Maia (147 page)

"Your hand's trembling," he said after a few moments.

"It's the steering," she answered. "You know, the going on and on." Even as she spoke she realized that they had yawed off course yet again, and put the helm over just as Bayub-Otal called a warning from the bow.

"Why not let me take over for a bit?"

"If it was Lake Serrelind or the Barb I would, but this is too dangerous. You've got to know what you're doing and be able to act quick."

"But we must be sensible, Maia. You've been steering now for hours, and even you can't go on for ever. You'll collapse or faint, and then we'll all be finished. You'd better teach me: come on."

"But the bailing-"

"I know: but once I've got the idea you can catch up with it, and then keep an eye on me while you bail."

He sat down in the stern, took the tiller from her and grasped it as he had seen her do.

"You've got to keep thinking ahead, Zenka. Only the rate we're going, it all happens so quick: I'd best keep one hand on the helm myself for a bit, so's you can feel what I do. There's only so much I can tell you, see: the rest you've got to learn for yourself.Oh, Cran, look
out!"

Talking, they had both failed to notice that they were approaching yet another tributary. As they came with the confluence the bow slewed and the boat listed, the current lashing down the length of the starboard beam. Maia, thrown on top of Zen-Kurel, involuntarily flung her arms round his neck.

They had both lost hold of the helm. She grabbed it, pushed herself upright by pressing with her other hand against his shoulder and turned the bow downstream again. Zen-Kurel picked himself up.

"I must learn to do better than that. I only hope it isn't going to be too expensive. Come on, give it back to me and I'll try again."

They sat side by side, swaying and pressing against each other with the unpredictable and often violent motion of the boat. Maia, tired out and feeling increasingly feverish, grew impatient and once or twice flared up with an exasperation of which she felt ashamed even as she spoke. Yet he accepted every reproof without retort. At length, satisfied that he had acquired a passable proficiency, she felt able, though rather hesitantly, to leave him and set about catching up with the bailing.

The continual danger and need for concentration and action gave them no chance to talk of anything else, yet nonetheless she could feel in his manner a new warmth and friendly solicitude. Since that terrible evening at Clys-tis's farm, when she had heard him curse her and demand her death, he had found himself compelled, in spite of everything, to respect her. She knew that much-had known it ever since Purn. But now, for the first time, he was speaking to her not merely as though he respected her but as though he liked her too. He wanted to help her and to lessen her anxiety and distress. Yet she wasn't just one of his soldiers any more, to be looked after as a responsibility. Whether or not he was aware of it, he was showing that he regarded her as an equal and a friend.

These thoughts, however, passed only very vaguely and indistinctly through her mind, for as the afternoon-it must surely be afternoon now-wore on and the rain continued to beat down until it was difficult to remember what things had been like before it began, before being wet through from head to foot had become the natural condition of life, she began to feel more and more despondent. As everyone knows, a continuous, unrelenting pain-toothache or earache-is hard to endure. So with this peril and instability. It was as though a carpenter's plane were gradually and steadily shaving away her courage and self-control. Always coming nearer was the inevitable moment when she would no longer be able to endure, would break down and become worse than useless. "O Lespa," she

prayed, "let me drown before that happens! Then at least they'll remember me kindly."

By degrees there came stealing upon her that heightened yet distracted sensitivity which often accompanies the early stage of a feverish illness. While her touch and hearing seemed to have become more acute-so that, for example, the bailer in her hand felt grainy and rain-smooth with a palpability more intense than she had hitherto been aware of-her perception of their surroundings and her relationship to them had also changed, growing blurred and indistinct. It appeared now almost dream-like, this watery wasteland, not subject to normal laws of hature and causation. She would not have been altogether surprised to see it break up and crumble in the rain, start revolving like a wheel or simply vanish before her eyes.

She had not been expecting the trees. Although when she first saw them approaching she did not suppose she was imagining them, yet at the same time they did not seem entirely real. As a matter of fact, in her situation and her slightly delirious condition this was a perfectly reasonable-or at any rate understandable-reaction, for the trees-acres of them-seemed growing up through two lakes of brown water extending one on each side of the river. As they drew nearer, she could see this water actually winding among them, through and over the undergrowth, curling round the thicker trunks like streamers of fog round the towers of the Barons' Palace. She'd no sense of danger, though-not yet. It was like an illusion, a kind of cosmic dance of the trees and water; like the Thlela's dance of the Telthearna which had so much delighted her at the Rains banquet.

She caught his arm, pointing, "Look, Zenka, look! The trees-the trees are dancing!"

He stared at them and seemed to be turning it over in his mind, as though she had said something requiring serious consideration. It was she, not he, who first grasped that she had spoken foolishly. With a sense half of pride and half of shame, she understood that he had become so much accustomed to her talking sense-or at any rate not talking nonsense-that he had been wondering what she might have meant by her metaphor.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Silly fancy. Afraid I'm feeling a bit light-headed. Only the trees-they just don't look real, somehow."

"They're real enough," he answered. "I only hope we can get through them, that's all. Well, in one way it's all to the good, I suppose."

"What is?"

"The forest."

"Forest?" Muzzily, she was trying to remember what a forest was. "Is it the Blue Forest?"

"No: that's up north of Keril. This can only be what they call the Border Forest, between Katria and Belishba. We got quite near the other side of it once, about three years ago, when I was first with the king. At the time he was thinking of attacking Belishba, but nothing came of that."

"Are we in Katria, then, once we're in the forest?"

" 'Fraid not. Katria's not far to the north of the forest, though."

"Then why did you-" She screwed up her eyes, blinking in the rain. Whatever had she been going to say? "Why did you-oh, yes: why did you say it was good, then?"

"Well, we've come so fast-faster than ever I thought we would. It can't be all that much further to Katria now. We must make quite certain we're across the border, though, before we take the boat in to shore."

"How can we?"

"I don't know. But most Belishbans hate Katrians, naturally, and the frontier's guarded even in the rains-or it always used to be."

"You'd better go and tell Anda-Nokomis: I'll take the helm back."

A minute later they were among the trees: but this was as different from their water-journey through Purn as a leopard from a cat. That, for Maia at all events, had been- or so it seemed now-a straightforward affair, in slack water and high summer heat. She had felt so strong and capable then, and the water, just as in old days on Ser-relind, had been her friend. This flooded forest, with the river swirling among the trees, and the bushes struggling like drowning animals-oh, gods! and there was a real drowned animal, look, a wretched fox floating on the current-seemed not only malevolent but unnatural, too. Many a rainy season had she seen, yet never a land grotesquely awash as a courtyard where a fountain-basin has given way.

Still concentrating the shreds of her energy and vigilance on keeping the boat in midstream, she saw, as they were swept further into the forest, the water thick with debris-

leaves, sticks, branches, lengths of creeper, fragments of roots and sodden tangles of grass. They were approaching a bend: on its edge, just where the point must once have been before the flood submerged it, the trunk of an ash-tree rose out of the river. It was like her own dear ash-tree on the shore of Serrelind, where she used to go to escape from Morca and the housework; from whose branches she had so often dropped down into the lake. Looking at it, she felt for a moment cheered and encouraged.

Ah! she thought, but her fever must be coming on worse, for before her rain-blurred eyes the tree seemed slowly moving. Now be sensible! It's just another stupid fancy; you're frightened and tired out! Just keep the boat pointing downstream.

But no; the tree really
was
leaning; listing, slowly tilting, for now she could see another tree behind it remaining upright and still. Then suddenly, shockingly, the tree was keeling over, first quicker and then all in a moment very fast, its tilt become a toppling downfall, as though it had been felled with an axe. The whole ramous structure of branches and drenched leaves was rushing downward. Fifty yards ahead, the surface of the river foamed and whelmed as the trunk hit it and disappeared. Waves tossed the boat, knocking and jouncing under the timbers, then abating, diminishing. Only a tangle of earth-covered roots remained sticking up out of the shallower water along the submerged bank.

Maia, putting the helm hard over and feeling the sluggish response of the bilge-heavy boat, knew with fear that they were already too close. They were not going to be able to round the fallen tree. The boat was turning to port, certainly, but not fast enough: they were going to be caught and enmeshed in the tangle of sunken branches.

Then, before her eyes, the tree began to move again. Just as a minute ago it had begun to move through the vertical, now it was slowly moving through a horizontal plane. Slowly at first and then faster, the topmost branches pivoted downstream with the current, while at the same time the tangle of roots twisted to face her. The boat, itself seeming to drift faster as it approached, came all in an instant abeam of the tree, scraping against one or two of the topmost branches even as the current drew them away to starboard. Before she had time to think, they were past: the tree was gone. Collecting herself as though awakening,

she realized confusedly that they were now too close to the left bank, and brought the boat back into midstream.

Zenka had returned to her side. He was smiling-though largely for her benefit, she rather thought.

"I hope there aren't any more like that, don't you?"

Returning his smile, she took his hand for a moment in her own.

"Just as well you came along with us, isn't it?" he said. "Otherwise we certainly shouldn't have got as far as this. Anda-Nokomis thinks there may be no more than three or four miles to go now."

"He'd best be right," she answered. "Light's going, I reckon."

It was hard to be sure among the trees, under the press of low cloud and heavy rain, but certainly the recesses of the forest seemed dimmer, evanescent in a distant twilight. Some distance behind them another root-dislodged tree subsided into the river. It was not at once dragged clear of the bank, but was still hanging in the current as they floated on and lost sight of it.

"Oh, we mustn't, we mustn't go wrong now!" she cried suddenly. "Not now, not right at the end! Dear Lespa-"

She raised her arms and tried to stand up, but he, laying a finger on her lips, drew her down beside him.

"Steady, Serrelinda! Why don't you go and take over from Anda-Nokomis for a bit? He's been up there long enough now. I'll carry on here."

Anda-Nokomis was hanging intently over the bow, the oar gripped in his good hand, from time to time reaching out to push away logs or floating branches as they drifted alongside. When she touched his shoulder he looked round and gave her one of his rare smiles.

"You got us out of that all right, then? I confess I never thought you would. I should have known you better, Maia."

"If you don't know me by now, Anda-Nokomis-Put the wind up you, did it?"

Still smiling, he shrugged. "Possibly."

"Well, it did me," she said, "tell you that much. Here's your flask: better have some, 'fore I drink the lot."

He shook his head. "We may be glad of it later."

"We'll be in Katria tonight, Anda-Nokomis: think of that! Somebody'll take us in for sure: we've still got a bit of money left. Hot food, dry beds, a fire-oh, a fire, Anda-Nokomis!"

As she spoke they suddenly felt a heavy blow aft. There was a sound of splintering wood and a cry of alarm from Zen-Kurel. The boat turned sideways on to the stream and checked. During the few moments that it took Maia to hasten back astern, it turned yet further and then began drifting stern forward, wavering with every fluctuation of the current.

"Zenka, what's happened?"

Zen-Kurel was standing up, facing the stern and holding the tiller-bar in both hands.

"Rudder's smashed, Maia."

"Smashed? How?"

"I was looking out ahead-I never thought of looking astern as well. We'd just come through that last fast patch into this pool when a log overtook the boat and rammed us from behind. It's still out there, look-see it?"

"Oh, Shakkarn!" she said. "Here, get out of the way! Let's have a look, see how bad it is."

It was as bad as could well have been feared. The log had split the rudder along a jagged line from top to bottom. Almost the whole blade had carried away. The stern-post, though splintered, was still in position, as were the rudder-head and tiller, but naturally, with the rudder-blade gone, these were useless.

Of course, she thought, it would not have occurred to Zenka (as it would unthinkingly to herself) that, having just come down a length of swift water full of heavy flotsam into a relatively still reach, he was in danger of being rammed astern. It was her own fault for having left him alone: she should have known better. One of Zenka's strongest characteristics, she had come to realize, was his unfailing assumption of confidence, which made people implicitly believe in and go along with him, usually without reflecting just how wise it might be to do so. Zenka-and this was no small part of why she had fallen in love with him, why she still loved him and could never love anyone else-believed in all honesty that any gap between what he knew to be possible and what he wanted to achieve could be bridged by sheer courage and determination. It was this buoyant, indomitable serenity in adversity which made him so attractive; ah! and so dangerously easy not to doubt, an' all. By implication he'd convinced her, at a time when she'd been too overwrought not to swallow it, that valor and resolution were enough to steer a boat in