the lamps. Erannath was aloft.
Six meters of span roofed the throng in quills and racket. What light came through shone burnished on those feathers, those talons. Unarmed though he was, humans ducked away from scything claws, lurched from buffeting wingbones. “Hither!” Erannath whistled. “To me, Rolf Mariner! Raiharo!”
Ivar sprang through the lane opened for him, out past tents and demon-covered wagons, into night. The aquiline shape glided low above, black athwart the Milky Way. “Head south,” hissed in darkness. “Keep near the riverbank.” The Ythrian swung by, returned for a second pass. “I will fly elsewhere, in their view, draw off pursuit, soon shake it and join you.” On the third swoop: “Later I will go to the ship which has left, and arrange passage for us. Fair winds follow you.” He banked and was gone.
Ivar’s body settled into a lope over the fields. The rest of him knew only: Fraina. Waybreak. Forever gone? Then what’s to live for?
Nevertheless he fled.
XI
After a boat, guided by Erannath, brought him aboard the Jade Gate, Ivar fell into a bunk and a twisting, nightmare-haunted sleep. He was almost glad when a gongcrash roused him a few hours later.
He was alone in a cabin meant for four, cramped but pleasant. Hardwood deck, white-painted overhead, bulkheads lacquered in red and black, were surgically clean. Light came dimly through a brass-framed window to pick out a dresser and washbowl. Foot-thuds and voices made a cheerful clamor beneath the toning of the bronze. He didn’t know that rapid, musical language.
I suppose I ought to go see whatever this is, he thought, somewhere in the sorrow of what he had lost. It took his entire will to put clothes on and step out the door.
Crewfolk were bouncing everywhere around. A young man noticed him, beamed, and said, “Ahoa to you, welcome passenger,” in the singsong River dialect of Anglic.
“What’s happenin’?” Ivar asked mechanically.
“We say good morning to the sun. Watch, but please to stand quiet where you are.”
He obeyed. The pre-dawn chill lashed some alertness into him and he observed his surroundings with a faint growth of interest.
Heaven was still full of stars, but eastward turning wan. The shores, a kilometer from either side of the vessel, were low blue shadows, while the water gleamed as if burnished, except where mist went eddying. High overhead, the wings of a vulch at hover caught the first daylight. As gong and crew fell silent, an utter hush returned, not really broken by the faint pulse of engines.
The craft was more than 50 meters in length and 20 in the beam, her timber sides high even at the waist, then at the blunt bow rising sharply in two tiers, three at the rounded stern. Two sizable deckhouses bracketed the amidships section, their roofs fancifully curved at the ends. Fore and aft of them, kingposts supported cargo booms, as well as windmills to help charge the capacitors which powered the vessel. Between reared a mast which could be set with three square sails. Ivar glimpsed Erannath on the topmost yard. He must have spent the night there, for lack of the frame which would suit him better than a bunk.
An outsize red-and-gold flag drooped from an after staff. At the prow the gigantic image of a Fortune Guardian scowled at dangers ahead. In his left hand he bore a sword against them, in his right a lotus flower.
There posed an old man in robe and tasseled cap, beside him a woman similarly clad though bareheaded, near them a band who wielded gong, flutes, pipas, and drum. The crew, on their knees save for what small children were held by their mothers, occupied the decks beneath.
As light strengthened, the stillness seemed to deepen yet further, and frost on brightwork glittered like the stars.
Then Virgil stood out of the east. Radiance shivered across waters. The ancient raised his arms and cried a brief chant, the people responded, music rollicked, everybody cheered, the ship’s business resumed.
Ivar stretched numbed hands toward the warmth that began to flow out of indigo air. Vapors steamed away and he saw the cultivated lands roll green, a flock of beasts, an early horseman or a roadborne vehicle, turned into toys by distance. Closer were the brood of Jade Gate. A stubby tug drew a freight-laden barge, two trawlers spread their nets, and in several kayaks, each accompanied by an osel, herders kept a pod of river pigs moving along.
For those not on watch, the first order of the day was evidently to get cleaned up. Some went below, some peeled off their clothes and dived overboard, to frisk about till they were ready to climb back on a Jacob’s ladder. Merriment loudened. It was not like tineran glee. Such japes as he heard in Anglic were gentle rather than stinging, laughter was more a deep clucking than a shrill peal. Whoever passed near Ivar stopped to make a slight bow and bid him welcome aboard.
They’re civilized without bein’ rigid, strong without bein’ cruel, happy without bein’ foolish, shrewd without bein’ crooked, respectful of learnin’ and law, useful in their work, he knew dully; but they are not wild red wanderers.
Handsome enough, of course. They averaged a bit taller than tinerans, shorter than nords, the build stocky, skin tawny, hair deep black where age had not bleached it. Heads were round, faces broad and high of cheekbones, eyes brown and slightly oblique, lips full, noses tending to flatness though beaks did occur. Only old men let beards grow, and both sexes banged their hair across the brows and bobbed it off just under the ears. Alike too was working garb, blue tunics and bell-bottomed trousers. Already now, before the frost was off, many went barefoot; and the nudity of the swimmers showed a fondness for elaborate tattoos.
He knew more about them than he had about the nomads. It was still not much. This was his first time aboard a craft of theirs, aside from once when one which plied as far north as Nova Roma held open house. Otherwise his experience was confined to casual reading and a documentary program recorded almost a century ago.
Nevertheless the Kuang Shih had bonds to the ruling culture of Aeneas, in a way that the tinerans did not. They furnished the principal transportation for goods, and for humans who weren’t in a hurry, along the entire lower Flone—as well as fish, flesh, and fiber taken from the river, and incidental handicrafts, exchanged for the products and energy recharges of industrial culture.
If they held themselves aloof when ashore, it was not due to hostility. They were amply courteous in business dealings, downright cordial to passengers. It was simply that their way of life satisfied them, and had little in common with that of rooted people. The most conservative Landfolk maintained less far-reaching and deep-going blood ties—every ship and its attendants an extended family, strictly exogamous and, without making a fuss about it, moral—not to speak of faith, tradition, law, custom, arts, skills, hopes, fears altogether different.
I dreamed Waybreak might take me in, and instead it cast me out. Jade Gate—is that her name?—will no doubt treat me kindly till we part, but I’d never imagine bein’ taken into her.
No matter. O Fraina!
“Sir—”
The girl who shyly addressed him brought back the dancer, hurtfully, by her very unlikeness. Besides her race, she was younger, he guessed eight or nine, demurely garbed so that he couldn’t be sure how much her slight figure had begun to fill out. (Not that he cared.) Her features were more delicate than usual, and she bowed lower to him.
“Your pardon, please, welcome passenger,” she said in a thin voice. “Do you care for breakfast?”
She offered him a bowl of cereals, greens, and bits of meat cooked together, a cup of tea, a napkin, and eating utensils such as he was used to. He grew aware that crewfolk were in line at the galley entrance. A signal must have called them without his noticing through the darkness that muffled him. Most found places on deck to hunker and eat in convivial groups.