Up Jim River

XIV. A CITY ON THE HILL

The canoes moved swiftly upstream. Behind them, one of the durms sent a dark plume of smoke into the sky. The other durm had been set adrift into the current with Watershank’s friend aboard and a message that the Tooth of the Harp had made women of the Gorgeous, and Rajilooris were no longer welcome in the Roaring Gorge. With the sweep alone to keep the durm in the channel, the man had a desperate time ahead of him; but he had his life, and that was no small gift. The Harps had wanted to carve the message into the man’s skin, but Watershank had asked his life as a favor of the chief. “Xudafah was a good friend to me on the boats,” he said. “We exchanged the kiss of friendship. How could I take from him what is mine to freely give.”

Méarana’s party had been split up, and the only sounds she heard were the rush of the Multawee over the rocks and the rhythmic chanting of the warriors at the paddles. The sound of the waterfall grew steadily louder and the canyon closed up into narrow, sheer cliffs. Once, the canyon was broken by the mouth of a tributary stream that came bubbling and churning out of a split in the rocks and Méarana glimpsed up its length a series of tumbling cataracts.

They came around a bend in the Multawee and saw the blackened ruins of a stockade and scores of people penned behind wooden fences under the eyes of more Harp warriors. “Candletown,” Donovan guessed. “Those poor bastards are Djamos’s kinfolk. He was a pigeon merchant? What are the odds that at least one of his pigeons was a homing pigeon, and carried word back here?”

“No odds,” said Méarana, “and it doesn’t really matter anymore.”

“I suppose the Harps found out about it somehow and hijacked the whole thing. That does matter, because they worship the harp. Who knows how it would have turned out if Djamos’s kin attacked the boatmen?”

“Father, be quiet. I have to think.” Donovan retreated into silence and, suddenly contrite, Méarana laid a hand on his knee. “I’m sorry. It’s just that there’s a thin line between honored guest and prisoner. Remember Jimmy Barcelona on Thistlewaite?”

“From what I’ve seen, they will deny you nothing.”

“From what I’ve seen all of our lives belong to the chief, and he can do whatever he pleases. If he chooses to keep a harper in a wooden cage to entertain him on demand, who will deny him? If he chooses to keep the harper and kill all the harper’s companions, can I do anything but threaten a satire?”

“I think that threat would mean something to him.”

“I don’t know how far I can extend the protection of my status.”

“You can’t ask Watershank.”

“God, no. He’s not our enemy; but he isn’t our friend, either. He may feel he owes us something because we gave him shelter behind the rocks. And he may have picked up more sophisticated mores in the old empire.”

Donovan snorted. “I didn’t notice many sophisticated mores in Lafeev or Sloofy or the boatmen.” He studied the burnt stockade as they passed. “Look at that,” he said, pointing. “Bunch-cords running down from the tops of the cliffs. That’s how the Harps attacked the town. They tied the cords to their harnesses and jumped off. Closest thing to an aerial assault this world has ever seen.”

“Billy can be my servant. He knows how to play the role. And Teddy and Paulie are my bodyguards. The Harps will understand a harper traveling with bodyguards and servant. But what am I to call Sofwari?”

“Or me,” Donovan suggested.

“You are my bongko. You play the lap drum to give me the tempo.”

“Méarana, I don’t know an alap from a jhala.”

“You don’t have to. Your drums were destroyed by the boatmen and you must go through a purification ritual before you can make a new set. And you can’t do that until your hand heals.”

“My hand…” Donovan studied that extremity. “Oh. Yes.” He curled his fingers and cocked his wrist. “Hurts like hell, too.” He fell silent for a while. “Sofwari,” he said after a time. “You like him.”

“I didn’t expect to; and he can be…exasperating. But he is both well-built and well-spoken, and that combination is not so common as to be dismissed out of hand.”

“When Bokwahna tackled you, I thought I would die.”

“Bokwahna?”

“The steersman on the Green Swan. A big man. When he overpowered you, I cursed myself for being on the flank instead of at your side.”

“Was that his name? I never got to know him. Well, we’re best friends now. Who can be closer than the killer and the killed?”

“When Sofwari fried Bokwahna’s brains, I loved him like a son.”

She had dealt the death blow. Four times into the abdomen. Sofwari’s shot had probably been redundant, but it was nice to remember that Sofwari had done that for her.

More silence passed and the canoes turned for shore. Donovan said, “He’s not right for you; but we’ll figure something out. He’s one of us now.”

Near the foot of Roaring Falls a path led up into the Foothills. It was a well-worn path and one easily ambushed in its narrower reaches; but those who had guarded it were dead and the Tooth of the Harp now owned it. The falls showered down in continual complaint from the ridgeline three hundred feet above and raised a mist within which shone a pale rainbow. Everything was damp and had a sheen of water over it. When Méarana closed her eyes, the falls sounded like a giant wooden door that was constantly rumbling open.

The Harps unloaded the canoes and strapped the bundles on the backs of himmers. These were a species of donkey native to the land: semiaquatic in the rainy season, and storing fat on their backs in the dry. Gorgeous boys, torn from their shrieking mothers, were pressed into service to drive the beasts up into the High Country.

“Look on the positive side,” the Fudir said through the scarred man’s lips. “At least they’re taking us in the right direction.” He nodded toward the towering massif of the distant Kobberjobbles, snowcaps shining in the afternoon light.

Days passed in endless walking. Each morning dawned chill and a hasty breakfast saw them on the way up. At the midmorning stop, the drivers adjusted and retightened straps on the himmers and everyone drank a bitter tea of cocoa leaves to ameliorate the altitude sickness that had begun to develop among the lowlanders. In the afternoons, the last waves of the ‘soons spent their scattered remains on the highlands. Around the campfires at night there was singing of a high nasal sort that set Billy’s teeth on edge, and some of the warriors played wild skirling music on whistles. Méarana filed it all away in that part of her mind that never stopped plucking the harp strings.

She would use it someday to play this journey to comfortable audiences on Die Bold and Jehovah, on Abyalon and High Tara, to audiences who thought themselves in their ignorance to be tough. It was a big Spiral Arm, but it was far away from here, and the whim of a border lord with a headdress of feathers meant more than the considered will of the Grand Sèannad in congress assembled.

They came finally onto a high plateau where the thin air blew unobstructed and the trees were strangely twisted. They met again the River Multawee in her upper courses. War canoes met them, drawn up on the riverbank. By then the boys pressed as donkey drivers had stopped crying and they faced the unloading with hot, stolid eyes.

The Harp canoes were more elaborately carved than the Gorgeous ones they had highjacked. Their prows arced into lions and gryphons and more fanciful beasts, each plucking with its claws a harp carved on the leftside bow. The sides were fretworked down their lengths: herringbones, weaves, floral patterns, all painted in bright gaudy colors. Watershank told her that each fret design and prow totem represented a different clan. He had never seen so many clans assembled.

“Harp country lies up there,” Watershank said, pointing beyond Second Falls to the Kobberjobble escarpment. “But chief says this plateau is now their—our homeland. Last year’s harvest was poor and many died in Great Hunger Month, and so he has led us down to find glory here. The Gorgeous have been driven off the clifftops, and the Tooth of the Bear chased into Telarnak Valley. No other chief of the Harps has ever conquered so much territory.”

“He is a regular Alish Bo Wanameer,” agreed Donovan; and Méarana remembered that the young Zorba de la Susa had assassinated the People’s Hope.

When the war canoes had been packed, the Harp chief had the children of the Gorgeous lined up, and his men drew their swords. It took Méarana a moment to realize what the Harps meant to do.

“No!” she cried. “Ye cannae!” Donovan grabbed her arm, but she shook it off and stepped out between the boys and the men with swords.

The chief did not understand Gaelactic, but he understood a negative when he heard one. But because she was a harper, he explained.

“Chief says,” Watershank told her, “that these children will grow to men, and these men will seek vengeance for their fathers, whom they saw slaughtered. When they do, they will fall beneath our swords as their fathers did, so why wait?”

“Because,” Méarana said in the loora nuxrjes’r, “they cannot fight back.”

The chief nodded. “Yes. That will make the work easier.”

“Harper,” said Billy Chins in Gaelactic, “this is not worth risking our lives. Their fathers were preparing to come downriver and slaughter us. We owe their spawn nothing.”

Méarana did not look at him. She said, “I will sing of this.”

A gasp ran through the Harps, as those who knew scraps of the imperial tongue told those who did not. The chief looked perplexed, unsure if he was to be honored.

“I will sing how the Harps so trembled before a band of children that they killed them, though they could not strike blows for their own honor. I will sing this in the City on the Hill toward which we journey. I will sing it in the wharfside taverns of Rajiloor; in the palaces of Nuxrjes’r. I will sing it on the shining path! On Harpaloon and Die Bold, from Ramage to the Dancing Vrouw. On worlds where they know nothing of you, they will know that you are killers of children.”

Watershank trembled and fell to his knees. “She sang a satire on the rivermen,” he told the chief, “and all but a remnant died.”

The chief sneered. “Aye. Because we came and killed them for their gold.”

“Can you deny that her singing brought you to her? The Weird twists like the river.”

“So,” said the chief, pale but determined. “If we must not kill them because they are unarmed, then we will arm them. Unless,” he added as he turned to give the orders, “you will fight in their name?”

A voice behind her said, “I will be their champion.”

Méarana turned and saw Teodorq Nagarajan grinning at her. “It’s what I do, babe. Start thinking of the stanzas you’ll sing about me.” Then he faced the chief. “I will fight your champion alone; or I will face five others who are not champions, for I have not eaten since noon and I am weak with hunger.”

The chief smiled as Watershank translated. Here was someone he understood! “I will fight you myself!” he declared.

But Teodorq declined. “I cannot deprive your people of great leadership. Your people will need your strong hand to comfort the widows.”

Chatter among the Harps rose and fell while the chief tried to decide if he had been praised or mocked. Méarana heard Donovan, sotto vocee: “I hope he is half as good with a sword as he is with a boast.”

Eventually four men stepped forward; then, after his name was called, a fifth. They stood in a row, each with sword in hand. Teodorq looked upon those swords, and smiled.

“Them are what we called ‘gladius’ back on World,” he said to Méarana. “They use them in sports matches.” Then, to the men facing him, he said, “Are those your own blades, dedicated to the gods in your name and blood?”

They frowned, uncertain of the custom to which he referred, but Watershank explained and they began to nod. “Yea, mine own.” “None other holds this!” Teodorq nodded.

“Then I claim the right to use my own blades, which for fear of them, they was taken from me and now lie in your canoes.”

The chief smirked. “You seek to delay your fate, starman.”

“Oh, no,” Teodorq said, “but it may take me a moment.” Then he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Goodhandlingblade! Gutripper! Your master calls you! There is work to slake your thirst!”

Everyone stood transfixed by this performance. Mouths spilled open and in the silence that formed, a high voice could be heard. “Here I am, boss! Come and get me!”

Debly Jean Sofwari closed his eyes and looked to heaven. “Holy Dear Wisdom! He put voice-activated amshifars in his sword hilts!”

Teodorq glanced sidewise. “‘Course I did, wallah. I ain’t fresh fallen off a bumboat. Done it on Gatmander. Those blades cost a pretty ducat, so I wasn’t about to lose none.” He was already striding to the canoe from which the voices came. “I’ll use both,” he decided at top lung, but as if talking to himself. “I will slay three with Goodhandlingblade in the right hand; two with Gutripper in the left.”

When he had extracated both swords from their bundles and turned again to face the group, there were only two swordsmen facing him. The other three had melted away, and most of the Harps were on their knees or hiding their faces from the talking swords.

Teodorq frowned. “It doesn’t seem hardly fair, there being only two of you. But I tell you what. All Lady Harp wants is that these boys not be killed. Is that so unreasonable?” He waited for Watershank to translate this.

One of the warriors could not take his eye off the blade called Gutripper, the one which, if they fought, would be his to converse with. Teodorq saw this and offered to introduce them, but the man shook his head. “It seems honorable to me, now that it has been explained.” And he, too, melted back into the throng.

“And that leaves you,” Teodorq said to the remaining warrior, who stood trembling, sword-naked, but the point aimed at the ground.

The man sighed. “It is as fair a day as any to die.”

When Watershank had rendered this, Teodorq nodded. “It is that. And you are right. Honor requires that one of you fight and that I defend. That is how the courts proceed in my homeland. It will be an honor to kill such a brave man as yourself.”

“Well,” said the other, hefting a round wooden shield to protect his left side, “one should not presume on honors. The Weird bestows honor, and winding are her ways.”

“As you will.” He held his two swords crossed before him. Watershank ran to the sidelines.

The Harp swung and Teodorq danced.

That was the only term that did him justice, Méarana decided. He danced. He leapt and spun in a display that was as much art as mere battle. When he caught the Harp’s sword in the V of his own two swords, he actually paused for effect before spinning and flinging the sword out of line and swooping low with Gutripper to slash at the man’s calf.

But his opponent was no mean swordsman, either. His people made their living by cutting up other people, and it would be hard to show him a trick that he had not already seen. He avoided the cut, though with less grace than Teodorq.

His return cut was overhand and aimed at the spine Teodorq had exposed. Méarana sucked in her breath, but she heard Paulie mutter, “One-two-roll.” And as if in time to the mutter, Teodorq spun against the man’s knees and brought him to the ground.

Both scrambled to their feet and stood again facing each other, this time out of reach. Paulie said, “They got their measure now and can start fighting. The idea ain’t to hit the other guy’s sword. The idea is to hit the other guy. What you’ll see are a few set moves and countermoves, then disengage.”

And so it went. Sometimes the swords flashed so quickly Méarana could not see the strokes clearly. She also learned that the big round shield had an advantage beside the obvious one, and a disadvantage. The unexpected advantage was that it could be used as a weapon itself. The disadvantage was that it was heavy, and over time grew heavier.

As the shield dipped lower and lower, Teodorq’s sword flicked up and over its rim more and more often. Slashes began to appear on the Harp’s torso and arms. Once, on his thigh.

Paulie grunted. “So that’s how he wants it. Better not ever try it on me.” But Méarana did not understand what he meant.

And then Teodorq made a mistake.

Méarana had not seen a single slip or error in his performance. He spun his two swords, slashing and poking with left hand and right in an intricate ballet with no misstep.

Now he was open, and the Harp lunged with his point. Teodorq danced back, but it was not enough and the point pierced his arm. He did not drop Goodhandlingblade, though he backed away another two steps. He grinned at his opponent, and his opponent grinned back. Then, he stuck both his swords in the ground. And the Harp, after a moment longer, did the same.

“Boss!” Theodorq called to the chief of the Harps. “I cannot kill this man of yours, because that would deprive your people of a mighty champion! You must melt honey and butter on his head, and put mead in his mouth! He must have a new name from this day forward! I will call him Sword-friend and, should he ever come to my country, I will feast him and we will spar once more for our honor!”

When this speech was translated, the longest Méarana had ever heard the Wildman utter, the assembled warriors broke into an ululation. Dovovan whispered, “I told you Teodorq was more clever than you gave him credit for. Did you like how he handled that warrior?”

Méarana nodded. “I liked how he handled the other four.”

Paulie, standing behind them, spoke up. “That poor savage never stood a chance. He ain’t never seen men like Teddy or me. He knows how to use a sword, that one does; but he don’t know how to use his tongue. So the one was sharp, but the other dull; and it was the weapon he did not look for that skewered him.”

“But,” Sofwari pointed out, “there are worlds where that trick with the locator unit would have gotten him burned as a witch. There are cultures where putting down his sword would have gotten him killed. I saw some, out along the Gansu.”

The Wildman shrugged. “A man learns to sniff out the ways of other men.”

“How?”

“Experience.”

Sofwari thought about that. “That’s a hard teacher.”

“Yah,” said Paulie. “You only get to see the graduates.”

The captured boys were given food and drink and set on the path back to their own country. The oldest, a lean scar-faced lad who looked to be about fourteen standard years, turned about before they left. “We will come back to this place. And then we will kill you for the deaths of our fathers and the rapes of our mothers.” But the Harps only jeered him, although some nodded and extended a welcome.

“It is only right,” the war chief said, “to return the seeds to the ground in the hope of a future harvest.” His henchmen drew their swords and waved them about, in case anyone was unclear on the scythes that would mow that harvest.

After that, Méarana and her people were led to New Town, where they were feted and praised, and where Méarana improvised a lay celebrating the sword fight between Teodorq and the Harp, whose name she learned was Crow-feeder. Those who had been there added color commentary for the benefit of friends and women. Méarana changed the ending a little bit. She had both men recognize at the same moment the heroism of the other, so that both plunged their swords in the ground at the same time. It made a better story that way, and flattered Crow-feeder. In her version, too, the other four warriors had not shrunk from fear of the talking swords, but because Crow-feeder dismissed them in order to fight alone. The war chief of the Harps recognized the alterations and gave an approving nod. In another year, when the song had been sung enough times, even the participants would believe it had happened that way.

A week later, a party of Harps escorted Méarana and her companions up past Second Falls onto the Kobberjobble Escarpment. The Harps called the peaks the “shining mountains” because the snowcapped peaks still caught the sun’s rays even after he had set over the horizon. Having no notion of the geometry of spheres and rays, they believed the glow to be a property of the mountain peaks themselves.

Here, the party transferred to yet another set of canoes, lighter than the war canoes they had been using. This was the ancient homeland of the Harps and the villages and stockades were more substantial and showed evidence of long habitation. The walls were more than a fence of poles, but were plastered over with something like stucco, which gave them an ochre appearance especially striking in the setting sun.

The utility of the lighter canoes was demonstrated the first time they had to make a portage. The Multawee ran over numerous cataracts on its journey across the high meadows, and each time, the canoes had to be unloaded and carried around the obstacle.

Crow-feeder led the escort, which consisted of his personal following, now swollen because of his performance in the Fight at First Falls. Also with them was Watershank, because his knowledge of the loora nuxrjes’r was their sole channel of communication, and a young woman named Skins-rabbit. She had been captured from the Emrikii of Dacitti in an earlier war and was being returned to them now as a tactical offering of good will. She knew both the tanga cru’tye of the Harps and the murgãglaiz spoken by the Emrikii.

“What a tangled path when we find these Emrikii,” Sofwari said. ‘We have to think in Gaelactic, our earwigs will render that in the loora nuxrjes’r, Watershank will translate that to the tanga cru’tye, and Skins will translate that to murgãglaiz. Any rabbit of thought that makes it through that bramble will surely be skinned by then.”

Some of the villages they glided by were abandoned, and Méarana recalled that Harps were moving down into the Foothills, driving out the Bears and others who lived there. Méarana thought that a great injustice on the Bears, but Watershank told her that the Tooth of the Bear had earlier taken the land from the Tooth of the Raven, who now lived in a valley farther to the east. “It is the way of the world,” he said. “One day, your people will come, and will drive out even the mighty Nuxrjes’r.”

“That might be a very long time,” Méarana said.

But Watershank shook his head. “In my time, or my childrens’ childrens’ time. But come, it will. Beside your might, we are as nothing. And those who have power, use it; unless stayed by fear or impotence.”

Méarana would have argued further, but Donovan said, “Once the Ardry learns that a forgotten road runs from the Confederation into the Wild, can he afford to stay out? What if the Confederation rediscovers the road? In the end, the choice is not whether these folk remain free to slaughter each other’s children and cut the throats of travelers, but whether they will be ruled by the Ardry or by Those of Name.”

They had portaged around any number of cataracts and falls as they wended their way through the old Harplands, but when after a week, they came to the base of the Longfoot, they saw why none of those had possessed even so much as a number. Longfoot Falls was called Third Falls because there was nothing else on the river to match her, save her two downstream sisters. Unlike Roaring Falls and Second Falls, however, Longfoot did not tumble straight down. Here, the mountainside was steep but, save near the crest, not sheer. Instead, the Longfoot sluiced half a mile down the mountainside, jouncing and splashing and leaping from its bed like a child on an amusement park waterslide before plowing into the Gryperzee at its base. The rocky slopes were barren, save to the south of the slide, where twisted “crumb-wood” trees grew no more than chest high and slewed their limbs toward the east.

“It’s a fairy wood,” said Teodorq, uneasily. But Paulie only laughed and called him a “prairie dog.”

Crow-feeder pointed toward the peak. “The Emrikii live up there, where none may molest them. They descend from their mountain only to take vengeance over what they call ‘injustice.’ But they never hold the lands of the people they defeat, being weaklings as well as cowards.”

Méarana stared up the long slide of the mountain. It did not sound cowardly or weak, but merely prudent. But there comes a time, Bridget ban had once told her, when there is no difference between them.

It was a strange thing. She had not thought of her mother in many days, and now her remembered voice was so true, so real, that she almost turned, expecting to see her by her side. She took a deep breath. Let it out. The air would be even thinner atop the mountain. They must watch their supply of cocoa leaves. “How do we get up there?” he asked Crow-feeder.

“The canoes will be of no more use to you,” said the Harp warrior.

Tell me something I did not know. But she smiled. “I did not ask how I might not reach the top, but how I might.”

The man waved vaguely. “There is a trail. We will leave the yaams.”

The yaams were a strange sort of hairy jamal, peculiar to the high mountains. They were ill-tempered and spat a lot; but they were surefooted on mountain trails. A raft bearing two of them was being poled up the Multawee and would probably arrive in the morning.

It is no favor to abide by the terms of the agreement, she thought, but aloud she said, “Your openhanded generosity is widely known.”

“And may the Weird be less strange on your journey.”

“You’re not coming with us.” She did not make it a question.

“It is not our journey. Our journey is to the lower lands, where glory and pasture may be won. The Emrikii are savages and poor, and they do not know honor. There is no glory in entering their country. We will leave you one bag of the gold with which to bribe them, and the food of your own that you brought with you.”

“Generous of him,” Teodorq said sotto vocee.

He is afraid of the Emrikii, Méarana thought.

They built a campfire and spent a somber night in its flickering glare. It was nearing the time when Captain Barnes expected to return with Blankets and Beads. It would be good to return to the world of baths and books. Paulie and Teddy got into an argument over who had done the most work unloading the canoes and nearly came to blows, save that Donovan separated them. Sofwari, his equipment smashed in the Roaring Gorge, his notes reduced to what he had already loaded in his pocket brain, had fallen into a morose lassitude and hardly bothered swabbing cheeks anymore. Some gang of savages would destroy them, he told her, before they could be analyzed. There were no more honeyed words, no more clever insights. Billy said little, and watched everything with a glum fatalism.

Méarana sang a little, but she was tired and pleaded sleep. She went off to the side and sat just at the edge of the firelight, where she took her medallion out. She had had to make a new thong for it after it had been ripped from her neck by the Harps in the Roaring Gorge. They are up there, she thought. The people that made this medallion. She thought of how many hands it must have passed through to reach Lafeev’s men in the city of Riverbridge on the banks of the broad Aríidnux.

Tomorrow, she thought, gazing up at the sky-rimmed mountain edge.

The raft arrived at midday and the yaams were loaded up for the climb to the City on the Hill. Crow-feeder took his leave. “May the Weird grant that you find your mother.” Then he went to Skins-rabbit and said, “I grant you your freedom, Skins-rabbit, and bid you give them my kiss of friendship.” And he took her in his arms and placed his lips on hers.

Then all was quiet once more. The wind soughed through the pine needles. The paddles of the departing canoes dipped and splashed. The Longfoot crashed and rumbled. High overhead, an eagle screeched. Suddenly Méarana felt as isolated as she had ever felt in her life. She shivered in the mountain breeze, and adjusted the any cloth in her jacket to pad up a bit against the chill.

She and Donovan went to Skins-rabbit, who stood on the riverbank looking after the departing Harps. When the last canoe had turned the bend and vanished behind a stand of hop-willow, she spat into the river.

Méarana had not expected that she had loved her captors. It was a hard world, but each man had his strengths and his flaws. There were none, as her mother had once told her, entitled to throw the first stone.

But that did not mean, she had always added, that there were none who deserved to be struck by it.

“Come with us, Skins-rabbit,” said the harper. The girl would understand nothing but her name, which Méarana had learned to pronounce in the tanga cru’tye.

But the girl tossed her head and the twin black braids flew like whips. She said something in a vehement tone and reached to rip off the thigh-length flaxen shift she wore. Méarana stayed her hand and she and the girl locked eyes for a time. Then Skins-rabbits made a grim line of her mouth and dropped her hand.

“I think we get the message,” Méarana said. “What is it, Donovan?”

“I think I know what she said. When you called her Skins-rabbits, I think she said, ‘My name is Chain Gostiyya-Uaid.’”

“My earwig was silent.”

“It wasn’t my earwig. It was the Pedant. It was a language I learned…I don’t know when.”

“You never talk about your youth.”

“If I ever learn I had one, you’ll be the next to know.” He said something to Chain in a tongue alternately liquid and guttural. Chain frowned, listened intently, and opened her mouth to reply. But then she shook her head and shrugged.

They walked back to the rest of the group, who had donned their backpacks and were waiting with the yaams. “It will come to me,” Donovan said, though he did not sound certain. “Perhaps I once learned a language that was cousin to hers.”

Chain led them to a trail that switchbacked up the massif. It was a pitiless trail, at times reduced to hand and toeholds carved into the face of the rock, and at other times to ledges that wound narrowly along the precipice. It was not a trail to be walked lightly. At one point, Billy slipped and would have fallen but that Donovan seized his arm and pulled him back up.

During the climb, Donovan mulled over the tantalizing half-familiarity of Chain’s language. The Treasure Fleet had set out from Terra well before the Cleansing, and her people would have spoken the Tantamiž lingua franca of that age. Yet, there had also been the Vraddies, the Zhõgwó, the Murkans, and the Yurpans with their Roomie underclass…

In the Age of Audio, languages changed more languidly than in the Age of Print. But while recordings preserved the classical pronunciation for longer periods, nonetheless consonants softened, vowels shifted, declensions dissolved. Among the descendants of the Cleansing, they had changed one way; among those of the Treasure Fleet, in other ways. In the Old Planets, different languages had been thrown together with the deliberate intention of hindering communication among the refugees, so the tongues of the Periphery were more thoroughly blended than those of the Wild. That was why he could understand occasional words, but not quite the whole sense.

The Sleuth was working on it.

Sometimes he missed the voices in his head. There had been a community in the cacophony, despite all their quarrels. Now and then, he heard a whisper of the Pedant’s pompous ruminations, of the Sleuth’s snide deductions, of the Inner Child’s high-pitched worries. But now he had the sense that he was ruminating and deducing and worrying—that it was the same “I” even when done in parallel by separate portions of his mind. He even missed that sly old reprobate, the Fudir.

“Told you you would miss me when I was gone,” his lips said.

And Donovan smiled as he climbed.

Then they were over the lip of the mountain and moving down through an alpine forest. High-crested light-blue birds cocked their heads at the parade and scolded them in shrill cries. Does with fawns bounded away through the dark beneath the canopy. The path was well-worn, but they saw no sign of the people who had worn it.

Then the forest opened out onto a broad, high meadow, and Donovan saw a checkerboard of regular, well-kept fields and small homesteads bordered by stone walls and rail fences. The houses crouched under low-slung turf roofs; and the smoke that curled from the chimneys drifted toward the ground. Men and women halted their plows with sharp commands to their himmers and stood to watch the passing strangers. Each had a long gun to hand, and some cradled theirs.

“They have firearms!” Méarana said. “Not even the Nuxrjes’rii have firearms.”

Donovan called out to a farmer and waved. The man, after some hesitation, waved back. Because he had recognized the word? Or only because he recognized a greeting?

They came to a small bridge across a rushing mountain stream, one of the tributaries that would become first the Multawee, then the mighty Aríidnux. On the other side, on an island formed by a fork in the stream, houses stood cheek by jowl. But instead of crossing the bridge, Chain went to her knees on the stream’s bank and splashed the water on herself, letting it run down her arms and dashing it on her face. “O Xhodzhã! O Xhodzhã!”

Sofwari had gone downstream a little way and now crouched there. “Strange,” he said. “They have dug two tunnels under the stream. Why?” Slightly downstream was a statue of a goddess holding a lantern.

The people on the island studiously paid the newcomers no attention. The yaam Donovan held honked and yanked against his reins. Then he spit on Donovan. The scarred man made a pungent comment on the beast’s ancestry in the Terran patois.

And one of the men across the bridge repeated the phrase, adding a gesture with his finger.

Some words, it seemed, changed very little over the centuries. In terms of communication, it was little enough, but it was a start. Donovan exchanged grins with the other man. Yeah, life’s a bitch.

An elderly couple elbowed their way to the stream-bank. “Chain!” they cried. “Chain, gyuh xub pex dyushdu evda yodãí!” And then, although the stream was easily waded, Chain ran to the bridge and slapped across it on bare horny feet into their arms. The other Emrikii clasped their hands and cried, “Aw!” as a crow calls, but deeper and throatier.

Almost, Donovan could make out what they were saying. But the words eluded him like a tavern wench. He beckoned to the Harp translator, Watershanks.

“Lord Donovan,” he said before the scarred man could speak, “these people don’t like Harps. Much bad blood. Tell them I be riverman from Rajiloor. I am a riverman, really, for many years since I left Harp country.”

Paulie’s lip curled. “Seems the Harps breed for cowards as well as bugnuts.”

Donovan was not certain whether the cold-blooded fighters of World were in any way preferable to the wild emotions of the Enjrunii. “Stick close by,” he told Watershanks. “The more you talk the loora nuxrjes’r and the less you talk the tanga cru’tye, the more you may set their minds at ease. Sofwari, hold onto my yaam. Méarana, when you’re ready.”

Donovan, Méarana, and Watershanks moved to the foot of the bridge. The Emrikii stirred uneasily, counting numbers, but clearly counting Teodorq and Paulie more than once. They had recognized Teodorq’s nine as a weapon, and possibly the dazers that Donovan and Billy wore. The people of this high valley did not have high tech, unless one counted gunpowder and waterwheels, but they clearly knew it when they saw it.

“Give them a friendly greeting,” Donovan told his translator.

Watershanks said something to Chain in the tanga, and the Emrikii murmured at the sounds and rhythms of their enemies.

It was in Chain’s hands to bring it all down on them, and Donovan could see the knowledge of that power in her eyes. All she need do is tell her people whatever vengeance she wished. But she must know that the strangers, although they had seemed on good terms with her captors, were clearly not of them. Their strange clothing and accouterments indicated great power. What could they wreak if offended? Finally, she said something in the tanga; and, after she had spoken the words, she knelt by the riverside and cupped water in her mouth and spat it out.

Donovan said to Watershanks, “If you want to ease their minds, every time you say something in the tanga, rinse your mouth out and spit.” The riverman stubborned up for a moment. He did not want to be identified with his people, not here and now; but that did not mean he wished to repudiate them. Yet, prudence won, and he did as Donovan advised.

“We have come,” Donovan announced, “seeking the men who wrought this.” And Méarana lifted the medallion from around her neck and held it up for all to see. “For we would know where the place is where this fire comes down from the sky.”

Not many could have made out the design on the medallion, but excitement bubbled through the growing crowd. Donovan heard them say, over and over, “El bhweka ezgoyfrõ!” And “El zagwibhoyshiz!” And they broke into cheers that were quite different from the ululations of the Great Valley, and opened a path from the bridge into the village of Dacitti.

There was a great deal of handslapping and general cheer as they made their way up a broad path to the village green, and Donovan could see that his companions were heartened by the welcome. But a vague unease stirred within him. «Something is not quite right.» I’m working on it. He looked about the village for escape routes. «Just in case,» his Inner Child told him. Meanwhile, he smiled at the people he encountered. They would not understand his words, but his friendly tone would come through.

Dacitti sat on a long, narrow island between the Xhodzhã and the Rjoyezdy. Save for the farmers scattered about the valley, nearly all the Emrikii lived on this island. In consequence, the huts were crowded close and, in some cases were stacked three high atop one another, with access by ladders. There were well-trod paths between the huts and many of them had been laid with corduroy planks or paving stones. The paths were rectilinear, save at the lower end, where the two streams came together, where they were more tangled. Donovan supposed that this arrangement had originally been for defense—the two streams were not especially formidable, but did provide a moat of sorts to protect the village from attack.

Whatever threat had once motivated its construction, the valley of the Emrikii was now peaceful and secure. The other valley tribes had long ago joined their confederacy. The Oorah used to raid into Emrika to capture women, but now seldom tried. Harp bravos sometimes led war parties into the Kobberjobbles, but the path was too arduous, the sentries too vigilant, and the Emrikii warriors too disciplined. Now the Harps were leaving the Longfoot Valley—blaming a poor harvest rather than an Emrikii punitive expedition.

A large rectangular green occupied the center of Dacitti. It included a sheep meadow and a pond where fish were cultivated. Much of this cornucopia was laid out for the visitors that afternoon in a great feast. Damáire, who was village headman, bid them official welcome and when the platitudes and formalities had been completed, Méarana finally got an answer to her question.

“The sky-fire comes down up there,” Watershanks told them as Damáire pointed to a flat peak at the far end of the valley.

“Every night,” said Billy Chins, “to cook their food.”

Damáire laughed at the humor of the starmen. “You are a funny man,” he told the Confederate courier. “That is only a legend of superstitious Valley folk. No, it is the sperm of the sky. When the god grows horny, he comes to our world to impregnate her. The sky-fire is his thrust into her.

“Well,” said Billy wooden-faced. “We wouldn’t want to believe a superstitious legend.”

“Sperm,” said Donovan. He could not get out of his mind what Méarana had told him on the Starwalk at Siggy O’Hara. “Then why ‘fire’ from the sky?”

“Because the god has what we call ‘the hots.’ God loves the world, so he comes back, again and again. And it is a beautiful world, though I know no others.”

Donovan could see between the three-stacked huts the newly plowed fields of Emrika valley rolling off toward forests and the mountains that rimmed them in. He could not tell Damáire he was wrong. He asked the headman how long it took the god to grow horny.

“Hard to say,” was the answer. “Gods are not like us, but it must be exhausting, making a whole world pregnant. I will ask the efrezde-who-watches-the-sky. Her tallyboard may tell us when the world is to be screwed.”

The efrezde-who-watches-the-sky spent several hours of prayer that night, using a sextant and jacobstaff to mark the positions of key sky-objects. But, as this was her station in life, she kept these observations updated daily, and it did not take long thereafter to complete her prophesy. “In one tenday and half a tenday,” she announced at morning prayer, “will the fire come down and enter the Well at the End of the World.” At breakfast later, she added, “So your arrival is timely. The other golden-skinned woman, who came in a sky-borne chariot, arrived last year. But it was not the proper time. So after a time among the Oorah she ascended into heaven.”

The harper’s knees nearly betrayed her. Donovan seized her by the arm and Sofwari took her by the other and between them they bore her up.

“Mother,” she said, almost in a whisper.

Perhaps that was another word that the centuries barely touched, for Chain Gostiyya-Uaid turned to her and something like understanding was in her eyes.