Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

“Father, be quiet. I have to think.” Donovan retreated into silence and, suddenly contrite, Méarana laid a hand on his knee. “I’m sorry. It’s just that there’s a thin line between honored guest and prisoner. Remember Jimmy Barcelona on Thistlewaite?”

“From what I’ve seen, they will deny you nothing.”

“From what I’ve seen all of our lives belong to the chief, and he can do whatever he pleases. If he chooses to keep a harper in a wooden cage to entertain him on demand, who will deny him? If he chooses to keep the harper and kill all the harper’s companions, can I do anything but threaten a satire?”

“I think that threat would mean something to him.”

“I don’t know how far I can extend the protection of my status.”

“You can’t ask Watershank.”

“God, no. He’s not our enemy; but he isn’t our friend, either. He may feel he owes us something because we gave him shelter behind the rocks. And he may have picked up more sophisticated mores in the old empire.”

Donovan snorted. “I didn’t notice many sophisticated mores in Lafeev or Sloofy or the boatmen.” He studied the burnt stockade as they passed. “Look at that,” he said, pointing. “Bunch-cords running down from the tops of the cliffs. That’s how the Harps attacked the town. They tied the cords to their harnesses and jumped off. Closest thing to an aerial assault this world has ever seen.”

“Billy can be my servant. He knows how to play the role. And Teddy and Paulie are my bodyguards. The Harps will understand a harper traveling with bodyguards and servant. But what am I to call Sofwari?”

“Or me,” Donovan suggested.

“You are my bongko . You play the lap drum to give me the tempo.”

“Méarana, I don’t know an alap from a jhala.”

“You don’t have to. Your drums were destroyed by the boatmen and you must go through a purification ritual before you can make a new set. And you can’t do that until your hand heals.”

“My hand…” Donovan studied that extremity. “Oh. Yes.” He curled his fingers and cocked his wrist. “Hurts like hell, too.” He fell silent for a while. “Sofwari,” he said after a time. “You like him.”

“I didn’t expect to; and he can be…exasperating. But he is both well-built and well-spoken, and that combination is not so common as to be dismissed out of hand.”

“When Bokwahna tackled you, I thought I would die.”

“Bokwahna?”

“The steersman on the Green Swan . A big man. When he overpowered you, I cursed myself for being on the flank instead of at your side.”

“Was that his name? I never got to know him. Well, we’re best friends now. Who can be closer than the killer and the killed?”

“When Sofwari fried Bokwahna’s brains, I loved him like a son.”

She had dealt the death blow. Four times into the abdomen. Sofwari’s shot had probably been redundant, but it was nice to remember that Sofwari had done that for her.

More silence passed and the canoes turned for shore. Donovan said, “He’s not right for you; but we’ll figure something out. He’s one of us now.”

Near the foot of Roaring Falls a path led up into the Foothills. It was a well-worn path and one easily ambushed in its narrower reaches; but those who had guarded it were dead and the Tooth of the Harp now owned it. The falls showered down in continual complaint from the ridgeline three hundred feet above and raised a mist within which shone a pale rainbow. Everything was damp and had a sheen of water over it. When Méarana closed her eyes, the falls sounded like a giant wooden door that was constantly rumbling open.

The Harps unloaded the canoes and strapped the bundles on the backs of himmers. These were a species of donkey native to the land: semiaquatic in the rainy season, and storing fat on their backs in the dry. Gorgeous boys, torn from their shrieking mothers, were pressed into service to drive the beasts up into the High Country.

“Look on the positive side,” the Fudir said through the scarred man’s lips. “At least they’re taking us in the right direction.” He nodded toward the towering massif of the distant Kobberjobbles, snowcaps shining in the afternoon light.

Days passed in endless walking. Each morning dawned chill and a hasty breakfast saw them on the way up. At the midmorning stop, the drivers adjusted and retightened straps on the himmers and everyone drank a bitter tea of cocoa leaves to ameliorate the altitude sickness that had begun to develop among the lowlanders. In the afternoons, the last waves of the ‘soons spent their scattered remains on the highlands. Around the campfires at night there was singing of a high nasal sort that set Billy’s teeth on edge, and some of the warriors played wild skirling music on whistles. Méarana filed it all away in that part of her mind that never stopped plucking the harp strings.

She would use it someday to play this journey to comfortable audiences on Die Bold and Jehovah, on Abyalon and High Tara, to audiences who thought themselves in their ignorance to be tough. It was a big Spiral Arm, but it was far away from here, and the whim of a border lord with a headdress of feathers meant more than the considered will of the Grand Sèannad in congress assembled.

They came finally onto a high plateau where the thin air blew unobstructed and the trees were strangely twisted. They met again the River Multawee in her upper courses. War canoes met them, drawn up on the riverbank. By then the boys pressed as donkey drivers had stopped crying and they faced the unloading with hot, stolid eyes.

The Harp canoes were more elaborately carved than the Gorgeous ones they had highjacked. Their prows arced into lions and gryphons and more fanciful beasts, each plucking with its claws a harp carved on the leftside bow. The sides were fretworked down their lengths: herringbones, weaves, floral patterns, all painted in bright gaudy colors. Watershank told her that each fret design and prow totem represented a different clan. He had never seen so many clans assembled.

“Harp country lies up there,” Watershank said, pointing beyond Second Falls to the Kobberjobble escarpment. “But chief says this plateau is now their—our homeland. Last year’s harvest was poor and many died in Great Hunger Month, and so he has led us down to find glory here. The Gorgeous have been driven off the clifftops, and the Tooth of the Bear chased into Telarnak Valley. No other chief of the Harps has ever conquered so much territory.”

“He is a regular Alish Bo Wanameer,” agreed Donovan; and Méarana remembered that the young Zorba de la Susa had assassinated the People’s Hope.

When the war canoes had been packed, the Harp chief had the children of the Gorgeous lined up, and his men drew their swords. It took Méarana a moment to realize what the Harps meant to do.

“No!” she cried. “Ye cannae!” Donovan grabbed her arm, but she shook it off and stepped out between the boys and the men with swords.

The chief did not understand Gaelactic, but he understood a negative when he heard one. But because she was a harper, he explained.

“Chief says,” Watershank told her, “that these children will grow to men, and these men will seek vengeance for their fathers, whom they saw slaughtered. When they do, they will fall beneath our swords as their fathers did, so why wait?”

“Because,” Méarana said in the loora nuxrjes’r , “they cannot fight back.”

The chief nodded. “Yes. That will make the work easier.”

“Harper,” said Billy Chins in Gaelactic, “this is not worth risking our lives. Their fathers were preparing to come downriver and slaughter us. We owe their spawn nothing.”