Warautumn (22 page)

To fill the time, they made rope from the inner bark of a tree that grew in groves a quarter shot down the path; made arrows from reeds and shoots of thick-cane; and flaked points from fire-glass, which was abundant thereabouts—or helped Kylin with the flute he was making. Sometimes they sang, too; but no one but Kylin had more than a passable voice.

They also played games: notably question games or dare games, and engaged in every sort of athletic contest a hard floor and cramped quarters allowed—which was mostly variations on wrestling. And they groomed each other: trimming long-neglected hair and shaving off sparse beards. Finally, they mended everything they could find that needed mending until they looked set to run out of thread and Lykkon made them stop.

Mostly, however, they simply talked—about the war, at first, but increasingly about what would be required to turn this remarkable location into a viable hold—either here on the island, or in the cliffs that ringed it.

And by all those means, the bonds between them grew stronger. Already comprised of two sets of bond-mates and another set of natural half brothers, with Kylin the only odd lot, they all discovered things about each other none of the rest had known. There was even a little love play—discreet and under covers, with Lykkon and Kylin being the most frequent participants, simply because, without bond-mates themselves, they had endured longest without physical affection. Bingg was an awkwardness in that regard, because he was Avall’s cousin, Lykkon’s actual half brother—and too young for even courtesy attention from the rest. He needed a bond-mate his own age—which was one thing he would not find here in the Wild.
If they remained in the Wild
.

Which brought them back to that.

Avall was absolutely convinced that he had been shown this place for a reason, and brought there for one as well—though what those reasons might be, he had no idea.

He turned back from the cave’s front rim, where he had been standing for at least a half hand, staring out at the sheeting rain. The cliffs that were their goal were out there somewhere, but he couldn’t see them. Scowling, he padded back to the fire and asked the question he had posed at least once a day since work on the raft began. “Assuming the thing actually floats, how long do you think it will take to reach the mainland?”

“How fast can you paddle?” Rann retorted, voicing his standard reply.

“As fast as you can,” Avall replied sourly. “It’s just that we really don’t have that much left to do on the thing, and if the rain were to break, we could make the first trip this afternoon.”

“Enough ‘ifs’ to choke a geen,” Myx grumbled. “We’d still have to carry the first load down there—and we don’t know what shape the trail is in.”

“We don’t
know
the raft’s still there,” Riff put in grimly. “If the level of the lake has risen much, it might not be.”

“We had it lashed down,” Lykkon opined from the corner. “There hasn’t been
that
much wind.”

“Only rain,” Avall spat. “And rain. And rain.”

“Don’t forget rain,” Bingg chuckled from nearest the fire, where he was pounding tubers in hopes of making something resembling bread meal.

Avall glared at him, then eased closer to Myx and Riff, pitching his voice for them alone. “There never seems to have been a good time to ask this,” he began, “and it’s not really a good time now, but … forgive me if this seems rude, but … are you lads happy here? You seem to be, but you’re both betrothed, correct? To women now at War-Hold? If we were to stay—not now, maybe, but someday—”

Myx exchanged glances with Riff. “You’re asking would we rather be here or with them.”

“We’d rather be here
with
them,” Riff inserted. “But that said, you’re right: We like it here. We
think
they’d like it here—or my lady would, anyway; since she’s from Wood, and The Eight know there’s plenty of wood around here.”

“Do these mysterious women have names?” Bingg inquired, likewise easing closer. “I don’t think I’ve actually heard you say them.”

“Navayn—she’s mine—and Tavera,” Myx murmured. “Navayn’s got a brother about your age. I suspect he’d be up for a trip west as well.”

“All of which is ultimately supposition,” Avall sighed, leaning back on his elbows. “But I had to know—well, wanted to know, anyway—in case we did decide to come back here on a more … permanent basis.”

“After the war, you mean?” From Myx.

“After some kind of resolution,” Avall corrected. “The Eight know precious little can be resolved from here. That’s why getting to the mainland is so important. Once we get there—”

“You can be King again,” Myx finished for him.

“Avall doesn’t like being King,” Bingg countered, too loud.

“I just wanted to know where you stood on the matter of going versus staying.” Avall replied. “I didn’t want you to do anything you didn’t want to do. Getting to know you two has been one of the joys of the last half year, but I never wanted to take over your lives.”

“You haven’t,” Riff assured him.

“Where you go, we go,” Myx added “—allowing for the Fateing, if it ever starts up again.”

“And as for Navayn and Tavera, they’re more likely to force us to go with you than to try to hold us back.”

“Well, that’s as much as I could hope for, I guess,” Avall concluded. And with that, he rose and ambled back to the front of the cave.

Something had changed out there, he realized. Perhaps the rain wasn’t falling so hard, or the drops weren’t quite so large. Certainly he could see farther into what was still mostly a sheet of mist. But for the first time that day, he could also distinguish two shades of gray where the opposing cliffs were supposed to be, so that reality had regained a horizon. And even as he watched, the whole world brightened abruptly and one pure beam of sunlight lanced down.

Rain swallowed it at once, evoking a disappointment in Avall so bitter he almost wept. But another beam appeared a finger later, and that one not only remained but expanded, so that by the time another hand had elapsed—it was still barely past noon—the sky was all but clear. A hand after that, they had spread three days’ worth of damp clothing on rocks to dry and were all, save Kylin, on their way to the cove to see how much damage the raft had sustained.

Not much, as it evolved. At some point the lake had risen high enough to lap under it and shift it—but in such a way that it had pivoted around one corner, so that the bulk of it was now two spans closer to shore than heretofore. As for actual
damage, one section of railing had torn loose, but would be no problem to resecure.

For the rest—it was mostly a matter of checking bindings, adding some new ones from the rope of which they suddenly had a near surplus, and rigging a mounting for the sail they had decided would make a useful supplement to oar power.

“If we stay here,” Lykkon mused, gazing at the now-visible shore that was so near and yet so inaccessible, “we should rig a ferry system. It would take a lot of rope, but it could be done, and the first crossing would be the hard one. Once we had one rope stretched across the lake, we could walk either end to the best locations. That would make going back and forth a whole order easier.”

“Assuming we stay here,” Myx stressed with exaggerated emphasis.

“Right,” Lykkon agreed, with a grin. “Assuming.”

“Tomorrow?” Avall inquired, dipping his head toward the raft. Sweat glistened on his bare torso, but he looked absurdly happy.

Riff nodded solemnly. “Tomorrow. But it won’t be fun, whatever you think. And it could still be deadly, for all we’ve seen no more water-beasts.”

“I’ve been thinking about them,” Lykkon murmured through a thoughtful scowl, as he surveyed the lake. “I think they may only be here part of the time. They could be like salmon: They live in the sea but come inland to breed, and maybe the young ones stay here until they’re big enough to dare open water.”

“The one we killed was big enough, thank you,” Bingg growled.

“Agreed.”

“That also assumes we’re near the sea,” Avall observed. “We’ve no proof of that, except that we’ve seen seabirds—but we’ve seen them as far inland as Gem-Hold, so that’s no indicator.”

“But there is a trace of salt in the water sometimes,” Lykkon countered. “That implies some level of physical connection.”

“There’s salt in the Flat, too,” Avall retorted. “It could as easily be fed by water that flows through that.”

“We’ll find out tomorrow—maybe,” Riff broke, in fixing both Avall and Lykkon with a warning glare. “We may reach the top of those cliffs and find a fine bright city of plague refugees on the other side.
Something
has to have happened to all those folks who went west.”

“Most of them died,” Lykkon informed him smartly. “There are good records of who left, and most of them were accounted for eventually. Relatively few actually got over the mountains.”

“Tomorrow,” Riff repeated absently. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” wound up being a seamless extension of “tonight,” for the simple reason that none of them slept more than sporadically. Long before sunrise, Myx had stoked up the fire and had cauf going—full strength this time, he said, for celebration as much as fortification. There was fish (there always was), fruit, and a few thin-shelled nuts of a type none of them had seen before their arrival on the island. Finally, there was a sort of semi-bread made from Bingg’s pounded tubers mixed with water, salt, and a little of their real bread crumbled, all baked by the fire.

They dressed carefully, in as many clothes as they could wear and still move effectively, but eschewed items like tabards and cloaks that would encumber a swimmer gone overboard. In the interest of maximum safety, in case of attack either by water-beasts or geens, each of them wore every weapon he possessed, and they were careful to have at least one dagger close to hand.

Some items were too large and bulky to consider transporting this trip, of course, notably the table and rug; but most of
the smaller items fit neatly into the boxes that had been made for them (they had, after all, come from a camp tent), so that packing was fairly simple. Every one of them carried a box or bag slung on his back, and that would be enough for the first trip. Bingg had the distance lens—triple-tied, to make absolutely sure he wouldn’t lose it.

So it was that the sun was a blue-pink promise in the sky when they set out. “We’ll be back, though,” Avall whispered to Rann. “Even if we return to the war, we’ll be back. I know it.”

Rann could only smile and slap him on the back—then stagger as the move unbalanced the box on his back, evoking nervous giggles from both of them.

The raft was still where they had left it, and still intact. Nor—thanks to Lykkon’s careful planning—did it take long to load the boxes around the mast and lash them down with make-do vine webbing. Kylin would sit with them, back to the mast, because that was the safest place for him. For the rest, Bingg was to the fore as lookout; Riff was in the back as steersman; while Avall and Rann manned the oars on one side, and Lykkon and Myx the others.

That was the plan once they got it into the water, anyway. Unfortunately, that aspect took far longer than expected, because the craft was already heavy, and they hadn’t reckoned on the extra weight of the load. In the end, they had to sling vines around it and drag it in small bursts of effort to the shore—which necessitated them wading out almost waist deep—which was also as far as they
could
go, before the bottom fell away.

Happily, the raft floated splendidly, and, once they had all clambered aboard, didn’t appear prone to tipping—if they moved with care. There was no wind to speak of, so there was no point in using the sail, but they were young, strong, healthy, well fed, and optimistic, and that was enough to see them out of the shallows with aplomb. A moment later, they were plying the oars (lengths of thick-cane with the bottom half span split
open and folded outward to make blades) as if they were lifelong boatmen.

They were almost exactly halfway between their departure point and their destination, when something thumped hard against the bottom.

Avall had not been the only one cursed with impatience that morning.

Merryn, too, had found that she could wait no longer.

Three days of nonstop rain that had them sitting beneath an increasingly leaky stretch of oiled-canvas roof while the world outside seemed set to wash away had seen to that.

Three days watching their campsite become an island amid a swirl of muddy needles, twigs, and leaves.

Three days of listening to Strynn alternately sniff, cough, and sneeze, as she succumbed to what she claimed was the worst cold she’d had in five years. Div was threatening to get it as well, and Merryn herself was coughing more than she ought, though she thought that might be a function of inaction.

Only Krynneth seemed to be prospering. He had doubled his vocabulary again, but still wasn’t offering up sentences—unless two-word opinions counted. He seemed impervious to the illness, however, and was proving to be an expert healer as well as a decent forager for firewood, though Merryn took pains to assure that his forays took him south and east: away
from the cave and toward what she’d been happy to discover was quite a serviceable river.