The Luck of Brin's Five (8 page)

The two suns were shining and the sky was so clear that it seemed to stretch all the way to Rintoul. The cold ate into our bones as we crouched on the wharf; the weather was clear and cool as the Ulgan had predicted. We shivered in our cloaks and waited, behind a stack of wool bales: Diver and Dorn, alone. The wharf was not busy. We had just seen Petsalee, Leader of the twirlers, bundling his bedraggled flock into a shabby old bird-boat, all lime and old cages, for the journey downriver. The Pentroy officer was there and a couple of vassals to hustle the twirlers out of town. Now these vassals hung about, two hundred feet away, chewing bara seeds against the cold and spitting out the rinds.

There was a step, and Gordo loomed up beside us. He spoke without looking down. “Barge coming. Be ready.”

There was a churning of water and the Ulgan's barge, a cheerful, flat-bottomed fool of a boat, painted in bright colors, swung slowly up to the wharf. Diver, struggling with his cloak, muttered, “Hope this works.”

“Have no fear,” said Gordo. He stared at me boldly and said: “Are you strong enough, hill-child?”

“Strong enough to break your magical head!” I snapped.

Gordo and I picked up the prepared bale, which weighed as much as a tree trunk, and walked towards the barge. Far to my left I saw the vassals staring; I concentrated on my load. Then, just as I was sure they were coming to investigate, Beeth Ulgan in a gorgeous robe strolled onto the wharf with an entourage of town grandees. This party captured everyone's attention, Gordo was on the low gangplank, so was I; the load was crushing me to death, but I breathed out hard and lasted until the clear deck space was reached. The wool bale lay at our feet, and the muscles of my legs were twitching with relief.

Gordo grinned; he did not seem such a bad fellow. “Good luck!” he said. “See you at the Spring Fair.”

I sat down on the deck, and he skipped back onto the wharf. He flicked up the gangplank and shoved it aboard. The barge heaver, a sturdy figure in a checked sailor's hood, pushed off with the pole and went back to working the paddle wheel. Beeth Ulgan raised her staff in a gesture of farewell, and I managed to wave back politely, like her deckhand. The barge swung out onto the broad blue gray waters of the Troon and went slowly, easily, towards the south. I sat there feeling for the first time the sensation of floating on water in a boat. The water spread between the barge and the wharf; there was a sundering, a breaking of ordinary ties. The figures of the Pentroy vassals looked smaller already. Then, with a slight curve of the bank, the houses hid the wharf from view.

The flap of the stern tent flew up, and I was embraced on all sides. There they were . . . Brin, Old Gwin, the Harper, Narneen dancing about like a mad thing. Diver crawled out of the wool bale. We stood all together on the deck and shouted with triumph. The Great Sun blazed in the east, and the Far Sun shone overhead; we were setting out on our journey under a clear sky.

“But where . . .?” I cried.

“Here, of course!” said a familiar voice. The barge heaver threw back his hood, and it was Mamor.

IV

Brin set up my enemy, the mat-loom, on the open deck, but I doubt if I completed ten rows of leaf pattern in all the time we went downriver. It was just so good, so new, to be moving on the water. I fell into my sleeping bag the moment Esto went down and woke early, with Esder's thin light silvering the broad stream. Mamor let me be tillergrip; Diver and Brin took turns at the paddle wheel. Old Gwin and the Harper turned to and washed our linen as if it were already spring. We were travelling light: most of our new work had been left in the cave at Stone Brook for Beeth Ulgan's factors to collect and market. Narneen sat in the stern catching fat water flies for our spinners and chasing the flatbills from our fishing nets with a green branch.

Down in the city I have seen plenty of tame flatbills in ponds and watergardens fed every day on cultured worms. But they cannot match the marvellous wild creatures who live in the Troon north of Otolor. The big ones, the To-tofee, are golden brown with dull green webs; they roll and play and chase each other from morning to night. They thought nothing of taking locusts from our fingers over the side or chasing across the deck, two or three at a time, with a peculiar snuffling noise from their broad bills and their tails slapping on the boards. Then there are two smaller varieties, the common Narfee and the striped Utonar. We saw them swimming in lines, their heads just breaking the surface of the water.

Diver came across the box of wood paints for decorating the barge and painted a frieze of flatbills on the lid of the cargo locker. His artwork was to spread over the face of Torin too quickly for our safety. It must have been about this time that one of the townees in Cullin found his drawings in the cave at Stone Brook and had them copied, with notes in Brin's own written script. Perhaps Beeth Ulgan had a hand in this; she has never denied it.

Mamor was the only one of our Five accustomed to boats; he was the child of river people, far away on the Datse, the river that leads to the Fire-Town. On the second day he and Diver broke out the mast from its long slot on the deck and raised sail. The barge lumbered along faster, but it was very clumsy. It was a matter of watching for channels, shoving off from banks and shoals, shouting a warning to other craft; there were not many at this time of year. We passed villages and hamlets on either bank where we had made spring and summer camps in other years. What a pleasant thing to sail past a track you trudged on, once before.

Diver sat with me at the tiller, and we saw a herd of wool-deer, outside Nedlor, where the banks rise up and there is a hanging bridge over the river. The shepherds were having a hard time cramming the silly creatures into their high-walled fold. Every so often a wool-deer broke free and went leaping and bounding to the edge of the cliff overlooking the river. Then the shepherds moved in with their catch-nets on long flexible poles and brought the straggler in by catching its “hands” and its strong tail. The wool-deer were unshorn; their coats become so thick you can sink an arm up to the elbow in the lovely fleece. This was a herd of pied cross-breds, and their colors were black, white and tan. Diver laughed and told me some more about a strange place on his world where the wool-deer leap about with no wool and the fleece comes from a more docile species.

It was that same day, in the evening, as I rode in the bow, going tillergrip for Mamor, I spotted a boat ahead of us. It moved oddly in the water.

“What is the matter with that craft?” I asked Mamor.

“Stuck on a sand bank!” We were under sail, so he had Brin reef it in a little as we steered closer. The river was broad and shadowy at this point, with a clear, deep channel between two bars of sand so high and dry they were like islands.

The water flowed swiftly through the channel, and I fought with the tiller. The stranded boat was not a barge but a keel boat, old and brown. It was caught up by the stern, and the bow swung free in the channel. As it moved, the keel scraped from side to side across the bar. Mamor hailed and hailed again, but there were no signs of life.

I caught sight of Narneen, crouched by the door of our tent, hands to her mouth in fear. I shared her fear; there was something dreadful about the quiet old shell of a boat, swinging lifeless on the bar.

“Dorn!” It was Diver coming to help reef sail.

“That looks like the twirlers' boat.”

I recognized it then: the filthy old bird-boat that the twirlers were hustled aboard at Cullin. I slackened my grip so that we entered the channel badly; Mamor seized the tiller and gave me a shove. “Watch out!”

He maneuvered more skillfully, and we drew level, away from the swinging bow.

We could see aboard now; the deck was empty . . . a tangle of broken cages scraped and rattled as the boat moved with the current. Not a sign of the twirlers or the boat's crew. We were all watching now, crowded to the low rail.

“What crew was aboard?” asked Brin.

“Captain and one or two sailors . . .” said Diver, “old fellows in whitish clothes. Do you remember, Dorn?”

“No . . .” I whispered. “Two sailors helped the twirlers go aboard.”

“Na-hoo the bird-boat!” Brin hailed them in her fine, mellow voice, seldom raised. Then we joined in, piping and calling, with the Harper making a melodious descant.

“Na-hoo the birder . . . Brown Keel . . . you there, the bird-boat!”

“Vano deg!” boomed Mamor, and we laughed uneasily at his joke . . . it means something like “big, cross, old bird.”

Then Diver filled his lungs and set the whole river ringing from bank to bank with his strange cries. “Coo-ee! Ahoy the bird-boat! Ahoy there!”

There was no reply; the boat was derelict, deserted. Night was coming down, and we all felt the same uneasiness. Old Gwin urged Mamor to move on and made the averting sign.

“We must search,” said the Harper. He cursed the twirlers under his breath and Old Gwin rebuked him, saying they were holy creatures. No one wanted the task of searching the bird-boat. The Harper gritted his teeth and gave me his instrument, but Diver laid a hand on his arm.

“I'll go and take Dorn,” he said, “in case I need an interpreter.”

I looked at Brin, and she questioned with her eyes: was I afraid? “I'm ready.” I was afraid, but game enough with Diver for company.

Mamor timed it nicely; he inched his barge pole along the left sandbank and slewed the barge around as the bow of the bird boat swung towards us again. Diver and I leaped across the thread of water and landed in a heap on the limed deck. We picked our way across the boards, slipping over old tackle, a leather boot, a bunch of blue feathers . . . from a twirler's cloak? Diver paused, head erect; even one thought-blind could sense it. He gripped my arm.

“Don't come any further. . . .”

“I know,” I whispered. “Death . . . dead persons. Go on.” Slowly he bent down and lifted the worn leather curtain that covered the wooden cabin housing. He shone his light down into the blackness.

The cabin was larger than I had expected, a bare, brown hold, with the ribs of the vessel showing through threadbare hangings. No twirlers, alive or dead, only a torn blue cloak to show that ten or fifteen passengers had been aboard. Then the circle of light rested on a tabletop, a rough thing made of a wicker bird cage upended. There were three of them, two slumped forward, one upright. Diver drew in his breath. The captain and the sailors were dead, dead as tree stumps on their wicker stools; three ancients, all female, old as Gwin.

They were still, their faces hidden, their limp bodies moving a little with the motion of the old keel boat. And I saw why the sight of them, strange and terrible as it was, moved me to pity rather than terror.

“It is a death-pact,” I said. “See . . . their hands.” The wrists of the three old persons were firmly bound with a red cord.

“How?” whispered Diver.

“Poison. It is an old thread we follow. See the cups.” Two cups and a cracked beaker rolled about on the table top.

“Come away,” said Diver. “Poor old creatures. . . . Aren't they female?”

“Yes,” I said. “We must go down.”

“No need.”

“Yes!” I was urgent. I did not dare look back to the friendly shape of the barge in case my nerve failed.

“Please, Diver. We are the first finders of a death-pact. We must pray and take their message skein.”

Diver nodded, and we went down the slippery ladder into the hold. I began the prayers as soon as I came to the foot of the steps, stumbling over the words in my haste. I picked at the fringe of my tunic and drew out a red thread; this was going to be the hardest part. With Diver, solemn-faced, watching me and shining the light, I drew back the captain's leather coat and laid the thread to her forehead. It was not terrible. She was old, wrinkled, pale; now she slept. The same with the other two. Three old sibs, most probably, or relicts of some five with a new bird-boat in happier days.

There on the table lay a long message skein in yellow flax fiber, teased from a rope. I finished my prayers and took it up, with the required response, near as I could recall. Diver saw that I was ready. He flicked the light around, examined the piece of the twirler's cape, then flung it aside. We hurried away, catching our breath.

“Anything else?” asked Diver, on the deck.

“We must show Brin the skein.”

It had grown much darker, and the crossing from one vessel to the other was more difficult. Coming back to my Family, even so short a distance, was enough to make me shudder and sob with relief.

We sat in the tent, except Mamor who kept watch, while Brin read the message skein again and again. Her eyes flashed golden in the light of Diver's torch.

“What's in the wind?” asked the Harper.

“Evil. . . .” said Brin in a fierce tone.

“What became of those spirit dancers?” demanded Old Gwin. “Child, tell us. . . .”

I looked at her and saw the three pale faces in my mind, in contrast to her lively brown wrinkled face. Brin read the skein:

“Our birds have flown.

Our sweet singers have been hauled from the hold.

We plied our trade honestly and gave shelter to travellers,

But now our good keel is dishonored.

Mother North Wind accept all we can give,

Ourselves compacted in death.

Mother North Wind bring deepest ruin

Upon the hand that strangles the Spirit Warriors.

Spirit of Eenath, his own kin,

Be stern upon the Elder Tiath.

First finders, remember your charge.

Be blessed if you be not accursed.

Itho, Lanar, Meedo.

Bird Carriers out of Cullin.”

She read the message aloud several times until even Diver understood, with our prompting. Harper Roy went out and told it to Mamor.

“I have put too many in danger,” said Diver. “The twirlers were speaking about my ship. . . .”