Chorus Skating (21 page)

Jon-Tom called back from his place near the bow, “Just shut up and pull! We're doing all we can up here.”

Their combined effort soon had the vessel back in the water. One by one, the other princesses were helped aboard. With each additional passenger the gunwales sank lower. But no waves disturbed the glassy surface of the somnolent marsh and Naike was reasonably confident that, short of a particularly violent storm, all would be able to stay high and dry.

Heke and Karaukul soon had the single lateen sail raised. Unfortunately, there was not even the suggestion of a breeze and the cloth triangle hung limp and useless against the mast. The brief discussion which ensued resulted in Mudge and Jon-Tom manning the tiller while the four soldiers resignedly settled themselves at the oars and began to row.

“Once we're out of these reeds and into a main channel, we'll pick up a current.” The ever-optimistic Naike pulled hard on his sweep.

“In any event,” added Karaukul as he strained on the star-board side, “it'll be easier than it was coming upstream.”

“If you ignore the fact that we're riding much lower in the water.” Heke grunted with each stroke.

To take his mind off the work at hand, Pauko had been watching the lost chords. The softly pulsing musical mist floated near the stern, occasionally darting off to the south-west, only to return when it was clear the boat would not be diverted from its current course.

“Your music sounds unhappy,” he told the spellsinger.

“It sounds that way sometimes,” Jon-Tom admitted.

“It'ss only a clusster of mussical notess.” Intrigued, Seshenshe approached the cloud, experimentally waggling her fingers in its direction. “How can it ssound ‘unhappy,' or, for that matter, anything elsse?”

“It's music,” Jon-Tom reminded her. “Though a limited number of notes are involved, its range of emotional expression is considerable.”

“Then 'ow about you demonstrate by cheerin' it up, mate?” Mudge was watching Pivver carefully. “We could all use a bit o' upliftin', wot? But no magic,” he added hastily.

“Yes, give us a song, spellsinger!” Umagi smiled encouragingly.

“Sure, why not?” Swinging the duar around, Jon-Tom considered the delta through whose vast, silent reaches they were drifting. “What should I sing about?”

“Some sort of river chantey would be in order, I should think.” Aleaukauna picked at her fur.

“River chantey. A heavy metal river chantey. Neat idea.” His fingers flashed across the strings.

The cloud sparkled and sang in counterpoint. When Jon-Tom essayed a certain chord, it rang particularly loud. Pleased, he began to improvise faster, accelerating the tempo until the duet was in full swing. The music that sang out across the reeds and water grass was not particularly profound, but it was certainly lively. And while it did nothing to advance their progress through means mystical or otherwise, the mongooses straining at the oars seemed to row a little easier.

Ever alert and always suspicious when things were quiet, Mudge would not allow himself to relax completely even though nothing larger than a newt appeared to contest their progress.

Once, off in the distance, they saw a flock of birds making their way to the northeast. Everyone aboard waved, hoping to attract the travelers' attention. Company and information both would have been welcomed, but either the fliers did not notice their presence or else chose to ignore it. The white wings vanished beyond a line of trees.

A newly depressing thought struck Mudge. Always unselfish in such matters, he hastened to share it with his companions.

“Sail an' oars notwithstandin', this tub is pretty much at the mercy o' the current. Wot 'appens if we enter a main channel and find ourselves poppin' out at the mouth o' the delta unable to tack sideways? We'll be at sea long before we can make it to this Mashupro.” He scuffed the rough-hewn deck.

“This wouldn't last ten minutes in the open ocean. One decent-sized wave'd swamp us.”

“You court disaster unnecessarily, otter.” Naike was pulling more easily at his oar now as his body settled into a recurring pattern of pushing and pulling. “My kind have an excellent sense of direction.” He glanced briefly over his shoulder, eyeing the water ahead.

“All we have to do is find the main channel which we used to make our way up here. The mouth of the Karrakas is a maze of small straits, many of which run east to west instead of north and south. When the water starts to turn brackish, that is when we will use the sail to work our way eastward, to Mashupro. Coming in, we memorized our course most assiduously, lest we prove unable to find our way back out.”

Heke smashed a blood-sucking fly against the deck. “Don't worry, otter. We don't want to spend any more time in this country than we have to.” He sighed heavily. “I long for the cool breezes of Harakun.”

“As do we all.” The Lieutenant spoke feelingly.

An assortment of large, potentially dangerous denizens of the delta approached the boat on several occasions, most notably under cover of night. Each time they swam off without troubling its passengers. Perhaps the boat was too sturdy for any to attack. More likely it was the noise generated by the constantly chattering princesses.

Whatever the reason, the little craft proceeded southward unhindered and unchallenged.

Jon-Tom was handling the tiller, allowing Mudge to sit in the bow alongside the princess Pivver. Though too short to reach the water, the otters let their legs dangle over the side.

“I'd like to hear more of your wondrous adventures.”

“Adventures? Wot adventures!” Mudge inhaled her musk discreetly. It stood out even in aroma-heavy country like the delta. “We've surely 'ad our share, that crazy 'uman an' I. I can't tell you 'ow many o' times I've 'ad to save 'is bald backside, 'ow many scrapes I've barely managed to pull 'im out of by the tips o' me whiskers. Why, if it weren't for me—”

She interrupted curiously. “Isn't he the spellsinger?”

“Oh, sure, 'e can do a few parlor tricks now an' again, but when the goin' gets truly tough, 'tis good ol' skill an' boldness that ends up savin' the day, as it were.” He dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. “See, 'e's clever, Jonny-Tom is, but 'e ain't too bright. Sort o' instinctive-like rather than really intelligent. I don't make a point o' harpin' on 'im about it. As you may 'ave noticed, 'e's a bit o' sensitive.”

“Perhaps a little,” she admitted.

“Don't get me wrong,” Mudge said quickly. “I like the silly sod. 'E's entertainin' enough, an' 'e builds a decent fire. A mite clumsy, though. You know 'ow 'umans are.”

“The poor thing is so fortunate to have a friend like you.”

“Oi, that 'e is, that 'e is. You should see 'im tryin' to swim. Why, many's the time I've 'ad to aul 'im out o' some gentle-flowin' river or stream an' push on 'is great 'airless chest until the water squeezed out o' 'is lungs like air from a bleed-in' bellows. But wot can you expect from a creature wot flops about like a fish in sand an' calls it swimmin'?”

Leaning over, she pinched one of his whiskers and twirled it back and forth between thumb and forefinger. “It's not his fault. Our kind are so much more limber.”

“Right! We 'ave—” He halted in midsentence, suddenly aware of what she was doing. Suddenly aware of a number of things.

“I want to know all about you.” She was whispering into one ear. “I want to get to know you. Now then”—her alert brown eyes probed his own—“tell me about the places you've been and the marvels you've seen and the wondrous encounters you've had.”

Mudge found himself damning his present location. There was about as much privacy to be had on the prow of the flat-boat as in Lynchbany's central square. Whiskers quivering, he leaned toward her.

“And your family,” she added huskily, sharp teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “Tell me about your family.”

Mudge stiffened slightly. “'Tis just a family, like any other.”

“Come now—you are too modest. I have brothers and sisters who are distinctively my own. Beyond that, I have not mated yet. It must be to a suitable noble, of course.”

“O' course.” Mudge gazed out across the moon-silvered wetlands. “'Ad I run into you twenty years ago, I couldn't 'ave done nothin' anyways. 'Tis many things I've been, an' many things I am, but noble ain't one o' 'em.”

Her lashes brushed the moist air. “Nobles are for mating, bold Mudge. Rogues are for practice. Now, tell me more about your family.”

“You know wot a gamble globe is?”

She ruminated. “A spinning hollow sphere full of tiny numbered balls. Each time one falls through a hole in the side, its number is called out. Those with matching numbers or sequences of numbers may win money. Or so it goes in my country.”

He nodded. “That's 'ow you make me feel, Princess.”

“Like a gambler?” She frowned prettily.

“Cor, no! Like one o' those bleedin' balls, waitin' for its number to come up.”

“I am sorry. I didn't mean to upset you.”

“Oh, 'ell. You upset me every time I set me bloomin' eyes on you.”

“Well, then.” She massaged the back of his neck with strong fingers. “I'll try my best not to unnerve you as we talk.”

“If that's your intent, then you're bloody failin', luv. No, don't stop. Might as well 'ave me body as confused an' unsettled as me brain.”

He proceeded to regale her with reminiscences of his travels with the spellsinger Jon-Tom … with their respective contributions suitably skewed, and his own appropriately enhanced.

*
See
The Day of the Dissonance.

Chapter 12

THEY SOON FOUND
themselves in a main channel and proceeded southward at increased speed and in pleasant fashion. Only occasionally was it necessary for the soldiers to bend to the oars or to climb overboard to hack at the floating grasses and reeds which collected around the bow or tiller. Manzai the abductor had not troubled their thoughts for many days. For the princesses, the principal source of complaint continued to be their radically altered (not to say addled) appearance, which contrary to Jon-Tom's hopes had yet to begin to return to normal.

It was very early the next morning (much too early, Jon-Tom decided as he lifted his head from the pillow he'd made from his cloak) that Pauko let out a shout, followed immediately by words of warning.

“Rouse yourselves and to arms! Something comes!”

“Somethin' comes?” A sleepy Mudge fought to wake up. “Wot the bloody 'ell kind o' alarm is that, somethin' comes?”

“Explain yourself, Pauko!” Naike was already standing and gripping his sword. “What comes?”

“I … I don't know, sir. Something monstrous bright. It's heading straight for us, or else we're drifting down upon it.”

By now the princesses were beginning to stir. They should be well rested, Jon-Tom mused, since none of them would stoop to taking a turn on watch. That plebeian duty was left to him, Mudge, and the mongooses.

Struggling to notch an arrow, the otter kept missing the bowstring due to lingering grogginess. As evidenced by the steady stream of curses he addressed to the bow, however, his mouth was already fully responsive and in excellent working order.

“Bloody bleedin' blinkin' string o' useless ratbag! Jon-Tommy, wot the 'ell's 'appenin'?”

“I'm trying to find out!” Stumbling forward, Jon-Tom dug sleep from his eyes.

A vast pale phosphorescence lay dead ahead, throbbing in the early morning darkness. What at first sight appeared to be a volute mass with two heads resolved itself into a pair of four-legged shapes as they drifted closer. There was no thought or hope of turning the boat: the flatbottom was no racing yacht, to be lithely pivoted on an imperceptible breeze.

Jon-Tom relaxed slightly when he saw that the creatures were harnessed in parallel. That implied domestication of some sort, which in turn suggested control. Whatever were bearing down upon them were no wild beasts of the marsh. Extraordinary they certainly were: He'd never before seen their like.

They came sloshing and sliding through the shallows, yoked to what at first sight appeared to be a luminescent white cloud. As the distance closed, they could see a third figure at the forefront of the singular vehicle.

“Someone rides upon it.” Naike strained forward, his lean upper body and head streamlined as an arrow. “By my liege, the craft has wheels!”

“Wheels?” Karaukul's sight was not as sharp as that of the Lieutenant. “In the delta?”

“Are you daft as well as blind?” Mudge was wrestling with his shorts. “The wheels aren't turnin'. The 'ole 'alf-cocked contraption's ridin' on that cloud, or fog, or wotever 'tis.”

By this time even Jon-Tom could see that the rims of the four wheels never touched the water. A powerful musk made him turn, to see Quiquell of Opan standing at his shoulder.

“what strange magic is this? i've never seen such a craft.”

“None of us has,” he told her. “I don't think it's a cloud. The light's bad, but I still think I can make out some kind of transparent sack or envelope constraining the glow.”

“Most wondrous.” Aleaukauna joined them, while Pivver kept close to Mudge. Her nearness did not upset him.

As they looked on, the driver of the remarkable vehicle became very active, whistling and fighting with his reins in a desperate attempt to change course. Far from mounting some kind of attack, he was clearly doing his best to prevent a collision. His vehicle seemed little more maneuverable than the overladen flatbottom.

Seeing no weapons in evidence or anything else that could be construed as a threat, Naike gave the order to man the oars. The mongooses battled the current while the driver railed at his team, and with agonizing slowness the respective tracks of the two craft diverged.