*
The Shugak raft was not an impressive craft to a Miilarkian eye. It consisted of two large squares of timber several strides across, rough planks laid across logs all bound together with ropes twisted from vines. An awful lot of loose ends trailed in the water. The two sections were generally tied together to form a rectangular raft, but they could be detached to maneuver in tight channels. The one in the rear had a mound of provision crates and kegs of potable water in the center under tarps, for two weeks of feeding had been part of the ticket price.
The front raft had a sheet of ash-covered iron sitting atop stones in the middle, which seemed like a terrible idea for cooking. It also had the one piece of furniture on either raft, an old lounge piled in thrush mats with only tufts of the original upholstery surviving. The legs were nailed down at the front end of the raft, making the seat a sort of captain’s chair. There was a pink, ladies’ parasol nailed to an arm, which the captain opened every time he sat there though it was too small to offer much shade.
The captain, and the six or seven members of his crew, were bullywugs. The captain introduced himself to his passengers with a gravelly croak and a lip-smacking blow that puffed out his throat, producing a sound like “Gghhoooorrr! Plalp!” Claudja said its name was Gorpal. The bullywug was fat to the point of being spherical though colored a rather lovely shade of sapphire blue on limbs and back, lightening to a somewhat sickly greenish pallor on the belly and face, which had no discernible neck between them. The bottom half of Gorpal’s head was all wide, frog-like mouth, just a bumpy ridge for a nose, and the cupolas atop his head had long, black, vertical slits for pupils in otherwise milky-yellow eyes. It was hard to tell when the bullywug blinked, for both its sets of eyelids were transparent.
The exact number of wugs constituting Gorpal’s crew was hard to count, for at least half of them were splashing in the water around the rafts at any given moment. On the first stage of the trip, crossing the Black River, all the wugs except Gorpal swam alongside kicking their legs wildly and pulling or pushing through the current while the big rafts swung in majestic circles. All four human passengers sat on the second raft with their backs to the food crates, turning green themselves. Gorpal sprawled in his chair under his pink parasol and croaked commands at a high, wind-piercing pitch, slapping splayed feet against the plank deck.
Once across the river the craft passed onto a swampy backwater region of the Wilds, sluggish bayous and dismal swamps. The raft moved at a less sedate pace than Tilda might have feared for at all times, even on most nights, Gorpal’s crew kept them moving either by paddling in the water or else pushing along from the deck with long poles sharpened at the ends like pikes. Though somewhat jungle-like the shadowy environs bore little resemblance to Miilark, and Tilda did not find them pleasant. The trees were all warped as though twisted in agony, covered in creeping vines that seemed to be trying to strangle them. Saw-grass in damp fields shifted in the breeze and made an unsettling sound like shears through stiff parchment, though it was often drowned out by weird bird calls that somehow sounded accusatory. The raft was often close to the tall banks, and on the first day when Dugan snagged a mottled gray and purple fruit shaped something like a plum from an overhanging bough, Gorpal rushed him with croaks of alarm and a flurry of slapping feet. The wug snatched away the fruit and with a series of pantomimes conveyed the impression that everything, everything in the Vod Wilds was poisonous to humans. Then Gorpal ate the fruit.
The wugs actually ate all day, plucking passing fruit or sometimes floating on their backs to devour fish, as it seemed they had some sort of teeth or something else they could chew with far back in their mouths. Most often however they spit out pink tongues several feet in the air anytime a dragonfly or other drowsy insect buzzed by in the chilly air. The first time it happened it startled Tilda so bad she almost produced a dagger, but she became accustomed to the wet snaps and pops in time as they were as constant as the lap of water against the log rafts.
For the first few days the four travelers spoke hardly a word among themselves except for Claudja and Towsan, who talked to each other in Daulic. They all ate together twice daily for in the middle morning and late afternoon the wugs managed to cook the excess fish tossed onto the raft during the day without setting the deck on fire. Hard cheese and harder rolls occasionally appeared from the crates, but the only fruit or vegetables made available were shrunken grapes soaked in wine, which only Dugan could stomach. While eating, Tilda and Claudja would pass a few words in either Codian or the Trade Tongue, but neither said much.
After almost a week on the backwaters, the Duchess seemed to have had enough of it, or else she was becoming bored only talking to Towsan. The old knight had cleared a sheltered slot between crates and under a tarp for the Duchess’s bedroll, while the others slept in theirs against the outside of the provision boxes. One early morning Claudja emerged from her shelter, carefully stepped over Towsan who was still asleep lengthwise across the entrance, and sat down cross-legged next to Tilda who was already seated likewise on the raft’s back edge. The vessel was too primitive for Tilda to really consider this end of it as a stern.
The morning was crisp as they all were now, but the sky was turning blue where it could be seen through the interlocked branches above. Claudja drew in a long breath.
“Another fair and fine day in the green hell,” she said in Codian. Tilda gave a small smile, and from somewhere came a cooing sort of whistle she had been hearing for days.
“Do you know what kind of bird is making that sound?” she asked.
“That? That is not a bird, it is a thief otter. Chatty little brigands.”
“Thief otter?”
Claudja nodded. “I am surprised you did not see any on the Chengdea docks, the little miscreants are everywhere. They snatch up any food not under lock and key, and use anything else they can drag off to build up their hutches on the riverside. Terrible robbers and burglars. No offense.”
Tilda glanced at the Duchess but Claudja maintained a straight face. She took up a leafless twig that had fallen to the deck and trailed it in the water.
“Matilda,” she said after watching the ripples for a while. “Are you all well?”
Tilda raised an eyebrow at her and Claudja met her gaze with her own eyes soft, looking genuinely concerned.
“I only ask because on the night we met at the inn, you seemed in far better spirit.” Claudja looked back at the trailing twig. “I know you are bound for a place of great danger, on what I assume is an important task. I understand if you wish to be left alone to think on your own concerns. I merely thought I should offer a word, or an ear, if you want either.”
Tilda sighed and shook her head faintly. “No, it is not even that, it is just…I had some bad news from home before leaving Chengdea.”
Tilda was not sure why she said anything, but she had felt very alone for a long time now.
“News from Miilark?”
“Yes.”
“Not…family, I hope.”
“No, nothing like that,” Tilda said, then realized she was unsure if Claudja had meant her actual blood kin, or had just very adroitly asked Tilda about her House.
“Politics,” Tilda said.
Duchess Claudja Perforce of Chengdea blinked, pointedly batting the long lashes of her gray eyes.
“Really? Is politics sometimes troubling? You don’t say.”
Tilda actually laughed a little, and Claudja smiled at her. Both turned back to the water and watched the banks slide by a while longer.
“Is it…” Claudja said carefully. “Is it something you would like to talk about?”
“It is not something that I should.”
“Fair enough.”
Tilda looked at her. “Do you want to talk about why you are going to Camp Town like this?”
Claudja smiled back at her, but shook her head once. “That is not something I can talk about. Not with anyone. Sorry.”
“Fair enough.”
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Somewhere ahead on the raft, a wug tongue-snapped what must have been a large bug out of the air, for some of its fellows hooted approval. Claudja gave a little shiver.
“Gods, that is disconcerting. Surely there must be something we can talk about.”
The Duchess turned and looked back toward the crates, around one of which Dugan’s feet in dirty socks were visible sticking out from the blankets of his bedroll. Claudja turned back around to look out over the water.
“Your man…Dugan,” she said slowly. “He is not an altogether unpleasant-looking fellow. I imagine he could be somewhat presentable, cleaned up a bit.”
Tilda snorted, louder than she had meant to.
“I don’t think he does clean up. That is about as good as it gets.”
Claudja looked at Tilda sideways.
“He is a trifle afraid of you, you know.”
Tilda felt her nose twitch. “Well, that would be because I promised to kill him if he ever touched me again.”
Claudja raised both eyebrows.
“It wasn’t like that,” Tilda said. “It was…complicated.”
Claudja waited for more, but when Tilda said nothing else for a while she shrugged and turned back to the water.
“Well. We have another week on this…floating dance floor, and days overland after that. And I did not think it would look right to bring along a book. Should you become bored enough to delve into complexities, Matilda, I imagine I will be somewhere close at hand.”
Tilda thought for a moment, and finally gave a little sigh before she spoke.
“My friends,” she said, “just call me Tilda.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Sable City Page 44
