Carefully but swiftly, he rowed toward land. Alanned, a num-ber of Liri people ran right and left, where they might re-enter the channel. Crossbow volleys sent them scuttling back, save for a couple who were killed. With detennined leadership, the whole group could have won past. However, Vanimen was barely re-turning to wakefulness. It was patent that he could not swim any distance. Meiiva laid his arm across her shoulders, upheld his weight, and took him lurching inland, where forest offered con-cealment. For lack of any better example, the tribe milled after them. It was exactly what the Venetian had hoped for. If they scattered into the brush, many would elude him, but he would take many others. Ducats danced before his eyes.
The ground sloped sharply. Guided by his leadsman, he cast anchor just within the galley’s draught and dropped the boarding bridge to a point higher up. Men who ran down it found themselves in water only to their stomachs, and hurried ashore. The prizes were vanishing under trees, among brakes and soughing shade. The hunters followed.
They might well have seized some of their quarry, to sell into mills or circuses or peculiar brothels or, maybe, fisher servitude like a falcon’s in air. The rest would have escaped them and gone on to the fate that awaited. However, bad luck struck down on misjudgment-unless everything was the will of Heaven-and thwarted them.
Dwellers on the island had been watching. What those saw from afar was enough to alarm; they remembered piracy and war too well, too well. Word had flown on nimble feet and a hard-driven rowboat, to the Ban’s harbor outpost and thence, on horse-back, to his garrison in Shibenik. A warcraft glided forth; a troop quickstepped along shore.
When he saw that metal gleam into view, the slaver captain knew he had overreached himself. He had had no business in territorial waters of the Croatian kingdom. Since it was presently at peace with the Republic, he would never have gone against one of its ships. A clearly foreign vessel, clearly in distress, had been too big a temptation. Now he had better make off, and trust the Signory’s embassy to deny that any Venetian could by any stretch of the imagination have transgressed in such wise.
A trumpet brought his m~n back. The Croatians for their part made no haste, after it grew evident that the stranger did not want a fight. They let him go. Their officers were curious as to what had attracted him in the first place. They set squads to beating the bush.
All this Vanimen learned much later, mostly from Father Tom-islav, who in his turn deduced a good deal of it on the basis of what he heard. At the time Vanimen knew simply pain, faintness, and an uproar which sent his band groping ever further inland.
Water was their first need, more terrible for each hour that passed. Yet they dared not return at once to the sea, when armed humans ramped along its edge and blundered in their wake. Through leafy distances they smelled a river, but also a town upon it. That they must give a wide berth.
Unsuccessful and unprepared for a real effort, the pursuers soon gave up. It was but a tiny consolation to the merfolk. Led by Meiiva, since the king could do no more than stumble along if he had someone to lean on, they battled the woods, the always rising hills, their own thirst, hunger, exhaustion, dread, the burden of the wounded among them, the sobbing of their children. Stones, twigs, thorns cut tender webs; branches clutched; crows gibed. As wind died out, warmth and quiet lifted from the earth-heat and deafness, to these beings out of another world. Here were no tides or currents, waves or fresh breezes, food to catch or deeps to shelter in; here was just a directionless maze, the same and the same and the same. Barely could they pick a way onward.
Infinite though it seemed, the forest was a patch, whose verge the wanderers reached about nightfall. That was a fortunate time, letting them strike across farmland to find the stream. Vanimen mumbled that they should stay on paths, which hurt feet that were already bleeding but would not leave a trail like grainfields. Oth-erwise, the trek went easier than heretofore, in cool air under kindly stars. No buildings were near. The terrain climbed and climbed.