C. Cherryh - Rusalka

The old man got tired and the boat broke a rope and tore a sail, but it got to shore…

Upon which thought Pyetr burrowed into the nest of canvas and blankets and just let go—not without knowing where his sword was, in the blankets with him; or knowing Sasha was an arm’s reach away. And that there was that little bit of salt in a bit of cloth, that Sasha had given him this morning.

Keep it in your pocket, Sasha had said.—It could never hurt.

He agreed with that.

And agreed that a bed well back on the deck was better than near the rail, be it the river side or the forest side of the boat.

He slept. He woke with the sun warming the blankets uncomfortably and the impression that there had been a sound a moment ago—

Sasha was getting up. Pyetr thought about that a heartbeat or two and realized it was very late for Uulamets to be still abed, and it was very unlike the old man to let them rest.

At which point he pushed the blanket off and picked up his sword on his way to his feet.

“Master Uulamets?” Sasha said aloud, a small and lonely voice against the sound of the river and the trees.

No one answered.

“Damn,” Pyetr said, with an increasingly upset stomach. He pulled his sword out of its sheath, stepped over the spar and its mass of canvas, and walked quietly toward the stern, hearing Sasha walking behind him. He worried about tangling with Sasha on the retreat: he reached back and touched Sasha’s arm, warned him back as he edged around the riverward side of the deckhouse.

There was nobody aft. That left the forestward side, and he beckoned Sasha to catch up and took the wide path around to a view of the rest of the deck.

No one there either.

“There’s the storage,” Sasha whispered, coming up beside him.

Pyetr took a deep breath and said, “I doubt it—”

But he had no good feeling about walking around the deck house to make that search. He took a good grip on his sword, lifted the latch and pulled the door open-But there was nothing inside but their stores—from which the basket of Uulamets’ belongings, including the book, was missing.

“That damned old fool’s gone for a walk!” Pyetr exclaimed, and Sasha came to look for himself.

“Unless the vodyanoi got him,” Sasha said.

“Don’t you think we’d have heard that?” Pyetr asked.

“He had to have made some noise,” Sasha said, walking to the forest side, a proximity to the trees that made Pyetr nervous. “We slept through it. I don’t sleep like that…”

“We were tired,” Pyetr said. “We wouldn’t have heard thunder.” He walked up beside Sasha and looked into the depths of the woods—seeing past the dead brush along the bank the green of vines and leaves. That evidence of life should have comforted him. It only looked thick and tangled through there, the kind of place an old man however crazy ought to have second thoughts about going, afoot, loaded down with, the god witness, the basket with that damned book and whatever pots he had taken.

More conjurings? he wondered.

“Old grandfather probably went off to sing at something,” he muttered. “He was reading last night. He probably figured out something and decided he’d go hunt up some roots or something, what can you expect? He’ll be back.”

They had their breakfast on the forward deck, and Sasha kept hoping for master Uulamets to come back, he did not know why—master Uulamets not having been particularly kind to anyone; but Uulamets having gotten them here, he had no confidence anyone but Uulamets could get them back again.

But Pyetr said that they ought to see about the sail, thinking, Sasha was sure, that they should be going back downriver soon.

So they got the cord and the awl and started sewing the rip up, himself doing the pulling and the holding and Pyetr doing the punching and threading of the cord through the canvas—his hand was purpling around the wound, but he swore it was no worse than yesterday.

“I’ll make a poultice for it,” Sasha said. Since they had no choice but to sit and wait, it was at least a chance to help Pyetr; and Pyetr did not shrug off the offer.

They had the sail stitched by noon. “I’ve no idea whether it’ll hold,” Pyetr said; and for the first time talking about the chance of Uulamets and Eveshka not coming back: “But I think, going back, we should just go with the current, if we can. The boat ought to work with that, a lot slower, maybe, but I don’t mind that.”

“Me either,” Sasha said, and glanced toward the forest.

“You suppose the River-thing got them?”

It was the first time Pyetr had talked about that, either, not that both of them were not virtually convinced of it by now.

“I’m not sure it ever lost her,” Sasha said glumly, and thumped Pyetr on the arm. “Come on. I’ll boil up something for the hand.”

PYETR WATCHED while Sasha started a fire in the stove and boiled up a concoction of wormwood, chamomile, willow, and salt—the last of which Pyetr protested as willful cruelty; but Sasha insisted, saying that if vodyanoi disliked it, it might help.

It stung, of course. But the heat helped, and Pyetr sat warming himself in the sun, his hand wrapped in a hot rag which he changed from time to time, between feeding the coals in the pan a twig or two—and quite uncharitably hoped that the vodyanoi had made a meal of Uulamets and his book—not, he told himself, that he particularly wished harm to the old man and certainly not to Eveshka, but he saw no reason for loyalty either.

“Give him till the sun touches the trees over there,” he said finally to Sasha, and nodded toward the far shore. “Then let’s untie and see if we can get this boat turned around.”

“Maybe he’s just trying to get us to break our word.”

Uncomfortable thought. Pyetr cast a look to the nearer woods and back. “We’ve waited all morning and half the afternoon. If he decided to go off he could at least have said to wait—and hang us if we didn’t. That’s one thing. But I don’t think he had a choice. I don’t know why he left, I don’t know what he thought he was doing—but, one—” Pyetr held up his thumb. “He packed, and, two—” The first finger. “He was quiet about it. Book and staff and all. He’s gone off before, but he’s never taken the book. So, one, he thought he’d need it, or, two, he didn’t want to leave it with us, because he wasn’t coming back, or, three, Eveshka got enough of papa and stole it and ran off to her lover…”

“If she did that, he’d have waked us,” Sasha said. “He brought us all this way—”

“If he trusted us he’d wake us. Which he doesn’t. We know he’s on the outs with his daughter. We were talking with her last night—weren’t we? And he was damned quiet about packing up, or we were sleeping sounder than usual—which he could wish. If you were asleep you couldn’t tell a thing. Could you?”

“No,” Sasha said.

“So? What do we owe him? The man’s threatened our lives.”

“Absolutely he’s dangerous,” Sasha said, “and he’s wished this boat safe, and maybe to stay on this shore. If we try to move it—”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t know he hasn’t; and I certainly would, in his place. I’d wish it with everything I had.”

“He could have said he was going. His wishing us asleep didn’t hold up. Did it? Same with his hold on the boat.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“You can’t always be sure!” Pyetr said. “Sometimes you just have to move. You’re worried about Uulamets. I’m more worried about another night on this river. If Uulamets couldn’t out-wish his daughter or the vodyanoi or whoever, I beg your pardon, Sasha Vasilyevitch, but I’m not sure you can, either. So what are we going to do tonight?”