Hegira (15 page)

Barthel and Avra and two navigation officers studied the morning glare of the light above the fallen Obelisk, trying to determine how it grew bright and why it faded. Barthel had the uncomfortable feeling it was no natural thing they were watching — not the work of Allah, but something a shade less exalted, though no less impressive.

Bar-Woten worked for several days finding small leaks in the methane tanks. He worked silently, putting his whole body into it, glad to be traveling again. When his duty was over he went to the prow and stood with one foot resting on the bowsprit clamps, staring north with eye squinted, riddling what lay ahead. Sometimes he shivered and went to his cabin before darkness set in. None of what he saw in the hazy distance pleased nun.

And nothing of what they found in the Bicht was encouraging. Most of the small islands were now barren deserts of sand and mud with patches of salt grass. The larger ones had been ravaged not only by waves and quakes, but by what looked like war. Entire villages had been haphazardly rebuilt, only to be put to the torch. No trade was possible when the only inhabitants were half-dead old women and belly-bloated children. The Trident gave aid where she could, but more often than not she had to leave at full speed with desperate rag-tag ships in pursuit.

The farther north they sailed, the more discouraged they became. The voyage had gone sour. The captain stayed isolated; all orders were relayed through the mates and deck officers. But the crew was too tired and beleaguered to complain or start trouble.

Barthel told himself, each time he saw misery and destruction, that the Obelisk's fall was Allah's method of testing the will of man. The will of man was not giving an encouraging performance.

In their twenty-ninth day out of Golumbine the first ship-on-legs appeared, gray, fast and sleek, lacking sails. No action was taken. The Trident maintained her course and pushed northward, sailing more each day into the ghoulish green light of the glowing patch in the sky. The pale luminosity, dim as light through clouds on a warm summer day, cast no shadows and did not glare from the sea or the ship's metal. Barthel was distinctly uneasy on deck facing that dismal, makeshift glow. Bar-Woten ignored it as much as possible.

But he didn't ignore the ship-on-legs. In the Trident's library he studied manuals on battle tactics at sea. He knew that Prekari was well-versed in handling ships under dangerous conditions. But Bar-Woten had never been in a position to learn how wars were conducted at sea, and he found the difference fascinating.

The Trident wasn't equipped for a heavy sea battle. She carried only three guns, one fore, one aft, and one mounted midships, just aft of the first funnel. She also carried loads of split and dried logs to put into the burners for heat during a battle. In emergencies her methane tanks were always sealed and padded, and she either ran under sail or steamed on wood.

They were approaching the southern coast of Pallasta when the submarine appeared. Kiril had read about them, but it was a shock to see one surface and follow two hundred meters astern, like a steel-clad whale. Prekari ordered gun crews ready and converted as quickly as possible from methane to wood. Smoke began to pour from the stacks. The stacks creaked and groaned, and deck officers supervised the loosening of the stack guy wires. The sails were furled, and the Trident picked up speed, testing her pursuer.

The submarine fell behind immediately and submerged. Prekari appeared on the quarterdeck walking from side to side and peering over the railing. Bar-Woten stayed below with the engines, nursing a rod that ran hot under the stress. His overalls were soon soaked with hot grease. The smell of burnt packing clogged his nose and he sneezed every few seconds, but he refused to go topside. He refused to acknowledge he was being hunted by something he couldn't see.

For seven hours they ran on alert. The sounding bobs showed no change. Prekari stayed on the quarterdeck in a folding chair and ate his dinner in silence. After finishing his last plate he wiped his mouth and beard with a linen napkin and ordered the crew to secure general quarters. They would continue to burn wood until the next morning, but otherwise the ship would run as usual until something new developed.

Bar-Woten went on deck as he finished his watch and looked at the fire doves hovering over the pitchy sea. The waters were less fertile now. Fish were seldom seen and seabirds were rare.

By the light of morning, gray and eerie, they saw the coast of Pallasta. It was a savage, burnt ribbon of black and brown. Weggismarche had had little peaceful commerce with Pallasta, a country dedicated to military discipline and rigid political regimes. Up until four decades ago, war had been almost continuous between them. It didn't look as if there would be any more wars. Kiril looked up and down the ragged coast and wondered why God would allow such destruction, and for what purpose. His heart grew bitter and his nose filled with the acrid smell of singed land and dead waters.

By now it should have been winter in Weggismarche and Pallasta. But the air was warm and humid, and the few mountains they could see were rocky and snowless.

The ship-on-legs reappeared two weeks after its first reconnaissance. The Trident's crew watched it angrily, shouting and curling their hands into fists. Bar-Woten followed it with binoculars and noted it had guns on its deck. It rode with its hull out of water when it moved its fastest, but at other times it rode in the water like an ordinary ship, though still uncommonly fast.

Prekari kept the guns manned and put the ship on full alert again. He knew instinctively they would have to wait to be fired upon, if anyone was going to fire. The ship-on-legs had far more powerful weapons than the Trident. To provoke it would be insanity.

When the submarine surfaced in front of them, the crew shouted in rage and nearly went out of control. Prekari let them vent their feelings for a few minutes until they were hoarse, then ordered them back to their posts. The wood burners were stoked. The methane tanks were wrapped and secured with rubber-covered chains.

The submarine rose even higher in the water. A hatch opened in its sail. A bearded man stood behind the hatch, using it for protection, and rested a bull horn on top. He addressed them in a language they didn't understand. When he got no response he tried again, and still they understood nothing. He shook his head and disappeared. Kiril, stiff with tension, stood on the bow and tried to sound out the phrases and riddle them. They were familiar, but he couldn't place them. He hadn't studied all the Obelisk languages, but he'd gone over enough of them to recognize many of the words.

Two men appeared behind the open hatch. One slipped and almost went off the ribbed decking on the back of the sub. He regained his footing and looked through binoculars at the Trident, paying special attention to the flags that fluttered from her rigging fore and aft. Then he said something to his companion, and again the bull horn was brought up. The man spoke Teutan this time, muffled and with a heavy accent but recognizable.

“You are requested to follow us,” he said. “You will be guided into port three days from here.”

“That'll put us in the Pale Seas,” Barthel told Kiril. Avra was beside him, her mouth set in a thin, grim line, Weggismarche sailors had always avoided the Pale Seas. Hegira, they said, did not behave there as it did everywhere else. At the terminus of the Pale Seas lay the Wall which determined the end of this section of the world. No one in recent memory had ever been there and returned.

Prekari's answer came by messenger from the quarterdeck. The first mate read the reply through a hailing cone.

“We thankfully decline and request leave to follow our own course.”

The ship-on-legs drew nearer. Signal flags flew from its mast. Kiril couldn't read them, but Barthel could. “'Follow ship, or I will fire,' it says.”

“There is no choice,” the bull horn barked. “Follow or we will sink you.”

Prekari kept his peace for fifteen minutes. Then he spoke, and the first mate hailed the sub again. “We will not allow a boarding party. We will follow you until fire dove Skhar reached thirty-three degrees ascension. After that we will discuss the issue.”

Barthel smiled. There was no fire dove called Skhar, and no bright ones that would reach precisely thirty-three degrees in these waters. The captain was delaying.

“We do not understand the reference,” the submarine said. “You will follow us, and there will be no further discussion.”

Prekari gave the signal for all the guns to be loaded.

The ship-on-legs cut back its engines and fell slowly into the water, sliding behind the Trident. With the submarine in front and the ship-on-legs behind, there was little they could do. Prekari secured battle stations and ordered bis mates to follow the submarine until further notice.

If they were heading into the Pale Seas, their course would take them past Pallasta's northern borders and Weggismarche. If there was nothing left in Weggismarche or Nin, then there was no reason why they shouldn't sail to the Wall itself. The first engine mate, a burly, hairy man, spoke to Bar-Woten as they watched from the poop deck.

“It's useless if we haven't got a home to come back to sometime or other,” he said. He rolled his sleeves up and tied them with lengths of rope. “Let's go below and tend that rod. We're going to have to steam it up fine to follow that thing, and the captain's bound to keep us on wood. No chance to rest and switch over.”

In and out, steam and water and heat coursed. It was the only Me and hope Bar-Woten recognized. He imagined them captured by unknown men; killed, perhaps. He fell into a black funk and watched the rod smoulder, making mechanical movements to cool and relieve it.

The coast of Weggismarche was covered with falling snow. Ships passed them going in several directions up and down the coast, but none were from Pallasta or Weggismarche. All came from the Pale Seas: fast, unknown, depressing. The air temperature fell so rapidly that frost and sea ice formed on the deck and rigging. At the same time humidity increased until they drifted through a freezing fog. All crew, on or off scheduled watches, worked to clear the deck and rigging of ice. Winter was coming late, but with a vengeance.

The fog obscured their view of most of Weggismarche. Perversely, hope rose among the crew that somehow their country had been spared the worst destruction of the Fall; that they might slip away when the fog was thick enough and return to their home. It would be a long battle with these men from the Pale Seas, they said, but it would be better than not knowing — it would be better than dying in sight of the Wall where the world ended.

Prekari stayed isolated.

Kiril made sketches of the submarine and ship-on-legs whenever it was clear enough to see them. After a few hours of peering through thinning fog and straining his eyes in the murky light, he had enough details to piece together what he thought the ship-on-legs looked like from all sides.

It had at least four small guns on each side and two large ones fore and aft. Tubes were mounted port and starboard, and banks of rectangular boxes squatted on the fantail.

Dishes studded a mast rising over the bridge. The vessel made a hideous roar when it was up to full speed and shot thin gray smoke from vents in the middle of the flat stern.

The submarine, what he could see of it, appeared to be fish-shaped, like a tuna, with a thickened fin directly behind its head. This tower, or sail, was gun-metal gray. The back of the sub was decked with dark varnished wood.

The second day of their capture took them past the northernmost peninsula of Weggismarche where the Obelisk had once stood. It lay on its side, spanning the isthmus like a bridge, buried in one mountain range on the peninsula and another on the continent, half its width lost in solid rock. It didn't appear broken as far as they could see, but the horizon swallowed its length in gray cloud. They passed the severed base of the Obelisk and saw it was smooth, as though cut by some unthinkable saw. The base thrust out beyond the mountain range of the peninsula and soared, a kilometer in the air, a square piece of chalk mounted on a rock-giant's ear. Where it had struck ground, flows of molten rock had cooled in curled gray rivers, some reaching to the sea. All around was charred desolation. Kiril looked at the destruction without any particular emotion. It was too incredible to believe. It seemed more likely that the Obelisk should have buried itself completely and been covered over.

The fallen spire was a monumental thing, like a stick thrust into an ant nest, its only purpose to stir up human lives. He loathed it and what it stood for — knowledge, gain, static civilizations, endless cyclopean achievement — all of it.

Hegira, too, had fallen in his eyes. The world was no longer self-evident axiom. It had to prove itself all over again before it could regain its solidity.

The submarine guided them into progressively shallower waters that changed color from deep blue-gray to gray-green.

The waves took on a dismal milky sheen. The air became dry and very cold. And nowhere, besides the ships that escorted them, did they see any signs of life.

They were in the Pale Seas.

On the fourth day, land appeared off the port bow. It was a narrow spit of sandy beach shrouded with thick ground fog. “It's embarrassed to show itself,” Bar-Woten commented. Dusty green bushes dotted its northern slopes. It passed to stern by midday. By evening, on the starboard, sheer cliffs of reddish stone rose from the muddy sea. Birds wheeled around the waterline in white puffs. Their cries sounded like children mourning. A hooked and baited line dropped over the side brought up a small, almost featureless smeltlike fish, silvery when first pulled from the water, but milk white in death.

The submarine guided them into a barren, rocky harbor on the eighth day of their capture. They were ordered to drop anchor and await further instructions from the ship-on-legs, which was called a “hydrofoil.” The submarine submerged and moved deeper into the harbor.