On Blue's waters (35 page)

All that lasted only a second or two, I believe. I climbed to my feet and pumped the action again; and then, seeing nothing and hearing nothing except Babbie, pushed on the safety. You will accuse me of exaggeration, dearest Nettle, I know. But I actually tripped over one of the immense horns before I knew that the huge beast lay there. I nearly fell again, and would perhaps have fallen myself if I had not caught myself upon its fallen shoulder.

I had to explore it then with my hands, because it was black and lay in pitch blackness under those closely packed trees, none of which were much above five cubits high but all of which were still in full leaf in spite of the cold. I do not know what they are called, but their leaves are hard, thick, pointed, and deep green, not much longer than the second joint of my forefinger.

It was enormous, that beast, and I was still trying to grasp just how enormous it was when He-pen-sheep and his son burst out of the scrub, howling like a couple of hounds in their exultation. “Breakbull,” they said over and over. “You kill breakbull, Horn.” The son cut off the tail and tied it to my thong belt; it made me feel a complete fool, but that is their custom and I could not have taken it off or even implied that it was unwelcome without offending them. I thought then about what that other Horn had said concerning the customs of his race, and wondered what I had let us in for. Our own differ greatly from one town to the next, as everyone knows. Those of another race (I thought) must be very peculiar indeed. As they are.

At this point I have told you everything of interest. I am going to make the rest very short and so finish writing about all this before I go to bed.

He-pen-sheep and his son skinned the breakbull in the dark with a little not very valuable help from me. I cut off a haunch, and tried to shoulder it without getting too much blood on the slug gun (which I had hung across my back with the butt up), at which I was not very successful. The two of them carried the skin back to their lean-to, and it was so heavy that the son fell once under its weight and was deeply shamed by it. As for me, I brought back ten times more meat than was needed to feed all seven of us. I say seven because Babbie ate at least as much as the hungriest, who was without a doubt your loving husband.

I have been tempted to omit this next observation, and have already pushed my account past it; but whether it fits here or not, I am going to tell you something very strange. On the way back to He-pen-sheep’s camp, he and his son often had a.good deal of difficulty working their huge roll of hide through the tangle of scrub that had obstructed me so often. I, who stood taller than either of them and had the massive haunch (it must have weighed as much as the twins) over my shoulder, should have been at least as inconvenienced by the angular, wind-twisted trees.

But I was not. My face and arms, which were already a mass of scratches from their limbs, were never scratched again. Although the haunch I carried was brushed now and again by leaves, it was never caught, not even momentarily. I cannot explain this. The limbs certainly did not move aside for me. The sky was gray by the time we were finished skinning the breakbull, and I would certainly have seen them if they had, and heard them, too. I can only say that it seemed to me that no matter in which direction I looked, I could see a clear path for me and my burden. And when I went forward, that was what it proved to be.

We reached camp about sunrise. She-pick-berry leaped up shouting and woke her sick daughter and Seawrack, which neither appeared to mind. We ate, and although all of us ate a great deal I am sure I ate the most of all, so much that He-pen-sheep was open in his astonishment and admiration. Even the daughter, who had been so ill the evening before, ate as much as would make a good big serving on one of our big dinner plates back on Lizard.

Afterward, She-pick-berry showed us how she would smoke the rest, making a sort of rack for thin strips of meat out of green twigs. We agreed that He-pen-sheep and his son would help Seawrack and me by bringing as much meat as they could carry to the sloop. In it return, they would receive the hide (which She-pick-berry was already scraping by the time we left their camp) and the remainder of the breakbull.

Escorted by Babbie, we four returned to the carcass, cut loads of meat, and made our way through the scrub to the sea, striking the beach only a short walk from the sloop. Krait was aboard and greeted our arrival with ill-natured sarcasm, twitting Seawrack and me for being as bloody as inhumi and laughing inordinately at his own witticisms. Before we realized that Patera Quetzal had been an inhumu, Nettle, I would have thought that a sense of humor was an exclusively human possession. Associating with Krait made me wish more than once that it were so; he had an overdeveloped sense of humor, and as ugly a one as I have ever met with in all my travels. Since then I have learned that the Neighbors, who treated me with so much solemnity that night, are notorious for theirs.

When He-pen-sheep and his son had helped us get the sloop back into the water, and had waded out to her with the loads of meat that they had brought and washed themselves in the sea, he drew me aside. Indicating Krait with a jerk of his head, he told me, “No like,” and I acknowledged that I did not like him either.

“You beat, Horn?”

I shook my head.

“Big beat,” he advised me. Then, “You talk Neighbor?”

I nodded.

“What say?”

I considered. At no time had the other Horn or any other Neighbor asked me to keep our conversation confidential, or put me under any sort of oath. “We changed blood,” I told He-pen-sheep. “I,” I touched my chest, “for you and all the other men, and for all the women and all the children, too. The Neighbor for all the Neighbors.”

He-pen-sheep stared at me intently.

“Because I spoke for you, I can tell you what we said. We agreed that where men are, Neighbors can come as well.” I waved my arm at the horizon, indicating (I hope) that I intended the whole whorl. “They can visit us in peace and friendship.”

“Big good!” He nodded enthusiastically.

“I think so too,” I told him. “I really do.”

As we hauled up the sails, he and his son waved farewell to us from the beach, and when we had so much sea-room that I could no longer distinguish one from the other, I could still hear them calling, “
You kill breakbull, Horn!
”

* * *

I had thought to end this part of my account with the words you just read, Nettle darling, the final words that I wrote last night; but there is more to tell, and it will fit in here better than anywhere else.

When we left He-pen-sheep and his son on the beach, I supposed that we would never see them again. That was not the case. In justice to them I ought to tell you here, since I neglected to do it last night, that when we had gone back to the breakbull’s carcass I had been much taken with its horns, all four longer than the blades of swords, sharp, black-tipped, elaborately grooved, and cruelly curved. After examining and admiring them, I had asked He-pen-sheep what he was going to do with them, and he had explained to me all of the many uses to which horn can be put, things that I ought to have learned long ago, since I am named for that substance.

Krait, Babbie, and I were more than sufficient to work the sloop under the light airs that were all we were granted even when we were well out to sea, so Seawrack set out to smoke as much of the meat as she could. She had prepared for the task by cutting a good supply of green shoots before we put out, and she trimmed them and fitted them together with her one hand as cleverly as She-pick-berry had with two; but our firewood was soon exhausted. As a result, Krait and I went ashore again before we rounded the point of the big sandspit I have called the Land of Fires and collected more.

(It was then, I believe, when I found myself yet again trying to cut wood with Sinew’s knife, that I resolved once and for all that I would acquire an axe or a hatchet at the first opportunity, or at least a bigger, heavier knife, if no axe or hatchet was available.)

By the time we had gathered as much dry wood as we could find without ranging far inland and loaded it into the sloop, wading out with bundles of it held clear of the water, the Short Sun was slipping away behind the distant peaks, and even Krait (who had done next to nothing) said that he was tired. Seawrack and I were close to exhaustion.

There was no good anchorage along that very exposed stretch of the coast, and no place suited to beaching, but I decided to remain where we were until morning. Since the weather had been good and was not actually threatening even then, I judged the danger to be less than that of sailing an unknown shore by night. I took Krait aside and warned him that He-pen-sheep and his son had been suspicious of him, which I believe he knew already, and suggested that he go elsewhere if he intended to hunt. He pointed out that he could scarcely use hunting to justify his absence to Seawrack as he had before-we had far more meat than we needed. I know how you feel about the inhumi, Nettle; and why you feel as you do. If you were looking over my shoulder as I write this, you would declare in the strongest possible terms that no one ought to crack jokes with such creatures; and certainly the bond that was to grow between Krait and me in the lander had not even begun to form. But I still felt grateful to him for rescuing me, and so I proposed that I tell Seawrack that he was hunting for napkins. He laughed and we separated, leaving me under the impression that he would remain with us on the sloop that night.

I took the first watch, and Seawrack the second. Krait was to take the third; he was to awaken me, of course, for the fourth and last watch of the night.

Here for art’s sake I should insert some account of dreams in which the Vanished People figured, I suppose; or perhaps reveal whispered confidences exchanged with Seawrack. In fact there were no dreams of any kind and no whispers. I roused her with considerable difficulty when it was her watch, and when she returned to lie beside me, leaving Krait on watch, she did not disturb me in the least.

It was Babbie who actually woke us both, squealing with alarm and nuzzling our faces. One of the gusty northwest winds that are so common in that region had set in, and the sloop had dragged her anchor until it found a solid hold in deep water and was about to pull her under. I was able to cut the cable just in time to keep her from swamping.

We had rounded the point of the spit at sunrise, and were heeling sharply under a reefed mainsail and making excellent time when Krait found us. I saw him, lit by the rising sun and carried swiftly along by the wind, at a height that few birds ever reach. Seawrack, I believe, did not.

He was in a quandary, as I realized immediately. If he landed on the sloop, Seawrack would know that he was no ordinary boy at the very least, and would in all likelihood see through his disguise. If he landed on shore and tried to signal us to pick him up, we might not see him-or might, as he would certainly have imagined, pretend not to.

He solved his problem by landing on shore well in advance of us and swimming out to the sloop. I saw him, threw him a rope and hauled him on board, shook him, gave him as violent a tongue-lashing as I am capable of, and followed it by grabbing him by the back of his tunic (which had been one of mine), peeling it off him, and beating him with the rope’s end until my arm ached. When the wind had moderated and we could talk privately, he reproached me for it, reminding me that he had rescued me from the pit and insisting, erroneously in my view, that we had sworn eternal friendship.

“I have been your friend ever since you got me out,” I told him. “Have you been mine?”

He managed to meet my eyes with a defiant stare that I found more familiar than it should have been, but could find nothing to say.

“You very nearly sunk this boat. We saved it, but if Babbie hadn’t roused us it would have gone down. I don’t suppose that Seawrack could drown, but I can.”

He said, “The weather was fine when I left and I would have come back before the end of my watch.”

“I would have died before the end of your watch. I would have been dead, and the sloop sunk, and my mission to the
Whorl
a total failure. I would be completely justified if I put my knife in you this minute.”

My hand was on it as I spoke, and he took a step backward. There was fear in his eyes. “You’ve hurt me as much as you could already.”

“Not half as much,” I told him, “and I’ve kept my promise even though you’ve broken yours. I threw you that rope; and if I hadn’t punished you severely for what you did, Seawrack would have known that you couldn’t possibly be what you pretend to be.”

He hissed at me. The hiss of an inhumu is at once a more sinister sound and an uglier one than the hissing of any serpent that I have ever heard.

“If one of my own sons had done what you did, I’d treat him exactly the way I treated you,” I told him. “If that isn’t what you want, what is it?” I did not say that at least one of my sons would have exhibited the same poisonous hatred; but I could not suppress the thought.

I put him to work in good earnest after that, something I had not done before, bailing, trimming sail and snugging up the standing rigging, tidying the sail locker, coiling and stowing the rope I had thrown him, and bailing again. I watched him every moment and shouted at him whenever he showed signs of slacking; and when he begged for mercy I started him scraping paint.

It was not long afterward that Seawrack spotted He-pen-sheep and his son standing on the beach with the head of the breakbull held upright between them. We were already some distance past them, but I put up the helm and ran down the wind until we were within hailing distance. He-pen-sheep cupped his hands around his mouth. “
You take! Tou kill breakbull, Horn!
”

Seawrack glanced at me, her lovely eyes wide. “They want to give you that head.” Standing upon its muzzle, it was nearly as tall as the son, and the spread of its horns exceeded that of my out-stretched arms, as I had found out when we had returned to the carcass.

“You’ll have to take it,” Krait told me, looking up from his scraping; and of course he was right.