At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion) (23 page)

“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 that I 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, no longer to feel physical pain. The mind utterly concentrated first upon 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, 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 that 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; and 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 fall 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 seasprites 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 a 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 off 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 seasprites seemed real and malevolently threatening, the depths yawning open and deadly, alternated 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 southwind and north, and eventually south must win. It is a question of time 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!”