Paul McAuley: Child of the River

The man stood with his back to the shrine, brandishing his staff. Its metal-shod point flicked back and forth like a watchful eye. Lud and Lob yelled and threw stones and clods of dirt at the anchorite but stayed out of the staff’s striking range. The twins were swaggering bullies who believed that they ruled the children of the town. Most especially, they picked on those few children of bloodlines not their own.

Yama had been chased by them a decad ago, when he had been returning to the peel-house after visiting Derev, but he had easily lost them in the ruins outside the town.

“We’ll find you later, little fish,” they had shouted cheerfully. They had been drinking, and one of them had slapped his head with the empty bladder and cut a clumsy little dance.

“We always finish our business,” he had shouted. “Little fish, little fish, come out now. Be like a man.”

Yama had chosen to stay hidden. Lud and Lob had scrawled their sign on a crumbling wall and pissed at its base, but after beating about the bushes in a desultory fashion they had gown bored and wandered off.

Now, crouching with Derev and Ananda in a thicket of chayote vine, Yama wondered what he should do. The anchorite was a tall man with a wild black mane and wilder beard.

He was barefoot, and dressed in a crudely stitched robe of metallic-looking cloth. He dodged most of the stones thrown at him, but one had struck him on the head; blood ran down his forehead and he mechanically wiped it from his eyes with his wrist. Sooner or later, he would falter, and Lud and Lob would pounce.

Derev whispered, “We should fetch the militia.”

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Ananda said.

At that moment, a stone struck the anchorite’s elbow and the point of his staff dipped. Roaring with glee, Lob and Lud ran in from either side and knocked him to the ground. The anchorite surged up, throwing one of the twins aside, but the other clung to his back and the second knocked the anchorite down again.

Yama said, “Ananda, come out when I call your name. Derev, you set up a diversion.” And before he could think better of it he stepped out onto the road and shouted the twins’ names.

Lob turned. He held the staff in both hands, as if about to break it. Lud sat on the anchorite’s back, grinning as he absorbed the man’s blows to his flanks.

Yama said, “What is this, Lob? Are you and your brother footpads now?”

“Just a bit of fun, little fish,” Lob said. He whirled the staff above his head. It whistled in the dark air.

“We saw him first,” Lud added.

“I think you should leave him alone.”

“Maybe we’ll have you instead, little fish.”

“We’ll have him all right,” Lud said. “That’s why we’re here.” He cuffed the anchorite. “This culler got in the way of what we set out to do, remember? Grab him, brother, and then we can finish this bit of fun.”

“You will have to deal with me, and with Ananda, too,” Yama said. He did not look around, but by the shift in Lob’s gaze he knew that Ananda had stepped out onto the road behind him.

“The priest’s runt, eh?” Lob laughed, and farted tremendously.

“Gaw,” his brother said, giggling so hard his triple chins quivered. He waved a hand in front of his face. “What a stink.”

“Bless me your holiness,” Lob said, leering at Ananda, and farted again.

“Even odds,” Yama said, disgusted.

“Stay there, little fish,” Lob said. “We’ll deal with you when we’ve finished here.”

“You wetbrain,” Lud said, “we deal with him first. Remember?”

Yama flung his flimsy trident then, but it bounced uselessly off Lob’s hide. Lob yawned, showing his stout, sharp tusks, and swept the staff at Yama’s head. Yama ducked, then jumped back from the reverse stroke. The staff’s metal tip cut the air a finger’s width from his belly. Lob came on, stepping heavily and deliberately and sweeping the staff back and forth, but Yama easily dodged his clumsily aimed blows.

“Fight fair,” Lob said, stopping at last. He was panting heavily. “Stand and fight fair.”

Ananda was behind Lob now, and jabbed at his legs with his trident. Enraged, Lob turned and swung the staff at Ananda, and Yama stepped forward and kicked him in the kneecap, and then in the wrist. Lob howled and lost his balance and Yama grabbed the staff when it clattered to the ground. He reversed it and jabbed Lob hard in the gut.

Lob fell to his knees in stages. “Fight fair,” he gasped, winded. His little eyes blinked and blinked in his corpulent face.

“Fight fair,” Lud echoed, and got off the anchorite and pulled a knife from his belt. It was as black as obsidian, with a narrow, crooked blade. He had stolen it from a drunken sailor, and claimed that it was from the first days of the Age of Enlightenment nearly as old as the world. “Fight fair,” Lud said again, and held the knife beside his face and grinned.

Lob threw himself forward then, and wrapped his arms around Yama’s thighs. Yama hammered at Lob’s back with the staff, but he was too close to get a good swing at his opponent and he tumbled over backward, his legs pinned beneath Lob’s weight.

For a moment, all seemed lost. Then Ananda stepped forward and swung his doubled fist; the stone he held struck the side of Lob’s skull with the sound of an axe sinking into wet wood. Lob roared with pain and sprang to his feet, and Lud roared too, and brandished his knife. Behind him, a tree burst into flame.

“It was all I could think of,” Derev said. She flapped her arms about her slim body. She was shaking with excitement.

Ananda ran a little way down the road and shouted after the fleeing twins, a high ululant wordless cry.

Yama said, “It was well done, but we should not mock them.”

“We make a fine crew,” Ananda said, and shouted again.

The burning tree shed sparks upward into the night, brighter than the Galaxy. Its trunk was a shadow inside a roaring pillar of hot blue flame. Heat and light beat out across the road. It was a young sweetgum tree. Derev had soaked its trunk with kerosene from the lantern’s reservoir, and had ignited it with the lantern’s flint when Lob had fallen on Yama.

“Even Lob and Lud won’t forget this,” Derev said gleefully.

“That is what I mean,” Yama said.

“They’ll be too ashamed to try anything. Frightened by a tree. It’s too funny, Yama. They’ll leave us alone from now on.”

Ananda helped the anchorite sit up. The man dabbed at the blood crusted under his nose, cautiously bent and unbent his knees, then scrambled to his feet. Yama held out the staff, and the man took it and briefly bowed his head in thanks.

Yama bowed back, and the man grinned. Something had seared the left side of his face; a web of silvery scar tissue pulled down his eye and lifted the corner of his mouth. He was so dirty that the grain of his skin looked like embossed leather. The metallic cloth of his robe was filthy, too, but here and there patches and creases reflected the light of the burning tree. His hair was tangled in ropes around his face, and bits of twig were caught in his forked beard. He smelt powerfully of sweat and urine. He fixed Yama with an intense gaze, then made shapes with the fingers of his right hand against the palm of his left.

Ananda said, “He wants you to know that he has been searching for you.”

“You can understand him?”

“We used hand speech like this in the seminary, to talk to each other during breakfast and supper when we were supposed to be listening to one of the brothers read from the Puranas. Some anchorites were once priests, and perhaps this is such a one.”

The man shook his head violently, and made more shapes with his fingers.