Brothers of Earth

XVI

Tavi’s dark blue sail billowed out and filled with the night wind, and Val t’Ran called out a hoarse order to the rowers to hold oars. The rhythm of wood and water cadenced to a halt, forty oars poised level over the water. Then with a direction from Val they came inboard with a single grate of wood, locked into place by the sweating rowers who rested at the benches.

Somewhere Edrif still prowled the coast, but the Sufaki vessel had the disadvantage of having to seek, and the lower coast was rough, with many inlets that were possible for Tavi, a sleek, shallow-drafted longship, while Edrif, greater in oarage, must keep to slightly deeper waters.

Now Tavi caught the wind, with the water sloughing rapidly under her hull. On her starboard side rose a great jagged spire against the night sky, sea-worn rock, warning of other rocks hi the black waters. The waves lapped audibly at the crag, but they skimmed past and skirted one on the left by a similarly scant margin.

These were waters Kta knew. The crew stayed at the benches, ready but unfrightened by the closeness of the channel they ran.

“Get below,” Kta told Kurt. “You have been on your feet too long. I do not want to have to pull you a second time out of the sea. Get back from the rail.”

“Are we clear now?”

‘There is a straight course through these rocks and the wind is bearing us well down the center of it. Heaven favors us. Here, you are getting the spray where you are standing. Lun, take this man below before he perishes.”

The cabin was warm and close, and there was light, well-shielded from outside view. The old seaman guided him to the cot and bade him lie down. The heaving of the ship disoriented him in a way the sea had never done before. He fell into the cot, rousing himself only when Lun propped him up to set a mug of soup to his lips. He could not even manage it without shaking. Lun held it patiently, and the warmth of the soup filled his belly and spread to his limbs, pouring strength into him.

He bade Lun prop his shoulders with blankets and give him a second cup. He was able to sit then partially erect, his hands cradling the steaming mug. He did not particularly want to drink it; it was the warmth he cherished, and the knowledge that it was there. He was careful not to fall asleep and spill it. From time to time he sipped at it. Lun sat nodding in the corner.

The door opened with a gust of cold wind and Kta came in, shook the salt water from his cloak and gave it to Lun.

“Soup here, sir,” said Lun, prepared and gave him a cup of it, and Kta thanked him and sank down on the cot on the opposite side of the little cabin. Lun departed and closed the door quietly.

Kurt stared for a long time at the wall, without the will left to face another round with Kta. At last Kta moved enough to drink, and let go his breath in a soft sigh of weariness.

“Are you all right?” Kta asked him finally. He put gentleness in his question, which had been long absent from his voice.

“I am all right.”

“The night is in our favor. I think we can clear this shore before Edrif realizes it.”

“Do we still go north?”

“Yes. And with t’Tefur no doubt hard behind us.”

“Is there any chance we could take him?”

“We have ten benches empty and no reliefs. Or do you expect me to kill the rest of my men?”

Kurt flinched, a lowering of his eyes. He could not face an accounting now. He did not want the fight. He stared off elsewhere and took a sip of the soup to cover it.

“I did not mean that against you,” Kta said. “Kurt, these men left everything for my sake, left families and hearths with no hope of returning. They came to me in the night and begged me-begged me-to let them take me from Nephane, or I would have ended my life that night in spite of my father’s wishes. Now I have left twelve of them dead on this shore. I am responsible for them, Kurt. My men are dead and I am alive. Of all of them, / survived.”

“I saved each of them,” Kurt protested, “as long as I could. I did what I knew to do, Kta.”

Kta drank the rest of the soup as if he tasted nothing at all and set the cup aside. Then he sat quietly, his jaw knotted with muscle and his lips quivering. It passed.

“My poor friend,” said Kta at last. “I know. I know. There was a time I was not sure. I am sorry. Go to sleep.”.

“Upon that?”

“What would you have me say?”

“I wish I knew,” Kurt said, and set his cup aside and laid his head on the blankets again. The warmth had settled into his bones now, and the aches began, the fever of burned skin, the fatigue of ravaged nerves.

“Yhia eludes me,” Kta said then. “Kurt, there must be reasons. I should have died, but they, who were in no danger of dying, they died. My hearth is dead and I should have died with it, but they-That is my anger, Kurt. I do not know why.”

From a human Kurt would have dismissed it as nonsensical; but from Kta, it was no little thing-not to know. It struck at everything the nemet believed. He looked at Kta, greatly pitying him.

“You went among humans,” said Kurt. “We are a chaotic people.”

“No,” said Kta. “The whole of creation is patterned. We live in patterns. And I do not like the pattern I see now.”

“What is that?”

“Death upon death, dying upon dead. None of us are safe save the dead. But what will become of us ... is still in front of us.”

“You are too tired. Do your thinking in the morning, Kta. Things will seem better then.”

“What, and in the morning will they all be alive again? Will Indresul make peace with my nation and Elas be unharmed in Nephane? No. Tomorrow the same things will be true.”

“So may better things. Go to bed, Kta.”

Kta rose up suddenly, went and lit the prayer-light of the small bronze phusa that sat in its wood-and-bronze niche. The light of Phan illuminated the corner with its golden radiance and Kta knelt, sat on his heels and lifted his open palms.

In a low voice he began the invocation of his Ancestors, and soon his voice faded and he rested with his hands in his lap. Just now it was an ability Kurt envied the religious nemet like Kta, like Mim, to feel physical pain no longer. The mind utterly concentrated first on the focus of the light and then beyond, reaching for what no man ever truly attained, but reaching.

The stillness that had been in Elas came over the little cabin. There was the groaning of the timbers, the rush of water past the hull, the rocking of the sea. The quiet seeped inward. Kurt found it possible ‘at last to close his eyes.

He had slept some little time. He stirred, waking from some forgotten dream, and saw the prayer-light flickering on the last of its oil.

Kta still sat as he had before.

A chill struck him. He thought of Mim, dead before the phusa, and Kta’s state of mind, and he sprang from bed. Kta’s face and half-naked body glistened with sweat, though it was not even warm in the room. His eyes were closed, his hands loose in his lap, though every muscle in his body looked rigid.

“Kta,” Kurt called. Interruption of meditation was no trifling matter to a nemet, but he seized Kta’s shoulders nonetheless.

Kta shuddered and drew an audible breath.

“Kta. Are you all right?”

Kta let the breath go. His eyes opened. “Yes,” he murmured thickly, tried to move and failed. “Help me up, Kurt.”

Kurt drew him up, steadied him on his deadened legs.

After a moment the nemet ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair and straightened his shoulders.

He did not speak further, only stumbled to his cot and fell in, eyes closed, as relaxed as a sleeping child. Kurt stood there staring down at him in some concern, and at last concluded that he was all right. He pulled a blanket over Kta, put out the main light, but left the prayer-light to flicker out on its remaining oil. If it must be extinguished there were prayers which had to be said; and he knew them from hearing Mim say them, but it would be hypocrisy to speak them and offensive to Kta to omit them.

He sought the refuge of his own bed and lay staring at the nemet’s face in the almost-dark, remembering the invocation Kta had made of the Guardians of Elas, those mysterious and now angry spirits which protected the house. He did not believe in them, and yet felt a heaviness in the air when they had been invoked, and he wondered with what Kta’s consciousness or subconscious had been in contact.

He remembered the oracular computers of Alliance Central Command which analyzed, predicted, made policy . . . prophesied. He wondered if those machines and the nemet did not perceive some reason beyond rationality, if the machines men had built functioned because the nemet were right, because there was a pattern and the nemet came close to knowing it.

He looked at Kta’s face, peaceful and composed, and felt an irrational terror of him and his outraged Ancestors, as if whatever watched Elas was still alive and still powerful, beyond the power of men to control.

But Kta slept with the face of innocence.

Kurt braced himself as Lun heaved a bucket of seawater over him-cold, stinging with salt in his wounds, but a comfort to the soul. He was clean again, shaved, civilized. The man handed him a blanket and Kurt wrapped in it gratefully, not minding its rough texture next to his abused skin. Kta, leaning with his back against the rail, gave him a pitying look, his own bronze skin able to absorb Phan’s burning rays without apparent harm, even the bruises he had suffered at the hands of the Tamurlin muted by his dusky complexion, his straight black hair drying in the wind to fell into its customary order, while Kurt’s, lighter, sun-bleached now, was entirely unruly. Kta looked godlike and serenely undamaged, renewed by the morning’s light, like a snake newly molted.

“It looks terribly sensitive,” Kta said, grimacing at the sunburn that bled at Kurt’s knees and wrists and ankles. “Oil would help.”

“I will try some in a little while,” Kurt said. He took his clothing and dressed, an offense to his fevered skin. He went clad this day only in the ctan. When there were no women present it was enough.

“How long will it take us to reach the Isles?” Kurt asked of Kta, for Kta had given that as their first destination.

Kta shrugged. “Another day, granted the favor of heaven and the ladies of the winds. There are dangers in these waters besides Edrif; Indresul has a colony to the west, Sidur Mel, with a fleet based there-a danger I do not care to wake. And even in the Isles, the great colony of Smethisan is dominated by the house of Lur, trade-rivals of Elas, and I would not trust them. But the Isle of Acturi is ruled by house-friends: I hope for port there.”

The canvas snapped overhead and Kta cast a look up at the sail, waved a signal back to Val. Tavi’s crew hurried into action.

“The gray ladies,” said Kta, meaning the sky-sprites, “may not favor us for long. Sailors should speak respectfully of heaven and never take it for granted.”

“A change in the weather?”

“For the worse.” Kta wore a worried look, indicated a faint grayness at the very edge of the northern sky. “I had hoped to reach the Isles before that. Spring winds are uncertain, and that one blows right off the ice of the Yvorst Ome. We may feel the edge of it before the day is done.”

By midmorning Tavi’s sail filled and hung slack by turns, Kta’s ethereal ladies turning fickle. By noon the ship had taken on a queasy motion, almost without wind to stir her sail. Canvas snapped. Val bellowed orders to the deck crew, while Kta stood near the bow and looked balefully at the advancing bank of cloud.

“You had better find heavier clothing,” said Kta. “When the wind shifts, you will feel it in your bones.”

The clouds took on an ominous look now that they were closer. They came like a veil over the heavens, black-bottomed.

“It will drive us back,” Kurt observed.

“We will gain what distance we can and fight to hold our position. You are not experienced in this; you have seen no storms such as the spring winds bring. You ought not to be on deck when it hits.”

By afternoon the northwest sky was utterly black, showing flashes of lightning out of it, and the wind was picking up in little puffs, uncertain at first, from this quarter and that.

Kta looked at it and swore with feeling. “I think,” he said, “that the demons of old Chteftikan sent it down on us for spite. Sufak is to leeward, with its hidden rocks. The only comfort is that Shan t’Tefur is nearer them, and if we go aground, he will have gone before us. Hya, you, man! Tkel! Take another hitch in that! Wish you to climb after it in the storm? I shall send you up after it.”

Tkel grinned, waved his understanding and caught quickly at the line to which he was clinging, for Tavi was suddenly beginning to experience heavy seas.

“Kurt,” said Kta, “be careful. This deck will be awash soon, and a wave could carry you overboard.”

“How do your men keep their footing?”

“They do not move without need. You are no seaman, my friend. I wish you would go below. I would not have you entertaining Kalyt’s green-eyed daughters tonight. I know not what their feelings may be about humans.”

Kurt knew the legend. Drowned sailors were held in the domain of Kalyt the Sea Father until proper rites could release their souls from bondage to the lustful sea-sprites and send them to their ancestral hearths.

He took Kta’s warning, but it was advice, not order, and he was not willing to go below. He walked off aft and suddenly a great swell made him lose his balance. He caught at the mast in time to save himself from pitching headlong into the rowers’ pit. He refused to look back at Kta, humiliated enough. He found his balance again and walked carefully toward the low prominence of the cabin, taking refuge against its wall.

Tavi was soon hard put to maintain her course against the seas. Her bow rose on the swells and her deck pitched alarmingly as she rode them down. Overhead the sky turned to premature twilight, and the wind carried the scent of rain.

Then a great gust of wind scoured the sea and hit the ship. The spray kicked up, the bow awash as water broke over the ship’s bronze-shod ram. Kurt wiped the stinging water from his eyes as sea and sky tilted insanely. He kept tight grip on the safety line. Tavi became a fragile wooden shell shrunk to miniature proportions against the waves that this morning had run so smoothly under her bow.

Wood and rigging groaned as if the vessel was straining to hold together, and a torrent of water nearly swept Kurt oft his feet. Rain and salt water mixed in a ceaseless, blinding mist. In the shadowy sky lightning flashed and thunder boomed directly after, and Kurt flinched against the cabin wall, constantly expecting the ship not to surface after the next pitch downward or the breaking of spray across her deck. Thunder ripped overhead-lightning seemed close enough to take the very mast. His heart was in his throat already; at every crash of thunder he simply shut his eyes and expected to die. He had ridden out combat a dozen times. The fury of this little landbound sea was more awesome. He clung, half drowned, and shivered in the howling wind, and Kta’s green-eyed sea-sprites seemed real and malevolently threatening, the depths yawning open and deadly, alternate with the sky beyond the rail. He could almost hear them singing in the wind.

It was a measureless time before the rain ceased, but at last the clouds broke and the winds abated. To starboard through the haze of rain land appeared, the land they so much wanted to leave behind, a dim gray line, the stark cliffs and headlands of Sufak. Kta turned the helm over to Tkel and stood looking toward the east, wiping the rain from his face. The water streamed from his hair.

“How much have we lost?” Kurt asked.

Kta shrugged. “Considerable. Considerable. We must fight contrary winds, at least for the present. Spring is a constant struggle between south wind and north, and eventually south must win. It is a question of tune and heaven’s good favor.”

“Heaven’s good favor would have prevented that storm,” said Kurt. Cold limbs and exhaustion made him more acid than he was lately wont to be with Kta, but Kta was well-armored this day. He merely shrugged off the human cynicism.

“How are we to know? Maybe we were going toward trouble and the wind blew us back to safety. Maybe the storm had nothing to do with us. A man should not be too conceited.”

Kurt gave him a peculiar look, and caught his balance as the sea’s ebbing violence lifted Tavi’s bow and lowered it again. It pleased him, even so, to find Kta straight-facedly laughing at him; so it had been in Elas, on evenings when they talked together, making light of their serious differences. It was good to know they could still do that.

“Hya!” Val cried. “My lord Kta! Ship astern!”

There was, amid the gray haze, a tiny object that was not a part of the sea or the shore. Kta swore.

“They cannot help but overhaul us, my lord!”

“That much is sure,” said Kta, and then lifted his voice to the crew. “Men, if that is Edrif astern, we have a fight coming. Arm yourselves and check your gear; we may not have time later. Kurt, my friend”-Kta turned and faced him-“when they close, as I fear they will, keep away from exposed areas. The Sufaki are quite accurate bowmen. If we are rammed, jump and try to find a bit of wood to cling to. Use sword or ax, whatever you wish, but I do not plan to be boarding or boarded if I can prevent it. Badly as we both want Shan t’Tefur, we dare not risk it.”

The intervening space closed slowly. Nearer view confirmed the ship as Edrif, a sixty-oared longship, and Tavi, though of newer and swifter design, had ten of her fifty benches vacant. At the moment only twenty oars were working.

“Ei,” said Kta to the men in the rowers’ pits on either side of him, the other twenty also seated and ready, six of the deck crew taking vacant posts to bring Tavi’s oarage closer to normal strength. “Ei, now, keep the pace, you rowers, as you are, and listen to me. Edrif is stalking us, and we will have to begin to move. Let none of us make a mistake or hesitate; we have no margin and no relief. Skill must save us, skill and discipline and experience; no Sufak ship can match us in that. Now, now, run out the rest of the oars. Hold, you other men, hold!”

The cadence halted briefly, Tavi’s twenty working oars poised creaking and dripping until the other twenty-six were run out and ready. Kta gave the count himself, a moderate pace. Edrif gained steadily, her sixty oars beating the sea. Figures were now discernible on her deck.

Kurt made a quick descent to seize a blade from a rack in the companionway, and on second thought exchanged it for a short-handled ax, such as was properly designed for freeing shattered rigging, not for combat. He did not estimate that his lessons with Kta had made him a fencer equal to a nemet who had handled the ypan all his life, and he did not trust that all Sufaki shunned the ypan in favor of the bow and the knife.

He delayed long enough to dress too, to slip on a pel beneath the ctan and belt it, for the wind was bitter, and the prospect of entering a fight all but naked did not appeal to him.

When he had returned to the deck, even after so brief ~a time, Edrif had closed the gap further, so that her green dragon figurehead was clear to be seen above the water that boiled about her metal-shod ram. A stripe-robed officer stood at her bows, shouting back orders, but the wind carried his voice away.

“Prepare to turn full about,” Kta shouted to his own crew. “Quick turn, starboard bank . . . stand by ... turn! Hard about, hard!”

Tavi changed course with speed that made her timbers groan, oars and helm bringing her about three-quarters to the wind, and Kta was already shouting an order to Pan.

The dark blue sail with the lightning emblem of Elas billowed down from the yard and filled, deck crew hauling to sheet it home. Tavi came alive in the water, suddenly bearing down on Edrif with the driving power of the wind and her forty-six oars.

Frenzied activity erupted on the other deck. Edrif began to turn, full broadside for a moment, continuing until she was nearly stern on. Her dark green sail spread, but she could not turn with graceful Tavi’s speed, and her crew hesitated, taken by surprise. Tavi had the wind in her own sail, stealing it from theirs.

“Portside oars!” Kta roared over the thunder of the rowing. “Stand by to ship oars portside! Hya, Val!”

“Aye!” Val shouted back. “Understood, my lord!”

A shout of panic went up from Edrif as Tavi closed, and Kta shouted to the portside bank as they headed for collision. Tavi’s two banks lifted from the water, and with frantic haste the men portside shipped oars while the starboard rowers held their poised level.

With the final force of wind and gathered speed, Tavi brushed the side of Edrif, the Sufak vessel’s starboard oars splintering as shouts of pain and panic came from her pits. Sufaki rowers deserted their benches and scrambled for very life, their officers cursing at them in vain.

“Take in sail!” Kta shouted, and Tavi’s blue sail began to come in. Quickly she lost the force of the wind and glided under momentum.

“Helm!” Kta shouted. “Starboard oars ... in water . . . and pull!”

Tavi was already beginning to turn about under her helm, and the one-sided bite of her oars took her hard about again, timbers groaning. There was a crack like a shot and a scream: one of the long sweeps had snapped under the strain and tumbled a man bleeding into the next bench. The next man leaned to let him fall, but kept the pace, and one of the deck crew ran to aid him, dragging him from the pit. Arrows hissed across the deck. Sufaki archers.

“Portside oars!” Kta shouted, as those men, well-drilled, had already run out their oars to be ready. “All hold! In water . . . and pull!”

Forty-five oars hit the water together, muscles rippled across glistening backs-stroke-and stroke-and stroke, and Edrif astern and helpless with half her oarage hanging in ruin and her deck littered with splinter-wounded men. The arrows fell short now, impotent. The breathing of Tavi’s men was in unison and loud, like the ship drawing wind, as if all the crew and the ship they sailed had become one living entity as she drove herself northward, widening the distance.

“First shift,” Kta shouted. “Up oars!”

With a single clash of wood the oars came up and held level, dipping and rising slightly with the give of the sea and the oarsmen’s panting bodies.

“Ship oars and secure. Second shift, hold for new pace. Take your beat. Now . . . two . . . three . . .”

They accepted the more leisurely pace, and Kta let go a great sigh and looked down at his men. The first shift still leaned over the wooden shafts, heaving with the effort to breathe. Some coughed rackingly, striving with clumsy hands to pull their discarded cloaks up over their drenched shoulders.

“Well done, my friends,” said Kta. “It was very well done.”

Lun and several others lifted a hand and signaled a wordless salute, without breath to speak.

“Hya, Pan, you men. It was as fine a job as I have seen. Get coverings for all those men in the pits. A sip of water too. Kurt, help there, will you?”

Kurt moved, glad at last to find himself useful, and took a pitcher of water to the side of the pit. Two of the men were overcome with exhaustion and had to be lifted out and laid on the deck beside the man whose splintered oar had gashed his belly. It proved an ugly wound, but the belly cavity was not pierced. The man was vowing he would be fit for duty in a day, but Kta ordered otherwise.

Edrif was far astern now, a mere speck, not attempting to follow them. Val gave the helm to Pan and walked forward to join Kta and Kurt.

“The hull took it well,” Val reported. “Chal just came up from checking it. But Edrif will be a while mending.”

“Shan t’Tefur has a mighty hate for us,” said Kta, “not lessened by this humiliation. As soon as they can bind up their wounds and fit new oars, they will follow.”

“It was bloody chaos on her deck,” said Val with satisfaction. “I had a clear view of it. Shan t’Tefur has reason to chase us, but those Sufaki seamen may decide they have had enough. They ought to know we could have sunk them if we had wished.”

“The thought, may occur to them, but I doubt it will win us their gratitude. We will win as much time as We can.” He scanned the pits. “I have not pulled an oar in several years, but it will do me no harm. And you, friend Kurt, you are due gentler care after what you have endured, but we need you.”

Kurt shrugged cheerfully enough. “I will learn.”

“Go bandage your hands,” said Kta. “You have little whole skin left. You are due to lose what remains.”