“Get away, clinkerbrain,” Fraina ordered Ivar.
“No, you slut!” He struck her aside. She recovered too fast to fall. Whirling, he knew in bare time that he really shouldn’t kill this yokel, that she’d enticed him and—Ivar’s empty hand made a fist. He smote at the mouth. The riverdweller blocked the blow, a shock of flesh and bone, and bawled:
“Help! Peacemen!” That was the alarm word. Small towns kept no regular police; but volunteers drilled and patrolled together, and heeded each other’s summons.
Fraina’s fingernails raked blood from Ivar’s cheek. “You starting a riot?” she shrilled. A Haisun call followed.
Rivermen tried to push close. Men of the Train tried to deflect them, disperse them. Oaths and shouts lifted. Scuffles broke loose.
Mikkal of Redtop slithered through the mob, bounded toward the fight. His belt was full of daggers. “ll-krozny ya?” he barked.
Fraina pointed at Ivar, who was backing her escort against a wagon. “Vakhabo!” And in loud Anglic: “Kill me that dog! He hit me—your sister!”
Mikkal’s arm moved. A blade glittered past Ivar’s ear, to thunk into a panel and shiver. “Stop where you’re at,” the tineran said. “Drop your slash. Or you’re dead.”
Ivar turned from an enemy who no longer mattered. Grief ripped through him. “But you’re my friend,” he pleaded.
The villager struck him on the neck, kicked him when he had tumbled. Fraina warbled glee, leaped to take the fellow’s elbow, crooned of his prowess. Mikkal tossed knife after knife aloft, made a wheel of them, belled when he had the crowd’s attention: “Peace! Peace! We don’t want this stranger. We cast him out. You care to jail him? Fine, go ahead. Let’s the rest of us get on with our fun.”
Ivar sat up. He barely noticed the aches where he had been hit, Fraina, Waybreak were lost to him. He could no more understand why than he could have understood it if he had suddenly had a heart attack.
But a wanderer’s aliveness remained. He saw booted legs close in, and knew the watch was about to haul him off. It jagged across his awareness that then the Imperials might well see a report on him.
His weapon lay on the ground. He snatched it and sprang erect. A war-whoop tore his throat. “Out of my way!” he yelled after, and started into the ring of men. If need be, he’d cut a road through.
Wings cannonaded, made gusts of air, eclipsed the lamps. Erannath was aloft.
Six meters of span roofed the throng in quills and racket. What light came through shone burnished on those feathers, those talons. Unarmed though he was, humans ducked away from scything claws, lurched from buffeting wingbones. “Hither!” Erannath whistled. “To me, Rolf Mariner! Raiharo!”
Ivar sprang through the lane opened for him, out past tents and demon-covered wagons, into night. The aquiline shape glided low above, black athwart the Milky Way. “Head south,” hissed in darkness. “Keep near the riverbank.” The Ythrian swung by, returned for a second pass. “I will fly elsewhere, in their view, draw off pursuit, soon shake it and join you.” On the third swoop: “Later I will go to the ship which has left, and arrange passage for us. Fair winds follow you.” He banked and was gone.
Ivar’s body settled into a lope over the fields. The rest of him knew only: Fraina. Waybreak. Forever gone? Then what’s to live for?
Nevertheless he fled.
XI
After a boat, guided by Erannath, brought him aboard the Jade Gate, Ivar fell into a bunk and a twisting, nightmare-haunted sleep. He was almost glad when a gong-crash roused him a few hours later.
He was alone in a cabin meant for four, cramped but pleasant. Hardwood deck, white-painted overhead, bulkheads lacquered in red and black, were surgically clean. Light came dimly through a brass-framed window to pick out a dresser and washbowl. Foot-thuds and voices made a cheerful clamor beneath the toning of the bronze. He didn’t know that rapid, musical language.
I suppose I ought to go see whatever this is, he thought, somewhere in the sorrow of what he had lost. It took his entire will to put clothes on and step out the door.