Gods and Warriors (7 page)

“Father, I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “But whatever’s going on, I’ll help you!”

Thestor rose to his feet and hefted the whip in his hand. Then he told his son to bare his back. “I’m sorry too,” he said.

As dusk fell, Hylas found a fisherman’s raft drawn up on the bank.
Much
better. Now the river could carry him all the way to the Sea.

Lying on his belly on the raft, he paddled with his hands. To his relief he saw no people, although once he glimpsed the fires of a village through the reeds. He pictured everyone huddled inside with the spirit gates shut against the Crows. But did they have spirit gates on the plains? In the mountains they said that plains people grew black barley and had no toes…

On impulse, he drew the bronze dagger from his food sack. Holding it made him feel stronger. It was too dark to make a sheath for it now, so instead he cut strips of willow bark and twisted them into twine, then strapped the dagger to his thigh, under his tunic, where it wouldn’t show.

With more reluctance, he tied the Keftian’s hair securely to his belt. He hated touching the dead man’s hair, but if his food sack fell in the river with it inside, that would be worse: Then he’d have an angry ghost at his heels.

Gripping the edge of the raft, he peered into the darkness, while the gurgling river swept him ever closer to the Sea.

The Sea will give you the answers you seek,
the Keftian had said.

Hylas had never even seen the Sea except from the mountains as a distant blue-gray blur, but when he was small, Neleos’ mate, Paria, had enjoyed scaring him with tales of the monsters of the deep. He had no desire to get any closer.

Night wore on, and the creatures of the wild came out.
A viper swam past, its tapered head glinting in the moonlight. On the bank a lioness raised her dripping muzzle to watch him pass. In the reeds he caught the shadowy flicker of a water spirit. Her eyes were silver and inhuman, and she looked through him as if he didn’t exist.

What power, he wondered, had chased him from the mountains?

Until now, he’d never thought much about the Great Gods. They were too far away and they didn’t care about goatherds. But what if he’d offended one of them? The Sky Father or the Earthshaker, or the Lady of the Wild Things? Or the shadowy immortals whose true names may not be spoken out loud: the Angry Ones, who hunt those who have murdered their kin; or the Gray Sisters, who crouch in their cave like ancient spiders, spinning their vast web, which contains one thread for every living creature?

Which of these had decided that Skiros should die and he, Hylas, should live?

And what about Issi?

Fireflies flashed past, trailing threads of burning gold. On a reed he spotted a frog that had eaten so many of them that its belly glowed green.

Frogs were Issi’s favorite animal. Once he’d caught a frog for her like this one and put it in a cage of twigs. She’d watched it till it stopped glowing, then carried it carefully back to the river and set it free.

She was always trying to make friends with wild
creatures: with weasels and badgers and once, to her cost, a porcupine. And she adored Scram. When she was four and Scram was a puppy, Hylas could always make her laugh by shouting “Scram! Scram!”—and instead of scramming, Scram would come racing toward them, his ears flying and his tongue hanging out. Issi never got tired of it. She’d clap her hands and yell “Scram! Scram!” laughing so hard that she fell over.

Thinking of her made Hylas feel lonelier than ever.

From the moment Neleos had found them on the Mountain wrapped in a bearskin, it had been him and Issi against the world. Hylas had been about five; Issi about two. The old man had tried to take the bearskin, and Hylas had bitten him. And Issi had laughed…

The Sun woke him, shining in his eyes. The raft was stuck on a sandbank. The voice of the river had changed into a distant sighing, as of some vast creature breathing in its sleep.

Scrambling off the raft, Hylas found himself on a shore of glaring white pebbles. The river was gone. Before him shimmered water of astonishing blue that stretched all the way to the sky. Wavelets rimmed with white lapped his feet. The shallows were so clear that he could see right down to the bottom, where the waterweeds weren’t green but
purple,
and among them he glimpsed weird little round creatures that bristled with black spines, like underwater hedgehogs.

Stooping, he touched the water with one finger. He licked it. He tasted salt.

They know you’re coming,
the Keftian had said.
They are seeking you through their deep blue world…

Hylas swallowed.

He had reached the Sea.

T
he dolphin was restless.

For some time he’d had a feeling that he was meant to do something, but he didn’t know what. The odd thing was, the rest of his pod didn’t feel the same.

Usually if he felt something, so did the others. That was what it was to
be
a dolphin: You swam through a shimmering web of clicks and whistles and flickering dolphin thoughts—so that often it felt as if there weren’t many dolphins but
one,
all leaping and diving together.

But not this time. When he tried to tell them, none of them understood, not even his mother. So now he decided to leave them for a while and see if he could find out for himself.

At first he kept to the Edge, where the Sea was noisy and bright. He heard the spiky cries of seabirds and the hiss and fizz of foam on the shore. He sped through a forest of seaweed because he liked its slippery tickle, and listened to a shoal of bream nosing for worms in the shallows. To take a look at the island that jutted from his range, he leaped out of the Sea, and for the flick of a flipper he was in the
Above, where sounds were jagged and the Sun was yellow instead of green. But whatever he was supposed to do, it wasn’t here.

Splashing back into the Sea, he left the restless clamor of the Edge and dived down into the beautiful Blue Deep, where the light was soft and cool, and he could hear himself click. He caught the suck and slither of an octopus, and was tempted to go after it, as octopus were his favorite prey and he enjoyed nosing them out of their holes. But the feeling of something he had to do stuck like a barnacle, and wouldn’t let go.

As he swam deeper, the Sea grew darker and colder. He clicked faster, listening to the craggy rocks crusted with coral. Mullets fled from him in panic, and groupers grunted warnings to each other. He ignored them. Down he swam, clicking faster and faster till he reached the Black Beneath, where he couldn’t see at all, but he could hear the peaks and valleys and the blind creatures moving in the dark. Here the Sea surged heavy and slow, which was a relief after the crashing, uneasy Edge. But whatever he was supposed to find, it wasn’t here either.

As he sped back to the Edge for air, the dolphin wondered what to do next. It never took him long to decide things, even though he sometimes made mistakes, and now, in a splash, he knew. Telling the pod that he’d be back soon, he turned tail on them and struck out bravely for the open Sea.

For a while he was busy sorting the tangled noises, and
tasting the currents. The swell was bigger here, and he had fun racing up and down inside the waves. The whistles of the pod were growing fainter, but he wasn’t scared; he was excited. He was the most adventurous young dolphin in the pod, and he loved exploring.

He also liked meeting new creatures, even if most of them didn’t enjoy meeting him. After several failed attempts, he’d learned that jellyfish stung and crabs pinched, and that it was no good playing with fish, because he always forgot and ate them. The best time he’d ever had was an amazing game with a seal, until it had remembered it was a seal, and swum away. The worst was when he’d tried to make friends with a dolphin from another pod; she’d butted him in the belly, then raked her teeth across his nose, which had hurt a lot.

Suddenly he heard a large, lumbering body wallowing on the Edge.

At first he thought it was a whale, but as he swam closer he heard that it didn’t have a tail, and was made of trees. Humans!

The dolphin liked humans. They were so odd. They had no blowholes, and they talked through their mouths; and as they couldn’t really swim, they just splashed about on the Edge. He also felt sorry for them, because they had to live in the Above, on horrible little dry scraps of land.

But humans were brave too, and almost as clever as dolphins; and the best thing about them was that if you swam just in front of one of their piles of floating trees, it pushed the
Sea at your tail, so that you could go faster without even trying. It was exactly like riding the nose-wave of a whale, but without the danger of annoying the whale.

For a while the dolphin wove happily in and out of the waves in front of the humans, while they leaned over the side, calling to him and flailing their flippers. Although he couldn’t understand their strange, muffled speech, he felt that they were friendly and glad to see him.

It came to him that he was getting too far from his pod and ought to turn back; but at that moment he sensed that one of the humans wasn’t happy.

He couldn’t see her, she was hidden deep inside, but he sensed that she was half-grown and scared, and
angry.
He was sorry for her and he wanted to help, but he didn’t know how.

Faint and far away, the pod was calling his name-whistle.

The dolphin felt a tug of regret. He wanted to stay with the humans. He hadn’t found what he was seeking, and he felt in his fins that it was still out there waiting for him—and that it had something to do with humans.

But the pull of the pod was strong.

To say good-bye, the dolphin leaped out of the Sea and flicked his tail flukes, while the humans waved at him and bared their teeth.

Then he splashed down again into his beautiful Blue Deep, and raced off to find his pod.