Hiero looked at the fourth symbol. It was a minute Sword and Shield interlocked. “That means personal combat for the one who casts the symbols.” He looked at Luchare and smiled at the worry in her eyes. “I’ve drawn it three times in my life so far. I’m still here.” There was no more to say. He put the signs away and called to Klootz to come and be rubbed down.
All three of them had been riding the morse, albeit at a slow pace. It was no great strain on him, and he had been feeding fairly well. Even at his deceptive amble, he covered the ground faster than a man could walk, and went straight through things a man would have had to walk around.
Two hours’ jog the next morning along the shore brought them to a small cove set deep in one side of a towering headland. As they appeared on the beach, Brother Aldo cupped his hands and let out a ringing shout, startling both the humans and the bear, who had been sniffing some tracks beside the path. Klootz twitched an ear.
To the surprise of Hiero and Luchare, a section of low woodland on the far side of the cove began to move. Out from a shallow indentation in the shore pushed a stout little, two-masted ship. Tree branches had been lashed to her lateen-rigged masts and more branches and bushes woven into a great net which covered most of the hull.
Perhaps a hundred feet long over all, she was painted brown and rose high at both bow and stern. There was a tiny deck cabin amidships between the masts and various bales and bundles lying about here and there. Men moved briskly on deck about various tasks, and a small rowing boat now pushed off and came shooting in to meet them as they came down to the water.
They dismounted, and the two sailors who were rowing splashed out and pulled the boat up on the beach. This allowed the man in the stem to step out dry-shod. He did so and came swaggering up to them. Luchare put her hand to her mouth to suppress a giggle.
“This is Captain Gimp,” Brother Aldo said. “He has waited for me patiently and has been of great service, both in the past and recently as well. No more-renowned captain of merchants sails the Inland Sea. Captain, let me introduce friends and your new passengers.”
Captain Gimp bowed profoundly. He was extremely short and very wide, a washtub of a man Luchare thought. His original, color was hard to make out, for he was so brown and weathered it might have been anything. He was bald, or perhaps shaved, for a short, smoke-blackened pigtail thrust straight back like a bow, or rather, stern sprit. He wore a kilt of dirty, greased leather, boots of undressed hide, and a green coat of wool, much stained and worn. He limped a little, hence his name, Hiero guessed, and his black eyes were beady with impudent humor. His hands, at the end of long arms, were surprising, being as dirty as the rest of him, but with long, delicate fingers. He carried no visible weapon.
“Glad to make yer acquaintance, all,” he said in understandable but accented batwah when the introductions were complete. “The Brother’s word is good enough for me. Now turn your dear pets loose and let’s get aboard. Wind’s fair for the southward and it may shift.” He spat something he was chewing in Gorm’s direction even as he spoke and started to turn away.
The bear, who had been sitting up on his haunches sniffing the warm morning breeze, moved like lightning. One broad paw shot out and intercepted the wad of spittle. Next, the young bear rose on his hind legs and advanced on the dumbfounded sailor, who stood only a few feet away. Reaching him, Gorm peered solicitously into his face from an inch away, snorted loudly, and then wiped his paw down the dirty green coat. The coat now bore a new stain, as well as several leaves. Gorm sat down again and looked up at Captain Gimp.
The captain finally emerged from his trance, his face now a shade paler under the accumulation of smoke, dirt, and weather. Surprisingly, to Hiero at any rate, he crossed himself.
“Well, ride me under,” he exploded. “I never see the half of that. That animal can talk! Who’s he belong to?” he asked, swiveling on the others, who were all smiling. “I’ll buy him! Just name your own price! I’m as fair as any master afloat; ask the Brother here, now, if you don’t believe me!”
It was some time before it could be brought home to the little sailor that Gorm was not for sale and that he could think as well as a man. The captain was still muttering to himself when Brother Aldo asked him to warp his ship in near the beach so that a plank could be run and the bull morse taken aboard also. This, however, seemed to be altogether too much.
“Look now, Brother,” he said to the old man, “I’ve carried those kaws on occasion, back when I had an old storeship, on local journeys, mind you, a day here or there. But I can’t take that great ox of a thing. What would people think? My ship, Foam Girl, the finest thing in the trade, a dung barge? I ask you, now? It’s not considerate of you, Brother. Talking bears, women who ain’t proper slaves or wives, that funny-looking northerner—no offense, mister—and now this animal mountain. No, it’s too much; I won’t do it; my mind’s made up.”
By the time they were aboard, it was almost noon. Once his arguments had been beaten down, the squat little captain proved both helpful and extremely efficient. A log pen was quickly built next to the deck cabin, and Klootz was secured by broad straps so that he could not slip.
The crew, Hiero noticed as the ship eased out of the cove, were a wildly varied lot. There were dark men who, with their curly hair, could have been Luchare’s or Brother Aldo’s cousins. But there were men in appearance like himself, though he heard no Metz spoken, and also there were others. He saw two, half-naked men with pale skins and high cheekbones, whose eyes were an icy blue and whose hair was fiery red. He had read of red-haired men in the ancient past, but had no idea that they still existed.
“They come from an island in the far North, from what used long ago to be called the Green Land, I believe,” said Brother Aldo, who had followed his glance. “They were probably outlawed, to be so far from home.”
“Do your Eleveners reach so far?” Hiero asked. He clutched the rail as the Foam Girl emerged from the cove and a strong wind in the great triangular sails made her heel sharply.
“We do reach there, though we are called something else, a habit of ours in many lands,” Aldo said. “One of the assistant witch doctors of the white savages who were trying to kill Luchare was an Elevener. That’s how I got on your track, my boy.” He smiled sadly at Hiero. “Yes, he would have let the birds kill her. He had no choice, and he was next in line to be chief wizard, or shaman. You see that then he could have influenced the whole tribe, to who knows what good end. The enemy works on such primitive people, too, and we cannot neglect such chances. I am sorry, but that’s the situation.”
“In other words,” Hiero said bitterly, “you’d turn on me if you had a change of mind about how much good it would do you. Not a very inviting thought when we’re so dependent on you.”
“I’m sorry,” Brother Aldo said. “I was trying to be honest with you, Hiero. I openly allied myself to you and gave my word. Now, the man I just spoke of made a calculated decision to remain silent in pursuit of a long-held purpose. Can you see no difference at all?”
“Possibly,” the Metz priest said in a curt tone. “I am not trained as a casuist or debater of legalisms. It sounds a bit cold-blooded.
Now I think I’ll rest. I haven’t slept in anything like a bed since Manoon.” He nodded and walked off to the little cabin, whence Luchare had already retired, taking the bear with her, for Gorm, surprisingly, was seasick and wanted to be shut up, away from the sight of the wind-tossed whitecaps.