On the Oceans of Eternity (61 page)

The dog backed away, mouth hanging open in a canine grin, then turned and slipped through the opening of the tent. Spring Indigo poked her head in a second later.

“It is time to wake, husband, sister. Come wash yourself with water, drink water, make your blood thin and healthy!”

Spring Indigo’s furs and blankets were already neatly rolled up. Giernas yawned, stretched and reached over to pull down the light blanket Sue was using. As usual, she was sleeping on her face and still dead to the world except for a few muffled grumbles.

“Wakie-wakie!” he cried, then administered a resounding slap to her buttocks. The resilient muscle under the thin smooth layer of female fat bounced his palm back into the air, stinging slightly.

Better move quick, he thought and bolted for the river with her curses ringing in his ears, taking the water in a long flat dive just as the sun came over the mountains to the east. Sue was a few steps behind him; he felt a strong slender hand clamp around his ankle, after which she made a determined attempt at drowning him, which was fun. When they’d rolled deep and come up snorting they surfaced, to see Spring Indigo and Perks standing on the bank looking at them. Giernas exchanged a look with her, and they waded toward the shore, mud squelching between their toes. Perks made a halfhearted attempt to dodge, and gave a yelp as the man scooped him up and whirled in a half circle, throwing him five yards out into the slow-flowing stream. The dog landed with a tremendous splash and came up with an enormous sneeze, swimming strongly with his head out of the water. When he turned Indigo was still mock-struggling with Sue.

“You take the arms,” he said. “I’ll take the feet ...”

“No!” A peal of laugher. “No!”

“One—two—
heave
.”

He turned and dived back in himself, swimming deep. The water was clear for a river running through an alluvial plain, very clear once he was away from the bank, and he swam downward until he felt the strong cold hand of the current gripping him. With the young sun bright he could see waving waterweeds below him, and fish by the dozens—a huge sturgeon, some late chinook and steeleye. A river otter came by, pausing to look him directly in the face from about five feet away; he thought he saw it blink in astonishment before it curled about like a living ribbon and arrowed away, sinuous grace until it disappeared upstream.

Turning over on his back he saw the two women swimming by above.
Hell of a pleasant sight,
he thought, crouching on the bottom and driving for the surface.

By then his lungs were burning, and the first breath was almost agonizingly sweet.
Well, so’s life,
he thought. He had good health, a fine young son,
two
women who liked him as much as he returned the favor, friends, the prospect of at least modest wealth and a bit of glory when he returned.
Yeah, life’s been treating me damned good. Life
is good. Not being more given to self-examination than most healthy young men his age, the thought struck hard.
And here I am, going off to where a bunch of homicidal strangers can shoot holes in me. I must be crazy.
He couldn’t even be accused of being yellow, not after the way they’d bushwacked the Tartessian patrol. Nobody would think much the less of him if he’d just taken the expedition off to the coast to hide out until the next ship arrived in San Francisco Bay.

Well, there’s me,
he thought wryly.
I would. Hell, okay, I’ll be sensible when I’m past thirty.

They swam ashore, passing Jaditwara and Eddie in the other direction; holding hands, this time, so they must be on the up cycle of their on-and-off personal relationship.
I wish Eddie would get his act together and settle down,
Giernas thought.
Everyone knows it’s going to happen eventually
—
except him.

As long as they didn’t bring their split-up-make-up-repeat-cycle into business hours, and they didn’t, it wasn’t realty his busines as leader of the expedition, and as a friend there were certain things you just couldn’t say. Particularly when Eddie had taken to responding with heavy-handed jokes about how lucky Giernas was not to have to pay bridewealth twice ...

“Slugabeds!” he said.

They let the slow breeze from the south dry their skins as they ate breakfast—leftover stew from yesterday, and more of the everlasting bannock-bread made from acorn meal—before getting into their buckskins. Spring Indigo brought out a spoon and fed Jared a bit of acorn mush porridge, part of the slow weaning process her people used. The toddler ate a bit, looking a little uncertain at the taste, before making a dive for the faucets.
Can’t fault his taste,
his father thought. He looked around the campsite, one of ... Lord, how many? Hundreds. In the eastern forests where the passenger-pigeon flocks wrecked forests with their weight when they landed, on the banks of the Mississipi, through the tall-grass prairies of central Missouri, where he’d intervened in a fight half on impulse and met Spring Indigo, on upland plains where buffalo herds went by for
days
at the gallop—he’d done the math and had Jaditwara check it and there had to be ten
million
beasts in that one herd—in the crystalline silences of the Nevada desert nights, by Tahoe and water so clear you could drop in a pebble and watch it fall for five hundred feet, in the Sierras ...

Can’t say I haven’t had a grand trip,
he thought.
And more to come, a lot more.
He hadn’t seen the Great Lakes yet, or Texas or Mexico, or a Cuba that was still jungle to the tide’s edge, or the Amazon or the Pampas, or ...
Someday, maybe Africa? And I’d sure like to see a moa somewhere besides a farm, too ...

“Okay, let’s get going,” he said; Spring Indigo hugged him, wordless, as if she were trying to drive herself into his chest, then stepped back with a smile to bring luck. He whirled Jared around in a circle, holding the boy high, listening to his chuckle and cry of
Papa!
and
Fly!,
then handed him back.

“Keep the crossbow or the pistols to hand,” he said, needlessly. “And always have a couple of the dogs near. Keep a horse saddled, change off so you’ve got one ready close by day and night.”

Spring Indigo nodded: “We will be as safe as can be,” she said softly. “Come home with victory.”

As he slung his pack into the canoe, Perks started to follow.

“No,” he said.

The dog pressed his belly to the ground and looked up pleadingly. Giernas took Jared from his mother’s arms and planted him before Perks’s nose. “Stay!” he said sternly. “Guard!”

Perks sighed deeply and stood, moving to Indigo’s side.
Guard the den, the nursing mother, and the cubs while the rest of the pack hunts
was reasoning that made perfect sense to a wolf, and to the mastiff side of his ancestry, too. He didn’t have to like it, but he’d do it, and see that all the expedition’s dogs did, too.

Good soldier,
he thought.

That was more than you could say about the local tribesmen. They were tough enough fighting-men, but they had even less discipline than a bunch of Sun People warriors right off the boat from Alba. He could only hope that they thought Peter Giernas’s
keuthes
too strong to gainsay; or his
war medicine,
or whatever they called it here.

The first problem was to get the boats into the water. A forty-foot log was heavy, even when you’d trimmed the outside and carved out most of the inside to leave a hull between two and three inches thick. The Islanders could have rigged block and tackle gear, but there were times when a hundred strong backs were faster.

“All right,” he said, putting his shoulder to the rounded stern of the first dugout. The wood still smelled of balsamlike sap, and of the nut-oil the locals had rubbed into it. “Get ready ...
heave.”

It took a while for the Indians to get the idea, but when they did the dugout moved a little with the first shove. Another heave, and it began to surge down the pathway of smooth peeled branches they’d laid. Another, and it gathered speed, rumbling over the soft soil as feet drove ankle deep into mud, then into the water itself with a splash and final triumphant shout. Giernas held his breath for a moment, but the craft floated high and evenly—they’d left enough wood along the keel to balance it nicely. It ran out lightly into the river, then jerked to a stop when the mooring line brought it up. The others came down faster, as if knowing they could do it made everyone push harder.

Giernas stepped out to his, rolling himself over the thwart to keep his center of balance low; he wasn’t a mariner by trade, but like any Islander who’d grown up post-Event he had plenty of experience with small boats. At the stern was a two-foot rounded dowel of black oak, sanded smooth and driven into a hole drilled in the wood. He picked up the rudder and tiller— carved from a single block—and slipped it over the pivot, the wood sliding smoothly into the greased hole. It turned easily.

“I christen thee Mother of Invention,” he muttered, then called and waved.

His crew were twenty-five of the local volunteers. They came aboard neatly enough; they all used canoes, albeit little one- or two-man models made out of bundles of tule reeds daubed with mud and natural asphalt. Packs and gear went into the bottom, or up toward the bow, where Eddie had taken a little extra time to carve a crude eagle as figurehead. They were less certain about the seats pegged to the hull, and the shape of the paddles, but sorted themselves out soon enough.

He looked over his shoulder; the other canoes were manned, each with an Islander at the tiller, and Spring Indigo was standing by the shore, holding Jared on one hip and waving with the other hand. His own hand answered, and so did the other three Islanders.

“Let’s go!” Giernas said, turning his mind wholly to what he had to do, and the few phrases in the local tongue he had mastered.

Paddling in unison was familiar here, too, if not on quite this scale. That was why they hadn’t tried to use oars. Enough fascinated or bewildered glances showed as the crew looked over their shoulders at the tiller as it was. Eventually the Indians sorted themselves out, one man to a seat, twelve paddles poised on either side. The twenty-fifth man had appointed himself coxswain.

“Tai!”
he shouted.

An intake of breath, and the paddles rose higher. Muscle rippled in the twenty-four strong brown backs before him, and hands braced.

“Hai
—tai!” from the coxswain.

“Hunah!”
in unison from the crew, a deep multiple grunt.

The blades dipped, bit, rose dripping again. The coxswain began tapping two sticks together, chanting as he did so:

“Hai-
tai
-tiki-tiki, hai-
tai
-tiki-tiki—”

The red-alder-wood paddles flashed, throwing bright sprays of droplets high. Clouds of birds exploded from riverside marsh at the sound of the chant, and from the other side of the broad stream as well; otter and beaver plopped into the water. Far to the east the rising sun gave the snow peaks of the Sierras a blush of crimson, looming over the jungle of trees on that bank and turning the horizon to a jagged line of blue and silver and blood. He pulled the tiller toward himself, and the canoe turned smoothly ... until the startled paddlers stopped and looked over their shoulders again; the only way they knew of steering a canoe was with the paddles themselves.

“Paddle!” he said.

The other canoes were out as well, cutting broad circles on the expanse of the Sacramento; it was a good thing it was a couple of hundred yards wide here; they passed within a few feet of Eddie’s, and the other ranger was cursing and waving his free hand, trying to kick the nearest local.

T
he jolt of the colonel talking to her faded, and Johanna Gwenhaskieths’s marching day dragged on; an hour of march, ten minutes of rest to swig water and gnaw a dog biscuit, another hour on the muddy road. Even in one day’s march up the Seha valley, though, the landscape had begun to change; fewer trees and groves, more of them olives, a drier feel to the land. Mountains rose in the east, the edge of the high country. If it hadn’t been for that change of landscape, she might have thought this the afterlife, and she condemned to a march without end.

The sun dropped behind them to the right, throwing long shadows. A bugle call sounded; Johanna found her feet stopping automatically, even before the
fall out
and
stack arms
sounded.

Good campground,
she thought automatically. A nice little hill, a ruined farmstead for dry firewood ... and she smiled beatifically at the little flock of sheep in a pen.

“Fresh meat tonight,” she said happily; feast-day food.

And it wasn’t her company’s turn for night-watch, so there wouldn’t be a four-hour chunk taken out of her sleep. That didn’t mean the end of work, of course, but at least she could walk over to where her section would be in the battalion camp, add her rifle and helmet to one of the tripods, and drop her webbing harness and rucksack. Then she pulled out a bundle of stakes with a steel blade on either end—swine—feathers, to be driven into the trench outside the earthwork—and took her entrenching tool to the perimeter.

When she came back a fire was already crackling, and she caught the smell of mutton roasting on it, enough to make her forget aching muscles, mud, and sweat.

One of her squad was frying crumbled dog biscuit in the grease that dropped from the chunks of meat; from the look, the beast had been a yearling lamb. She took some of the biscuit in her mess tin and hacked off a couple of chops from the spit with her clasp knife, blowing on her fingers as she juggled the hot food. While she gnawed the savory meat and ate the fat-rich morsels of biscuit (for once not worrying about breaking a tooth on it) Vaukel came up with two buckets of water. She hid a smile; even after this long, it was still a little odd to have someone doing women’s work for her. Not unpleasant, she’d come to like Eagle People ways and even Fiernan more than those she’d grown up with.