by Hugh Cook
* * *
That day, as they marched north, they saw no sign of soldiers, so Hor-hor-hurulg-murg called a halt early in the afternoon. He caught fish in the river, and gave the women one each. Yen Olass found everything in her tinder box was damp, so she spread it out to dry; for the time being, they would have to eat the fish raw.
After the fish, the women climbed for eggs. Then they sat down to feast. Resbit started telling riddles, and Yen Olass tried to answer them. Their Melski guide helped them out with their language difficulties. Some of the riddles were easy enough, such as 'How do you sex an egg?' where the answer was simply 'By growing it into a chicken or rooster.' But one, which baffled Yen Olass, went as follows:
I was sired by a stallion.
I am furry as a rabbit.
I live in trees, unsuccessfully.
Yen Olass struggled with it for ages, then finally gave up. She demanded the answer.
'A gamos!' said Resbit. 'A gamos!' And she rolled round on the ground, laughing. 'Now that wasn't fair,' said Yen Olass. 'It wasn't nice, either.’
But her protests just made Resbit laugh all the more.
When Resbit quietened down, Yen Olass heard something rustling in the undergrowth nearby. She stalked it and caught it, raked it out of the undergrowth with a branch, and displayed it for all to see.
'A veagle!' said Yen Olass, naming the hedgehog in Eparget.
'A crel!' said Resbit, naming it in her native Estral. 'The Galish call it a klude,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg. 'A klude,' said Yen Olass, committing the word to memory.
Resbit bent over the little klude and cooed to it, saying, 'Skoon, skoon'. From the way she was saying it, Yen Olass guessed that 'skoon' meant 'cute', unless it meant something like 'Oh you sweet little beautiful thing you.’
'It's not skoon,' said Yen Olass. 'It's food.’
'Don't be cruel,' said Resbit.
'I'm not cruel, I'm hungry.’
'However, in the end, even Yen Olass was not game to eat a hedgehog raw, and so the little klude escaped to live another day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When the three fugitives were halfway to'Lake Armansis, they ran into a Melski patrol. After some bloody clashes with the Collosnon army near Lorford, the Melski had withdrawn to the depths of the riverforest, where the odds would favour them. With a Melski to provide them with introductions, Yen Olass and Resbit were spared the indignities of interrogation. Otherwise, they might have found life rather unpleasant for a day or so, for the Melski were in an ugly mood.
Since the Melski ran all the raft convoys on the Hollern River, which was a part of the Salt Road, they were not naive and ignorant savages. They knew the conversation of travellers from all walks of life and from all the nations of Argan and the Ravlish Lands. They were well aware of the nature of empire, and knew they could only stay free by killing enough Collosnon soldiers to persuade the enemy to leave them alone. Defeat would be disastrous. The few humans living in Estar had never been much of a threat to the forest of the Penvash Peninsula, but Khmar's hordes could strip away the entire forest as they sought timber for firewood, houses and shipbuilding.
Melski living elsewhere in the continent of Argan, in isolated places such as the Rausch Vally in the high country east of Trest, sometimes were unsophisticated primitives, slow to see their danger until it was almost too late. But the inhabitants of Penvash had learnt the hard lessons of history from their ancestors. A hundred years previously, invaders had come from Sung, in the Ravlish Lands. They had crossed the mountain pass from Larbster Bay to Lake Armansis; even after four generations, the Melski were still bitter about that invasion. Now, remembering stories their grandfathers had told their fathers, they were preparing themselves for a new and possibly more terrible struggle.
When the fugitives met the patrol, Hor-hor-hurulg-murg conferred with its members, and caught up on the news. Shortly before the Collosnon army attacked Lorford, he had accompanied a flotilla of rafts taking a Galish trading convoy to Lake Armansis. He had left before the journey was completed, returning to the vicinity of Lorford with a patrol, which was how he came to be captured.
Now, he learnt that the Galish convoy had reached Lake Armansis, only to find that a southbound convoy had arrived there by way of Larbster Bay and the Razorwind Pass. The two convoys were camped by the lake while the southbound contingent debated whether to turn around and accompany their fellow traders to the Ravlish Lands.
'Soon we'll go north,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg, reporting to the women. 'Then you can join one of the convoys. For now, we wait. We've sent more patrols south. We want the latest news to take to the Galish.’
So they waited.
Yen Olass and Resbit made a small hut by staking the branches of a tree down to the ground, weaving in willow then slapping on mud and clay. They shared the Melski diet of fish, fish and fish; they gathered watercress and went bird-nesting. The Melski ate no red meat, and refused to kill the forest animals, but allowed Yen Olass to borrow a bow. Venturing into the forest, not knowing whether she was the hunter or the hunted -- the presence of the Melski was no guarantee against soldiers -- she sought out and killed a small deer. If well-fed, she might have thought it cute; hungry, the notion never occurred to her. Yen Olass and Resbit ate their fill, then hung up the rest to ripen, knowing that this would improve its flavour. When the Melski objected to the presence of dead meat, they moved it further away.
While they waited, Yen Olass tried to persuade Resbit to join a Galish convoy. That was surely safer than venturing over the mountains on their own. But Resbit still refused to consider a journey to Larbster Bay.
'We should stay by Lake Armansis,' said Resbit. 'With the Melski. They'd take us in. Hadn't you thought of that?’
'That's a ridiculous idea,' said Yen Olass.
Of course, it had once been her own idea. But a little time in the forest had swiftly changed her mind. The forest was wet, gloomy, oppressive, cold, alien and threatening, full of trees which hated her. She was made to live free in the open spaces, not to moulder away in the wilds of Penvash with the wooden giants nightly elbowing their way into her nightmares.
They argued about it while they waited for the Melski scouting parties to return with the latest news. But when the patrols came in, what they brought was not news but people. They had picked up a small party in Looming Forest: Draven, Haveros, the Princess Quenerain, a sea captain from the Harvest Plains by the name of Menjamin Naraham Occam, a soldier by the name of Saquarius who was a deserter from the Collosnon army, a young woman from Estar by the name of Jalamex, and two boy children of twelve or thirteen who identified themselves as Shant and Mation, both of Estar.
Haveros told the story.
After being released by Draven, Haveros and the Princess Quenerain had fled to the east on stolen horses (and here Haveros did not mind admitting that he was a horse thief every bit as good as his emperor) in the company of some other prisoners. They had been pursued by hard-riding cavalry. As the pursuit closed in, they had been forced to abandon their horses and flee north into Looming Forest.
Now Chonjara had a thousand troops in the forest, hunting them. There was no doubt that his men, thwarted by the failure of the assault on Castle Vaunting, were glad to have the chance of a hunt which promised a kill. One Melski patrol was already believed to have been wiped out by the invaders.
After a brief council of war, the Melski decided the humans should go north to join the Galish convoys, which would doubtless leave immediately for Larbster Bay rather than stay to face a thousand marauding soldiers. Hor-hor-hurulg-murg and three other Melski would take the humans to Lake Armansis, then go deeper into Penvash to alert the Melski nation (which was, in Melski terms, not exactly a nation but 'our arc of the circle', a phrase which Hor-hor-hurulg-murg did not translate, for it would have meant nothing to humans who stood outside the Cycle).
The other Melski would harass the enemy, pick off stragglers and try to kill or kidnap Chonjara. To find
him, they would interrogate prisoners. Yen Olass taught the Melski one word of Ordhar: 'glot', meaning 'where'. In Ordhar, 'Glot Chonjara?' was a grammatically correct sentence meaning 'Where is Chonjara?'; for the rest, the Melski would have to rely on sign language and pointed directions.
Haveros estimated that it would take eight days to cover the eighty leagues to Lake Armansis, their pace being dictated by their weakest member, the Princess Quenerain, who was suffering badly from blisters. Chonjara's men would gain on them during those eight days, and might even catch them. They set off as soon as possible and moved as fast as possible.
The only person who was not eager to get to Lake Armansis was Resbit. She almost seemed to think it would be better if Chonjara's soldiers caught them. She was, Yen Olass realized, truly terrified of making the journey over the Razorwind Pass to Larbster Bay.
'But why?' said Yen Olass, when they talked about it during a rest break.
'Because it's so far!' said Resbit, close to tears.
'It's not far at all,' said Yen Olass, thinking Resbit must have a very shaky grasp of their local geography.
'It's right out of Estar.’
'We're out of Estar now,' said Yen Olass. 'We're in Penvash.’
'We're still by the river,' said Resbit.
'It's always hard to leave a place,' said Yen Olass. 'I know. I've left many.’
And she thought of some of the places she had lived in, and the partings she had said.
'But I've never left Lorford in my life!' said Resbit.
'But you must have been to Trest,' said Yen Olass. 'Or north, or south, or down to the sea.’
'No, never,' said Resbit, starting to cry. 'No, never the sea. The sea eats people.’
And Yen Olass, holding her and comforting her, started to realize what very different lives they had led.
'I'm sorry,' said Resbit, sniffing. 'I shoud be brave.’
'You'll be brave once we eat well,' said Yen Olass. 'Nobody was ever brave on an empty stomach.’
She was sorry to see Resbit so badly upset. On the other hand, she was glad that the Melski had decided all the humans were to join the convoy, because that meant Resbit would be forced to go with her.
Each night, they were exhausted at the end of their march, and each night the Princess Quenerain, her feet steadily disintegrating, was close to collapse. Yet she did not complain: Yen Olass admired her for that. Each night, the princess slept in the arms of Haveros, her very dreams numb with exhaustion. Yen Olass curled up with Resbit, and Draven with Jalamex, to whom he seemed to have laid claim. The others slept as best they could; all of them usually woke before dawn, when the night was coldest.
On the morning of the fourth day, they found the swollen body of a man trapped in the roots of a tree by the riverside. From his clothing, he appeared to be Galish. Yen Olass, who had no fear of dead bodies -- at least not by daylight -- examined the corpse and tried to estimate how long it had been in the water. Quenerain came down to have a look, then turned away, feeling sick. The man had been hacked to death by a sword or an axe.
'Come away, Suggy,' said Haveros, drawing her away.
Hearing that pet name, Yen Olass remembered the princess whimpering with excitement in a room in Gendormargensis. It all came back to her. 'Suggy, you're so wet down here. So hot and wet.' 'That's because my little teni is crying for joy, Son-son.' Remembering, Yen Olass had to bite her hand to keep herself from laughing; if she remembered those scenes on her deathbed, she would die laughing.
'Come away, Yen Olass,' said Resbit, seeing she was in some distress.
'Son-son,' said the princess, 'I feel faint.’
Yen Olass collapsed to the ground, writhing.
'Yen Olass,' said Resbit. 'What's wrong? Speak to me. Yen Olass.’
'I'll live,' said Yen Olass, controlling herself with an immense effort of will.
She buried her head in her arms, her laughter sobbed out. And Resbit, thinking she was crying, comforted her as best she could. By the time Yen Olass had sobered up, Haveros, Draven and the sea captain Menjamin Occam were discussing the dead man with the Melski. It was a long, laboured conversation, with the polyglot Hor-hor-hurulg-murg bearing the brunt of the job of translation. The Galish did not fight amongst themselves; the Melski would not have attacked the Galish. So who or what was killing upriver?
'We have to go on,' said Draven.
Nobody disputed it. Leaving the body where it was -- they could not spare the time or energy to dig a grave, and none of them wished to eat it -- they continued north in a sombre mood.
That afternoon, a Melski raft came drifting down the river with a Melski body on board. Without a word, Hor-hor-hurulg-murg dived -- and did not surface.
'Where Hor-hor-hurulg-murg?' said Yen Olass to the three other Melski, using one of the few Melski words she had picked up. They signed her to be patient.
'Let's get under cover,' said Haveros, signing for them to withdraw into the trees.
But at that moment, Hor-hor-hurulg-murg surfaced near the bank, and started to clamber out of the water. Then he turned round, as if expecting someone to follow him. Seeing nobody, he plunged into the water again, reappearing shortly with a child-small Melski, which reluctantly allowed itself to be led ashore.
'He was under the raft,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg in Galish, after which he addressed the child in his own language.
He got no response.
'What happened?' said Haveros.
'Unknown,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg. 'But we know where the children usually shelter if trouble starts. I suppose the parents of this one were killed, so he took shelter.’
The child stood on the bank looking lost and frightened. Yen Olass advanced. He flinched. 'Dumadoml’
'Glum dumadom glum,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg sternly.
'Glum dumadom,' said Yen Olass emphatically, certain that she was not a whatever-it-was.
The Melski child squealed in panic and fled for the river. Draven blocked its path. It turned at bay and bared its teeth. Hor-hor-hurulg-murg laughed, and spoke again:
'Glum dumadom loglum.’
The child relaxed slightly.
'What's a dumadom?' said Yen Olass.
'Zardik,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg, using the Galish word.
'And what's that?’
'You know . . . fur, claws .. . like this.' Hor-hor-hurulg-murg did a little pantomime, shambling on all fours then lumbering onto two legs. It was so funny that Yen Olass almost broke into hysterical laughter. She controlled herself, guessing that would be an irretrievable insult to Melski dignity.
'I think he means bear,' said Haveros.
'Oh, a bear,' said Yen Olass.
'You understand?' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg. 'Good. So you know, glum starts no, but on its own it means maybe. Sometimes it even means yes. If you want one word that's always no, use loglum. Otherwise, glum glum, start and finish.’
Yen Olass committed that to memory as they set off again. The raft was now out of sight; floating downstream with a dead body on board, it would take a clear warning of danger to the Melski still in the south.
The little Melski managed to keep up the pace, but was exhausted when evening came. Yen Olass regarded it as a personal triumph when he allowed her to fold his small green body into the comfort of her furs. She taught the child her name, and discovered his, which was Wadu; this discovery delighted her, until Hor-hor-hurulg-murg advised that 'wadu' simply meant 'hungry'.
'Ask him his name then,' said Yen Olass.
Hor-hor-hurulg-murg tried, but failed. Little Melski were always cautious when talking to large Melski. This behaviour was instinctive, dating back to the Stone Days before the Merging had brought the wisdom of the Cycle. Back then, large Melski used to delight in eating little Melski.
'Try again,' said Yen Olass.
'He's too young to understand,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg; this convenient formula excused him from having to explain why it was really beneath the dignity of a Melski male to con
verse with a child.
The child was a problem the next day, because it started lagging behind. Toward the end of the day, Yen Olass was trudging along with Wadu riding on her shoulders. That evening, as they feasted on dead fish and (humans only)
gently mouldering venison, Yen Olass was concerned to find Wadu eating slugs; Hor-hor-hurulg-murg, with a trace of weariness, explained that slugs were the best possible thing for him.
Apart from this disconcerting eating habit, Wadu was in many ways an ideal child. He was strong,, sturdy, wore no clothes, never caught a chill, and was never in any danger of drowning in the river. Furthermore, he was awed into good behaviour by the presence of so many adults. Yen Olass decided that her first big project as a mother would be to get him to speak. But what would happen when they got to Lake Armansis? Would she be allowed to take him west with her?
