Ancients of Days

Chapter Nineteen The Fisherfolk

The sailors cracked the valves of more lanterns, and wherever they shot their beams they discovered little round coracles, each with two men sitting cross-legged and holding leaf-shaped paddles. The men had legs as long and thin as those of storks, and their naked torsos were mottled with green and dun patches. There were more than a hundred of them.

Yama laid a hand on Tamora’s shoulder and said, “It is all right. They are no enemy.”

“No friends either, to arrive unannounced under cover of darkness.”

“This is their home. We are the unannounced arrivals.” Yama hailed the fisherfolk, and asked if there was one amongst them called Caphis—the man who had helped him after he had escaped from Dr. Dismas’s attempted kidnapping. The shoal of coracles swirled apart to allow one to move forward. A dignified old man with a cap of white hair stood in it. His left arm ended above the elbow; silvery scars crosshatched his chest and shoulder.

“You are the son of the Aedile of Aeolis,” the old man said. “Caphis is my son. If I may, I will come aboard and talk with you.”

The old man’s name was Oncus. He explained that he had lost his hand to a grandfather cayman when he was a young man and usually wore a hook in its place, but he had taken it off on this occasion because it might be mistaken for a weapon.

“We have no quarrel with the son of the Aedile of Aeolis,” he said. “The Aedile has always been good to us. Before he came, the Mud People of Aeolis hunted my people for sport and for food, but the Aedile put a stop to that. Because of your father, our two bloodlines have lived in peace for a hundred years. Now the Mud People are scattered across the river and two ships burn the forest. Bad times have come again.”

Oncus sat cross-legged on the main deck under the awning, between Yama and Captain Lorquital, who lay on her side, propped by bolsters and puffing calmly on her pipe. Aguilar, Pandaras, Eliphas and Tamora completed the circle. Tamora’s sword lay across her lap and she kept her hand on its hilt. A small entourage of fisherfolk stood behind Oncus; above, the sailors stood along the slanted trunk of the folded mast.

Yama said, “It is my fault, grandfather. They are burning this floating forest because they know I am hiding in it.”

Oncus nodded. “One of them came to me three days ago, when the warship first arrived off the stone shore of the Mud People’s city. He showed me an image of you, and said that we would be rewarded if we found you. You must be a great enemy of theirs, if they destroy your home before you can return to it.”

“They did it because they believe me to be their enemy, and so I am, because of what they have done.”

“Then that is another reason to help you. They have no respect for the river. Any enemy of theirs is a friend of ours, and you are doubly a friend, for you are the Aedile’s son.”

“Is he alive? And the people of Aeolis—are they safe?”

“They were driven from their homes before the big ship set fire to the land. If any refused to leave, and perhaps many did, for the Mud People are a stubborn race, then they are dead. The city has been burned to its foundations and its fields boiled dry. The Aedile tried to stop it. He stood on the stone shore and said that if the Mud People’s city was burned then he would be burned, too. Soldiers took him away and locked him in his own house, but he escaped.”

Yama nodded. “I have heard that he escaped, and it pleases me to hear it again. Where is he? Is he safe?”

“Most of the Mud People are crossing to the far-side shore,” Oncus said. “It is as if the beginning of winter is already upon us. The Aedile overtook them. We found him on a boat in the middle of the river the day after the big ship began to burn down the city. We took him across the river and left his boat adrift, so that his enemies might think him drowned. That is how I know this story.”

“Then I am in your debt, Oncus, as I am in your son’s debt. You saved the life of my father and your son saved my life.”

“As for the last,” Oncus said, “that is between Caphis and yourself. Caphis is not here, and I will only say that if he saved your life, then it was because you saved him from the trap of one of the Mud People. And your father has saved countless lives of my own people. Only the Preservers can weigh such debts.”

Captain Lorquital stirred in her nest of bolsters and said, “If we can escape this forest, then the warship will follow us, and no more damage will be done to your home.”

“The small ship is at the edge of the forest,” Oncus told her. “The big ship waits downstream. They both shine fire into the trees and hope to make you quit this place.”

“As I thought,” Captain Lorquital said.

“We sailed into a trap of our own making,” Aguilar said. Her usual good humor had leaked away during the difficult passage through the forest maze.

“Let them come and look for us,” Tamora told her, “and we’ll spring the trap on them.”

Pandaras said, “It seems simple to me. We could leave the ship and go with these people. They can take us to Yama’s father.”

Captain Lorquital said, “I can no more leave my ship than you can leave your master, Pandaras.”

“And I will not run away,” Tamora said. “Be quiet, boy.”

Yama said, “My enemies have orders to find me. They will not go away as long as they are sure I am hiding somewhere close. And if they think Oncus’s people are hiding me, they will burn more than this forest.”

“I was afraid that might be so,” the old man said.

Captain Lorquital said to Oncus, “If your people can guide us out of the forest, we will take our chances on the wide river.”

“As long as they don’t see us leave,” Aguilar said. “Otherwise they’ll be all over us before we’ve raised the sail.”

“They have eyes everywhere,” Oncus said.

He gestured, and one of the fisherfolk stepped forward. The man carried a small leather sack. He opened it to display the little machine inside. It was the size of a child’s fist, and most of its many delicate vanes were crumpled or broken off.

“We caught this one in a net and drowned it,” Oncus said. “There are others. They fly through the air at the edges of the forest.”

Yama touched the machine. For a moment, light glimmered in the compound eyes and a single intact vane feebly beat the air. But the movement was little more than a reflex powered by the small amount of charge remaining in its musculature, and the machine died before Yama could learn anything from it.

Yama looked around at the fisherfolk and the sailors standing above them. Two of the soldiers touched their throats with the tips of their fingers.

“You must destroy them, brother,” Eliphas said. “You know that you can. Don’t hold back.”

Oncus said, “You cannot leave the forest because it hides you, but you cannot stay because your enemies will burn it to the waterline. But we will help you. We will move the forest.”

Yama laughed. “Of course! It is summer! And if you can find me a living machine, then I can provide a diversion.”

“In winter, the trees root and draw nutrients from the river mud,” Yama told Pandaras. “In summer they break away from their feeder roots and float free on the flood. They float all summer until tide and chance draw them back together at the beginning of winter. The fisherfolk are speeding up this natural process. It is how they control the floating islands on which they make their homes.”

Pandaras was tired and frightened, and in no mood for a lesson in natural history. He said, “You should sleep, master.”

“Not yet. Oncus is right. There are many machines.”

“And you keep them away from us. But you cannot stay awake forever.”

“They keep away from me, Pandaras. Their master knows what I can do.”

“If they are afraid of you then we should not be afraid of them. So we can go to sleep.”

“They might not stay away forever. Besides, although I have lived by the river all my life, I have never seen this before.”

All around the Weazel, fisherfolk were working by the dim glow of oil lamps, sinking sacks of moss amongst the roots of the banyans. The moss had been soaked in an extract of the hulls of banyan seeds; as this diffused into the water, it stimulated the trees to shed the myriad feeder roots which anchored them. The night was full of the creaking and groaning of banyans which were beginning to shift on the currents; the water all around the Weazel seethed with bubbles as pockets of gas were released by roots dragging through mud.

Yama said, “Oncus told me that there are more than a thousand fisherfolk from a hundred families. But how many more trees?”

“They are fools, master, to believe that they can move a forest. And we are more foolish still to believe them. We should go with them while we have the chance.”

“They know the floating forests better than anyone. We must trust them.”

Near dawn, Oncus returned to the ship and told Yama that another machine had been caught. Yama was taken out in a coracle to the net where it hung, at the far-side edge of the floating forest. The forest was beginning to break up there. Irregular channels and lagoons opened and closed as trees spun slowly around each other. The water was stained with silt and alive with shoals of fish. The picketboat was close by, slowly advancing downriver amongst trees that had become a myriad floating islands. Every now and then the red flash of the picketboat’s cannon lit the dark sky above the tops of the trees, followed by the hiss and crack of water flash-heated to steam. The air had a brassy taste, and there was a constant flutter of falling ash flakes.

“They will be here soon,” one of the fisherfolk said, and Yama saw that the man’s hands were shaking as he aimed the beam of his lantern at one of the floating islands.

The net, woven from monofilament fibers combed from float bush seed heads, fine as air and strong as steel, was strung above the top of the banyan, guyed by bamboo poles. The machine caught in it glittered and gleamed in the beam of the lantern; as soon as the light touched it, it began to vibrate in short furious bursts, shaking the poles and branches to which the corners of the net were fastened.

“Some of the machines can burn their way free,” Oncus said, “but ones like these are merely spies. They are stupid and weak. We sometimes catch them by mistake. They are blind to our nets, or fly too fast to avoid them.”

“And you destroy what you catch,” Yama said distractedly. He was already unpicking the familiar tangle of logical loops and snares which hedged the machine’s simple mind.

“Only the Preservers need to see all,” Oncus said. “Usually we drop the net and the machine drowns, although some can swim as well as fly, and those escape us.”

The machine was no more intelligent than the watchdogs which patrolled the grounds of the peel-house, and after its defenses had been penetrated it was as easy to fool. Once Yama had convinced it that he was its handler, he called for the net to be lowered, and he cradled the machine while two of the fisherfolk began to untangle its vanes from the fine filaments of the net.

They worked quickly, but still had not freed the machine when an intense needle of red light lanced across the channel behind them. The needle struck through the canopy of a banyan, which immediately burst into a crown of fire; a second needle struck the main trunk and burst it apart in an explosion of live steam and splinters.

The two coracles were lifted and turned on a swell of smoking water. All around, floating banyans rocked to and fro, as stately as green-clad dowagers at a ball. The coracles spun apart and the net stretched out between them, wrenching the machine from Yama’s grip. Then the swell passed and the coracles revolved back toward each other, and the net dipped toward the water. For a moment, Yama feared that the machine would be drowned, but Oncus grabbed the net with his good hand, and Yama and the others helped him haul in the slack.

A minute later, they had freed the machine. Yama cradled it to his chest, but before the two coracles could drive for cover, red light flashed again and two more trees burst into flame. Steam and smoke enveloped them. A drumbeat swelled; a dark shape glided between the burning trees.

The coracles bobbed on its wake, and then the picketboat was past.

Yama sent up the machine he had captured as a hunter sends up a hawk, and used it to call other machines to him. It took several hours to find the way back because the floating forest had begun to break up, a maze in which channels opened and closed between ten thousand drifting trees. By the time the two coracles had returned to the Weazel, they were trailing a cloud of glittering machines, like birds following a fishing boat. The sailors eyed the machines with a deep unease, but the fisherfolk beat spears and paddles against the sides of their coracles at this demonstration of Yama’s power.

The Weazel was hauled into a narrow berth hacked into the dead heart of a grandfather banyan, and lashed to the main trunk. The sailors covered her sides with a blanket of leafy branches. Tamora commandeered four coracles and lashed a platform across them and, with Aguilar, took the light cannon to the nearside edge of the forest. When they returned, the banyan in which the Weazel was hidden had begun to float amidst a flotilla of other trees on the strong current.

Late in the afternoon, the tree passed one of the places struck by the warship’s light cannon. It was as wide as the channel by which the Weazel had first entered the shoal. The smoldering stumps of banyans poked through water choked with ashes and the corpses of parboiled fish.

Hundreds of small fires smoldered in the canopy on either side, and smoke hung thick in the air.

The fisherfolk murmured to each other at the sight of this destruction. Oncus told Yama that one day there would be a reckoning. “We are not a fierce folk, but we do not forget.”

By the middle of the afternoon there was open water on all sides of the banyan’s floating island. Yama climbed to the topmost branch and, clinging there, saw a vast archipelago of small green islands scattered widely across leagues and leagues of water. The remaining part of the forest was a green line shrouded in a long cloud of smoke and steam turned golden by the light of the sun.

When Yama climbed down, Captain Lorquital said, “We are set on our course now.”

“I still say we shouldn’t have left our only real weapon behind,” Aguilar said.

“If the timer works, daughter, then it will serve us better than by being here.”

“Of course it will work. I set it myself. But our fee will not cover the cost of replacing it. It’s a poor bargain.”

“Better alive poor than dead rich,” Captain Lorquital said, and Aguilar laughed for the first time since they had entered the forest.

“That’s just what father would say.”

“Sometimes he managed to stumble on a truth without my help.”

Yama said, “They will not believe the machines alone because they know I can fool machines. They must also have something to aim at.”

“I’ve never had to fire the thing in anger,” Ixchel Lorquital said, “but I’ll still miss it.”

At nightfall, the lines which lashed the Weazel to the banyan were cut and she used her reaction motor to maneuver out of her hiding place. It took an hour to raise the mast and haul up the sail; then everyone stood at the port rail and watched the dark line of the forest. They watched a long time, and although they knew about the timer, the sailors cheered when at last the flash of the cannon showed, a vivid red point of light doubled by its reflection in the river. The sharp crack of the discharge rolled across the water a moment later; then the cannon flashed again.

Yama raised his arms—a bit of theater, for he had already told the machines to go. They went in a whirring rush that fanned the air, scattering toward different parts of the forest, where they would lay a hundred false trails in the opposite direction to the Weazel’s intended course.

Even as the machines flew up, the warship answered the Weazel’s light cannon with a bombardment that lit half the sky. At once, Ixchel Lorquital ordered the sail unfurled and the anchor raised. While the sailors busied themselves, the fisherfolk departed without ceremony, their tiny bark coracles dwindling into the river’s vast darkness. Oncus kissed Yama on the forehead and tied a fetish around his wrist. It was a bracelet of coypu hair braided with black seed pearls, and when Yama began to thank Oncus in the formal fashion taught by his father, the leader of the fisherfolk put a finger to his lips.

“Your life is mine,” the old man said. “I give you this to protect and guide you on your journey. I fear you will have much need of it.”

Captain Lorquital thanked Oncus for the safe passage of her ship, and gave him a steel knife and several rolls of tobacco. And then he too was gone.

The Weazel caught the wind and heeled to port as she set course toward the far-side shore. Far off, the cannon of the warship set up a stuttering rake of fire. Vast clouds of steam boiled up as needles of hot light lashed open water.

If the Weazel’s dismounted cannon fired again, it was lost in the bombardment.

Yama stood at the stern rail and watched red and green lights flash within spreading clouds of steam and smoke.

The bombardment continued for a whole watch. Yama knew then that the aim of the chase was not to capture him, but to destroy him. He watched until the warship’s cannon finally stopped firing, and at last the night was dark and quiet beneath the red swirl of the Eye of the Preservers.