Shallows of Night - 02 (10 page)

The ship sped southward away, away from the trembling land, the red and onyx sky, over the thinning ice and, when once more the oblate sun cracked the horizon, still steeped in clouds glowing amber from its light, the morning was less chill, promising a day cool, not cold.

Still Ronin lay upon the maimed deck, delirious, the tatters of his foil suit fluttering over his gouged back. Perhaps it was better thus: that he did not see the vast chunks of ice shearing off with great cracks like barks of thunder, floating now out onto the dark green water.

The ship hit the last thin sheet of ice with a noise that was part groan, part splinter. The crust disintegrated under the weight, and at last the ship was afloat. The bow dipped precariously, then righted itself, the stern coming up in a shower. The cascade streamed over the gunwale running aft, eddying around the prone form lying on the deck.

He awoke briefly, snorting salt water from his nostrils, lifting himself weakly, grasping the gunwale, peered over the side. Water! his numbed brain screamed. Water! But he could not think why that was so important. He lifted his head and the sun blinded him. He looked again at the water, blue-green, sun-dazzled golden, and then beneath the surface at—what?

A shadow? Its immense bulk flickered deep beneath the waves without outline or contour. He stared at it for what seemed a long time. Then all that winked back at him were the green waves, tipped with reflected light, chopped into ten thousand minute crescents bobbing and dancing. What? Then he passed out, his body falling limply to the salt-slick deck.

The day turned chill as billowing clouds, dark and gravid, passed before the face of the sun, blotting out its warmth. The sea changed color, becoming slate gray; and now here and there whitecaps appeared. A heavy, gusty wind sprang up from the northeast and tore at the sail. Moments later, in the gathering gloom, the squall hit with full fury. The seas rose and the ship, unmanned, began to founder. She was turned beam on by the wind, into the troughs of the oncoming waves whose high crests now swept incessantly over the felucca. She began to take on water as she lay heavily in the crashing seas. Rain came in sheets and the day turned gray-green, dark and featureless, filled with the hiss and drum of the downpour.

The ship was sinking and nothing could save her. The wind hit her just as a wave crested broadside and she began to break up. The rain slackened but the wind intensified, as if it knew that the vessel was in the throes of going under.

The deck beneath Ronin’s body buckled and collapsed and he was washed unceremoniously into the turbulent sea. He awoke in the water, gasping and choking for air as the sea filled his mouth and throat. He rose to the surface, hearing the grinding roar of the splitting ship all around him. Disoriented, heavy with the weight of his sword, he went under, clutched for a floating piece of the mast, missed, regained the surface, lungs bursting, back a glyph of agony as the salt drenched his wounds, reached again for the mast, felt its slippery length for only an instant before it rolled away from him. He tried to go after it but he had no strength and he knew with a peculiar calmness that he was drowning and there was nothing he could do about it. He went down into the cold green depths, watching the light recede from him, taking with him in his lungs a fast-diminishing piece of the sky.

E
VEN WHEN RIKKAGIN T’IEN
looked him full in the face, he was never sure what the stubby man was thinking.

“Tea?”

As now.

“Please.”

What rules him? Ronin wondered not for the first time. Rikkagin T’ien was solid, built low to the ground. His wide shoulders, muscular arms, and short legs made him seem almost other-wordly. Then there was the fact that he was hairless.

“So pleasant to relax every now and then, so?” He lifted the small pot, lacquered in a multicolored wheel pattern. “You must excuse the lack of a lady,” he continued as he delicately turned the small cups. “It is most unseemly for a rikkagin to perform this function.” He poured the honey-colored liquid. It steamed the air. He tilted his head. “However, war causes us to make do with so many things that we would normally find abhorrent.” He shrugged as if talking to an old friend. His yellowish skin gleamed in the low lamplight, his wide oval head with its small ears, black almond eyes, and smiling mouth seemed almost regal in this atmosphere. The distant sounds of the ship wafted around them like a fragrance, dominated by the rhythmic singing. Rikkagin T’ien ceremoniously presented Ronin with a filled cup. He smiled dazzlingly and sipped at his own cup. He sighed broadly.

“Tea,” he said, “is truly the gift of the gods.” Then his face fell. This made him appear oddly childlike. “How strange that your people are ignorant of its existence.” He sipped once more from his cup. “How tragic.”

They sat cross-legged on opposite sides of a low wooden table lacquered in squares of green and gray. “You are comfortable in your new clothes?” Ronin put a hand to his loose shirt, looked at his light pants.

“Yes,” he said. “Very. But this material is new to me.”

“Ah, it is silk. Cool in the heat, warm when it is cold.” Rikkagin T’ien sipped again at his tea. “Some things are changeless, so?” He placed his cup precisely in the center of a green square. “Now that you are at your
ease,
please tell me again where you are from and why you are here.”

Something pulled on his feet. His descent was checked. He was cradled, the sea washing over him. Then he rose toward the rippling emerald pool of light, rising from the depths, from the awful liquid silence, from the buoyancy of death, into the clean sweet air, the churning of the waves. Gripped again by gravity, he coughed and retched sea water, his lungs working like bellows, automatically, independent of his brain, which was still fogged, in the coruscating quietude of the ocean, not yet ready to accept the return to life. Then he rose into the air, a gasping, wounded phoenix.

“So,” Rikkagin T’ien said, nodding. “A Bladesman you call yourself.” He stared hard at Ronin; at his face, at the muscles along his arms, at the deep chest. “A soldier you are, a tactician. Well. You are ill and the injury to your back is quite serious. My physician informs me that you will carry those scars for the rest of your life.” He stood up, planted his bare feet wide apart, bending his knees, slightly. Three men came into the room, swiftly, silently, all armed, and if he had made a move to summon them, Ronin had not seen it. “Yet a soldier knows one thing. He knows how to fight, so?” He beckoned Ronin to stand. “Come,” he said in a light tone that held no overtones, no rancor. “Come against me.”

A song in his brain. A song. It dominated his senses, filling the air with a smoky tang, washing over him like the sea. It was a singsong tide of voices, rhythmic, sleepy, and muscular at the same time.

Slowly, numbly he turned over. Dazed. He had been drowning, tumbling gracefully down, twisting on the currents. He stretched out his arms. And now?

He was looking down through the slimy web of a net within which he lay. Below him, the swell and suck of the sea against long wooden planks. Curved. His eyes traveled upward and a word forced itself into his brain. A ship, he thought dizzily.

Drenched and dripping, he swung perhaps thirty meters above the water. Above him, the ship rose another forty meters. Its immense side sloped outward near the bottom. The hull was painted a deep green from the gunwale until almost fifteen meters from the sea. From there down it was red. From the side of the vessel myriad square ports had been cut and from these jutted long slender staffs, it seemed to Ronin, cleaving the water at an oblique angle. A forest of staffs; on separate levels. Two? Three? Staring upward, the sun struck his eyes and he vomited the last of the sea water before he passed out.

“‘Rikkagin,’” said Rikkagin T’ien, after Ronin had for the first time told him the story of the Freehold, “is a title not dissimilar to that of Saardin, so?”

That had surprised Ronin because at no time since he had been brought aboard had he ever been disarmed, even when he was in the presence of Rikkagin T’ien. Slowly he had come to realize that this was because they did not fear him.

Rikkagin T’ien beckoned to him and these thoughts flew through his mind like doves fleeing before a chill wind. What the little man said to him was true; he was not yet fit. Much of his strength had been sapped by his ordeal and it would be many days before he returned to good health. Yet he was a Bladesman and T’ien was again correct: he would have to prove himself.

He stood and Rikkagin T’ien bowed to him, a curious solemn gesture which he had sense enough to return. Two of the men came forward and, stooping, removed the low table from between them.

Slowly Rikkagin T’ien withdrew his sword, the light gleaming along the single slightly curved edge. Ronin withdrew his blade.

“Ah,” said Rikkagin T’ien as if he had been holding his breath.

Heat. He sensed it even before he opened his eyes. The polyglot odors hit him then: sweat and briny salt, tacky tar baking in the sun and aromatic pitch, fresh fish flopping in the warmth. The singing was in his ears and the deck rolled gently under him to its thudding tempo. Heat. Against his chest and cheek.

He was stretched out on the deck. The burning along his back had somehow lessened. He sensed movement around him. A shadow crossed his face and the heat lessened. He tried to rise. A hand, gentle, firm, stopped him and he obeyed, understanding now that someone was working on his back. He felt weak and drained, not even sure, if he were pressed, what reserves of energy remained within him. The situation was unclear. He had no idea where he was. On a ship. Just a ship. With that came the thought of the mast of the felucca. Bend, he told himself. Bend or you will break. Thus he willed himself to relax in the midst of the unknown. Thus did he survive.

He closed his eyes and let the breath flow out of him completely until his lungs sucked in the air of their own accord. He repeated this, cleansing his respiratory system and energizing himself by oxygenating his blood. His eyes opened. He stared at Rikkagin T’ien. He forced all speculation from his mind.

The curving sword was a blur, flashing upward, and simultaneously Rikkagin T’ien screamed. Ronin parried the blow. Just. The intense sound had surprised him. The clang of the blades echoed off the cabin’s bulkheads. The rikkagin whirled and his sword hummed in the air again, the force of the blow stinging Ronin’s wrists.

Back burning anew, Ronin lifted his blade; it was as heavy as a drowned corpse. Pain flared in his chest, making him gasp, and his guard dropped. Through the veil of agony, he saw Rikkagin T’ien advancing and, sweat rolling down his head and torso, he attempted to defend himself. Slowly, his sword came up, trembling. The end, he thought.

But instead of striking, Rikkagin T’ien stood as still as a statue, lowered his sword, sheathed it. The deck whirled, seeming to rise toward Ronin, and then he was in the powerful arms of the two men who had stepped behind him. They set him gently on a mat of rushes, carefully sheathed his sword.

Rikkagin T’ien’s oval face hovered in Ronin’s line of vision. He smiled reassuringly. Ronin struggled to rise.

“Stay still now,” said T’ien. “I have found out what I needed to know.” He shrugged, a totally pragmatic gesture, free of any theatricality. “Do not regret your pain, Bladesman.” His face was a great yellow moon planted in the sky. “You see, we saw your boat break up and your story was most convincing, especially with the evidence of your back. But still”—the moon waned before his eyes, blood pounded in his temples—“we are at war and I must tell you that my enemies would do anything to discover my plans. Please do not think me melodramatic; it is quite true. And frankly the distinct possibility arose that you were in their employ.” Pain was rippling through his chest, making breathing a labor. The moon smiled benevolently in the cloudless sky. “Rest now; you have proven your story; you are who you claim to be. Only a lifetime of training would have allowed you to come against me with three broken ribs.” The moon wavered and broke apart. He strained to see it. “Now my physician is here. He will give you a liquid. Swallow it. He must set the ribs.” Then the moon went out and he was falling, falling.

The passage of the days and nights were as puffs of smoke to him, blooming briefly, evaporating on a jasmine wind as if they had never existed; they were replaced by others, an ephemeral progression blending into a canvas of tonal colors, snatches of sounds, watery whispers of almost heard words. Most of the time he slept deeply, dreamlessly.

When at last he sat up he felt the constriction of the bandages fastened tightly across his chest. Immediately, one of the men in the cabin went out. The other leaned forward and poured tea from a clay pot into a small cup set on a lacquered tray. He held it for Ronin, who sipped gratefully until his thirst was slaked. He sat back and regarded the sailor. He had a sharp aquiline nose and a wide thin mouth. His deep-set eyes were blue. He wore an open shirt and wide-legged trousers. A scabbarded sword hung from his right hip. The cabin’s door opened and the physician entered.

“Ah,” he exclaimed, smiling, “you have had tea already. Good.” He knelt and pushed Ronin gently down onto his back, his fingers moving deftly over the contours of the bandages. He was yellow-skinned as was T’ien, with almond eyes and a wide nose. He clucked to himself, then looked at Ronin. “It was a very bad fracture, yes. You were hit with great force.” He shook his head as the fingers continued their probing travels. Ronin winced once and the physician said, “Ah,” quite softly.

“He is better, so?” said Rikkagin T’ien from close by. Ronin had not seen him enter.

“Oh my, yes,” nodded the physician. “Very. The ribs are knitting faster then I had anticipated. A very fine body. As for the back”—he shrugged almost apologetically—“it will heal but the scars are forever.” His face brightened. “Still, not so bad, eh?”

“So,” said Rikkagin T’ien, addressing Ronin. “When you feel fit enough, you will come on deck. Then we talk.” He turned and left.