The First Protector ec-2

by James White

  Brian nodded and said, "There goes my poteen."

  "… Our hands must be shaken dry," she went on, with a grateful nod in his direction, "rather than being dried with a cloth that might contain harmful impurities. There is more than enough poison in that leg as it is and its removal should be done speedily. That's why I need the lamps now rather than waiting for daylight."

  The captain looked at Seamus, who nodded and left quickly to begin making the necessary arrangements, then turned his eyes on Sinead again.

  'What of the seventh man?" he said.

  She paused for a moment, her face clouding over and plainly seeking for inner composure, then went on, "He is the young man, Liam, and the worst of them all. He took a deep thrust in his lower belly that opened his boweL so it did not matter whether or not the blade was poisoned because his own wastes escaped into his body with the same effect. He has a high fever and is in great and continuing pain, and moans softly and constantly when many another man would be screaming in agony, but he tells me that doing such a thing would make him feel unmanly and ashamed of himself. There is no way that I can save his life, which will end in four or five days' time. The potion I administered, which is itself a slow poison, deadens his pain a little but does not remove it.

  "In greater strength the potion would kill him within a few moments," she ended, "with no pain at all."

  "Healer," said the captain gravely, "is that the action you yourself would take?"

  "It is," she said, looking at his face for a long moment without either blinking or looking away. "But the final decision must be yours because you are his captain."

  "I am much more than his captain," said the other in a low voice that was filled with pain, "I am also a good friend of his family who has known him since he was a babe in arms. Neither I nor they would disagree with your proposed action, so your recommendation is approved. But before you put him into the endless sleep, I shall say my last words to him and, when you are administering the potion I would like you, too, to speak to him, not as another boy but with gentleness as the last woman he will ever meet."

  "I will do that," she replied softly as the captain was leaving.

  Ma'el looked at Sinead, picked up his folded map and rose to leave. "I hear the captain and Seamus outside with your patient," he said. "Regrettably, I can be of no help in what you have to do. I wish steady hands and calmness of mind to all of you, and to Tomas the best of good fortune…"

  "Please, before you go," Brian broke in. "Declan and I were too busy last night to see the magical beast that frightened off the Romans. What did you do, what was it, and what did it look like?"

  "I merely shone a light onto the foresail," said the old man gently, inclining his head toward Sinead. "It was the healer who conjured up the terrifying beast."

  "Sinead," said Brian, "you're a healer, not a magician. What does he mean and what did you do?"

  The captain and Seamus arrived carrying Tomas at that point and Sinead, looking uncomfortable, told him that she had done very little and she had too many instructions for them to waste time answering unimportant questions. But suddenly the subject and the question arose again and from a source she could not very well refuse to answer.

  They were ready to begin work and the medical situation and their plans for remedying it had been explained in detail to Tomas. He had already downed almost two flagons of wine so that, he told them with a wide and completely relaxed smile, if he had not been roped tightly to the table he would have been floating close to the ceiling. But before the work began he, too, wanted to know all about the terrible monster that had been conjured up to protect their ship, and which he had not been able to see for himself.

  He said that if he was to die this night it should not be from curiosity.

  'The magician lit up the foresail," Sinead said, her face coloring with embarrassment, "and I produced the monster. Are you quite sure that you want me to do it again?"

  "No," Tomas mumbled, then immediately contradicted himself, "I mean, yes. Captain, you told us that it wouldn't hurt any member of the crew. If it is too fearful, I'll tell myself that the wine is affecting my mind and I will simply disbelieve in its existence."

  The captain laughed quietly and said, "It will not hurt you, drunk or sober. But your mind is working clearly and with the logic of a philosopher, so it may be that you are still too sober. Have some more of Brian's wine, look at the monster and then, Tomas my friend, we must take off your leg. Healer?"

  Sinead nodded and reached up to the lanterns hanging from the low roof beams, turning down the wicks of all but one which she lowered on its chain to chest height before closing all except one of its windows. A single square of yellow light shone on the cabin's aft wall in clear sight of everyone. She placed her hands between the light and the wall.

  "When I was very young," she said. "My father showed me how to make shadow pictures…" her hands clasped together in different ways as she demonstrated, "… of a dog, like this, or a duck or my favorite, a butterfly that moved its wings. Later I became more imaginative and made pictures of fearful demons and flying monsters including this one. of which, to humor me, my father pretended to be afraid. Last night this same one appeared briefly in giant size, filling the entire expanse of the foresail which rippled and bellied in a wind which made the monster's body move with great realism. The boarders glimpsed it for the few moments that Ma'el's light was shining and thought that we had conjured up a terrible, winged demon. Unlike my father they were not pretending to be afraid of it and so they ran back to their boats."

  For a moment Tomas stared wide-eyed at the dark picture and the illuminated hands that were making it, then he swore and began to laugh. "It frightens me, a little, even when I know what it is." he said, and looked into her face for a moment before he went on. "Thank you, healer, for the most hilarious and outrageous joke I have ever heard, as well as for everything else you are trying to do for me. I am ready."

  Declan was to remember the sights and sounds of that night for the remainder of his life, and they were to trouble his sleep for many weeks to come. Tomas had screamed throughout, stopping only to breathe, and Declan had not blamed him because in the same position he would have been doing the same.

  Despite the padded cord that had been twist-tightened around the upper leg to reduce the flow of blood, after the first deep, circular cut was made to the depth of the bone there was a frightening amount of it oozing and pumping sluggishly onto the captain's table. It was even worse when Sinead, her words calm but her face the palest he had ever seen on a living person, made two more deep vertical cuts at the edge of the original one and asked him to hold the resulting flaps of muscle and bleeding flesh backward and away from the bone while she used the saw. The job had fallen to him because, in spite of the tight ropes encircling his body, both the captain and Brian had been needed to hold the struggling Tomas still. As she worked Sinead had explained that the bone had to be cut short so that a flap of muscle and flesh could be folded over the end of it to form, if the work was successful, a fleshy pad that would support a wooden leg.

  But then she had asked him to hold tightly a slippery, pulsing artery between two tightly pressed fingertips and a thumb while she tied off the end with a length of poteen-soaked catgut while explaining, as if he had been some kind of high druid examiner of healers, or perhaps her dead father, that the ends of the knot were being left long so that they would project beyond the wound and be withdrawn when healing was complete.

  She had done many other intricate and bloody things before he had been asked to hold the edges of the fleshy flaps together while she joined them together with more cleansed catgut except for a small slit containing a short length of quill which, she had said, would allow bad blood and pus to flow away so that the wound, if the fates willed it, would not go bad on the inside. By the time that had been done and the stump bound firmly in washed rags, Tomas was quiet again. She had given Declan a small, serious smile, then thanked everyon
e and told them that their faces were paler than the patient's and that they should all sit down for a while.

  Lastly she had bent over Tomas, raised his head slowly in one hand while holding a small cup to his lips with the other.

  'Tomas," she said gently, "this night your body has worked harder than it has ever done in a month of labor, and endured more pain than most men are called on to suffer in a lifetime. It is all that hard work and pain, more than the mind-dulling potion I have administered, or the soft, warm hammock that awaits you, that will put you to sleep.

  "So rest easy, Tomas," she said, laying her hand gently on his forehead, "you have done very well."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Excerpts from Ma'el Report. Days 112,557 to 112,584

  The weather remained fair and the winds favorable until we passed through the Pillars of Hercules and turned eastward into the Mediterranean, whereafter the wind continued westerly and mild. In spite of explaining that this good fortune was due simply to the operation of the meteorological laws of chance, the crew believed me responsible and thanked me many times for it.

  "I am deliberately curtailing the use of my 'magic map' because it would be an unkindness to make the captain too dependent on it before I leave his ship.

  "On the second day after repelling the Roman boarding craft off Finisterre there was a ceremonial disposal of the form of flesh that had recently housed the young man Liam. The rite involved the officers and some of the crew speaking words of praise and admiration about his short life and I, although present, did not take part because the philosophical reasoning behind it was unclear to me as there is nothing with any resemblance to this ceremony among the Taelon.

  "The damaged helmsman, Tomas. is progressing well after giving the healer initial cause for concern when his stump became inflamed for a few days and required constant poulticing. Now, when the sea is calm, he moves about the deck on two crutches made for him by the ship's carpenter, who has also promised to make him a thick, wooden peg and attachment straps so that he will be able to balance his weight naturally and discard the crutches. The healer insists that this should not be done for several weeks so as to enable the fleshy pad at the end of the leg stump to heal and harden to the point where it will support the helmsman's weight without pain. By now all of the crew know that the healer is female, but they maintain the pretense and use only her title rather than her name, and from conversations I have overheard on my sound sensor it is clear that they would be willing to die rather than allow any harm to befall her.

  "I am particularly impressed by the way the helmsman, Tomas, has been able to overcome his disability. The idea of a physically crippled Taelon is inconceivable and repugnant to me.

  "Apart from my servants, who are still not entirely at ease with each other, the psychological behavior of the humans on board is very good, a condition which Captain Nolan describes as being in good spirits. When they are not otherwise engaged and the sun is out, they have taken to projecting hand pictures on the deck or superstructure and compete with each other to see who can make the most realistic subjects. As the person who saved them by showing the first picture, the healer is called on to judge the competitions. At times they have a tendency to behave like children, which is strange because their life spans are too ephemeral to waste on activities that are nonessential. But from time to time they do this, and in spite of the desirability of remaining emotionally detached from the specimens under evaluation, 1 am aware of a strange feeling for these ridiculously short-lived beings that is analogous to the affection felt by them for their even more transient and non-sapient work animals and pets.

  "It was this strange feeling, as well as the inconvenience of losing and having to replace servants, which caused me once again to intervene secretly so that their lives could be saved

  …"

  –

  They were passing between the southern extremities of Sardinia and the north coast of Africa and turning northeast with a light following wind onto the heading that would take them to Rome, when the triangular sails of two ships were sighted astern. Within moments Seamus joined them beside the wagon.

  "Healer, Declan,'" he said, his voice unnecessarily loud because it was plain that he wanted Ma'el, who was resting in the wagon, to overhear him as well. "They are pirate craft out of Carthage by the look of them, with about the same spread of sail as ourselves but with the advantage of rested oarsmen or, more likely, galley slaves who can be whipped half to death to give them the speed they need. A stern chase is usually a long chase, but the captain estimates that they will catch us by midafternoon unless…"

  He left the word hanging.

  "You want Brian and I to take an oar…?" Declan began.

  "No," Seamus broke in, glancing at his long-axe and gladius. "We need you rested if you are to fight well."

  Sinead looked at Declan and made an obvious attempt to force calmness into her voice as she said, "If they catch us as early as that, there can be no fearsome beast to threaten them from the sails. Or were you suggesting something else?"

  "I don't know what I'm suggesting," said Seamus grimly as he was turning to leave. "These pirates are worse, much worse, believe me, than the Romans we fought off at Finisterre. But Ma'el has withdrawn from us.

  Even though he remains friendly he will not even show us his magic map. I was hoping that you would ask your master to help us."

  When he had gone, Declan looked up at the wagon and said, "We'd better tell Ma'el about this."

  Sinead shook her head. "There's no need," she said, "I have the feeling that he hears and knows everything that is happening on this ship. Whether he will do anything about it is another matter."

  They watched without speaking as the pursuing ships crept closer and the climbing sun began to warm the deck timbers around them, the silence broken only by the steady creaking and splashing of the oars, and the drum that gave them their timing. But something incredible was happening, and the suddenly excited voices of the captain and Seamus aft showed that they, too, had seen it. Gradually, and in spite of their filled sails and the sunlight flashing off their oars, the pirate ships were falling behind.

  Seamus returned when the ships were shrunken with distance, his teeth making an uneven white line across his bearded face. "The captain says that we must have encountered a strong, northeasterly current," he said jubilantly, "one that our enemies have not been able to find. It is aiding both sails and oarsmen and if we can stay in it the pirates will be out of sight by sunset…" He paused to glance at the wagon, "… So if you haven't done so already, there is no need to worry the old man about this matter."

  When he had gone, Declan grasped one of the ropes, many of which the crew had considered unnecessary, that anchored Ma'el's wagon to the vessel's structure, and felt it thrumming in his hand like the string of a silent lute before he looked at Sinead.

  "It is not a fortuitous current that is helping us," he said quietly. "I think we both know that it is…"

  She raised a warning finger to her lips and said, "He will hear you."

  "Yes," said Declan, "but on our first night out of Cobh he told Brian that he did not want to control our minds or how we used them. But I would not want Ma'el to think that my mind was a stupid one."

  She didn't speak and he went on quietly, "Look at the ropes holding Ma'el's wagon. They encircle or are tightly attached to the strongest and best-supported cross-members of the hull. When the ship pitches and rolls and the vehicle's weight moves off center, the ropes on one side should tighten and on the other loosen, yet they all remain the same and as tight as…" He groped for a suitable word without finding it and went on, "You are not stupid, either, and must know what is happening because I remember you telling me that Ma'el used to lighten his wagon for the horse's sake."

  Still she did not speak. Declan struck the nearest rope with the edge of his hand and watched it vibrate for a moment before he continued, "There is no favoring current. He and his wagon are lifting
us so high in the water that there must only be a fraction of the ship's bottom immersed, so that means the light wind is pushing us with greater speed and the oarsmen are assisting it because they have a lesser weight to pull against. There is no doubt in my mind now. Ma'el is a truly great and powerful magician, but he doesn't want anyone to know about it except, for some reason, we two."

  Sinead stared for a long moment at the side of the wagon. "I don't believe that Ma'el would hurt anyone for talking about him," she said, "but let us keep this knowledge to ourselves."

  In the captain's cabin that evening, the only subject of conversation between the old man, Brian, and the ship's officers concerned the plans for off loading Ma'el's wagon and party at Ostia in two day's time, and the discussion became even more intense when Brian advocated a complete change of plan at the last moment.

  "My onward trip to Alexandria is not all that urgent," he said, "and I will enjoy a short stay in Rome while Ma'el is doing whatever it is that a magician does there. It will mean that he can safely leave his wagon on board and away from prying eyes while we use local conveyances for travelling to and from the city. Ma'el, I know my way about Rome and will gladly serve as a guide, as well as gaining you entry to libraries, establishments, and homes of the Patrician families that you might otherwise find difficult of access."

  Ma'el smiled the gentle thanks of one who has been offered a service that he might not need.

  "After all," Brian added disarmingly, "with you as a close companion it is likely, nay, certain, that I will be able to discover more secrets of value than any obtained during my lifetime of spying."

  And so it was that they threaded their way through the constantly arriving and departing grain ships that filled the bellies of the citizens of the Eternal City, to tie up at a dock assigned by the harbormaster while the sights and sounds and smells common to any busy seaport, as well as those peculiar to this one, filled the morning air. Brian, as good as his word, busied himself arranging transportation, Sinead was so bursting with quiet excitement, as was Declan, at the thought of visiting Rome itself that they paid little attention to the organization of the affairs of a docked ship and its crew.