The Luck of Brin's Five

by Wilder, Cherry;

  “Stay here. Is that the scribe helping us?” He plunged out into the daylight, followed by the Harper, and at last I was able to get a look at the struggle.

  Diver had his stun-gun out and had already felled one vassal as he drew away with Vel Ragan to the open ground at the end of the camping place. But the bond of Gulgarvor made them heedless of any danger, and Vel Ragan, unsteady on his lame leg, stumbled and fell in their path. They were swarming onto him; Diver rushed back, stunning two more, and dragged the scribe to his feet again. Diver, speaking plainly in Moruian, warned them to keep back, but they did not heed him. Then Mamor and the Harper joined the fray, each seizing a vassal from behind and wrestling. Diver had used his stun-gun with measured force; already those that he felled had bounced up again, and as he altered the setting two of the largest brutes leaped upon him. Vel Ragan, behind a tree now, fired his weapon, and I saw Red-Belt, the leader, clutch a wounded arm, pierced by a dart. Diver had one of his assailants down with a chopping blow, but the other was pressing him dangerously. A crowd was gathering now, to watch this strange, long battle.

  Narneen crawled to my side and said, “There is a flying machine . . .”

  Blacklock flew in low, with the big wind-blade churning the air and tossing the treetops. The crowd scattered and crouched, but the members of the Gulgarvor still fought on as if possessed. I saw the machine land on open ground, then a present danger made me cry out for Brin. Red-Belt and another vassal, who had an arrow skin-sewn in blue on its upper arm, were racing upon us, determined to regain the shelter of the tent or seek hostages. Brin sprang to the door again, pushing me aside; she carried a loom board as a weapon and I heard Red-Belt grunt as she used it.

  She held it out of the tent, prodding and parrying the assaults of Red-Belt and Arrow.

  “Devils!” panted Red-Belt. “Nest of devils!”

  “Keep back!” cried Brin. “I charge you in the winds’ name!”

  “Repent!” growled Arrow. “Make clean, mountain weaver! Give up your bond with the Foreigner!”

  “Keep back from my Family, my children and my home tent that you have defiled!” said Brin, in a voice that made me shudder. “Or I swear by Eenath I will strike you down!”

  Then she struck at them again, more fiercely still, and I felt Old Gwin come closer, placing the whimpering Tomar in my arms. She drew back the flap until she stood at Brin’s side and in a sharp chanting voice she cried out, “Keep back, for the fire of Eenath has consumed your souls! We know you all, and you are all accursed! You will go down into fire and have Gulgarvor enough, for your very bones will be consumed to ashes . . .”

  The pair of them, Red-Belt and Arrow, halted for a moment at the ancient’s curse; then they came on, and Old Gwin dipped into a leather sack on her wrist and flung a handful of dust in their faces.

  “Narneen,” she shrieked, “call the names of the Gulgarvor for all the world to know!”

  “VARADON!” cried Narneen, kneeling by me in the darkness, and I echoed her cry and so did Brin. The Leader gave a cry of pain and surprise, for Old Gwin was throwing the dust of the fireweed.

  “MEETAL!” cried Narneen. The vassal marked with the arrow reeled back, and its eyes were stung with the dust.

  “ARTHO!” cried Narneen. The two, backing away from the tent, half-blind, fell over another vassal coming to their aid. Brin, holding the loom board and Gwin with her sack of pepper, edged after them. I stood up, holding Tomar, and took Narneen’s hand and we stepped out into the sunlight.

  “TRANJE!” cried Narneen.

  “Tranje!” echoed Brin and Gwin and myself at the tops of our voices. A vassal, wrestling with the Harper, stood back amazed.

  “TROY!” cried Narneen.

  “Troy!” The shout rose up even louder, for now the Harper and Mamor had joined in the naming of the Gulgarvor. The wretched Troy broke loose from fighting with Diver. Mamor’s opponent, still not named, rushed at Narneen, and Gwin threw another handful of dust.

  “ALLOO!” cried Narneen.

  “Alloo!” The cry went up on all sides.

  At last the Gulgarvor faltered, and all rushed for open ground. They slammed full-tilt into Blacklock and Fer and two sturdy members of the black and white escort who had somehow crowded into the flying machine Dah’gan. They were flung down and herded into a ring, wild-eyed, panting sweat-streaked creatures, some unarmed, some clutching weapons . . . they looked like devils indeed.

  “BANO!” Narneen cried out the last name, and it was repeated. Then we saw that one member of the Gulgarvor lay still on the ground, apart from its companions.

  Blacklock clapped Diver on the back and said in a matter-of-fact tone, “At your call, Garl Brinroyan. But with the power of Brin’s Five, I see you have flown past this net.”

  “Let us make all secure!” said Fer. He gestured to the members of the escort, who carried ropes.

  “What will you do?” asked Diver suddenly.

  “Bind up these creatures,” said Blacklock. “What, did you think I meant to string them up? My nickname is not Gargan, like my uncle’s, I promise you.”

  With the help of Mamor and the Harper, the six living members of the Gulgarvor were bound all together and sat on the grass in the sunlight of the New Year, with their fallen comrade. Fer walked about and bade the members of the crowd go about their business and refrain from watching a private quarrel.

  I sat on the grass too, at a safe distance, with Tomar, Narneen and Old Gwin, still shivering and muttering from the ordeal. Vel Ragan came slowly out from behind his tree and waved; the Witness Onnar came running to his side. They approached our group hesitantly, then Onnar held out her hands and Narneen ran to her. It was a moment, in all the terrible violence and confusion, that I was often to see in my thoughts. I felt as if some piece of weaving was complete; the last shuttle had gone through a certain panel and the pattern was ready to be seen. Brin came to join us and took Tomar in her arms.

  “Let it be known that Vel Ragan and Onnar have saved this Family!” she said. She clasped hands with each of them in turn.

  “It was the power of Narneen that made it possible,” said Vel Ragan. He was a strange, shy person, made harsh, I guessed, by what life had brought him, including his disfigurement. His mind was the keenest of any Moruian I have ever known, for all the ways of city living and politics and the relations between one person and another. In this he surpassed even Nantgeeb, who was before everything a scholar and a ruling spirit, who could see only one way at a time.

  Now, on the fairground at Otolor, Old Gwin took the edge off the day by squinting crossly up at Vel Ragan. “I forgive you the sleep-spying, young scribe,” she said, “and wish you a Happy New Year.”

  We returned to our tent and purified it, and I had the joy of seeing Blacklock, the hero himself, together with Fer, that legendary flier, under our roof branches, sitting among us. But the New Year was not a happy one and all the soothing talk ringing in my head made the hurt and confusion I felt worse instead of better. I stumbled out of the tent and saw the members of the Gulgarvor sitting under a tree, dazed as twirlers, and I felt a stab of hopeless pity for the creatures. Brin and Blacklock had been at pains to tell Diver of the threat that they presented; they would never cease to threaten him with capture until death took every one of them.

  Their naming, the death of their comrade, the offers that had been made to them secretly by Blacklock, a member of clan Pentroy, for pardon and release . . . nothing could sever them from the bond of Gulgarvor. They could not return to Tiath Avran Pentroy with the task incomplete; they were outcasts. . . . Varadon, Meetal, Artho, Tranje, Troy, Alloo and Bano. Even the dead member, Bano, was not released from the seven-fold cord, and indeed the spirit of this member weighed upon all of us. Bano, an omor like Meetal, Artho, and Alloo, had died at Diver’s hands, not from stun-gun or dart or cudgel but from the single chopping blow with which Diver had felled her to the ground. The killing lay on him like a shadow; he had a special aversion to killi
ng a female, even a strong, fierce omor, seeking his capture.

  As I sat on the grass by myself, looking as dazed as the prisoners, Blacklock, Fer and Brin came out of the tent with Diver. They were talking about boats and plans, but it seemed like so much of the grown-up chatter I had heard so often that it went literally over my head.

  “Dorn . . .” it was Brin standing over me.

  “Dorn Brinroyan,” said Fer. “The escort will stay here so we have vacant places. Would you like to fly with me back to the field?”

  To fly . . . in Blacklock’s machine! Part of me was ready to jump up, but instead I found myself coming up from the ground wearily and unsteadily.

  “Thank you,” I stammered, “but I would rather stay on the ground this time.”

  He smiled, green eyes twinkling, and exchanged one of those grown-up glances with Brin. “It has been too much for him,” she said.

  I was ashamed and sad and felt tears stinging my eyes as I stood looking at the grass. There was too much I could not bear thinking about, from Jebbal to the Gulgarvor. I turned my back on the whole of the New Year and went into the tent. I lay down on top of a sleeping bag beside Narneen, and the last thing I heard was my sib, the Witness, cracking nuts with her teeth.

  I slept heavily but not long enough, and I seemed to hear the New Year Shout in the depths of my sleep. I woke with Diver gripping my arm . . . the Great Sun had gone down, and the people had shouted to see the Far Sun rise up beside it at least two hours before. Now the fair was in a sleepy stage of rejoicing.

  “Come, put on your gray cloak again, and we will walk through the fair to the river,” said Diver. I looked about and hardly recognized my own tent for it had been stripped and packed while I slept. There were strange faces there; three weavers had been hired to help with the packing under the sharp eyes of Gwin and the Harper.

  “Blacklock has hired us a boat,” explained Diver.

  I went to the water bag, luckily still unemptied and drew out water for my face. “Wait!” I said. “What will become of the Ulgan’s barge? Has Gordo Beethan come to the fair as it was promised?”

  Diver shook his head. “He has not been seen. Mamor arranged for a family to take the barge back to Cullin.”

  “I hope no evil has come to him.”

  They were calling outside the tent now, “Dorn!” and “Diver!” so we went out. Blacklock and Fer and the escort had gone; the Gulgarvor were no longer beneath the tree. Only Brin’s Five stood there in Esder light beside a wheeled handcart, which showed that this Family had come up in the world. Once the tent was down and folded, the hired helpers set off on the paved ring-road, and we turned to walk through the fair.

  We went into the cloth market and halted before a lace stall while Old Gwin examined the lace and collected credits from the stall keeper for some of her own lace that had been sold. I saw the Family, tired after their ordeal, with Tomar sleeping on Brin’s back, for he would not ride with the others now that she had returned. There stood Harper Roy, tuning the good harp over his shoulder and Diver muffled up, with his head bent to hide his eyes, and Narneen leaning sleepily into the folds of his cloak.

  I stood at the back with Mamor, and I saw us, side by side, making part of the family.

  “What has become of the Gulgarvor?” I asked.

  “Blacklock’s escort and the Town Watch took charge of them.”

  “Will they be . . . put down?”

  “It might be kinder!” said Mamor grimly.

  “No!” I shuddered; the idea of a kind death was horrible to me.

  “None would do it,” said Mamor, “except their own liege. They will be parted . . . some sent north and some to the Fire-Town. Murno Pentroy’s people will see to it.”

  Brin led us through the cloth market and the stands for rope-twisting and another place for eating and drinking that we had never visited before.

  “Where are we going?” I called. The others laughed.

  “To the Sun Carpet, where else?” said the Harper.

  “Your friend Blacklock has a turn coming up!” said Mamor.

  The press of people at the fair was greater than ever and still their faces were happy, the mood was one of friendship. But the light of Esder, strong yet silvery, made them strange, a parade of ghosts and shadows, revelling in some other world. I caught a gleam of Diver’s eyes under his hood as the crowd jostled him.

  I drew up to him and took his hand. “How does it really seem to you, among all these Moruians?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “Very strange . . .” He threw back his hood and deliberately held up his head. For an instant, as he looked about, I saw what he saw: thin bodies, angular; faces that were long, peaked, shadowed, stripped to the bone or tilted and more firmly fleshed in youth. And the eyes . . . wrapping around the head in the way we admired, wide apart, in deep sockets, sometimes skewed to the sides in the look we called Gastil or South-North; eyes wide open, gleaming, or glazed with tipsy-mash and lack of sleep, eyes with thick natural lashes or lashes oiled into spikes, or painted white for the New Year. A flickering, glistening night-forest of eyes.

  I tried to imagine a crowd of Diver’s people, and I could hardly do it: skins of every color from black to a whitish pallor; blue, forward-looking eyes . . . and what other colors might they have? Red eyes? Purple? Orange? Short folk and tall and the females oddly shaped; forests of curly hair like a crooked fleece or the wigs of grandees; all the shapes and sizes of Man milling about under a light even stranger than that of Esder, the impossible light of some reflecting dead little world called the Moon. It made me laugh, and I tried to tell Diver what I had imagined.

  “Well, you are not far wrong,” he said, smiling; “but if I have the colors right, there are no red eyes or purple or orange. Besides, Blacklock’s eyes are nearly orange to my way of thinking.” So he went on to tell me the colors of the eyes of men, and to point out those that came closest to earth colors among our family and the passers-by.

  We came to the edge of the Sun Carpet, and there was a viewing stand filled with people from the Bird Clan, with a place in the middle for Diver. He put up his hood and greeted the Mattroyan and his child and Deel Giroyan, with an arm bandaged from a hard landing in Gwervanin. We looked around for Ablo, but he was not to be seen; so we sat comfortably and examined the great dancing floor. The Sun Carpet is one of the wonders of Otolor; it is not a true woven carpet but a huge tufted rug, made in sections like a flat loaf divided, on wicker frames that can be easily replaced. The colors are red; turquoise, yellow and tan in a waving pattern, with motifs of double circles for the two suns.

  Harps and flutes were sounded, and the troupe of skippers who had been performing whisked away. There was a flutter of the familiar black and white; we cheered for Blacklock, and there he was . . . in bright orange, of all colors! Diver leaned down to me and whispered, “To match his eyes,” and I laughed until I choked, and Mamor patted me sternly between the shoulders. First of all Blacklock did the triple leap—which meant springing over a series of high frames; then he rode the circle—a wheel with foot pedals in the center. In all these feats he was accompanied by members of the escort so that the whole performance was finished and perfect, like a dance or lace pattern. At the end of each feat, he beckoned to the crowd to try the same thing, and certain town grandees or clan folk, including two from clan Dohtroy who had flown unluckily in the Bird Clan, came forward and performed well. But none were so fine as Blacklock himself, who had a sweetness, a precision, a gift for pausing and seeming about to topple and coming upright again, so that his audience laughed and gasped.

  For the finale, the escort brought on a whole raft of fleece cushions until the Sun Carpet was nearly covered. Blacklock stood alone, and the escort clambered on his shoulders; two stood still, then more clambered up until he supported a rack of six, seven persons, and a little one, Spinner herself, went up and was balanced on the top. Then Blacklock began to groan and rock like a tree in the wind, and the others with hi
m; and with a final whoop, while we laughed ourselves into tears, the whole structure came toppling down upon the cushions. But more was to come, for Blacklock stood before our viewing stand and gestured; we knew who it was he wanted. Diver climbed down, grinning, and stood in the midst of the Sun Carpet, side by side with Blacklock, their arms linked to make the base for a double rack. Up went the escort, placing themselves differently this time, six, seven, eight, nine, eleven and Spinner was the twelfth. Diver, taking his cue from Blacklock, began to groan, and Blacklock echoed and the whole crazy rack swayed; the crowd hallooed with delight and down they all came. Everyone, even Old Gwin, was doubled up with mirth.

  “Well, it is childish stuff,” she said. “I don’t know why I laugh . . . except for that cheeky sprig of Pentroy. And if Hunter Geer has shaken Blacklock by the hand, well, I have had him in my tent and well-acquainted with the Luck of my own Family.”

  Then Blacklock left the Sun Carpet, and there was a dive for the fleece cushions, which he left as pickings for the crowd; soon there was not one to be seen.

  Brin gave us the sign, and we left the stand to go to our boat. I saw, as we left, that the Sun Carpet was being removed to reveal the bare brown earth under its beautiful frames, but I did not realize what this meant until we were some way off, on the western edge of the circle. Diver had come back, panting, from his feat.

  “Wait!” said Harper Roy, drawing us to a halt. His sharp ears had caught the jingle of shell bracelets. We turned back at once and huddled together in shadow beside an empty stall; Mamor lifted Narneen to the counter shelf to see better.

  There was the same furtive jingle of shells as the twirlers came to the dancing place, then fire shot up in the center of the circle. Petsalee! There he stood once more, gnarled and long and brown, dipping his hands in and out of the cool flames. There was an enormous host of twirlers—three bands at least—but the Leader was Petsalee, and he began to chant at once in his queer, penetrating voice.

  “I am returned from the dead!”