Who am I? What am I? He felt as uncertain, as lost to his own true identity, as he had felt when he had had no memory at all.
He put on his fins at last, sighted the deep, calmer pool below, and dove far out and straight and swam with strong strokes out toward the feeding otters. He sped along and was strong enough now with the flippers’ power to outmaneuver the waves. His flippers were like an otter’s webbed feet, driving him through the sea.
He doesn’t even have webs between his toes, Litta had said once, laughing. He looked back toward the cliff to see a line of sentries standing watch for the sea hydrus, and he thought Thakkur was right, stolen weapons would be a comfort when the creature came.
He reached the feeding otters, and Mikk started a game of catch with a small sea urchin. Later he gave Teb a lesson in diving and holding his breath, and Teb was pleased that he was growing more skilled. He had managed to pry three abalones loose and was taking them home to his cave to cook when Thakkur sent for him. He dropped the abalone on his sleeping shelf, slipped on his leather tunic, though it was very tight for him now, and went along to Thakkur’s cave.
The owl was there, and soon Charkky and Mikk and a good many others, too, came to join them, to plan a stealing raid for weapons to use against the hydrus.
“Sivich’s men are rounding up stray horses on the meadows,” the owl said. “If they camp on the eastern meadows near Nightpool, I will come to alert you. You can slip weapons away in the darkness, move off quickly again to the sea.”
“There is an underwater cave at the mainland, near our south shore,” Thakkur said. “We can hide the weapons there, hide ourselves there if need be.”
“But not you, of course,” said the owl. “Your white coat would show far too brightly; and Nightpool cannot risk losing its leader.”
“I mean to cover my coat with mud,” said Thakkur.
“Do you think I would send otters into a danger I won’t face?”
“We will vote on it in council,” said Shekken. “We do not want to risk losing you.”
“You will not vote in council. This is my decision, not Nightpool’s.”
*
But it was not to come so quickly, this stealing of weapons. Sivich called in his troops to make a series of raids north of Branthen, where attacks by the growing underground had fouled Quazelzeg’s plans, and no more soldiers were seen gathering horses until late in the fall as the sea took on an early phosphorescent gleam like fires under the water. Then the phosphorescence washed away and the water turned chill and gray, and the owl came winging down over Nightpool on a blustery afternoon to say that a band of Sivich’s men was working toward the coast, gathering strays. He went back to watch them, circling so high he was only a speck, and returned at dusk to report they had camped conveniently close to the south cliffs that fell down to the sea.
The moon was at half, and still too bright, but the wind was so high that it would hide any sound of their approach. They were a band of nine as they slipped down the south cliff and into the sea, Charkky and Mikk and Teb, Kkelpin and Jukka and Hokki, Thakkur and Shekken and Berthekk. And the owl, of course, circling overhead silent and invisible. Teb carried one knife in the pocket of his breechcloth. Thakkur carried the other. Berthekk carried a coil of twine Mitta had braided for them, to secure the weapons to logs, to drag them home. The only thing that could be seen clearly during that swim was Thakkur’s white head, and the paler oval of Teb’s own face. The moment they came up out of the water at the foot of the mainland cliff, Thakkur found a patch of mud and smeared himself with it, and Teb did the same, covering all his bare skin, until soon the two of them looked little different from the others. Except that Teb was a good deal taller.
They climbed the cliff in silence, and as they came out onto the grassy plain they could smell the horses, a hearty, sweet smell that stirred a powerful longing in Teb. They could see the camp in the distance, where the campfire still smoldered. It was late, and they hoped the camp was asleep, hoped the shadows passing back and forth in front of the red embers were only the legs of grazing horses. The little band crept forward as the owl circled overhead in the heaving wind. The horses would be nervous, restless in the wind, ready to run if Teb could free them. That would cripple their pursuers and be a setback for Sivich. A very small thing, in this war. But he supposed every small thing counted for something.
As they drew near, the horses began to stir. Teb heard one snort and knew they were watching the dark shadows creeping toward them. He tensed to run, or to fight. He could see the way the horses moved that they were tied to a common tether rope, each on its own short rope that he would have to jerk free.
As he fumbled at ropes, whispering gently to the horses, loosing one and calming it, then loosing the next, he could see the dark shapes of the otters moving among the sleeping men, see the occasional glint of a steel blade as they confiscated weapons. A soldier snorted and turned over, and everyone froze. Several of the men snored. A soldier moaned, and Teb saw an otter back away. He had loosed one line of horses and begun on the other, the first animals moving off softly into the night. They had likely been loose on the pastures a long time; they wouldn’t linger here. Near to him a sleeping man rolled over, sighing. There was the tiny clink of metal against metal as someone worked too hastily. But the wind hid many mistakes. The horses stirred as he loosed the last of them. Then the owl came swooping and one horse bolted, then another. “Run,” someone whispered. “They’re waking. . . .” The horses wheeled and went galloping off, and even the wind couldn’t hide that thunder. Teb and the otters fled, the otters clanking now with their burden of weapons. Teb grabbed a handful from someone, another, until he, too, was loaded down. There was a shout behind them, some swearing, sounds of confusion, and then of running feet, too close. . . .
But there was the cliff, and they plunged over its side, tossing the weapons down to the sand, grabbing at the stone as they climbed and slid down; and they grabbed up weapons again from the sand and dove into the waves and down, and it was very easy to dive, to sink, so loaded with heavy weapons.
They came up inside the cave, Teb flanked and guided on both sides by swimming bodies. He sucked in air. He could see Thakkur now, a pale smear among invisible swimmers. He kicked hard to keep afloat, with the burden of the weapons. Then someone was pushing him toward the cave wall, and he clung there with one hand, clutching the weapons with the other.
Chapter 16
They stayed in the cave until the moon had set, then headed home through the black water, pulling the weapons behind them tied to driftwood logs scavenged from the beach. They had captured thirteen spears, eleven swords, and five good knives, as well as four good bows and two quivers full of arrows. They took the weapons to Thakkur’s cave, cleaned and dried them with moss, and polished the blades with fish oil to keep rust from starting, after their salty bath in the sea. Then they all slept the day around and ended with a big meal at sunset. Teb laid his fire in a niche in the rock above his cave and brought a pot full of steamed clams to the feast in Thakkur’s cave, where Thakkur hefted a sword and thrust with it, looking very pleased.
“We will form teams of soldiers and train with the weapons until we are skilled both in the sea and from the cliffside.” His dark eyes shone with purpose. “And perhaps, in our own way, we will help against the dark.”
For days afterward, otters crowded in to look at the weapons, hahing at their gleam and sharpness, and there was more than one cut paw from careless enthusiasm. Ekkthurian came and looked, and went away silent, and it would not be until the hydrus returned, hunting for Tebriel, that the dark otter would speak out again with his usual venom. Something seemed to go out of Ekkthurian after the stealing of the weapons, something to lay a hand on his vile manner and silence him. He sulked around Nightpool with Urikk and Gorkk, and the three otters fished alone, north up the coast toward Rushmarsh. Sometimes Ekkthurian was not seen for days, as if he slept the time away in his cave out of boredom and anger, perhaps. Early winter brought the runs of silverheads and squarefins. And schools of migrating seals and whales passed beyond Nightpool, and the sea was brilliant again at night with hidden flame from millions of tiny phosphorescent creatures. Teb practiced his swimming and diving, and holding his breath for longer times. When the water grew too cold to stay in long, he practiced with sword and spear, and when storms blew he sat in his cave, or with Mitta or Charkky and Mikk, weaving sometimes, for they always needed string bags. He ripped out the seams of his leather tunic, which had grown too small, and laced them with a two-inch gap, with strands cut from a bridle rein. And he made new flippers for swimming, for he had well outgrown the first pair.