“I will not marry your daughter! That is final.”
“But that is most unkind of you, Father! Would you have her live in sin with my nephew? We have given you a fine residence and we bring you ample provision—”
“Report me to the authorities!” Please!
Shiuy-Sh sighed and shrugged his shoulders, causing fish scales to twinkle like sequins. “But,” he said—most faun sentences began with that word—”but I have explained many times. Several princes claim to have authority here.” “Any of them will do!”
“But to favor one over another might cause trouble.” “Then choose the nearest!”
“But I don’t know which is the nearest, Father. We pay no attention to any of them.”
Acopulo uttered a heartfelt groan. The humiliation was unbearable. That he, a distinguished scholar, a widely traveled man of letters, a trusted confidant of the imperor, should prove incapable of delivering a letter! Almost six months had gone by since he left Hub on a simple journey to Zark, and yet in those months he had gone barely a third of the way and looked likely to die of old age before he went any farther.
He spun around to the skinny little fisherman and gripped him by the shoulders. They felt like iron. At close quarters his stink of fish made Acopulo’s eyes water. Shiuy-Sh was a nasty little runt, yet when Acopulo tried to shake him, his skimpy form proved quite immovable.
“I am not a priest!” the scholar yelled in his face. Shiuy-Sh blinked in astonishment, as if he had not been told that hundreds of times before. “But the elves said . . .”
2
The first thing Gath did when he awoke most mornings was to think over what was going to happen in the next few hours. Probably everybody did that, but in his case he knew. Sometimes he was reassured and just went back to sleep. Other days he came awake with a rush, foreseeing events that had sneaked up on him in the night.
This morning the first thing he thought about was a very smelly foot in his face. He rolled over, and there was another one on that side. Vork was up to his silly tricks again, obviously. Gath selected the best future, chose a toe at random, and bit it. It tasted really bad, but the yell was just as satisfying as he had seen it would be, and so were the thump and yelp as Vork jostled one of the sailors and provoked a jotunn reaction. He was going to have a thane-size bruise. Serve him right!
The crew slept in the hold, on top of the cargo. Vork could have had the floor in his father’s cabin, and the imperor had offered Gath the spare bed in his, but bunking down with the sailors had a lot more appeal. There was something manly about it, even if a load of shovels and picks was not the most comfortable mattress in the world. The talk at night was manly stuff, too, all about sailoring, and being a raider, and women. Gath had learned a lot of new things and confirmed some things he had suspected but not been sure of. Very educational.
Then he saw what the morning had in store for him and woke up with a rush. Holy Balance! God of Madness! Wow!
For three weeks, Gurx had been riding the spring flood on the Dark River. She was a wallowy old tub. Most of the officers were dwarves, because that was the law in Dwanish, but Thumug the bosun was the real captain, and the hands were all jotnar. The ambassador regarded them with downright contempt, calling them discards and freshwater fish, and of course Vork did, too, although he was careful not to let the men hear him. The crew’s ability or lack of it had mattered little on this trip. The current had carried her like a leaf in a gutter, whirling past the dirty, dismal Dwanishian towns. Today she arrived at Urgaxox. All sorts of things were going to happen at Urgaxox.
Gath emerged on deck and looked around, shivering. He dressed like a sailor now, in leather breeches and nothing else. He did sailor things when he was allowed to—pulled on ropes and scrubbed decks, and it was a lot of fun. He’d developed some good calluses and he thought he had a little more muscle in his arms, or at least his biceps felt harder. Of course it took rowing to make real sailors’ arms, and Gurx was no longship. Unlike Vork, he wouldn’t want it to be, but any ship was better than a dwarf wagon. A jotunn was a jotunn. Even half a jotunn.
There was frost on the deck. The sun was just over the horizon. The Zogon Mountains had disappeared two days ago, and now the Kalip Range was in sight to starboard. At Urgaxox the river turned east in its final rush to the sea, and this was the end of Dwanish. Urgaxox was a frontier post of the Impire and the start of Guwush, gnome country. It was where Gurx would unload her cargo, and her passengers.
Vork was forward, just tipping a bucket of water over himself. For a moment Gath stood and studied him, sizing him up in view of the very surprising things that were going to happen in the next couple of hours. After three months away from Krasnegar, Gath pined for some friends of his own age. A girl or two would be especially welcome because it was time he got some practice in talking with girls, but Vork could have been an acceptable fellow traveler. So far he had been anything but.
He was Ambassador Kragthong’s son, the youngest of Jarga’s six half brothers and the only one still living with his father. He was a year older than Gath, but not as tall.
He still had his puppy fat and he still spoke soprano. He was one of those freakish jotnar with red hair and green eyes. His nose was well flattened already—and he seemed to think all these misfortunes were Gath’s fault.
Vork had three aims in life and would talk of nothing else. On a scale of years, he planned to be a great raider like his unlamented cousin Kalkor. More immediately, he longed to go home to Nordland and especially to visit the great midsummer moot at Nintor. Gath could agree with him on that one, although he had some reservations about watching men chop each other to bits with axes. Once, maybe, just so he could say he’d seen a reckoning.
Vork’s short-term ambition was to smash Gath to jelly. He missed no chance to pick a fight, and Gath’s refusal to cooperate riled him frantic. Traditionally, fighting must be done ashore. Gurx had tied up only twice in the last three weeks, and both times Gath had stayed on board. Vork called him a coward and Gath didn’t care—much. He knew he could beat Vork if he wanted to.
Clenching himself up to hide his shivering, he stalked over to Vork, then stepped back quickly as Vork tried to drop the bucket on his toes.
“Know what happens today?” Gath said, snatching the bucket.
Vork paid no attention, squeezing water out of his red hair.
“Clean your ears out, you’ve got fish in them.”
“I don’t talk to cowards.”
“I’ll tell you what happens today, then. We tie up at Urgaxox.”
Vork swung around with a gleam in his blue-green eyes. “And?” The bruise on his cheek was a great pinky-yellow lump already.
“Time you came ashore with me,” Gath said, blandly giving the sailors’ challenge in shrill falsetto.
Vork flushed scarlet. “Time? . . . I’ve been trying to get you ashore for weeks, you jelly-boned half-breed!”
Gath smiled. “And the other thing that happens today is that I rub your face in the dirt.” He put a foot on the line and tossed the bucket overboard.
It wasn’t quite certain. He had a very faint foresight of Vork kneeling on his chest and pounding with both fists, but he wasn’t going to mention that.
“You’re a seer!” Vork said, suddenly wary.
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I mean, if you’re scared.”
Vork was jotunn. That settled that.
There wasn’t much time. Gath sluiced himself off sailor fashion and rushed down to the galley to grab some breakfast and turn from blue back to pink. Then he hurried up on deck again, still dripping, still gnawing on a hunk of gritty black bread.
Already Gurx was approaching the docks. Urgaxox was even larger than he’d expected, but the river was so high that much of it was hidden behind the shipping. He saw sunlight flashing off metal on the quays and guessed it came from legionaries’s helmets. There would be gnomes, of course, and dwarves, and jotnar, because this was one of the greatest ports in the world. But he wasn’t interested in the people at the moment. There were more ships in sight than he’d ever seen in his life—river craft like this one, and oceangoing galleys. They clustered along the piers like suckling piglets. Here and there he saw longships, low and sinister. Not the longship, though—not quite yet.