The two children went and sat next to Uxevallak, their eyes wild and excited as Vaneshanda started to lay out plates and bowls in front of the men. Whitey, so used to field rations, was
surprised at the number and variety of things on offer – hard cheeses, flatbreads, fish soup and other side dishes of plants and other things he had never seen before. There was a delicious
sort of small wild onion which tasted fantastic with the soup. Whitey found himself devouring far more than what was probably his fair share and was aware of gravy dribbling down his chin.
When it was finished, the bowls were taken away and Whitey was preparing to thank his hosts and say goodbye when Vaneshanda left the house for a while. When she returned she was carrying
something in a wide basket.
‘Some of the other ladies have been cooking this for us,’ said Cygan as Vaneshanda began handing out fresh earthenware plates. Whitey looked inside the basket; it was full of charred
and dripping steaks.
They had killed a goat.
This threw him a little. He knew how important and valuable these animals were to them, a source of milk and cheese and very precious to their owners. To kill one was an honour only reserved for
exceptionally important occasions. Or guests. It was time for him to experience another rare feeling – he felt humbled.
It did not stop him from chewing his steak until only a sliver of white bone remained. Vaneshanda watched him with a beaming smile on her face; he was obviously honouring her by acting like a
glutton and he saw no reason to disappoint her.
When finally the meal was done, Vaneshanda and the children collected the bowls and went outside to wash them. Uxevallak took some dried brown leaves out from a pouch and put one of them into
his mouth to chew. He offered one to Cygan, who did the same and then Whitey. The albino looked enquiringly at the Marsh Men.
‘It is citrid leaf,’ said Cygan. ‘Very refreshing after a heavy meal. If you take three or four, you can see visions from the gods and spirits, not something I would recommend
tonight.’
Whitey took one; it was indeed a refreshing palate cleanser. He was then offered some honeyed milk which was also welcome. The bees were kept close to the Sketta guards’ camp across the
lake, so he was glad to see they had some positive uses. A couple of the men had already been stung by the damned things.
When the children returned, Vaneshanda busied herself with putting them to bed in the corner. While she was doing that Cygan started to teach Whitey some simple words of the Marsh tongue. In
turn, Cygan tried the opposite with his brother, who seemed to find the whole thing hilarious. In fairness, in his alcoholic haze, Whitey imagined that he was murdering their language on a grand
scale, but after half an hour or so he could manage ‘Hello’, ‘How are you?’ and ‘My name is...’ pretty well.
Vaneshanda asked something of Cygan, who smiled back at her.
‘Rain,’ he said.
‘Rain,’ she replied, pointing at the roof.
It was true; a light scattering of rain could be heard pattering on the dried rushes above them. As they listened, it became denser and heavier until the fire started to hiss as heavy droplets
of the stuff dripped through the chimney.
Cygan looked at Whitey. ‘Stay here tonight; you will get soaked travelling back on the lake.’
‘Here?’ Whitey thought aloud. It was something he was not expecting to do but Cygan threw him a blanket, as if the issue was already decided. Uxevallak was already picking his spot
on the floor. Vaneshanda came over to him.
‘The children. They speak.’
She signalled to the two tired little mites as they lay swaddled in their low beds. They spoke in unison, in his own language, something they had obviously rehearsed earlier. ‘Goodnight,
Barris. And thank you.’
‘Good night, kids,’ said Whitey. ‘Sleep well.’
The rain was beating down steadily now; it was obviously settling in for the night. He watched Cygan and his wife climb into their hammock before wrapping the blanket around himself and curling
up close to the fire. He smelled wood smoke, damp rushes, leather and the remnants of the fish they had eaten earlier. It was warm, far warmer than the tent in his camp, and that, and the pleasant
alcoholic haze, conspired to send him off to sleep in minutes.
Over the next few days the two men saw little of each other. A contingent of men had returned to Sketta to pick up some more supplies and Cygan was involved in liaising between
the two groups and organising and preparing for the daunting enterprise to come.
Whitey was roped in with the other city guardsmen, cleaning and oiling equipment, sharpening swords, preparing arrows and repairing torn and split armour. The Marsh folk fashioned many small,
thin clay pots, which were filled with lime then sealed up. Many of the men spent their time practising with their slings, firing them as far as they could into the lake.
Some five days after his meal with Cygan, he was sitting around the campfire whetstone in hand when Sperrish came over to him.
‘Have you heard?’ he asked Whitey in a tone of suppressed excitement. ‘You and me, we are going east along with the old Wych man and your mate the translator.’
‘Really?’ Whitey replied without much enthusiasm.
Last night he had not been able to sleep. After tossing and turning for a while he had left the tent to find everyone abed and the whole village wrapped in a cloak of deepest silence. He had
wandered up to the side of the lake where their boats were moored. It would be easy, he had thought, to push the boat out and steer it ever so gently until he was out of the lake and head north
along the river. Sure, the river fragmented into swamp many times and the potential to get lost or stranded couldn’t be ignored. But if you kept heading north you could surely not go wrong.
He had actually sat in the boat and picked up the paddle – just one push and he would be out and away on the water. Just one push. He was no brave soldier; he was Whitey, always one step in
front of the law – the thief, the back stabber, the cutpurse, the gang runner. Could they not see he did not belong here? He could no more defeat a dragon than walk to the moon. It was time
to leave.
He had been about to lift the rope from the mooring peg when he looked over the lake. There, on the island, he saw Cygan’s house, still standing, even though he had helped build it. In his
mind, he saw Vaneshanda smiling at him and heard the voices of the children.
‘Goodnight, Barris, and thank you.’
A fish rose and fell back into the water with a loud plop. With his shoulders sagging, he climbed out of the boat and headed back to his tent, slowly realising that conscience could be a truly
terrible thing.
Hence his lack of enthusiasm at Sperrish’s remark.
‘East,’ he said. ‘East or south, we are all likely to die doing this.’
Sperrish looked at him wickedly. ‘Not necessarily.’ He crouched down close to Whitey and started to whisper.
‘Listen, east is a good thing. I have had a couple of chats with the Marsh fellows – well, it’s more gestures than a chat if you get me – but, if we go east, we get to a
couple of villages surrounded by lakes and trees and in their lakes they have’ – he dropped his voice even lower – ‘an absolute ton of spirit grass. It is swamping parts of
their lakes apparently. They could get rid of it but the superstitious fools are only allowed to take so much of it a year or it angers their Gods or something. Do you see what I am
saying?’
Whitey looked up at him. ‘No.’
Sperrish raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘Artorus’s balls, but you are stupid sometimes. We stay at the village, go to the lake at night, harvest all the grass a boat can carry and
scarper before any one sees us. They will all be too busy fighting these damned lizards to bother chasing us, and for us, it’s back to Sketta to sell the stuff to the house of Meriel, or
whoever will pay the most. We will be made, my friend, made! A boat full of that stuff could fetch us fifty crowns easy!’
Whitey was unconvinced. ‘And do you know what spirit grass looks like in these wilds?’
‘I have asked. Long, thin, pale green with some blue flowers. They clump together in tussocks with their roots under the water. Are you in on this?’
Sperrish held out his hand to Whitey, who looked at him as though in the grip of some great mental discourse. Eventually, though, the proffered hand was clasped and Whitey nodded slowly in
agreement, but he did not smile.
‘Marvellous!’ said Sperrish. ‘In a few weeks we will be rich and this savage-filled bog will be a forgotten memory. You will not be able to move for all the women after you
when we get back.’
‘After my purse,’ Whitey corrected him. ‘After my purse.’
Two days later the other men returned, their boats laden with barrels of oil. The two flotillas divided it up between them and prepared to depart the following morning. It was
a sad day for the Marsh folk – the men were departing on the most perilous journey of their lives and no one knew if they were coming back or whether they would end their days at the bottom
of a murky lake or inside a dragon’s belly. The mood around the village, therefore, was sombre. Dumnekavax led the villagers to the sacred lake to ask for the blessings of the Gods in the
early afternoon. Cygan explained to Whitey and the other soldiers that it was a holy site for the villagers and so they were not permitted to see it, a remark met with near indifference as most of
them were busy praying to the little icons of their own gods that they carried with them everywhere.
Prayers done, people retired to their homes for one last evening with their families. For Cygan, this felt a little like the replaying of the same emotions he went through prior to his solitary
venture to the north and, considering how close he came to death there, he was not exactly brimming with optimism at the moment.
‘Be strong,’ he said to his wife as they held each other in their hammock. They were enjoying a rare moment of serenity as night closed in outside and the piping of the owls drifted
eerily over the limpid waters. The children were with Uxevallak in his own house; he would be one of the few men who would be remaining here. Cygan would say goodbye to them in the morning.
‘So you are to go again,’ she said sadly, looking at him with her large sad eyes. ‘It does seem that those who watch over us enjoy seeing us apart.’
‘This will be the last time,’ Cygan replied. ‘If I am destined to return, the only time I will leave you from then on will be to fish or to hunt.’
‘I will hold you to that. The children should see more of you. Uxevallak is great with them and they love him to the death, but he is not their father.’
‘Then why did you send them away tonight?’
Vaneshanda giggled and tickled the lobe of his ear. ‘I thought you would guess. Don’t you think they deserve another brother or sister?’
‘Oh I see.’ The penny dropped. ‘But after tonight I may never see you again.’
Her giggle continued. ‘Then it will have to be tonight then, won’t it?’
‘Then we are wasting time talking.’ He pulled a blanket over their heads and the hammock started to rock. Violently. And almost until dawn.
A cold mist hung over the lake. That same morning the village children had played a game just after dawn, running along the banks of the water cracking the icy earth with their feet until their
parents had stopped them. Now, on the water were some forty boats, some constructed out of planks, others from hollowed-out trees. Some three to four men were sitting in every boat, their faces
drawn and pensive. On the bank stood the women, the older or physically lame men and the children. Uxevallak and Vaneshanda, with her children standing at her feet, watched Cygan climb into the
lead boat on which was fixed the skull of Tegavanek. There had been a late change of plan. Dirthen was travelling east and Terath south; since Terath could almost speak both languages, he was to
act as a translator for the southern expedition, with Cygan doing the duties for the eastern.
The women threw flowers for their men. One plant, the frost rose, grew all year around the sacred lake and its petals now scattered on the waters as well as landing in the boats themselves.
Cygan caught Vaneshanda’s and held it up for her to see before placing it gently in his pack.
Whitey, as usual, was in the same boat and waved nervously at the two children who, after bidding their father goodbye, saw him and started calling his name. Then he heard his name again –
another voice, clear and female. He looked around and saw Emterevuanu raising her arms for him to see. He waved back at her even more nervously and then saw she was throwing a rose at him.
Dumbstruck, he did not react as it hit him in the face and bounced back into the water, but then, seeing her disappointed face, he put his hand into the icy lake and plucked it out, holding it up
for her to see, mirroring what Cygan had done earlier.
‘Goodbye, brave Barris!’ she called out to him. He heard Cygan laugh and felt his toes curl. Then the call went up. Dumnekavax sounded the horn for departure. Swiftly, skilfully, the
boatmen steered their craft into the lake where the mist soon swallowed them up and all the onlookers on the bank could hear was the sound of paddles breaking the water’s surface and the
excited squawks of a group of ducks who were diving for the weed accumulated on the wooden piles of the great house.
The men were gone. Maybe for ever, and on the shore many women wept at their leaving. Not Vaneshanda, though. As her daughter started to sniffle at her father’s disappearance, she touched
her gently on the shoulder.
‘No crying. Do not listen to the others. Your father will return; he is beloved of Cygannan. He will return. Believe me.’
They made their way to their own boat and within minutes were drifting across the lake to their home. Vaneshanda sang to the children as they travelled, soothing them, quieting them. Helping
them to believe that what she just said was immutable fact rather than wild hope. Cygan would be back, she thought. He most definitely would.
‘What! You haven’t tried any of them?’