by Robin Hobb
Our river journey was the least eventful part of our travels. It might have even become boring, for that part of Gernia is much the same. The Tefa flows steadily along through the wide plains, and the little towns and villages that cluster at likely landing spots resemble one another so much that most of them have large signs posted along the riverfront to announce the name of the town in no uncertain terms. The weather continued fair, and though the foliage along the more deserted stretches of riverbank grew denser than it did on the prairie, it varied little.
My father saw to it that I did not waste my travelling days in idleness. He had brought with him his copies of the texts he had helped approve for the Cavalla Academy, and insisted that I attempt the first several chapters in each book. “For,” he warned me, “the first few weeks of living in a barracks and rising before dawn to rush to breakfast and then classes will be a foreign experience. You may find yourself wearier than usual, and distracted in the evening by the company of other young men at the study tables in your barracks hall. I am told that promising young cadets often fall behind in their first weeks, and never catch up, and hence earn lower marks than might otherwise be expected of them. So, if you are already versed in what you will study in those first weeks, you may find yourself on a more solid footing with your instructors.”
And so we went over texts on horsemanship, and, military strategy and the history of Gernia and its military forces. We worked with map and compass, and several times he awoke me late at night to come onto the deck with him and demonstrate that I could identify the key stars and constellations that might guide a horse soldier alone on the plains. On the occasions when our boat docked for a day in small towns to take on or unload cargo, we took the horses out to stretch their legs. My father, despite his years, remained an excellent horseman and he lost no opportunity to share the secrets of his expertise with me.
Early in our journey, there was an incident that disrupted our crew and justified my father’s reservations about Captain Rhosher employing plainsmen as deckhands. It happened as evening was creeping over the land. The sunset was magnificent, banks of colour flooding the horizon and echoing in the placid waters before us. I was on the bow of the ship, enjoying it, when I saw a lone figure in a small vessel on the river coming toward us, cutting a path against the current. The little boat had a small square sail, not even as tall as the man himself was, but bellied out with wind. The man in the boat was tall and lanky, and he stood upright, my view of him partially obscured by the sail. I stared at him in fascination, for despite the current being against him, his boat cut the water briskly as he steered up the main channel of the river.
When he saw us, I saw him perform some task that made his little boat veer to the left, so that he would pass us with a generous space of water between us. As I stared at him and his unusual vessel, I heard heavy footsteps on the deck behind me. I turned to see my father and the captain tamping tobacco into their pipes as they strolled toward the bow for their evening smoke together. Captain Rhosher gestured with his unlit pipe and observed genially, “Now there’s a sight you hardly see any more on this river. Wind wizard. When I was a youngster, we often encountered such as him, in his calabash boat. They grow those boats, you know. The gourds from such a vine are immense, and they fertilize them with rabbit dung and shape the fruits as they grow. When the gourds are large enough, they cut them from the vine, let them dry and harden and then shape each one into a boat.”
“Now that’s a tale,” my father challenged him with a smile.
“No, sir, as I’m a riverman, I’ll tell you it’s true. I’ve seen them growing, and once even watched them cutting the gourd to shape. But that was years ago. And I think it’s been over a year since I’ve seen a wind wizard on this river,” the captain countered.
The little boat had drawn abreast of us as he spoke, and a strange chill ran up my back, making the hair stand up on my neck and arms. The captain spoke true. The man in the boat stood tall and still, but he held his spread hands out toward his little sail as if guiding something toward it. As there was every night on the river, a gentle breeze was blowing. But the wind that the plains mage focused toward his sail was stronger than the mild breeze that barely stirred my hair. His wind puffed his sail full, pushing the boat steadily upstream. I had never seen anything like it, and I knew a moment of purest envy. The solitary man, silhouetted against the sinking sun, was at once so peaceful and so powerful a sight that I felt it sank into my soul. With no apparent effort, one with his magic, the wind and the river, his shell-boat moved gracefully past us in the twilight. I knew I would remember that sight to the end of my days. As he passed us, one of our polemen lifted his hand in greeting, and the wind wizard acknowledged him with a nod.
Suddenly there was a gun blast from behind the upper deck behind me. Iron pellets struck the wind wizard’s sail and shredded it. As my ears rang with the shock, I saw the craft tip and the man spilled into the river. A moment later, a cloud of sulphurous smoke drifted past me, choking me and making my eyes water. The angry shouting of the captain and raucous laughter from the upper deck barely reached me through the ringing of my ears. The two young nobles stood on the upper deck, arms about each other’s shoulders, roaring with drunken laughter over their prank. I looked back toward the wind wizard’s boat, but saw nothing there but blackness and water.
I turned to my father in horror. “They murdered him!” Captain Rhosher had already left us and was running toward the ladder that led to the upper deck. One of our plainsmen polemen was faster. He did not use the ladder, but scrambled up the side of the cabins to the upper deck, where he seized their gun. The poleman threw it wildly away from him, and it sailed over the side of the boat, splashed and sank. A moment later the guide, probably alerted by the gunshot, was on the scene. He seized the plainsman and spoke to him in his own language, forcibly holding him off the two young nobles as the captain hurried up the ladder. Down on the deck, the other poleman was running frantically up and down the length of the flatboat, scanning the river for any sign of the wind wizard. I ran to the railing and leaned out as far as I could. In the darkness, I could barely make out our wake. “I can’t see him!” I called out.
A moment later my father joined me at the railing. He took my arm. “We are going to our cabin, Nevare. This is none of our doing, and none of our business. We shall stay clear of it.”
“They shot the wind wizard!” My heart was hammering with the shock of what had happened. “They killed him.”
“They shot his sail. The iron pellet destroyed the magic he was doing. That was all,” my father insisted.
“But I can’t see him!”
My father glanced at the water, and then pulled firmly at my arm. “He’s probably swum to shore. He’d be far astern of us by now; that’s why you can’t see him. Come on.”
I went with him, but not eagerly. On the upper deck, Captain Rhosher was shouting at the guide about keeping ‘those drunken youngsters under control’ while one of the young men in question was complaining loudly about the cost of the gun that had been thrown overboard and demanding that the captain compensate him. The poleman on the upper deck was shouting something in his own language and angrily shaking a fist. The captain still stood between him and the others.
I followed my father numbly to our cabin. Once inside, he lit the lamp and then shut the door firmly as if he could shut out what had happened. I spoke determinedly. “Father, they killed that man.” My voice shook.
My father’s voice was thick but calm. “Nevare, you don’t know that. I saw the pellet shred his canvas. But even if some struck him, at that range it would probably barely penetrate his skin.”
I was suddenly impatient with his rationality. “Father, even if they didn’t shoot him, they caused him to drown. What’s the difference?”
“Sit down.” He spoke the command flatly. I sat, more because my knees were shaking than because I wished to obey him. “Nevare, listen to me. We don’t know that any
pellet hit him. We do not know that he drowned. Unfortunately, the current is in command of us at the moment. We cannot go back to be certain of his death or his survival. Even if we could go back, I doubt that we could be certain. If he drowned, the river has taken him. If he lived, he has reached the bank and is probably gone by now.” He sat down heavily on his bunk, facing me.
I was suddenly at a loss for words. The amazement I’d felt at the sight of the wind wizard and the callous way in which the two hunters had ended his remarkable feat warred in me. I desperately wanted to believe my father was right, and that the wizard had escaped lasting harm. But I also felt a strange hurt deep inside me, that they had so thoughtlessly snuffed out a wondrous thing. I had glimpsed him so briefly but in that moment I had felt I would have given anything, anything at all, to know the power that he channelled so effortlessly into his craft. I clasped my hands in my lap. “I’ll probably never see anything like that again.”
“It’s possible. Wind wizards were never common.”
“Father, they deserve punishment. Even if they didn’t kill him, they could have. At the very least, they sank his boat and caused him needless injury with their recklessness. For what? What had he done to them?”
My father did not answer my last question. He said only, “Nevare, on a ship the captain is the law. We must let the captain handle this. Our interference could only make matters worse.”
“I do not see how they could be worse.”
My father’s voice was mild as he observed, “It could be worse if the plainsmen were stirred to outrage over this incident. If our captain is wise, he will swiftly shed those two and their guide, but before he does, he will see that they pay an ample amount of coin to the two plainsmen who witnessed it. Unlike Gernians, plainsmen see nothing dishonourable about being bought off. They feel that as no death can be righted and no insult completely revoked, there is nothing wrong with taking coin as an indication that the culprit wishes he could undo his mistake. Let Captain Rhosher handle it, Nevare. This is his command. We shall not say or do any more about this incident.”
I did not completely agree with his argument, but I could think of no better alternative. At the next town, the hunters, their guide and their trophies were unceremoniously off loaded. I did not see the plainsmen polemen after that, but I never found out if they quit or were discharged or simply took their bribe and left. We picked up two more deckhands and departed within an hour. The captain was obviously disgruntled about the whole incident. None of us spoke about it again, but that is not to say it did not trouble me.
We were the sole passengers for the rest of the journey. The weather turned rainy and cooler. As we slowly approached the juncture where the Tefa River meets the surging flood of the Ister River, the land changed. Prairie gave way to grasslands and then forest. We began to see foothills and beyond them distant mountains to the south. Here the two great rivers converged around a rich isthmus of land to form the Soudana River that flows in a torrent to the sea. Our plan was to disembark at the city of Canby and there change to a passenger jankship for the remainder of our journey. My father was very enthused about this next leg of our trip.
It had become quite fashionable for touring parties to come upriver by carriage and wagon, seeing all the country and staying at inns along the way. Canby was gaining the reputation of being both summer resort and trade centre, for it was said that the best prices in the west for plainsworked goods and furs were there. The jankships that moved slowly upriver by the ponderous processes of poling, sailing, and cordelling went downriver a great deal faster. Once they had been almost entirely sheep and cargo vessels. Now the eighty foot vessels were grandly appointed with elegant little cabins, dining and gambling salons, and deck-top classes in water-colours, poetry and music for the ladies. We would make the final leg of our journey to Old Thares on such a vessel, and my father had emphasized that he wished me to show well in this, my first introduction to society.
We were a few days away from making port at Canby when I awoke one morning to a smell at once strange and familiar in my nostrils. It was scarcely dawn. I heard the lapping of the river against the drifting flatboat, and the calls of early morning birds. It had rained steadily through the night, but the light in the window promised at least a brief respite from the downpour. My father was still sleeping soundly in his bunk in the flatboat cabin we shared. I dressed quickly and quietly, and padded out onto the deck barefoot. A deckhand nodded wearily at me as I passed him. A strange excitement that I had no name for was thrilling in my breast. I went directly to the rail.
We had left the open grasslands behind in the night. On both sides of the river, dark forest now stretched as far as the eye could see. The trees were immense, taller than any trees I had ever imagined, and the fragrance from their needles steeped the air. The recent rains had swollen the streams. Silvery water cascaded down a rocky bed to join its flood with the river. The sound of the merging water was like music. The damp earth steamed gently and fragrantly in the rising sun. “It’s so beautiful and restful,” I said softly, for I had felt my father come out to stand on the deck behind me. “And yet it is full of majesty, also.” When he did not reply, I turned, and was startled to find that I was still quite alone. I had been so certain of a presence nearby that it was as if I had glimpsed a ghost. “Or not glimpsed one!” I said aloud, as if to waken my courage and forced a laugh from my throat. Despite the empty deck, I felt as if someone watched me.
But as I turned back to the railing, the living presence of so many trees overwhelmed me again. Their silent, ancient majesty surrounded me, and made the boat that sped along on the river’s current a silly plaything. What could man make that was greater than these ranked green denizens? I heard first an isolated bird’s call, and then another answered it. I had one of those revelations that come as sudden as a breath. I was aware of the forest as one thing, a network of life, both plant and animal, that together made a whole that stirred and breathed and lived. It was like seeing the face of god, yet not the good god. No, this was one of the old gods, this was Forest himself, and I almost went to my knees before his glory.
I sensed a world beneath the sheltering branches that crossed and wound overhead, and when a deer emerged to water at the river’s edge, it seemed to me that my sudden perception of the forest was what had called her forth. A log, half-afloat, was jammed on the riverbank. A mottled snake nearly as long as the log sunned on it, lethargic in the cool of morning. Then our flatboat rounded a slight bend in the river, and startled a family of wild boar that was enjoying the sweet water and cool mud at the river’s edge. They defied our presence with snorts and threatening tusks. The water dripped silver from their bristly hides. The sun was almost fully up now, and the songs and challenges of the birds overlapped one another. I felt I had never before comprehended the richness of life that a forest might hold, nor a man’s place in it as a natural creature of the world.
The trees were so tall that even from the boat’s deck, I craned my neck to see their topmost branches against the blue sky of early autumn. As we drifted with the river, the nature of the forest changed, from dark and brooding evergreen to an area of both evergreen and deciduous trees gone red or gold with the frosts. It filled me with wonder to stare at those leafy giants and recognize the still life that seeped through their branches. It was strange for a prairie-bred youth to feel such an attraction to the forest. Suddenly the wide sweeping country that had bred me seemed arid and lifeless and far too bright. I longed with all my heart to be walking on the soft carpet of gently rotting leaves beneath the wise old trees.
When a voice spoke behind me, I startled.
“What fascinates you, son? Are you looking for deer?”
I spun about, but it was only my father. I was as startled to see him now as I had been surprised not to see him earlier. My conflicting thoughts must have given me a comical expression, for he grinned at me. “Were you day-dreaming, then? Homesick again?”
I shook
my head slowly. “No, not homesick, unless it is for a home I’ve never seen until now. I don’t quite know what draws me. I’ve seen deer, and a snake as long as a log, and wild boar coming down to water. But it isn’t the animals, father, and it’s not even the trees, though they make up the greater part of it. It’s the whole of it. The forest. Don’t you feel a sense of homecoming here? As if this is the sort of place where men were always meant to dwell?”
He was tamping tobacco into his pipe for his morning smoke. As he did so, he surveyed my forest in bewilderment, and then looked back at me and shook his head. “No, I can’t say that I do. Live in that? Can you imagine how long it would take to clear a spot for a house, let alone some pasture? You’d always be in the gloom and the shade, with a pasture full of roots to battle. No, son. I’ve always preferred open country, where a man can see all around himself and a horse goes easily, and nothing stands between a man and the sky. I suppose that’s my years as a soldier speaking. I’d not want to scout a place like that, nor fight an engagement there. Would you? The thought of defending a stronghold built in such a thicket in such a place daunts me.”
I shook my head. “I had not even imagined battle there, sir,” I said, and then tried to recall what I had been imagining. Battle and soldiering and cavalla had no place in that living god. Had I truly been longing to live there, amongst the trees, in shade and damp and muffled quiet? It was so at odds with all that I had planned for my life that I almost laughed out loud. It was as if I had suddenly been jarred out of someone else’s dream.
My father finished lighting his pipe and took a deep draw from it. He let the smoke drift from his mouth as he spoke. “We are at the edge of old Gernia, son. These forests used to mark the edge of the kingdom. Once, folk thought of them as the wild lands, and we cared little for what was beyond them. Some of the noble families had hunting lodges within them, and of course we harvested lumber from them. But they were not a tempting place for farmer or shepherd. It was only when we expanded beyond them, into the grasslands and then the plains that anyone thought to settle here. Two more bends of the river, and we’ll be into Gernia proper.” He rolled his shoulders, stretching in a gentlemanly way, and then glanced down at my feet and frowned. “You do intend to put on some boots before you come to breakfast, don’t you?”
