Angus Wells - The God Wars 01 (71 page)

 
          
"Even
so," Bracht said, "What right has he to speak thus?"

 
          
"Tekkan
is my father," she replied, and left them, dumbfounded.

 
          
"Little
wonder he's chary of you." Calandryll's gaze swept back from Tekkan,
standing at the tiller, to Bracht's face. "He finds an outland warrior
paying court to his daughter, that same warrior persuading her to risk—can you
wonder he shows concern?"

 
          
"Aye."
Bracht nodded, his face abruptly serious. "I think it time we spoke."

 
          
Calandryll
opened his mouth to advise against such conversation but the Kem was already on
his feet and striding purposefully along the deck, leaving him no alternative
save to hurry after, ready to mediate should argument arise. He reached the
companionway as Bracht gained the poop, bowing formally to the helmsman.

 
          
Tekkan
appeared surprised by such obeisance: more by the Kem's words.

 
          
"We
should lay this in the open," Bracht said, "that there be no doubt
between us."

 
          
"What?"
asked Tekkan bluntly, though the clouding of his eyes said that he knew.

 
          
"I
had not known you were Katya's father," Bracht said, "though had I, I
should not have done otherwise. Not in the matter of the savages, nor in other
things."

 
          
"You
are at least ..." Tekkan smiled slightly, "... honest."

 
          
"It
is the way of my folk to speak openly." Bracht faced the bulky helmsman,
his gaze unwavering. "And I believe vou know of my ... feelings ...
towards Katya."

 
          
Tekkan
nodded, unspeaking.

 
          
"And
of my promise," Bracht continued, "that I shall not press further on
that matter until we have brought the Arcanum safe to Vanu."

 
          
"She
spoke to me of that," Tekkan confirmed.

 
          
"I
would ask her then to be my woman; and it must be her word that says me yea or
nay. That you would have it otherwise is a matter between you and her—but I
would have you know that until then I shall neither say or do anything to
offend her or you. Until then—when we come safe to Vanu and the Arcanum is
destroyed I shall speak openly.”

           
Tekkan remained silent, staring at
the Kern with thoughtful eyes, his face unreadable. Then he ducked his head.

           
"You follow the way of the
sword, Bracht, and I cannot tell you that I would choose you for my daughter,
but you are an honest man and I thank you for that honesty. Let me return mine—should
Katya seek my advice in this matter I shall tell her, nay; but it shall be her
choice, not mine."

 
          
"And
there shall be no ill feeling between us?”

 
          
Tekkan
smiled again, warmer now, and shook his head.

 
          
"No.
We make strange bedfellows, you and I, but we travel the same road and our
purpose binds us there shall be no ill feeling."

 
          
"That
is good."

 
          
Bracht
extended his hand and Tekkan took it. Calandryll felt himself relax; and saw
Katya watching from the lower deck, smiling. She had heard enough, he thought,
to understand the gist of what had transpired, and it appeared to please her.
Certainly it pleased him: he felt a clearing of the air, his own doubts
dispelled, the faint, lingering fear that Tekkan might leave them helpless in
Gessyth dismissed by Bracht's honest words, the Vanu's honest response. Just as
Tekkan feared that the Kern s ways might, in his estimation, taint his
daughter, so had Varent's duplicity tainted him. He saw that now; saw that he
had seen shadows where none existed, save those cast by Varent's lies. But
those were behind him: he was among friends, comrades dedicated to the denial
of Varent's mad ambition, while ahead lay honest toil. Dangerous, certainly,
but not tainted with fell magic, or the soft persuasions of an’ages-old wizard
bent on the insane resurrection of the Mad God. Varent—Rhythamun—sat safe in
Aldarin, a spider lurking in his web, awaiting the return of the flies he had
tempted with false promises; but unaware the flies saw his strands and could
avoid them. Varent was behind him, could not touch him, not here on the Vanu
warboat, nor in Tezin-dar.

 
          
He
smiled his relief, not knowing then—not knowing until much later—how wrong he
was.

 
         
The
warboat altered course, headed for deeper water, away from the shore where
the canoes were loath to follow, and in time the jungle faded to a dim juncture
of ocean and sky and the sweeps were brought inboard, the sea anchors dropped.
The slight swell rocked them as the Vanu folk slung their hammocks and
Calandryll stretched on the planks, the night air warm as he lay staring at the
blue-silver panoply of stars.

 
          
He
watched a shooting star arc across the heavens. A portent, the palace
soothsayers claimed, and he wondered if that was so, and if it was, of what?
Did civil war now tear at
Kandahar
? Would Tyrant or the rebel Fayne lord prevail? Did Sathoman ek'Hennem
carry the victory, he and Bracht might well return to
Kandahar
to find them- outlawed; and still the
danger of the Chaipaku existed. In
Kandahar
and Lysse, too, for Tobias must surely
still deem him enemy. Secca, then, was no refuge for him; nor Aldarin, once
Varent should learn of his intent and doubtless poison that city's domm against
him. He was, he realized with sudden shock, homeless. All his dreams of
glorious return, of heroic welcome, were no more than the fancies of a naive
youth. And he was no longer that: he was a man with blood on his hands,
alienated now from all he had known. No longer the callow youth who had gone so
readily—so trustingly!—with Varent, dreaming dreams of high endeavor, but a man
grown cynical. He needed Tekkan, he realized, smiling grimly at the stars, simply
because he needed the warboat. Without that he was prey to whatever events
unfolded in the world behind. Civil war in
Kandahar
; perhaps war between
Kandahar
and Lysse. Vanu must be his destination.
The taking of the Arcanum and its safe bringing to the holy men of Katya's
homeland. After ... that was too far in the uncertain future: he would worry at
that bone when it lay before him.

 
          
He
sighed, and yawned, and closed his eyes, letting sleep assuage his troubled
mind. He did what he could, he could do no more.

 
          
Dawn
brought a resumption of their northward journeying and an end to doubts. The
sun rose ferocious over the jungle, the wind strengthening as the oarsmen ate a
hurried breakfast and returned to their benches, Tekkan at the helm once more,
conferring with Katya. Calandryll joined Quara and the other women, unashamed
to help them gather up the platters and cleanse the dishes in seawater hauled
up in canvas buckets before joining Bracht on the foredeck.

 
          
They
continued along the coast of
Gash
,
sometimes trailed by dugouts, but those never venturing close enough to attack,
as if word had passed among the jungle dwellers that this was no easy prey they
stalked and better left alone. Three times landing parties rowed in to shore,
to refill the water casks and hunt what fresh meat might be found, and no
assault was made, the hunters returning safe with deer and pigs to augment
their diet of fish and the rapidly dwindling supplies taken on in Kharasul.
They saw no other vessels as the summer aged toward autumn and their greatest
threat was the tedium induced by the unchanging days, that was alleviated
somewhat by the sword practice that became their routine. Calandryll's skill
increased under Bracht's tutelage, and in time—and with Tekkan's not-quite
grudging approval—other members of the crew took part, though none of the Vanu
folk approached Katya in ability or
enthusiasm.               
.

 
          
Bracht,
as Calandryll had known he would, remained true to his word, saying nothing to
the blond woman of his hopes. He showed her an oddly formal courtesy that often
elicited her smile, that answered by the Kem's, whose eyes said what his tongue
held back. Such words were reserved for Calandryll's ears, and he found himself
often struggling for the patience needed to hear out the eulogies Bracht was
wont to weave as they lounged in the sun or lay watching the pattern of stars
spread across the night sky. He wondered if he had piled such encomiums on
Nadama, whose face he found difficult to recall, she a part, he realized, of
the life he left behind. That love, if love it had been and not simply a
youthful infatuation, belonged to a time lost, shed as a snake sheds its skin,
discarded in the rebirth. And he was, he knew, reborn. What small regret he
felt at the knowledge that he might likely never see his home again was compensated
by what lay ahead. Tobias was welcome to Secca—that had never been in doubt,
but now he was welcome to Nadama, too—and should Bylath go to the vaults
beneath the great temple of Dera not knowing where his younger son might be,
well, he had chosen that fate when his uncaring hand lashed out to firm
Calandryll's resolve.

 
          
He
could accept such things in his rebirth: he changed. Physically, too. His body
hardened, the muscles firmed by boat work and swordplay; Bracht taught him to
wrestle, and in that the oarsmen joined, pitting their strength against his,
such friendly combats, Katya informed him, enjoyed in Vanu. Quara schooled him
with the bow, until he was able to use the barbed fishing arrows near as well
as the women, reeling in his share of the catch to an accompanying choms of
praise sung in the soft Vanu tongue that he struggled to master. That was
harder, but he round, in time, that he understood simple phrases and could make
himself understood were the listener patient enough, practicing with Katya
until she laughed and threw up protesting hands, claiming that he must wait for
a better teacher, perhaps in Vanu itself.

 
          
He
learned more of that mysterious land, wishing that he had the means to write
down what he learned—perhaps his only regret: that he had no books or writing
materials, but that small enough as he gathered knowledge.

 
          
He
came to understand that Vanu was, tmly, without conflict such as racked the
southern kingdoms, the folk manning the warboat oddities among their people,
for while they seemed mild-mannered to such as he and Bracht, to their fellows
they were unusually bellicose. It seemed an idyllic land, a peaceful haven in a
world much given to ambition and struggle, and in only one area did he find
doubt. Katya spoke only vaguely, and with scarcely concealed reluctance, of the
holy men whose augury had sent her forth, and not at all of gods. It seemed
none existed in Vanu, save perhaps as concepts, more embodiments of notions of
good and evil than the clearly defined deities of Lysse or Kandahar or Eyl, and
the holy men seemed less priests than sages, concerned as much— or more—with
the physical well-being of the people as with matters spiritual. This Bracht
accepted more readily t
h?m
did he, for the tree god of Cuan na'For was a
deity little given to intervention in the ways of men, and the Kem maintained
that the appearance of the
byah
had been occasioned only by the enormity
of Varent's evil, so great it had called forth a warning in much the same way
as Vanu's holy men had scried their augury. Calandryll found he must be content
with this, for when he pressed Katya on the matter she grew increasingly
ambiguous and sought to shift the direction of the talk; subtly, but not so
well that he failed to notice her reticence. He chose to respect it, suspecting
that some admonishment forbade her from speaking more deeply on the subject,
and told himself that when at last they came to her homeland he would question
the holy men himself, directly.

 
          
He
remembered vividly Reba's augury: You will travel far and see things no
southern man has seen, perhaps no man at all.

           
That came daily true as he traveled
northward, farther than any Lyssian craft had sailed since Orwen. And Orwen had
not witnessed the appearance of a
byah,
nor, as best he knew, fought
with demons or seen the raising of such fire creatures as Anomius had brought
forth to sack Kesham-vaj. None had journeyed to Vanu and he held that land
promise to his hopes, the ultimate goal of the quest begun in that other life.
That he should, with Bracht and Katya, reach Tezin-dar and bring the Arcanum
out he did not doubt as they closed on Gessyth's coast.

 
          
They
found themselves, suddenly it seemed, crossing open water, the jungles fading
steadily into the distance behind, ahead only the empty sea. The charts
revealed this as the great inlet, unnamed, that divided Gash from

 
          
Gessyth,
and after two days they had their first sight of the land they had come so far
to find.

 
          
It
was a forbidding vista.

 
          
No
discernible shoreline existed, sea and swamp merging, the blue water of the
ocean darkening, becoming a peaty brown on which floated vast fields of lily
pads, viri- descent and decked with flowers of livid yellow or leprous white.
Distant beyond these strange floating fields stood massive trees, great grey
mangroves hung with gloomy moss, and between them ran channels of sluggish
water that marked the courses of the torpid streams that fed the marshes. Day
after day that glum horizon stood to starboard of the warboat, unchanged by the
shifting season, the boredom of the lily fields sometimes broken by the
appearance of meadows of reeds and rushes that swayed languid in the hot wind,
rustling softly, noisomely redolent of fecund decay, thick and rank. They saw
birds of brilliant plumage and creatines that combined the aspects of both
avians and lizards, things with feathers and scales, both, and saw-toothed
beaks; and the swamp dragons that furnished the soldiery of
Kandahar
with their armor. These seemed, often, no
more than logs floating among the lilies and reeds until they rose up to bay
stertorous challenge, vast jaws all set with jagged fangs opening wide as
spiked tails lashed, stirring the grue of the swamp to brown foam. The smallest
were long as a tall man, and the larger of the beasts three times that size,
but it seemed they had no love for the saltier water of the ocean, for although
several charged noisily toward the passing warboat, none ventured far into the
sea, instead turning back to roar their displeasure from the safety of the reeds
and lily meadows.

 
          
It
was an uncomfortable time, the air hot and moist and stinking, so that shirts
hung damp and irritating to skin that seemed never dry, the daily tasks
rendered the harder for the growths of moss and algae that sprang up overnight
on ropes and canvas and cloth. Food spoiled faster here, and metal required
constant oiling; leather threatened to rot and wind-borne insects assailed
them, stinging and sometimes bringing fevers. The Vanu folk, more accustomed to
their high, windswept homeland, suffered the worst, but in that thick,
insect-filled atmosphere even Calandryll and Bracht recalled almost
nostalgically the cleaner discomfort of the gaheen and the days spent following
the jungly coastline of Gash.

 
          
At
last, their water near gone and their food running low, they saw the headland
that marked the site of the hide hunters' outpost. It thrust dramatically from
the vast expanse of swampland, as if whichever god had shaped this desolation
had allowed one single nub of solid ground to remain; or omitted to reduce it
to miasmic bog. It was a grey thumb stuck across their course, raised up a
little above the surrounding swarm). Low huts stood along the headland and
shallow boats floated on the turgid water, moored to ramshackle jetties raised
up on mossy piles above the reeds. As they drew closer they saw the huts, too,
were built on piles, ramshackle, stilted structures of wood and hides and
rushes, seeming almost to have grown there rather than been built by human
hands, and the fetid scent of the swamp was joined by a ranker odor.
Calandryll, standing on the foredeck, came close to gagging on that stench and
pointed in silent disgust to the bloody hides stacked about the buildings.
Bracht, his own mouth clamped tight, nodded and indicated the dragon carcasses
that floated on the tide. Katya, standing beside them, said nothing, winding a
cloth about her face, masking nose and mouth.