“Where did they come from, if not from Au?” asked the Speaker. As far as he knew, there wasn’t anywhere else to come from. “Did they spring up out of the waves, boats and all?”
“Perhaps,” said one hunter, “the god of Au is tired of a steady diet of criminals.”
“Perhaps,” said the other, with the merest touch of malice, “the god of Au wishes all men to have a chance at riches and nobility, as was the case in former days.”
The Speaker didn’t particularly like hearing this. As the gatekeeper had, he questioned the captives. One spoke, or tried to speak, but something was evidently wrong — no words came out, only meaningless sounds.
By now, passers-by had stopped, and some of them confirmed the hunters’ story — there were strange boats anchored in the islands, carrying strangely dressed people. And though the custom had not been followed for more than two hundred years, the Speaker could think of no immediate grounds on which to deny its fulfillment now, and plenty of grounds for possible retribution later, if it should become a problem. So he sent the hunters to Ihak.
Ihak was no less astonished than anyone else. However, unlike anyone else he had reason to take this development with a fair amount of equanimity. “So, ah, hm,” he said, looking over the captives. “Who captured which ones?”
“We worked equally together,” said the first hunter. “So we should get equal credit.”
“That’s right,” said the second.
“Ah,” said Ihak. “I see.” He looked the line of captives over more carefully. “Ah. Hmm. You say you both participated equally in all twelve captures?” The two hunters assented. “So. Twelve tokens, then, six for each of you. And you may then call yourselves Warriors of Au.”
“I can’t wait to walk through the market,” said the first. “Oh, to see the looks on everyone’s faces!”
“What about the pregnant one? She looks pretty far along. Shouldn’t she count for two?”
“Ah. No,” Ihak said. “I regret to say. The guidelines are quite clear on the matter. So. But aren’t you more fortunate that way? If there were thirteen tokens, how would you divide them without a dispute? Hm?”
So Ihak formally accepted, on behalf of the god, the sacrifice brought by the two hunters, and gave them their tokens. And then he went to speak to his wife.
In due course, a baby girl was born, and Ihak put it about that his wife had given birth at long last. She had been extremely surprised to discover herself pregnant, but this was understandable, as she had long ago stopped looking for signs of it. And everyone knew some tale of a woman who had not realized her condition until nearly the last moment. Clearly Ihak’s wife was one of these.
Ihak held a great feast at which he presented the child to his friends, and he gave extravagant thanks to the god of Au. He named the girl Ifanei, which is to say, the god provided her.
When the period of fasting, vigil, and mortification had passed, each of the six captains of the Godless presided at a feast in honor of the god of this place, who punished us for our recent offense. The day was gray, and the breeze made the constant mist of rain sting. The inhabitants of each boat crowded together on their respective central decks and offered prayers praising the god as the most powerful, the most gracious, rightly the only ruler of the islands and the surrounding sea. “We desire to hear your will!” all the Godless cried, carefully making no other request, and no promises at all, while the captains let blood into the water.
Steq sat, then, and his wound was bound, and the people around him ate, with every bite praising the generosity and bounty of the god. He himself was not particularly hungry, but he knew that he should eat for the sake of his people and because of the blood loss, and so he did.
The Godless had been miserable with cold, and their hearts were sore with the loss of the twelve. Their acts of penitence had only increased their unhappiness. But now, despite the clouds and the rain, and the doubtfulness of their prospects, their spirits began to lift. There was plenty of food, all of it as carefully prepared as their situation allowed. The smiles and laughter began as performance but, as often happens, feelings began to match actions in at least some small degree. Steq could not bring himself to smile, but he was pleased to see the Godless enjoy themselves.
“If nothing else,” called the captain of O Gods Take Pity from his own deck, “we will die with full stomachs.”
This brought a bitter half-smile to Steq’s face. “As always, you speak wisely,” he answered.
Eventually the feast drew to a close, and the Godless began to clear away what was left of the food. Steq sat in thought under his boat’s single square sail, his back to the mast. He sat brooding as people went back to their routine tasks, and as the day grew later the clouds blew away from the western sky, leaving a strip of blue shading down to green and orange, and the setting sun shining gold across the water. Colors that had been muted under the gray light seemed suddenly to glow — the brilliant emerald of island-topping grass, the brown of the boat’s planking, the tattered, wheat-colored sail, the pink of a slab of seal fat the cook was packing away, all shown like jewels. The sun sank further and still Steq sat in thought.
When the sun had nearly set, Steq suddenly stood up and called a child to him. “Go to O Gods Take Pity,” he said, “as quickly as you can. Tell the captain to be on the watch — my skin prickles, and the air is uncanny. Bid him pass my warning on.”
“I feel it, too,” said the child. Before any further move could be made, the other captains came up onto the decks of their ships — Steq had not been alone in his premonition. All work on the boats had halted as well, and the Godless were afraid.
“Fear not,” said Steq. “Either we are about to meet our end, in which case our troubles are over, or we will survive. In any event, we have done all we could and will face our future as we always have.”
As they stood waiting, a jet of water rose up just beyond the stern, and a dead-white tentacle snaked up from the water onto the deck. It ran half the length of the boat and with a thud it curled itself around the mast where moments before Steq had sat in thought. The boat’s stern plunged towards the water. “Bail!” cried Steq, and in the same instant he spoke the Godless were taking up their bailers. Crew without bailers ran to the bows of the double hull, in part to balance the boat, and in part from fear of the glistening, gelatinous tentacles that had come out of the water after the first and wound and grasped at the other end. All around, the crews of the other boats stood watching, bent nearly over the gunwale strakes, crying out in horror and fear.
From the stern came a weird, bubbling noise, which resolved into gurgling speech. “Steq!”
“Don’t answer!” cried one godless.
Steq only walked as steadily as he might to the end of the unsteady deck, stepping cautiously over lengths of suckered flesh. Behind him his own crew except for the bailers froze, hardly daring to breathe, and the watchers on the other boats fell silent.
At the end of the deck, he looked over the rail into the water. There, looking back from the waves, was a huge, silvery-black eye, as large as Steq’s own head. Under this eye the white flesh in which it was set branched out into the tentacles that held his boat, and in the center of those was a beak like a bird’s. “Steq,” the thing gurgled again.
“I am here,” he said. “What do you wish?”
“Let us each speak of our wishes,” it bubbled. “An association would benefit us both.”