Djamos said, “There is no price among brothers.”
The men in the canoes laid their paddles aside and notched longbows while the canoes carried them silently forward. The command to loose must have been audible on the riverbank, for the boatmen spun suddenly about and their chests blossomed with feathered shafts. The two archers returned the favor, picking off two of the attacking party. Another man ran for the bow dropped by the third archer, but the attackers pinned him neatly to the sand. The three men who had stayed out of the fight ran for the cliffs, and two of them made it behind the rocks.
The Madareenaroo scraped off the sand and into the current with the surviving boatmen scrambling aboard. One fell off the gunnel with an arrow in his back. The durm spun slowly as the current carried it downstream. No one exposed himself at the sweep to keep her steady. A canoe caught up with her and pulled alongside. Men leaped from the canoe to pull themselves up the side. But now the adwantage was with the boatmen, for the sides of the durm were high and they could fight back from a tactical height. Finally, the canoe’s captain gave up and backed off. The Rajilooris jeered their attackers as they drifted away, as if they had won some sort of victory.
One of the boatmen who had made it to the rocks looked over to Méarana. “I wanted no part of it,” he said. “You must believe me, Lady Harp.” He made a motion like scratching his chest. She recognized him as the man who had given her the token payment.
“I believe you, Watershank,” she told him. “You have acted with honor throughout.”
Djamos moved swiftly, and his curled blade was out and at Méarana’s throat before anyone knew that he had moved. “And now let us await my kinfolk,” he said. “No. Make no move, or the harper’s voice is stilled forever. And you, harper: If your lips part in a satire, your throat will sing before your lips.”
Billy said quietly, “You are making a grave error.”
The marauders in the canoes had beached themselves and now swarmed over the boats, tearing bundles open. Clothing and equipment were strewn on the sand. “My instruments!” groaned Sofawri. “My data!”
“It’s not your head,” growled Donovan, “at least not yet.” He pressed the stud on his dazer and the green light began to blink. Billy noticed and carefully slipped his own gun into his crotch. Theodorq’s nine had disappeared.
A contingent of warriors approached the tent. “All of you!” said Djamos. “Place your hands on your head! You, Paw-lee, put down the sword!” Then he stood, holding Méarana, and called out, “The canyon! The canyon!”
One of the warriors sent an arrow through Djamos’s neck. The translator had no time even to register surprise, but opened his mouth in a gush of blood. Méarana spun away and Sofwari caught her. The warriors drew bows on the embattled group and one of them barked something incomprehensible, motioning with the arrowhead.
Watershank, the boatman, exclaimed and responded in the same tongue. The war chief rattled a command and Watershank opened his shirt to expose an intricate tattoo of a harp. This seemed to satisfy the chief, who motioned to Watershank to join them.
Watershank did not move. “Chief says, are any else here degenerate dog-farking gorge-dwellers?”
“Well,” murmured Billy, “not if he asks that way.”
“Watershank,” Méarana said. “Tell him who we are.”
“These people do not understand ‘starmen,’ Lady. I do not know if I can explain.” He spoke again, making signs with his hands. The chief grunted and glanced at Méarana. He asked a question. “Chief says, where is your harp?”
“In my tent. Does he want me to fetch it?”
“Chief says, if you are harper, you can play—how do you say ‘on the moment, without previous hearing it’?”
“Extempore.”
“If you are harper, you can extempore a praise of his feat here in besting the mighty downriverfolk.”
Méarana doubted such a lay would include the escape of one of the boats, or even a realistic assessment of the might of a band of wharfside thugs. “Does he expect me to use the tropes of the Harp—you are Harps—or may I use the tropes of my own world?”
Watershank grunted and said, “I will say your own country.”
“Tell him my country lies far up the gozán lonnrooda, high up the side of the Mountain of Night.”
Watershank looked frightened at this. “My Lady!” he wailed. “I did not know!” Then he turned to the chief and the two discoursed quickly and vehemently. Méarana did not know whether they were arguing or that was the normal timbre of their language. Then Watershank turned to her.
“Chief say, as riverfolk would have it, put the money in your mouth.”
“I will go into the tent and fetch my harp. No one will stop me.”
Donovan whispered in Gaelactic, “Méarana, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
She answered in the same tongue. “I told you. My mother trained me.” She stepped through the warriors, more of whom had come curiously from looting the boats. Bows followed her, sweating bravos stepped back with uncertain looks. She heard the term crootài several times, and wondered if that were the local term for harper.
Inside the tent, she fell to her knees before her satchel and trembled. A body lay in the entrance to the tent and she remembered that a scant hour before she had killed that man. Mother had been right. When the time came, her training had held and no hesitation had stayed her hand.
Her fingers shook as she took the satchel and she paused a moment to gather herself. She remembered what Donovan had told her once. It is much harder to risk another’s life than to risk your own.
Unsnapping the clasps, she removed the bolt of anycloth and inserted the datathread into her communicator. She searched through the memory until she found the image she wanted.
Then she slung her harp case over her shoulder, stepped across the body in the entrance, and walked uphill toward her companions. Passing Sloofy on the way, she saw that a Harp warrior had smashed his skull in. She wondered if the unfortunate Nuxrjes’ri had welcomed surcease by then and what it must be like to die so far from home amidst angry strangers.
Méarana wasted no tears on him. He had gone out looking for trouble, and ought have had no complaint at finding it. But she saw no good in using him cruelly, and gave thanks to her God that the Harp warrior had ended his pain.
She found a pole that one of the boatmen had been using as a quarterstaff in the attack. (How futile and pathetic their effort seemed now! But a man is as dead brained with a quarterstaff as he is when fried by a dazer.) She attached the anycloth to the staff and stabbed the pole into the ground.
The southern breeze caught the cloth and unfurled it. It was the green banner of Harpaloon: the harp embraced by the crescent moon.
Their captors jabbered excitedly among themselves. Then the chief stepped forward and embraced Méarana, kissing her lightly on each cheek.
“You have come at last,” Watershank translated for him. “You have come at last.”
XIV. A CITY ON THE HILL
The canoes moved swiftly upstream. Behind them, one of the durms sent a dark plume of smoke into the sky. The other durm had been set adrift into the current with Watershank’s friend aboard and a message that the Tooth of the Harp had made women of the Gorgeous, and Rajilooris were no longer welcome in the Roaring Gorge. With the sweep alone to keep the durm in the channel, the man had a desperate time ahead of him; but he had his life, and that was no small gift. The Harps had wanted to carve the message into the man’s skin, but Watershank had asked his life as a favor of the chief. “Xudafah was a good friend to me on the boats,” he said. “We exchanged the kiss of friendship. How could I take from him what is mine to freely give.”