1.6
“So, what does your brother make of these disturbances?” Qitsturt wanted to know. His thickly accented voice reminded Manuah of the wildmen: high and quick and clipped.
The two of them were up on Qitsturt’s roof, sitting in leaned-back wooden chairs, looking up at the comet and drinking beer from clay mugs. Manuah always expected the beer in Shifpar to taste…inferior somehow, but it never did. Their wine was sour and dry and took some getting used to, but the beer was, if anything, even better than what Manuah could get in The City. Perhaps it was fresher?
Manuah snorted. “He says it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Hmm. And do you believe him?”
Manuah didn’t need to say anything. The comet’s length stretched from one horizon to the other, and its width stretched across a third of the sky’s remainder, now bright enough to blot out many of the familiar constellations.
Qitsturt said, “Dolshavak is a man from your city. He told me last week you’d gone crazy, prattling about greatfish and floods. He says no one listens to you anymore, but you have never struck me as a prattler. There is something going on. The river grows swifter and deeper. And colder.”
“Yes.”
“And The City is built on flat ground. And spring floods do occur, as do storms.”
“Yep.”
“And the sky is, forgive me, rather foreboding.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, my friend, there is nothing crazy about all that. Perhaps it’s your countrymen who prattle. Or, forgive me, our countrymen. My thanks to Sraddah for liberating us from our former condition.”
“You shouldn’t joke about that,” Manuah cautioned.
“Who says I joke? Before we had an army that Sraddah could easily defeat. Now we have Sraddah’s own army. This is meaningful, when the lands of the wildmen begin just a day’s march away, with nothing but a few rude farming villages between us. Which also belong to Sraddah, and are also protected by his army. We gained peace by losing a war. Sraddah is a clever man.”
Manuah snorted at that.
“Now who jokes? You think your cousin is not wise?”
“He doesn’t seem so at times.”
“No? Well, perhaps it is difficult for him. He is accustomed to winning. When the forces of sea and sky begin lining up against him, what is he to do? I tell you this, my friend: if there is a flood in The City, your family is welcome to seek refuge with mine.”
Manuah paused before saying, “Thank you, my friend. My family is small, but not that small. You’re a generous man, but I couldn’t possibly.”
Qitsturt laughed. “We’ll see how reluctant you feel, if the time comes. Now drink! Drink! You leave at dawn, yes? What manner of host am I, if I send you home without a headache?”
Dutifully, Manuah drained his mug, and turned it over to show it was empty.
“There, see?”
“You don’t look happy yet. I’m going to keep serving you until you look happy.”
“Ah. Well, I’ll try. The beer and the company are fine, and I thank you, but the view up here is shit. I’ve had enough of this comet.”
“Yes? Well, it won’t stay around forever.”
“Huh. Yeah. May the next month be kind.”
* * *
If the current had seemed swift on the way upriver, it seemed even more so on the way down. At first, Manuah ordered that each boat have two paddlers in the bow and a steersman in the stern, with the sails stowed away, but the Great River wasn’t the sort of waterway that had rapids. Almost half a kos wide and well over twelve feet deep, it suffered the occasional sandbar or tree, but otherwise presented few navigational hazards. So once the men had found their rhythm, and were rolling down the river under comfortable control, he ordered the sails raised.
“Whooooosh!” the men exclaimed as the wind caught and filled the linen, making the boats leap forward so quickly that they all lost their balance for a moment. In hardly any time at all, their downriver speed had nearly doubled. The boats left wakes now, like comet trails of their own, and when the steersmen started crossing paths to make each other’s boats roll sickeningly, Manuah didn’t put a stop to it. He liked this as well as anyone—the wind in his hair! The thrill of being fastest!
“You see? You see?” Letoni said to a frightened-looking Hamurma. “Songbirds! Whoosh! Whoosh!”
The men in one of the other boats got out their paddles and started churning the water hard, taking a few kesthe to find their synchrony and then, finally, adding even more speed. Though initially they were in the middle of the pack, they began to pull out ahead, until the men in the other boats shouted their objections and unstowed their own paddles.
Now there was no need to keep people busy, to keep them from focusing on how hot and tired and out of breath they were. This was dangerous work and even more dangerous as play, but they’d done it before, and Manuah wouldn’t have thought twice about it if not for the presence of Hamurma. But Hamurma was nearly old enough to get married, and had not been promised to anyone yet, and a little danger would make him more interesting to the young women of The City. Probably not to their fathers, but that was their own problem.
“Race!” he called out to the crew of his own boat. “Pull with your backs! Pull with your legs! Bury those blades, you toads! Plant and pull! Plant and pull! Now! Now! Now! Now!”
They didn’t quite get out in front—no one was about to let the boss beat them in a fair contest!—but they acquitted themselves well enough.
Of course, no one could keep up a race pace for long, so eventually they all settled down into a more leisurely (though still challenging) rhythm, with one boat or another occasionally putting in the effort to take the lead for a while. It was a fine thing, on a fine day, and for a while Manuah was able to forget all the troubles of the world. They made it all the way to the delta, through the widest channel, and back to the Grand Sea a full hour before nightfall, grinning and whooping at their accomplishment. Let’s see Dolshavak beat that.
But at the mouth of the Great River there were lots of sandbars, and they had to pick their way more carefully around the harbor’s cape, and then through the interlocking sea walls, tacking back and forth in the sputtering wind. The sun set, and the sky turned yellow and red and purple and blue. And then the comet appeared, its head hanging low in the northern sky, its tail streaming way out behind it like a ghostly white flame.
“It’s bigger,” someone said.
“It’s closer,” someone else said.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” a third person said, in clear imitation of Adrah’s voice.
The men burst out laughing. And then the greatfish appeared, blocking their way into the harbor, and the laughter stopped.
Yes, blocking their way! The fish spouted and thrashed its tail, raised up an eye to glare at them, then dove and breached and spouted some more. Exactly as though it were trying to get their attention.