Гарри Тертлдав - The First Heroes

Belike Wihta had never heard it. "We haven't thought so deeply." Well, they were simple tillers and woodsmen here. They had no ships trafficking from the Eastern Sea gulfs to the Tin Isles and the Island of Gold in the far West. They actually saw little of the merchandise that formerly went to and fro and sometimes was bartered at this very spot, because they could not afford it. His admiring tone harshened. "There's begun to be talk of our tribes getting together to build earthworks, lest we too be overrun." He gulped his hornful down and beckoned for another. The ale was soothing him a bit. "But they're still far off, the wild men, and have more to gain by attacking countries ahead of them than struggling through our forests. Don't they?"

"That's one thing we want to make more certain of than you are," I said.

He blinked. His friends gaped. "You're bound yonder—to them?"

"Yes. As scouts, if nothing else."

"They'll kill you!"

"We trust not. We may even be able to talk with them, if we can get an interpreter."

"Or two or three, each translating for the next," remarked Herut wryly.

"What would you talk about}" protested Wihta.

"They may number some who can see farther than a bowshot," I explained. "They may come to agree it will pay them to let the traders pass through for a toll. Not that we suppose our party can by itself make such an understanding firm, but—"

The door darkened. Athalberh stumbled through. "Quickly, come quickly!" he shouted across the crowd. "A fight's broken out. A brawl— They don't heed me!"

He was hardly more than a boy, who needed the razor maybe once a month. I sprang to my feet and pushed through the sudden uproar. "Stay behind me," I ordered. A battle between the high and the low would be ruinous. I stopped only to grab my sword, leaned against the front wall with other weapons, and unsheathed it as I ran out. My heart galloped, my mouth dried, sweat trickled cold down my ribs. I too had never dealt with this sort of thing before. J must not let it show, I told myself over and over, a drumbeat in my skull.

The sun had slipped behind the trees on the opposite bank, but the sky was still blue and the river shimmered. A nestbound flight of birds crossed overhead, gilded by the unseen radiance. Air lay cool and quiet. Outrageous amidst this, snarls and curses ripped from among the men at the campfire. Most stayed aside, unhappy, but two had seized arms and squared off. Four or five behind either stood tensed, glaring, fingers knotted into fists, about to fly into the fray.

I didn't immediately ken the two. They were from the second boat, burly, shaggy, coarsely clad, the poorest of the poor. One held a flint ax, the other a spear.

Even as I plunged toward them, the spearman yelled and jabbed. More skillful than I would have expected, the axman parried the thrust. He jumped past the shaft, swinging his great weapon aloft.

I arrived barely in time. "Hold!" I roared. My blade whirred between them. They checked, gasping.

Their partisans milled back. Someone among the onlookers uttered a faint cheer.

"What is this?" I demanded. "Has the Ghost Raven snatched your wits?" By then my followers were on hand and I knew the trouble was quelled. A wave of weakness swept through me. I hid that also, as best I could. "So help me Father Tiu, whoever started it will rue the day."

"He did," growled the axman.

"No, he did, that scum-eater," said the spearman. Sullen mutterings chorused from their friends.

"Do you hear, master?" cried the axman. "He called me worse than that, the son of a maggot, and did me worse at home. Kill him!"

"Be still, both of you," was all I could find to say.

Herut stepped forward. "I think, young lord, if you feel the same, we should straightaway hold a meeting, ask witnesses what they saw, and get to the truth," he proposed. I nodded. "Yes," I answered. "Of course. At once." When I thought nobody was looking, I threw him a smile. We understood that he had rescued me.

Dusk fell over us, the earliest stars blinked forth, an owl began to hoot, while I sat in judgment. Herut's shrewd questions helped move things along. Nevertheless the wrangling and the tiresome stories tangled together, dragging on and on. That was for the better, though. Tempers cooled, men wearied, they grew glad to have an end of the business.

It came out that the quarrelsome pair and their abettors—kinsmen— were from the marshlands around Vedru Mire. Few though the dwellers and scattered though their huts be in that outback, they are often at odds. Lives so wretched and narrow must make it easy for dislike to fester generation after generation, now and then bursting into murderous clashes. When my father's messengers bore word of the venture everywhere around the Skerning country, these descendants of two different, otherwise forgotten men had offered their services as much to get equal gains as for the rewards themselves. It was a mistake to put them in the same hull, but who of my kind and Herut's knew that much about them? They had kept a surly peace until this eventide. Then a lickerish wish uttered by one as a woman of the village walked by, and a sneer at his manhood by the second, turned swiftly into a slanging match, and then they went for their weapons.

"That you were full of the beer our hosts handed out earns you no pardon," I declared at last, after a short, whispered consultation with Herut. "To make such a showing before them was as bad as trying to spill blood when we may need every man to keep all of us alive upstream. You would-be warriors have forfeited the bronze tools and good clothes promised you when we return. You who were about to fight have forfeited half. Maybe you can redeem yourselves as we go. Maybe. We'll see. Meanwhile, the two lots of you will serve apart."

The spearman hight Kleggu, the axman Ernu. Because Ernu had not truly pleaded but grumbled his case somewhat less badly, I chose him and his cousins for my ship. In the morning we departed with our slightly rearranged crews. We had meant to stay a day or two, less for rest than in hopes of learning more. A dwindled and impoverished trade did still move along the lower Ailavo, bringing news with it. But the incident had shamed us—I think more in our own eyes, the eyes of Skerning gentlemen, than in Aurochsford. We would try elsewhere.

I have kept no tally of time, but we were always aware of it, the summer slipping away from us at home. Let us learn whatever we could, do whatever we could, turn around, and paddle back out of this darkling land. Nobody threatened us in the next several days, but we lost two of them when weather forced us to ground our ships and huddle ashore beneath the rain and lightning, amidst the thunder. Therefore we pushed on without stopping until we reached a thorp called Suwebburh—I suppose from the tribe in whose territory it lay. Wihta had told us that it was the last of its kind. Beyond it were only some isolated steadings, and then the country held by the Celts.

Again folk received us hospitably, although less gladly. I marked at once that trouble weighed on them. When we sat in the headman's house, much as we had done before, I heard bit by awkward bit what it was. And yet at first it seemed as if some god bestowed luck on us.

Fewer men were on hand, for this house was smaller. I can't quite remember the headman's name—something like Hlodoweg. All our heed was soon on another of his guests.

Gairwarth lived here, a man of standing and, what mattered, a man with the knowledge we needed. It began with his being able to speak the language as it was spoken farther north, yes, as far as the estuary. That enabled me as well as Herut to talk with him fairly readily and, through him, with the Suwebi. Stocky, a bit paunchy, his brown hair braided, Gairwarth from the first slipped shrewd questions of his own into the interpreting. At length he said slowly, "Then you're bound for Celtic country, eh?" He shook his head and clicked his tongue. "I'd rede otherwise. You've chosen an ill time."