Anna von Wessen (33 page)

“They have come!” Dio cried. “Ready yourselves, brothers! We are leaving!”

Speedily the little vessel drew nigh. As its bow came near to Wolach’s ship, Dio crouched down on his hind legs, preparing to spring. All in an instant he leapt up and over the two rails, and landed cleanly upon the deck of the opposite boat. The impact was jarring. Anna felt all of her bones rattle inside her, like the bars of a shaken cage. The wound at her throat bled more freely, yet still she craned her neck to see what would become of Dio’s comrades.

They all turned from Wolach when the rescue boat appeared, and made ready to jump as Dio did. Wolach snapped viciously at their ankles, and wrung sharp cries from all of them ere they had succeeded in their task. But just before the last of them had sprung, Wolach realised the wiser route to take, and leapt himself upon the neighbouring ship. He fell there to a new attack. Maybe he would have prevailed in this fight, if a score more of Narken had not come barrelling then from belowdecks; but come they did, and they managed quickly to eject him from their vessel. He was cast down into the surging water, where he bobbed like a cork for a minute or two, staring at Dio Constantín with the very most fearsome expression Anna had ever borne witness to. But he seemed aware that his part in the fight was over. Finally he turned away from the boat, and struck out with strong strokes towards his own ship, which was being whisked quickly out of sight upon the mad waves, with the miserable howls of the injured Gorn (who must somehow have managed to keep to the crazy, wobbling deck) to mark its departure, fading swiftly and steadily into the lonesome darkness.

XXXIV:

A History

I
f Anna had not been so completely stricken with pain and exhaustion, doubtless she would have demanded an explanation straightaway of Dio Constantín. Even as it was she tried to speak to him, tried to ask him; but he would say nothing. He only nodded to the boat’s crew, who were all watching Anna very intently, and then went to carry her belowdecks. She knew hardly more of the whole ordeal, than that she was laid finally upon a soft, dry bed, and was after that very quickly asleep. Just before her eyes closed, and all sound fell away, she felt a pair of human-shaped hands touching her throat very gently. But what they might have done she lingered no longer to find out.

When next she came awake, the sun was shining brightly through the porthole, with a bit of clear water coming up sometimes to splash over the glass. She watched this little round window for a long while, but saw nothing more over the blue plane of the horizon than the light and the waves. She attempted once to rise, but was in far too much pain to do so. Her limbs were heavy and cramped, and a thick haze seemed to be lying upon her, of the kind that might have been engendered in a human when given a strong drug. But still that ferocious pain gnawed its way through. She could scarcely move her neck at all, so tightly was it bandaged. Probably this was for the best, though; for little as she did manage to move it, still the motion brought a fresh, wet spot of blood to the clean wrapper of the wound. The bone of her wrist had begun already to knit itself back together, but the one who had mended it was not so skilled as Vaya, and it made a nauseating cracking sound if it was displaced from its resting-spot on the blanket. All her many other wounds were not so grievous as they had been, but produced pangs enough still to irritate her extremely.

She weaved in and out of consciousness all through the morning. The last time she roused herself, snapping awake as though to sleep at such a time was unheard of, she noticed that the light at the porthole had changed, and dusk was very near to falling. Soon after this a member of the crew came down to the little oblong closet which was her cabin (it could not have been more than six-foot-by-eight), with a tray of meat and drink in his hand. He was a very small fellow, with dark shaggy hair and wide, bright eyes.

“You’re awake!” he exclaimed cheerfully. “I am glad to see that. My name is Doric; and it was I who dressed your wounds. Now, though, what’s best is to eat.”

“I would very obligingly accept your offer,” said Anna hoarsely, “if I thought that I were capable of raising myself off of this pillow.” She put a hand to the damp bandage, and added, “Or if I thought that that water wouldn’t come spilling out of this hole in my throat.”

“I don’t say some won’t,” said Doric with a smile. “But no doubt you’ll get at least a little of it.”

He helped to prop her up against the wall, and then set the tray on her lap. “Here you are,” he said. “Eat what you can. I’ll come back to see to you in a while.”

Anna was prepared to let him go; but she was struck by a sudden thought, and called him back.

“Do you know,” she asked him, “whether Dio Constantín will come to me?”

“I’m sure he will come when he can. Eat, and rest till then.”

He nodded, and smiled once more. Then he opened the door and went out of it. Anna heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs; but that sound soon vanished, and was succeeded only by a threefold recurrence of the same, ever and anon on the deck above her head. But no one came for a long time.

~

Weary though she was, Anna slept no more till Dio Constantín called upon her. He tapped softly on the door, but said nothing, and simply waited for her to beckon him inside. She did so immediately, for she knew it was he. She smiled when she saw him standing, great and brawny even in his human form, in the small rectangle of the doorway.

He ducked his head to enter the room, and set a lamp on the tiny table where Anna’s dinner tray was laid. He looked about for a place to sit, and frowned when he could not find one. He disappeared out the door for a moment, and returned with a chair in his hand. He set it as far from Anna’s bed as he was able (though that was not very far at all), and settled himself down in it, while it creaked loudly under his weight. Anna wondered whether it would give way under him; and hoped she would not laugh if it did.

“Well,” he said, when he had made himself as comfortable as seemed possible; “how are you feeling?”

“Better,” Anna lied.

“Ah! You are very strong.”

Anna looked for a little into his big bearded face, and examined studiously the depths of his kindly blue eyes. But more than that they
were
kindly, certainly she could not make out. All she knew was that he looked older, much older than he had looked before, in the throes of battle. His hair seemed even greyer now, and his broad, sunburnt visage was wrinkled as a prune. His movements upon entering had been stiff, almost laboured. Anna wondered how he had ever managed to work up what strength it must have required to do what he had done.

“Will you tell me who you are, Dio Constantín?” she asked.

“I’ve come to you for no other reason.”

“Good! I am very anxious to hear.”

She thought he might smile, or say something of a little levity; but he only frowned as he had before he went for the chair, and looked at her seriously. “Now I wonder,” he said, “how you would like to do this. Would you rather I tell you a little, and then answer your questions? Or should I tell you all my tale, and try to anticipate your questions by doing so?”

Anna narrowed her eyes at him, and was immediately troubled. “I suppose you should tell what you like,” she said slowly.

“All right, then,” he said. Still his frown did not fade; and in fact it even seemed to etch its lines more deeply into the skin round his mouth. His silence, however, was brief. When he spoke again, he settled quickly into a story-telling tone of voice. Though Anna listened with marked wonder, the height of which rose with nearly every word, she did not interrupt him. And probably you will guess – though if you don’t we shall tell you – that it was in fact this very story which King Xeros told Vaya two nights before. 

“I will start,” said Dio, “from the very beginning. My name, as you know, is Dio Constantín.
The surname is a human one; for my father was a human from the Isle of Crete. I myself hail from Chersky in Northern Russia, the place where the small Narkul house of my mother was built, and where my father went after he wed her. But the story of their meeting is a longer one than I’ve time to tell.

“
Many years ago I fell in love, as most people will do – and her name was Mila. Her mother, Mordova, was spiritual leader of the Narken of Western Russia. She was their priestess, if you will. She was a very important woman, much more important than anyone in
my
family had ever been considered to be. With a human father from a foreign land, and a dead mother whom I had never known, my name meant hardly anything to anyone. That is, to anyone but Mila. She was the only one who thought me special.” He laughed softly, and added, “Special I surely am not; but I knew that she was, and because she loved me, she thought the same of me.

“
Now I shall tell you how I met her. There was a man in Chersky, you see, who had been very ill for a long time, and who sensed that his death was near. He had great respect for Mordova, he said, and wished for her to recite the death rites over him. Of course no one thought she would come. The month was December, and the short thaw was long past. To travel from St Petersburg (or Leningrad, at that time), to distant Chersky, seemed too much to expect. Yet she came. She came with her daughter.

“
I was tending to the sick man in his little house. Old Otlo, you see, was a dear friend of my father’s. I was there, then, when Mila arrived.”

He paused for a moment, and his face brightened. “Truly she was beautiful!” he said. “Her he
art was so pure! She knelt by Otlo’s bedside, and prayed with him. When she looked up, and saw me standing by the doorway, she called me down to pray, too.

“We were wed only weeks after we met. Her mother was not overly pleased; but she loved Mila dearly, and could not bear to break her heart by denying me. So I said goodbye to my father, and went with Mila to Leningrad. We lived for some years in peace, and in happiness. I was a sailor before I was wed; but afterwards I could not find it in myself to leave my wife, so I sold my ship, and took a job as a boat-builder on the Neva River.

“All was well till the year of 1934, when we learnt that the Night Council was to meet in our city. Never before had they done so. Always they had met in Moscow. But they had heard of our settlement in Leningrad (which was separate from the larger state ruled by King Ryok, and therefore vulnerable) and wished to destroy it.

“But Cordoff, who was the brother of Mordova and her deputy priest, as well, had been wed six months earlier to Era, the daughter of Kenneght, who was Worgach’s chief advisor. He had been sent to Germany the previous year, on the request of Kenneght himself – who had his own ardent beliefs in matters of the soul. He kept to Germany after his wedding, but his sister wrote him when she learnt of the coming of the Night Council, beseeching his aid. He bade the three of us immediately to leave Leningrad, and to come and live in the house of one of Kenneght’s comrades, whose family was all dead and who had room to spare.

“In my heart I wanted to stay, and fight against the Lumaria. I wished to strengthen our small army, and to build a resistance. There was a part of me that wondered, too, why Mordova should want to leave her people. A number of years ago she had divided with them from the tyrannical government of Ryok, and was the nearest thing to a Queen that they had. She had asked for their passage, as well, but Worgach could not be swayed to allow so many of a hunted people into his demesne. Of course I would go wherever Mila went; and above all things I desired her safety. So I went with her and her mother, and left the Leningrad wolves behind. Of course they all died during the invasion – or rather, the ‘Council meeting.’

“But anyway. We travelled to Germany in April, and stayed there till Worgach’s rule was ended in 1936. Then we ran, just as all the others did; all in different directions, all like scurrying mice. When Worgach was slain by Abrast, much of his army was killed along with him, and Worgan had very little ammunition at that time to launch against the Lumaria. But he was not proud, and he ordered that all his people who could depart should do so. Kenneght formed a little company, consisting of himself and his daughter, Cordoff and his sister, Mila and myself. Together we fled.

“We took a ship for ourselves from Worgach’s fleet, and struck out across the sea towards America, whither many of the Narken were heading, and where we thought we would stand the best chance of merging with an independent state. We ran like little children from the darkness, much as the Jews would run shortly afterwards from the Nazis – and we had just as little chance for success. Counterfeit papers had been drawn up, so as to allow us to pass for human Germans in the case that we were overtaken and searched. And we did have the misfortune to be spotted by a vessel of the Lumarian navy. We showed them our papers, and though we wished for them to consider us human, we hoped too that they would not go and spoil everything by thinking of making a meal of us. It did not get so far, however; for their noses were too keen, and they sniffed us out. There were too many to fight against. We were all forced from the ship to be tortured for information.

“In addition to ourselves, there were two little children on board, both almost the same age. One was the son of Cordoff and Era – and one was mine and Mila’s own daughter. When we caught sight of the Lumarian ship approaching, we hurried to hide the children. We thought it better for them to drown, or even to starve, than for them to be taken. Mila and I hid our daughter behind a loose board beneath one of the berths. We tried to make room for the boy, but it couldn’t be done. So Era went wild, searching for another place – tried one of the trunks, but couldn’t bear to think of the boy suffocating. She was rushed by the sudden arrival of six Lumaria, and was forced merely to hide him in a mess of blankets. He cried, and the Lumaria came upon him quickly. But it was as though our girl sensed the trouble; and she was silent. The Lumaria never found her before they herded us off the ship.

“All I could do was pray. I prayed that we would escape – that if even one of us could do so, it would be Mila, and she would return for our child. But that was not to be. The Lumaria put us aboard their own ship, and started off wherever it was they were headed. A storm overtook us, though, and the ship was driven far into unfrequented depths. We took advantage of the chaos to strike up a fight. But when they are caught in the water, as you very well know, the Lumaria sometimes cannot shift – and the two who managed it must have wound up on the bottom, for it’s clear they never lived to tell the tale. All the others we killed in our fury.

“But then we had the trouble of saving ourselves. It was no easy thing to do. I watched as they drowned, and held only to Mila, keeping her head above water even when my own lungs were filled, and I could not breathe. I lost consciousness eventually.
When I woke – oh, I wished so dearly that I never had! – Mila was gone. The ship was completely sunk. Only I remained.

“I drifted starving through the sea, and after a while mounted an island, where I survived alone for some years. No doubt I would have done away with myself immediately – but it was the thought of my daughter which kept me alive. The last time I saw her, she lived. She breathed! I could not bring myself to believe that she was dead. Someone had found her, I told myself – somehow she still lived, and was waiting for me to come to her! Even my own selfish grief could not force me to abandon her.