by Garry Ocean
“They are beyond the Dominia and the Orsphius itself. They are so faraway that their light has not been able to shine on this sky.”
“Stars? You want to see the stars?” Nick was awestruck. Good thing Sith was not here. The boy would have definitely decided that Nick was hopelessly sick. Nick did not even notice how he had switched to Russian again. The girl nodded silently. Just to make sure, Nick looked around to see if anyone was there. Was this a joke? Valu and the inn master were arguing about something in their corner. Seemed like they had started on another wineskin and nothing else interested them. Whisperer was still sitting in the same position, leaning back in his chair. Lola was singing something to herself in the kitchen.
“Please show me!” the girl said with a hopeful plea in her voice.
“All right, so be it!” Nick decided. “You want to see the stars? All right, I’ll show you the stars.”
He closed his eyes. Nick’s memory immediately pulled up their open terrace of the Altay house. The last family dinner. It happened just last year, but it seemed like eternity. That evening, he announced to his family that he signed up for the Military Space Academy. He had though that his mother would be shocked and against his decision, and was counting on his father’s support. And, of course, his grandma’s. But it turned out to be the opposite. Mother waved her arms in excitement and stated immediately that she had always dreamed about such a career for her son. As she deeply believed that men who did not work in Space in one way or another were not interesting by default. And she could not even imagine her son dawdling at some terrestrial lab. Grandma was less excited. She shook her head in disapproval and simply reminded everyone that this praised Space of theirs took away Nick’s grandfather and uncle on her side of the family. Not to mention Nick’s father, who had lost his parents when he was not even ten. And father just called Nick a blockhead.
After dinner, when the dust settled a little, Nick and his father were standing on the terrace looking at the stars. The sky was black, practically no clouds. The stars were glistening and glimmering beautifully against the sky. His eyes were habitually looking for constellations.
“We humans always strive to learn something new, unknown. Tame the nature. Make it work for us. This is our essence,” his father said to him then. “But I believe this is not the only reason why we are seeking to go farther and deeper into the Space. On the grand scale of things, the human race has already achieved the level of sustainability. We are over forty billion strong. We have inhabited planets in the radius of tens of thousand light years away from the good old Earth. We have learned to produce dirt-cheap energy, leap from one space point to another one, hundreds of parsec away. So why do we need to go farther into Deep Space? Risk our precious lives? In ancient times, men left their warm well-protected caves to get food for their families. The risk was justified then. But now? Tell me, why?”
Nick didn’t know what to say. Indeed, why does he personally need it? Out of sheer interest? Curiosity? To go to places where no man has ever been before and then tell his friends about them in colorful details? To discover something new? But he knew perfectly well that the lion’s share of all discoveries took place in scientific labs. So if you wanted the fame of a pioneering discoverer, you didn’t have to go too far.
“This is what I’ll tell you, son,” his father finished then. “We are searching for ourselves. Going deeper and deeper into the Space, we are trying to find an answer as to who are we, where we came from, why are we? Nothing else, believe me, matters.”
“So beautiful!” the girl’s voice jerked Nick out of his pleasant memories. “Can you show me more?”
Nick closed his eyes again. He started to get amused by the absurdity of what was happening. All right, here you go – Andromeda’s Nebula. First Nick imagined how it looks from the Earth. He remembered that from their school trip to the Tibet Observatory. Then, Nick was shocked by how dense its star clouds were, all tangled up in complex spiral structures. It was a whole star world in itself, a faraway galaxy composed of hundreds of billions of stars.
Then Nick imagined how the Andromeda’s Nebular looks from inside. This was their only family trip, when there were just the three of them – mother, father, and Nick. They went to the Excelsior. The trans-galactic spaceship Poseidon exited in that point of the space on purpose, so that the passengers could enjoy the view of the star cluster opening to their eyes. All tourists onboard, including Nick, were happy and excited beyond words. The spaceship came almost to touch, of course, on the Galaxy scale of things, the three-star Alamak system. One of the stars in the system was brightly orange, the other – deep emerald in color. A little farther away one could see the third star, captured in the gravitational net of the previous two, and it was a tender white-blue in color. The scale and beauty of what they saw left no one indifferent then.
Nick felt a pinch on his wrist and opened his eyes. The girl’s little fingers were squeezing his arm so tightly that her knuckles became white. He un-clutched them very carefully and looked at the girl. Niya’s eyes were full of joy. Nick couldn’t hold back his smile.
“I knew you would come, Big Man,” she whispered. “Here, take this.”
Niya took off of her neck a rope necklace with a matte claw on it.
“This is a haze claw,” she said as if confirming his thoughts. “It will help you. You just show it to her and she will not harm you.”
With these words, the girl put the necklace into his palm and ran to her mother in the kitchen.
Nick fidgeted with it, completely perplexed. His head was aching and spinning. “What’s with me?” he thought feebly, putting the rope with the claw around his neck without a second thought. Using the wall for support, Nick crawled upstairs on his numb legs. Already in bed, Nick thought, “Weird, Whisperer is already here. Sleeping. And Sith is already sniffling in his sleep. And where’s Valu?” For an answer, a loud snoring came through the next room’s wall. Falling into deep sleep, Nick saw the stars again.
********
“Get up, you lazy bones!” Sith’s voice broke through his death-like sleep. “Wow, you can sleep! Everyone is long ready, we are waiting just for you.”
Nick tore himself from the bed in one swift move. The head did not ache anymore, he felt great.
“Wow, I must have dreamed it all,” Nick thought. “Next time I need to go easier on the local mead.” Already outside in the front yard, fastening his shirt on the go, he suddenly felt an object on his chest.
“Oh, no!” Nick couldn’t hold his surprise. Yesterday’s hallucination turned out to be a reality. “Interesting things are happening in the Danish Kingdom,” he muttered to himself a phrase that suddenly popped out from his memory.
The hunters were already outside, standing next to the sloths harnessed to the cart. Nick was surprised that they all looked cheerful. Valu was involved in a lively conversation with Sith. Ron was checking the harness. Whisperer was already in the cart, in his usual position. Nick started out toward them, but suddenly heard someone’s call. He turned to the voice. Niya’s mother was standing in the door.
“Big Man, thank you!” she said quietly.
“Oh no, I thank you, Lola,” Nick mumbled, embarrassed. “Your roast was divine, I’ve never eaten anything as tasty before.”
“Thank you for my daughter,” the woman was looking at him attentively. “Yesterday I saw her smiling for the first time in her life.”
“Oh,” Nick was embarrassed even more. “It’s nothing, really. I mean, I am glad. Please tell her I said hello. On the way back, I’ll bring something from the City for her.”
“Please don’t bother. She does not like the City and everything that relates to it.” The woman paused as if she was going to say something else, but then changed her mind. “Let your path be straight as an arrow and soft as grass, Big Man!”
Nick nodded to her in response and hurried to his friends waiting for him. He could still fill her gaze on him for some time, until the r
oad turned sharply to the side and the village disappeared after the turn.
“So you see, Nick,” Sith said, clearly in good mood. “Another half a day on the road and we will reach the tower, and from there it’s just a little bit more to the ferry. Do you know what the ferry is, Nick? No, you don’t. You surely don’t. I can’t explain it in words. You’ll have to see it for yourself. Are you afraid of the Rapid Waters? I’ve heard that you, the steppe dwellers, are afraid of the water like it’s a fire. Or are people lying about you? What do you say, Nick?”
“And what is this rapid water, Sith?” Nick asked with great interest. He already realized that for the rest of the way he will have to listen to the boy’s ramblings. The most difficult thing was to filter out the stream of words for little seeds of useful information. They had a long road ahead, and Nick braced himself.
“Just how do you live there?” Sith continued, seemingly perplexed. It was obvious he was enjoying the role of an older and more knowledgeable fellow.
“You don’t know simple things. They are right to call you savages,” here he quickly realized that he had overdone it a little, and added hurriedly, “I didn’t mean you, of course. It’s just what people say.”
And then Sith suddenly lowered his voice and asked like a plotter, “Is it true that you don’t burry your dead ones but eat them, just like they are, raw?”
Nick chocked in surprise. Then he steadied his pace and said as jauntily as possible, “No, that’s nonsense. Why would we eat dead flesh?”
With these words, he slid softly and turned up right in front of the boy. He then made an animal face and roared in a very low voice, “We usually eat little children!”
Caught off guard, Sith jumped to the side and fell on the dusty road, losing his balance. Nick broke into laughter and added in his usual voice, “And the chattiest ones get eaten first! As a rule, they taste the best!”
“Not funny!” Sith mumbled, shaking the dust off his clothes and rubbing the injured spot on his body. “One can expect anything from you, savages!”
He walked silently for some time, occasionally mumbling something under his nose. Pretty soon he got tired of being offended and he said in a peace-seeking tone, “As for me, I saw Rapid Waters only once, and from the Tower’s wall. The adults said that the beasts reached the ferry that time. Gobbled up all sloths and the dock.”
“Which time?” Nick asked, understanding nothing.
Sith wanted to say something in the same line as before, but catching Nick’s serious look, explained, “Well, ten years ago, during the last Exodus. The guards killed so many beasts then!”
Sith’s eyes sparkled with the memory of the battle and he continued, excitedly, “The whole area was covered with them. The gatherers then had to clean them up for half a year. The harvest was good then, we still have some stored from that time.”
“And where those beasts came from?” Nick couldn’t understand anything from Sith’s stories.
“From the Forest, you fool!” Sith didn’t hold himself back anymore. “Where else do you think they could come from?”
“Let Nick alone,” Whisperer’s coarse voice came from the cart. Turned out the old man was listening to their conversation carefully. “Don’t you see he doesn’t understand you? Tell him everything from the beginning. Start from the old tradition that I told you near the Stone Gate.”
“Can I really tell him all that?” the boy’s eyes were round. “Won’t he tell everything to his fellow steppe dwellers?”
“It’s not that great of a secret,” Whisperer mumbled into his beard. “Besides, he is as of the steppe dwellers as you are of the city folk.” The Whisperer giggled, having found this comparison funny.
The boy hesitated for a moment, thinking over the old man’s words. Then he made a decision. “Well, if that’s so, listen to me, Nick.” He lowered his voice, putting on an air of mystery. “And don’t interrupt me until I’m done!”
While Sith was narrating his story, Nick was listening attentively, without interrupting the boy even once. Although he did have a lot of questions in his head. To think of it, he now had more of them than before. On the one hand, it became a little clearer what this Exodus of theirs is. On the other hand, it was not clear how to classify it. Was it something like a natural disaster happening cyclically every ten years? It was strange. And the forest came out in the stories somewhat biblically. Nick was not an expert on history of world religions. He only vaguely remembered one legend on the man’s expulsion from the Paradise.
“There, everything was growing on trees too. There was no need to labor for food. Pick a fruit from a tree and you have a nice lunch,” Nick thought. “On the other hand, what do I know about their land cultivation? Take, for example, the gatherers. Why are they called this way? Not cultivators, not husbandmen, but gatherers. As if everything grows by itself and they just need to reap the fruit. And there’s no cattle raising here either. Hmmm. It’s not really much clearer.”
Nick glanced at Sith. “And this secret agent is just as good. Could have told me this story a lot earlier. I would have had a lot more time to analyze and compare the data.”
Suddenly, they heard Valu’s joyous shout. He was pointing somewhere in front of them. Nick looked ahead and saw a silhouette resembling a medieval castle.
“That’s the Tower, Nick,” Sith confirmed his thoughts. And then asked Whisperer, “And the City is even bigger, right?”
“Bigger, bigger,” the old man answered with a smile. “Urge the sloths on, will you, otherwise we won’t make it there till the evening. They will close the pier when it gets dark. Then we will have to spend the night under the open sky.”
********
As they approached the castle, Nick was surprised to notice that the building was indeed very much like medieval castles he had seen on the banks of the mighty river Rein. It had the same thick and tall stonewalls with long cutouts of the loopholes and round towers above them. To complete the picture, the castle needed a moat, heavy iron gates and a drawbridge.
“Well, there is a moat,” Nick corrected himself, “And more than one.” There were three, and even though they had no water inside, they were deep, at least four humans in height. Every moat was fenced with thick crudely sharpened logs set at a 45-degree angle. The ground at the edges of the moats was burnt and covered with some greasy soot. It gave out strong stench.
“Against whom did they build this stockade?” Nick thought. “Do they have hostile mammoths here?” The sight in front of his eyes made him a little uncomfortable.
The castle, or as the natives called it, tower, was busy with work. People were running back and forth on its tall walls. One could hear hammers banging and the drawstrings whistling. Through the noise and bangs the hunters could hear tidbits of conversations and curses with the mention of the Departed Gods. On the round watchtowers, craftsmen were installing some mechanisms. Nick could never guess what their function was. Besides, it was impossible to see the details from below and because of the loopholes it was only possible to see the mechanisms’ wide copper trumpets.
The hunters went around the castle on the left side and, to Nick’s great surprise, proceeded farther. The road was going up, and a little later the travelers were up on a hill that opened a picturesque view on the valley. There, no more than a couple of kilometers away, ran a broad river. There was a dock with a moored barge on it. Nick had no doubt that it was a docking pier. “But the barge looks more like a ferry,” Nick corrected himself. It was in a full unloading mode. People were rolling big wooden barrels off the ferry and loading them onto big carts powered by harnessed sloths.
“They’ve started to prepare earlier this year, haven’t they?” Whisperer mumbled. “With this, we may not be able to get on the ferry today. See those barrels they are unloading? They have flammable tar inside. They will pour it into the moats. All right, Sith, why are you standing idle, drive the sloths to the pier!”
Soon enough, their cart stopped ne
ar a shabby crudely made booth. On its rickety roof it had a shaft, seemingly put up there in a rush. On the shaft, a dirty old rag dangled. If one had a certain degree of fantasy, one could imagine that at one time the rag was a flag. It was so faded and dusty that it was impossible to make out what coat of arms the flag had on it. Near the booth, three men were sitting and playing a game. One was throwing the dice, the other two carefully observed the process, not forgetting to comment each throw.
Nick looked at them carefully. Their clothes were starkly different from the clothes of the villagers he got used to by now. “It resembles a military uniform too much,” Nick thought. “The same design, looks very practical. Nothing extra, no frills.” On their feet, the men were wearing short leather boots. Thick linen wide pants in a dark color and rough gray shirts, worn underneath knee-long light chain-mails confirmed that Nick was right.
“Now, this is more interesting. A regular army suggests a different level of development,” Nick thought, continuing to look at the players. He immediately spotted long sheaths with swords that were fastened to their wide belts. Near one of the watchmen, a crossbow carelessly was left on the ground.
The watchmen paid no attention to the travelers at all. Whisperer got out of the cart, groaning, and went toward them, holding something looking like a rolled papyrus in his hand.
“Honorable guards,” he said with respect, “Here is our travel document. We would like to make it to the pier today.”
“Can’t you see we’re busy, old man!” one guard mumbled without raising his head.
“I have a travel document issued by the pier commander himself, honorable Archy.”
“Why not the Guardians themselves? Do you really have to be here?” the guard turned around and spat to Whisperer’s feet. “Why are you coming and going here? Everyone needs to go to the City? Why can’t you stay put in your Forest? You only spread the dirt and disease!”
