The Tritonian Ring and Other Pasudian Tales (13 page)

             
The rain petered out and the wind turned colder. The cloud-cover thinned until Vakar had an occasional glimpse of the sun. He took a good look around the horizon—and stopped, his jaw sagging in horror. A couple of miles aft the galley's small sail swayed upon its mast.

             
Vakar was overwhelmed with despair. With Qasigan's magical powers tracking him down, how could he ever shake off the fellow? He was in no condition to stand and fight.

             
He pulled himself wearily together. Somewhere over the horizon ahead lay the mainland, and from what he had heard it also projected eastward to the South of him in the peninsula of Dzen. Therefore if he angled off to the right, the way the wind was now blowing, he should fetch up against the mainland. He would be taking a terrific chance, for out of sight of land an overcast that hid sun and stars would leave him utterly lost, and if the wind swung round to the east he would be blown out to sea without knowing it. On the other hand the ship would sail faster and with less of this torturous
rolling
...

             
Vakar pulled his steering-lever to the left so that the
Dyra
swung to starboard. The galley followed.

             
As the hours passed, the island sank out of sight and the galley drew closer, though the water was still too rough for the latter to use her oars efficiently.

             
"Ah me!" said Fual. "We shall never see our homes and friends again, for this time we are truly lost."

             
"Shut up!" said Vakar. Fual wept quietly.

             
In the afternoon another coast appeared ahead. As they drew nearer, Vakar saw a wooded hilly region with
a
hint of towering
blue mountains
in the distance.
He wondered if this were the Atl
antean range of sinister repute. Behind him the galley was almost within bow-shot again.

             
"What do you plan now, sir?" said Fual.

             
Vakar shook his head. "I don't know; I seem no longer able to think."

             
"Let me feel your forehead," said Fual, and then: "No wonder! You're a sick man, my lord. I must get you ashore and put
a
cow-dung poultice on that wound to draw out the poison—"

             
"If I can get ashore I'll take a chance on the wound."

             
Close came the shore and closer came the galley. Fual cried:

             
"Breakers ahead!
We shall be wrecked!"

             
"I know it. Get our gear together and prepare to leap off the bow when we touch."

             
"Too late!
They'll ram us before we can reach the beach!"

             
"Do as I say!" roared Vakar, straining his eyes ahead.

             
A glance back showed that the galley was overhauling them faster than they were nea
ring the strand. Vakar gripped hi
s steering-lever as if he could thus squeeze an extra knot out of the
Dyra.

             
Behind, the galley gained; Vakar heard the coxswain exhorting his rowers. Ahead a line of rocks showed between waves, a score of paces short of the beach. As the combers toppled over they struck these rocks and sent up great fountains of spray, then continued on to the beach with diminished force. If he could guide the little ship between these*rocks they might escape, but if he struck one they would drown like
mice
...

             
Crash!
Vakar staggered as the galley's bow struck the stern of the
Dyra.
Fual tumbled to the deck, then rolled over and sat up with a despairing shriek. Under the whistle of the wind, the roar of the breakers, and the shouts of the men on the galley, Vakar fancied he heard the gurgle of water rushing into the
Dyra.

             
He recovered his balance and looked ahead. They were headed straight for one of the needles of rock. Vakar heaved on the yoke to swerve the
Dyra,
which heeled and scrapped past the obstacle with timbers groaning and crackling. The change in the slope of the deck told Vakar that the ship was settling by the stern. The galley had withdrawn its beak and was backing water furiously to keep off the rocks.

             
"Get ready!" Vakar screamed to Fual, who blubbered with terror.

             
Then the deck jerked back under him as the ship struck the beach. Vakar staggered forward and stopped himself by grabbing the mast. He ducked under the lower yard to find that Fual had already tumbled off the bow into kneedeep water and was splashing ashore, leaving the bag containing their possessions on the deck.

             
With a curse that should have struck the Aremorian dead, Vakar threw the bag ashore and dropped off the bow himself, the pain of his arm shooting through him like red-hot bronze. He picked up the bag with his good arm and caught up with Fual, to whom he handed the bag, and then hit him across the
face with the back of his hand.
"That'll teach you to abandon your master!" he said. "Now march!"

             
Staggering, Vakar led the way straight inland up the grassy side of
a
knoll that rose from the inner edge of the beach. At the top he looked back. The galley was still standing off the rocks while the
Dyra
lay heeled over on the edge of the sand, her sail flapping and water pouring in and out of her great wounds. As the galley did not appear to possess a ship's boat to send a search-party ashore, Vakar felt, secure for the time being—until Qasigan found
a
safer landing-place and took up his pursuit ashore.

             
Vakar led the weeping Fual down the back slope of the knoll until he was out of sight of the sea, then turned to the left and walked parallel to the beach.

             
They had tramped for an hour or so when
a
sound brought them up short: a fierce barking and snarling as of the dog that guarded the gates of the hells. They went forward cautiously, hands on swords, and over the next rise found
a
wild-looking shepherd clad in sheepskins tied haphazard about his person. In one hand he grasped a wooden club with stone spikes set in the thick end, while the other clutched the leash of a great dog, which strained to get at the travellers. The sheep huddled baaing in the background.

             
Vakar held out his hands. The shepherd shouted. "What does he say?" asked Vakar. "To go away or he'd loose the dog on us.
"

             
"
A hospitable fellow.
Ask where there's a settlement." Fual spoke in broken Euskerian. After several repetitions, the shepherd waved his club, saying: "Sendeu."

             
"That's
a
village," explained Fual.

             
"Toll him there's a wrecked ship back that way, and he's welcome to it."

             
Vakar began a detour around the surly shepherd and his flock. As they passed out of sight the man was gathering his sheep to drive them south along the coast.

             
Vakar's arm hurt with an agony he had never known before. He muttered:

             
"I'll never sneer at others' sicknesses again, Fual
...
"

             
Then the universe went into a whirling dance and Vakar lost track of what was happening.

-

             
Vakar Zhu awoke to the sounds of domestic bustle. He was lying on a rough bed in the comer of a log hut that seemed, at the moment, to be entirely full of children and dogs.

             
The cabin had a door at one end partly closed by a leather curtain, and no windows.
On the walls hung the family's tools: a fishing-spear barbed with sharks' teeth, hoes made from large clamshells, wooden sickles set with flint blades along their concave edges, and so on.
Animal noises from beyond the wall opposite the door told Vakar that this wall was a partition bisecting the cabin, the other half being used for livestock. At one side of the room a husky-looking peasant girl was working a small loom whose clack-clack furnished a rhythm under the barking of the dogs and the cries of the children. A sweaty smell overhung the scene.

             
Fual was sitting on the dirt floor beside him. Vakar raised his head, discovering that he was weak as water.

             
"Where am I?" he said.

             
"You're yourself again, my lord? The gods be praised! You're in the hut of Juten, a peasant of Sendeu.
"

             
"
How did I get here?"

             
"You walked, sir, but you were out of your head. We stopped at the first likely-looking hut, and you told Juten you were emperor of the world and he should order out your chariotry to attack the Gorgons. He didn't understand, of course, and after much struggle with the language I explained to him that you were a traveller who had taken sick and needed to lie up a few days. He was suspicious and unfriendly, but when I paid him out of your scrip he finally let us in." Fual looked around the hut with lifted
Up
. "
Hardly people of our class, sir, but it was
the best I could do."

             
"How long ago was this?"

             
"The day before yesterday."
Fual felt Vakar's forehead. "The fever has left you. Would you like some soup?"

             
"By all means.
I'm hungry as a spring bear."

             
Vakar moved his right arm, wincing. Still, it was better than it had been. Fual brought the broth in
a
gourd bowl.

             
As the day wore on Vakar met Juten's wife,
a
very pregnant woman with lined peasant features. She began speaking to him while going about her chores, undeterred by the fact that they had only a dozen words in common; so the rest of the day Vakar was subjected to
a
continuous spate of chatter. From its general tone he guessed that he was not missing anything by lack of understanding.

             
The people were tall
light-haired round-headed Atlanteans, who never bathed to judge by their looks and smell. The girl who ran the loom was Juten's eldest daughter. Vakar never did get the names of all the children straight, but a little girl of six named Atse took
a
fancy to him. When he pointed at things and asked their names she told him, making a game of it and finding his mistakes
a
great joke. By nightfall he had a fair household vocabulary.

             
Then Juten came in, thickset and stooped with dirt worked deeply into the cracks of his skin. He gave Vakar a noncommittal look and spoke in broken Hesperian:

             
"Lord better now?"

             
"Yes, thank you."

             
Supper was a huge loaf of barley-bread, milk, and
a
strange golden fruit called an "orange". Juten pointed apologetically to a jug in the corner: