“I thought it might help him to hear something.” I stopped, confused. “Cillian, I've never said this to you, and now I'm thinking of telling Sorley.”
“You're blushing, Lena,” he said, a thread of amusement in his voice. “What is it?”
I searched for the words. “If you had asked me even half a year ago to envision myself partnered with someone, well, it wouldn't have been a man.”
He looked down at me, his smile spreading slowly across his face. “I don't think I know what to say to that,” he murmured.
I spread my hands helplessly. “I chose freely. You know I love you.”
“I know, käresta. And I know you loved Maya. It might help Sorley to hear that, if you are comfortable telling him.”
“I'll see,” I answered. I needed to think about it.
We set off again. I fletched arrows; then, at the first mooring, we set up the butt again. I was matching shots with Cillian, with Turlo watching us, when Sorley appeared. He looked tired and I thought his eyes were red-rimmed. “Go find food, lad,” Turlo said, “and a mug of beer. You look like you need it. In fact, I'll come with you. I could use a draught as well.”
Geiri whistled, indicating the break was over. On board I went back to fletching but I soon ran out of feathers, so the rest of the arrows had to wait. Sorley dozed in the stern. Cillian was talking to Geiri, probably about where the river went, and Turlo was talking to Irmgard. I had, for the moment, no one to talk to and nothing to do.
We all needed space from each other, and time to think, because I watched the land pass for most of that sailing time alone. The ship was quiet except for the oars and the occasional exchange among the rowers. I looked around once: Turlo was sitting against the side near the bow, snoring. Cillian stood near him, gazing out over the river. I thought he looked pensive. I let him be.
At the second mooring Sorley offered to match swords with me, and we gave Cillian a measured demonstration. Sorley didn't want to practice archery, though, and nor did the women, so I watched Cillian's lesson. He had improved a little; his moves were smoother, but still uncertain. The oarsmen had already won another story earlier, so fewer of them came to heckle. It added to the odd feeling—not quite peaceful, but quiet, almost meditative—of the day.
After the evening meal, Sorley played a few songs, and then Cillian joined him to tell the danta he had chosen for the night. They spoke, and I saw Sorley nod, changing the tuning on his ladhar. Whatever the story was, it raised cheers and laughter from the Marai, and while I couldn't understand the words, just watching Cillian tell it, the gestures with hands and arms, the change in tone and volume, had me transfixed.
When he was done, and after he had made it clear to the oarsmen he was finished for the night, he came to sit beside me, carrying a mug of the thin, sour beer. “What danta was that?” I asked, after he'd eased his thirst. “They certainly enjoyed it.” Sorley had started to play a rollicking tune and the Marai were shouting along.
“One of the favourites. There's a dragon, and a hoard of gold, and a hero to beat the dragon and win the treasure. It's almost a children's tale, but all the Marai and half of Sorham love hearing it.”
“Why do you say it, instead of singing it? You can sing.”
“Tradition.” He took another swallow of beer. “Sorley could sing it, because he is playing. Because I am not, I speak it.”
“Odd,” I said.
“Probably a test for the scáeli. It's easy to remember the words to a song. Saying the danta is harder.”
“Did Sorley have to prompt you on it?”
“Not this one. It was partly why I chose it. I wasn't sure he wanted to talk to me, really.”
Sorley played several drinking songs, toe-tapping, undemanding, spirit-lifting music. It was growing late when he stopped; playing a few chords with one hand, he gestured Geiri over. They spoke for a minute, then Geiri turned to say something to the oarsmen. They quieted.
Sorley adjusted the tuning on the ladhar and played a few notes. “Oh, Sorley,” Cillian whispered beside me.
“What is it?”
“This song,” he murmured. “An dithës braithréan[9]. It's a lament, a song of farewell between two brothers separated by war.” He took my hand. “He is singing this to me, Lena.”
Sorley continued to play the tune, slowly, the notes dropping like tears into the night. “On midsummer's night,” he said, pitching his voice to carry, “if I understand correctly, the soldiers of the Empire play a song for their lost. I do not know the song, and it is not midsummer, but tonight I offer this for all we have loved, and all we have lost.”
Another soft, mournful descent of notes faded into the dark, and with the next, Sorley began to sing. Nothing disturbed the music: drinking cups were lowered, conversation ended. His voice, deep and slightly rough, told his anguish and grief to the night, to the stars, to all the world. A lament, I knew, for what he could not have, but also a gift to us, a song for our losses, too. It was not the Breccaith, but it served. When the last notes drifted out over the river, I was openly weeping, and the firelight glittered on the tears in Cillian's eyes.
Chapter Eleven
We were readying to sail next morning when Geiri stopped, his hand up, a sudden broad grin on his face. He said something, but I didn't need a translation. The wind had changed. It blew now from the south, and it carried with it the faintest smell of the sea.
I closed my eyes against the wave of homesickness that swept through me, a fierce wanting of my boat and the salt spray and returning home at sunset with a full hold, into Tirvan's sheltered harbour. As Maya and I had done, bringing Dovekie home to hear Tali's casual announcement of an unscheduled council meeting, that last evening before the world had changed forever.
But if we could smell the sea, it was not that far away. Geiri and Cillian were already deep in conversation, Cillian using a spread hand to indicate to Geiri which channel he believed the ship should take. If the maps are accurate, I thought. It didn't occur to me to doubt Cillian's memory.
Turlo beckoned me over. “You and Sorley, bows to ready on each side.” I found my bow and quiver and positioned myself on the right side, near the front of the ship. On either bank, the grasslands were giving way to a rockier landscape.
An hour later the first channel of the delta angled away to our left. We continued on our course, mooring after another hour to rest the oarsmen. Geiri cut the break short, ordering the men back to work. They complied without obvious complaint: like me, they wanted to get to the sea.
The river widened a bit, descending over a series of stepped drops, taking all Geiri's and the oarsmen's skill to keep us straight. And perhaps, I thought, as we jostled towards one drop, upright. A command from Geiri, and two oarsmen slipped overboard to fight their way to each bank with ropes to help guide the ship through. Geiri growled something at Cillian; he was clearly unhappy with this route.
The land flattened again, becoming marshy, flowing among reeds with the occasional island of willow trees. Insects began to whine and bite. The reeds on either side meant we could see little beyond the water. It felt enclosed, and it made me nervous. Occasionally birds flew up, in twos and threes, large ones I didn't recognize. I slapped a biting insect, cursing.
The sun moved to its zenith and began to descend. The wind had died, and the insects were worse.
“Turlo!” Sorley called. “A boat, ahead!” I saw it a second later. The curve of the river had given Sorley a better view. Geiri snapped a command and we slowed and stopped.
The boat approached. One man, dark haired and bearded, stood at the prow, and behind him half-a-dozen archers. Whose bows were bigger and arrows longer than ours, I noted. So had Turlo. He signalled us to lower ours.
Their oarsmen brought the boat alongside. We eyed each other. The dark-haired man asked something. To Turlo's shaken head, he repeated the question in a different language, and then another, I thought, and then another. At the last question, I saw Cillian's eyes narrow
. He held up a hand and replied in a language I didn't know, but sounded—almost—familiar, as if there were elements in it I should recognize.
The man looked puzzled, but after a moment his face cleared, and he replied. Cillian answered, evoking the same momentary confusion. Several more exchanges occurred, the dark-haired man looking amused, then disbelieving, and then startled, and in the last thing Cillian said I thought I caught Callan's name, and the word Casil.
Sorley had come to stand beside me. “What language is that?” I whispered, slapping at the biting insects.
“Casilan. I can't follow most of what they've said; I can read it, fairly well, but I never really learned to speak it. No one has actually spoken it in Linrathe—or the Empire, I suppose—for hundreds of years, except at the Ti'acha.”
The archaic version of your tongue, I remembered Perras telling me.
I studied the boat. High-prowed and almost equally high at the stern, it was broader than our ship and not as long. Stable on the sea, I thought. A pair of eyes were painted on the bow. I let my eyes travel to the archers. Well-kept bows, the wood oiled and the nocked arrows straight and smooth, with metal heads. The men held them nearly at full draw easily, and their quivers were full. A knife hung in a curved sheath at each archer's waist. Trained men.
“Westani!” I heard the dark-haired man call, and then something I did not understand, but his gestures made it clear: follow him. The archers lowered their bows, and the rowers began to manoeuvre the boat around. Cillian took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. I thought he looked bemused.
“Well done, mo charaidh,” Turlo said. “Now, will you translate?”
“If I understood everything,” Cillian said, “and I am not entirely sure I did, the man's name is Mihae and he is the leader in the town he is guiding us to, which is called Sylana, I think. I told him we are from the Western Empire—which he did not believe, at first, and may still not—sent by the Emperor Callan to Casil. I did not tell him why. And as he did not question that at all, I think we can conclude that after all these years, Casil still stands as an important city in the east.”
The significance of this took a moment to sink in. Casil, whose people had built the temple in the plain, and the nearly vanished road across that plain. The Eastern Empire of memory and legend. A place to ask for sanctuary for Irmgard and succour for the West. The thread of hope had just become a little stronger.
“That any of us can speak to this man at all is a marvel,” Turlo said.
“It is—disconcerting,” Cillian answered, “to know that I have just made myself understood in a language learned only to access ancient texts. Although,” and he glanced my way, the tiniest hint of amusement on his face, “my pronunciation was appalling, it would appear. But I can improve that, no doubt.”
“Aye, well, you'd best, as you are going to have to do all the speaking for us. Here and at Casil,” Turlo said. “You need that rank now, too. Captain will do, but your appointment is adjutant, to me, so of the third. Understood?”
“Sir,” Cillian said, without a hint of irony.
Turlo turned to me. “Guard, you are clear on the ranks here?”
“General,” I replied.
Turlo grinned. “But only when necessary. I think we can all relax again.”
“What did he call, at the end?” I asked. “Westani, it sounded like?”
“It was,” Cillian said. “People of the west.”
As we followed, I told Turlo my observations, of the boat and the archers, the others listening. “How did they know we were coming?” Sorley asked.
Turlo gestured to me. “The birds,” I said. “I think someone saw the flights of birds we frightened. Either that, or there was someone out in the reeds in a small boat, but I think it was the birds.”
“Aye,” Turlo said. “I agree with Lena. Now, Cillian, what impressions do you have of our safety?”
“I don't know,” he replied. “I am sorry, General, but for me to speak Casilan is not like speaking Marái'sta, or even your language, which is now almost as familiar to me as my own. I must see the words in my mind, to read them, almost, and that took all my concentration, that and translating what I heard in the same way. I could not do that and listen for inflection and watch his face and hands, as I normally would.”
“I did,” Irmgard said, unexpectedly. “I have experience of this, with my husband. I think he will not kill us, but his eyes were not always looking at you, Cillian; they saw the swords and axes too, but his hands did not clench. He looked at me and my women with interest, too. We are not a threat, I think. He will want tribute to let us pass.”
“And surety for our weapons,” Turlo added. “Lady Irmgard, do you remember anything more from Fritjof or his men?”
“Fritjof did not speak of such things to me,” she said, her hatred of him evident in the way she said his name. But Geiri told me the men talked of trade, yes. Râv and alfban...” She turned to Cillian. “I do not know how to say these words.”
“Amber and ivory.”
“Yes, these, for food and metalwork and a fine cloth. It is what we brought, as much as we could. To buy me safety in Casil, I thought.”
“We may need to use some of it here,” Turlo warned. “To buy us safe passage.”
“If we must,” she replied. She turned back to Cillian. “Did he speak of me?”
“He said this, Ǻdla, if I understood it correctly: 'You have brought women. Good'.” His voice, I noticed, was measured, unembarrassed, giving a simple translation. “I took that to mean that we would not want…access to the town's women, but I am not sure. I apologize, Ǻdla, but I could not think fast enough to find a way to clarify his meaning.”
“You do not need to apologize,” she said. “He made no mention of Lena?”
“I think,” Turlo interjected, “that he may not have realized Lena is a woman, if he did not look too closely.”
I could see Turlo's point. Rind had cut my hair for me, tsking over the task, but I had insisted. It was cropped so that it did not blow in my eyes, as I liked it. I wore a loose tunic which disguised my small breasts, and breeches, and I had held a bow. At a quick glance, I could be a young man. I would wager, though, that one of the archers would convey my sex to Mihae as they sailed: they had studied Sorley and me, as we had them.
A thought occurred. “Lady Irmgard,” I asked, “do you know if Fritjof's men sailed beyond this place?”
She asked Geiri. He shook his head.
“Geiri thinks not. They spoke of coming to a sea, and trading, and returning home.”
“Then,” I said slowly, “if Fritjof brought back new ideas on how to treat women, then these are the people he must have learned those ways from.”
“Can we use that?” Cillian said. “Will Mihae negotiate more honestly if he believes we are civilised, by his lights?”
I bit back my first response. This is not about you, I reminded myself. This is about all our lives, and more: we need to reach Casil.
“Perhaps,” Turlo said.
“But,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, “unless Fritjof made this part up to suit himself, the leader of the people can...claim any woman he wants, and she cannot refuse. We cannot accede to that.”
“No!” Irmgard exclaimed. “Or what have I fled from?”
Turlo and Cillian exchanged a look. “Then,” Cillian said, “I suggest this. That you are being sent to Casil as an offered bride, in hope of forging a new relationship. One that will bring traffic and trade to this place, as ships move between our lands and Casil. You and your women must arrive inviolate.”
“That might work,” Turlo said. “Although will he then feel obligated to offer us women?”
“We say no, if he does,” Cillian said. “Sorley, make sure the oarsmen understand that.”
“What about Lena?” Sorley asked.
Cillian looked at him, and then me. “I doubt they are so uncivilised as to demand another man's wife,” he answered. “If you can tole
rate the deception, Lena?” Irmgard made a sound of protest, but did not speak.
“If we said she was not just your wife, but my daughter?” Turlo asked. “Both a soldier, and a soldier's daughter, taught her skills with bow and sword by a doting and unwise father? Would that help shelter her?”
“Shelter her,” Cillian repeated, a nuance to his voice I didn't understand. “Yes. Another layer of status. I like that, Turlo. Lena, can you accept this?”
“Say what you need to,” I replied. “It is all a story, after all.”
The reeds gave way to open fields, diked and drained, and then to a town spread out along the left bank and the shore. Ahead of us was open sea. Gulls screamed and soared, congregating around the fishing boats returning to the harbour. The houses were stone and wood, well-built, and both canals and paved paths provided access.
The oarsmen brought the ship into the harbour wall, blocks of stone cut and laid to prevent erosion. I wondered where the stone came from, both for this and the houses. The boat was tied, bow and stern, against the jetty.
Mihae waited for us where a paved path abutted the harbour wall. He was, I realized, eyeing me closely. Abruptly he spoke to Cillian, who replied calmly, gesturing to himself and Turlo. They spoke for a few minutes. Mihae, laughing, added a few last words. Cillian exhaled. “He had thought you a boy, Lena, but he has accepted what I have told him: you are Turlo's daughter, a solder in our army, and also my bedmate. He said he had heard of such women, and made a few predictable comments, which I will not translate. “
“Now what happens?” Sorley asked.
“We—Turlo and you and I, not the women—wash, and make ourselves as presentable as possible, and then we go to eat, to be observed and studied and talked about, as Western barbarians, no doubt.” Cillian said. “At some point, Mihae will broach the idea of a fee to be allowed to leave. I will need to know exactly what Irmgard is willing to give up, before we start.”
“They will do all this tonight?” I asked.
“Of course,” Cillian said. “We are weary, and out of place, and therefore vulnerable. The wine will be offered freely, too: be cautious, mo charaidheán[10], drink sparingly, and water it well if you can.”
Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy Page 83
