The Island Under the Earth (7 page)

After a while, when they judged it safe to speak, but still not safe to speak in other low voices, Stag said, “It was well-done, Bosun. But how did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“‘Do
what?’
Damn it, don’t bandy words with me! Haven’t I overheard your bragging often enough to know that you have no more modesty than a fish has navel?”

The bosun said, in a faintly injured tone of voice, “If you mean roping and recovering the asses, I had nothing more to do with it than that I took the old bits of rope and new-fashioned them into one line. Who did do it? Who else could it have been, but the old sixy?
I
don’t know how.
I
didn’t see him — ” “No more did I.” “
I
was looking at the other ones, there in the pit, or whatever it is.” “So was I.” “And then he flung a turf at me, as he did at you … well, it had to be him, but I never saw him … and I turned me around, and, dragons take me, but there they were! And, you know, Captain, it’s an odd thing — ” “What’s that?” “Why, in the whole line running from bridle to bridle, it’s all just loops, you know. Just loops. I mean, it
was
. I mean, until I put a few in, there wasn’t one single knot in the entire line!”

Captain Clarb had a deeply uneasy feeling that he ought not to be in the House of Dellatindílla the comprador, but, damn it, there he was! He searched his mind to think of a legitimate (that is, a commercial) reason why he should be there. At the moment he couldn’t think of one, but no doubt it would occur to him by and by. Meanwhile he watched with no small interest as his host’s hand, holding a webby old jug of wine, hovered over the goblets. That, in fact, might be the reason for their being here together, and not at the wine-house, where no such famous vintage as this was available. That is, Clarb assumed it was famous. It had to be. It was old, wasn’t it? It was in one of those red-glazed jugs which cost so damnably much that a coasting captain would never think of buying one. Besides, the winehouse, now. Here he’d patronized it for all these years. Didn’t they know it? Didn’t they value his patronage? When they saw him come in, hadn’t they remembered how long he’d been gone? Didn’t he always have the nicest of the new girls, if there was one around? Wouldn’t you think they’d reserve her for him? And just because he, as any civilized and newly-returned traveler would, had ordered a jug of the house’s best to break the back of his thirst upon instead of being bawdy and demanding to see the new wenches the first step inside the door —

“I think you will like this, Captain Clarb,” said Dellatindílla. His two dwarfs — odd little bodies, two feet high and dressed in costumes as black and shiny as their huge eyes — nodded and made portentious faces at each other.

“
I
think he’ll like it,” said Atom, and pursed his mouth at Mote.

“He’ll like
that
,” said Mote, and put his finger by his nose as he dipped his head to Atom.

Clarb cleared his throat. It was plain who counted
here
, where age and experience found the respect it merited. Was that frecklefaced little foreskin of a junior captain here, sitting on this damned rare tiger’s pelt and about to try a famous vintage? No, dragons take the whelp, he was upstairs in the winehouse, tumbling that new girl, and neither of them had the manners that a man had the right to expect of an alley-born orphan. “I’m sure I will,” he said, glancing covertly around him. Silk hanging sewn with pearls, was that to be believed? It had to be. “I’m sure I will, Comprador.”

Even an alley-born orphan would have the manners to defer to the House’s senior captain; but, never mind, never mind. “I’m sure I will.”

“
He
knows,” said Atom, with a smile of deprecation which modestly belittled his knowing that Clarb knew. “
He
will. Oh, yes.”

Mote could scarcely contain his own pleasure in the shared knowledge. “He
will
, he
will!
” said Mote.

Gracefully, Dellatindílla put down the jug and politely wiped the spotless goblet with the sleeve of his rich robe. “I fear my things are scarcely fit for one whose travels will have led him to expect a very high standard,” he said. (“Not fit, not
fit,
” echoed Atom. And Mote nodded: “A very high, a
very
high standard.”) Again, with the same grace, Dellatindílla took up the jug and poured, and scanned, and sniffed, then poured a drop into his own goblet and tasted it; raised his eyebrows; poured at last a measure of the wine into his guest’s cup. The guest drank, then was suddenly beset with a feeling that perhaps he shouldn’t have, should have … what? … waited? … poured a libation? … let his hosts — ? … In his confusion he choked.

“Ah, it is bad,” Dellatindílla exclaimed, clasping his thin hands together. Their fingers were covered with rings. Mote gave a groan of miniscule anguish, “Oh, bad! It’s bad!” and twisted his tiny face. Atom looked aghast. “Bad, ah, too
bad!
” he declared.

But Clarb recovered himself. “It may be bad by your own high standards, Comprador,” he said. “But for a rough old sea-serpent such as that I am, it’s very good.” And, indeed, it was, for wrapped within the thin, clear, tart taste of the wine was an after-taste: richer, sweeter. The two dwarfs smiled with knowing contentment, mouthed at each other that it was good … oh yes … it
was
… it was
good…
.

And the eunuch himself sat back in his carven chair and slid his hands into one another and allowed his seamed face to relax. “That’s well, then. Yes, that’s well. For this is the same wine of which I had set a six aside for you after a certain transaction not quite three years ago, which you will remember … or was it only two? … but then, alas, a certain coolness sprang up, I needn’t be more specific — I well know and admire your loyalty — But as I did not wish to compromise you with your merchant, I thought it best not to send the six. But neither did I sell it. Nor did I drink it. We are, in fact, drinking of it now. In effect, then,
you
are the host and not I!”

And Atom said, with a deep nod, “
He
is the host.” Mote matched him, nod for nod, for, “He is the
host
,” said Mote.

Clarb took another sip.
His merchant
, yes.
A certain coolness
, that’s right. Again a twinge of uneasiness made itself felt. But not so much as before. After all, that was … when was that? A while back, a good while back. Good wine, this. His own? Drink it down, then. Mayn’t a man drink his own wine? Without having to pay wine-house prices? Without begging anyone’s permission?

“No, I haven’t forgotten your favors,” said Dellatindílla, unfolding his hands. “I never forget.” (
“He
never forgets,” Atom informed Mote. And Mote reminded Atom, “He
nev
er for
gets.”
) “Ah, well, those were other days. Old faces, old ways. Favors were done and not forgotten. But they have passed. One sees new faces nowadays. One is expected to follow new ways. New partners, new captains, ah yes.” (
“Ah
, yes!” “Ah,
yes!”)

Clarb nodded. It was the truth. Would Tabnath Lo, in the old days, have begrudged a senior captain a bale or so of stockfish? Would he have humiliated him like that before a boy with barely a beard on his speckled face? “New captains, Comprador,” he said, heavily, “let me tell you about them young new captains. I’ll tell you about them. New captains.”

Atom and Mote simultaneously began on,
“He — ”
but Dellatindílla interrupted them, and, addressing them jointly as “Child,” he told them to be quiet. “Our guest, or rather our host, is going to tell us about new partners.”

“
New
partners,” Mote repeated, in a muted voice. “New
partners
,” said Atom, in a loud whisper. They moved their mouths into marvels of compression, and snuggled close to each other and raised their eyebrows as though somehow the better to hear.

“That’s right, children. Be good now. I got something in my pouch for you, you be good. Listen, now, Comprador. How long have you known Lo? Longer than I’ve known him, correct or not? Correct or — Correct. Did you ever know him to have a partner? What’d he ever need a partner for? Knowledge? Didn’t he have the most knowledgeable captains a merchant ever had? He did. Richness? Why, he was rich to start with; his father had a spring which didn’t fail even in the Year of Drought, so his son was rich to start with. Then who did he marry? The old Hobar’s daughter’s daughter. And got more richnesses with her. Ill-health? Had to depend on another man’s soundness? No, Comprador. Oh, no. You are but mistaken there, Comprador.” Softly the comprador acknowledged his error and begged that it might be forgiven and replaced by truth. The dwarfs neither moved nor spoke. They did not even roll their eyes. Only the light gleamed and sparkled in them.

Since when did an established merchant take a partner for no given reason, one who appeared out of nowhere, not a seasoned man of business, either, no, but a savage young blood who gave himself all sorts of airs and took all sorts of liberties: and because of why? And all because of why? Because and simply because he was a
seacrosser
, that was why! Didn’t the comprador know well enough the arrogance of seacrossers? And how they looked down upon the coasters, when, when, never mind, it’s not the best robe, winestains are good for it, too bad about the wine, ah, very well, a drop more, yes. When, what was it,
oh
yes, when everybody knows that the coastal trade is the backbone of commerce: isn’t that so?

“The very vertebrae of it. Who knows that better than you?”

But others didn’t seem to know it. What did long and loyal service mean to them? Quibbling about stockfish and complaining about a dribbet and a droppit of private trading. Let a flashy stranger just come in from over the dirty, deep sea and
then
, ho! what consultings and whisperings in corners! What confabulations behind locked doors! What alterations in manners and in looks
that
could make. Changes in schedules which hadn’t been changed in years, shufflings of ships, night-time departures, strange bosuns, strange crews, strange voyages. New things. Strange things.

The yellow wine trickled into the goblet. A tray of tiny goodies, spicy and smoking hot, appeared from nowhere at the captain’s side of the table. Under the table, Atom and Mote licked their fingers. “There would be none of these dissemblings and discriminatings,” the captain said, feeling tears welling in his eyes, “if the Cap of Grace was still with us, Comprador.”

The comprador slid his fingers between themselves. “Ah, Captain, the Cap of Grace,” he said softly. Underneath the table, in a reflection of the lamplight, there was the gleam of eyes. “Grace,” said Atom. And “Grace,” said Mote.

The comprador examined his rings. He twisted them so that they glistened and they sparkled. Captain Clarb’s bleared eyes were drawn to them. “Pretty….” he said.

The great, gaunt eunuch nodded. “They are pretty well,” he said. “This one — ” He turned it to show off the stone: it shimmered and it shone its many colors. “This one, so I was told, oh, long ago, came from a place called Allitu. I don’t know where, exactly, that may be. I know only that it is a peninsula.”

Captain Clarb’s head drew back and went a-cock to one side. The look he turned now upon the comprador was devoid alike of respect, awe, sentimentality or sententiousness. “A peninsula?” he said. “Do none of you landhuggers know aught of the world beyond your city walls? ‘Allitu is a peninsula,’ you say. Is it, now? Oh, is it? Since when is it a peninsula? A coaster I may be, and proud of it, but I’ve made my deep-sea journeys in my time far out of sight of land. When did the Shoals of Brazen Stones heave up and dry off and turn Allitu into a peninsula? Tell me
that!
”

Dellatindílla’s eyes fell. He made an embarrassed sound or two. “Well, really, Captain,” he demurred. “Unlike the Cap of Grace, which goes (so we are told) in search of men, I do not go in search of business. Business comes to me. I was assured by men whom
I
considered eminent seafarers that Allitu
was
a peninsula. No. No. I know they were of wide experience. Consider,” he suggested, in his soft and clear and sexless voice; “consider, Captain: is it not possible that
you
may be mistaken?”

The red face of his guest looked at him impassively. Then it puckered. “Listen,” said Captain Clarb. “Listen …”

It was earliest dawnlight and the white starlines still made a meshwork of the night sky; scarcely had the graymists become visible, creeping along the grounds and unwinding their shrouds around the trees. Stag and Bosun lay wrapped in the blankets taken from the packs, but even had they been wide awake they could not yet have distinguished the colors of the simple country-weave: red warp and blue woof.

They had hobbled the onagers and thought the task well enough done, but they were sailors and not herdsmen. Bosun was also doubling as cook that night, and, having had nothing to eat since the morning’s broiled venison (and, by reason of time lack, not much of that), his mind, as he tied the last knot, was on the pot a bit more than it should have been. Consequently, his fingers, left to themselves, automatically manipulated the rope into a certain trick knot which was an especial favorite of his and which he had often practiced — and often performed. This done, and without further reflection, he returned to the cookfire, and thought no more about the matter than he was thinking of it now.

The last onager to have been hobbled was not now thinking about it, either; indeed, it had quite forgotten the rope tied about its legs to enable it to walk about a bit and graze, but not to run. The onager was already partly awake and was faintly disappointed that the warm sun which had been comforting it a moment ago was nowhere to be seen, and that the pile of grain it had been about to discuss was nowhere to be seen. It was, under the circumstances, hardly worth getting up just yet. The onager had a feeling that eventually there would be a warm sun once more. Its assurance that eventually there would be a pile of grain once more was perhaps not quite so strong. It let its head fall down once more and contemplated a dewy tussock a few feet off quite without reaction or emotion.

The graymists moved slightly in a brief gust of wind. The onager’s eyes, which had begun to close again, opened wide, and so did its nostrils. There was another, longer, stronger gust of wind, the graymists danced before it; and the onager, suddenly aware of something off behind and beyond those mists, something which was even more desirable than warm suns and piles of grain, was on its feet in an instant. The graymists whirled, the wind blew flat into the onager’s face, it lifted its head, nostrils wide, laid back its ears, and (with a cry between a neigh and a bray) galloped off in the direction of the source of the wind. It was aware for a fast-fleeting second of something entangling and impeding its legs, but the impediment vanished before the first stride to freedom was fully completed, and the onager thought of it no more.

“Which one was it?” asked Stag.

Bosun counted off the other animals, who seemed more indifferent than otherwise to their fellow’s flight. “The stallion,” he said. “Mares and geldings are all here, seemingly. I suppose we can put his load on another … or redistribute it … the loads are lighter since the loss of the wine — dragons take those sixies!”

Stag grunted that he supposed so, too. He wasn’t going to take any more time to follow it. “Let the poxy owner bear the loss,” he said. “It was folly to bring a stallion along, anyway. It’s just as well that we’ve seen the last of it.” But they hadn’t.

He blew up the fire and added wood which they had prudently covered against the dews, and they waited for their small breakfast to cook whilst the graymists melted away. After eating they loaded up and unhobbled and started slowly on their way. Or, at any rate, onward. It was a fact that they did not really know where they were. For this reason they gave the onagers their heads in some hopes that they might somehow sniff or sense their way in a homeward direction and that somewhere en route the men would recognize enough of the terrain to be able to retrace their way back to Stonehouse Hobar.

They could not but consider it was possible that the beasts might follow a trail which, though familiar to them, led nowhere that the men wished to go … and, conceivably, somewhere that they might very much wish not to go. But although they discussed other alternatives, they could think of none better. And so they passed through fields where the ferny bracken grew, and through glades radiant and fragrant with carpets of tiny golden flowers, under the widespread branches of ancient trees whose boles were as wide as houses. Then the forest began to thin out again and the rocks, the earth’s bones, began to heave themselves up through the ground more frequently. And then they heard the onager again. And again and again.

Although they had heard nothing else, still, their voices as they paused to speak went low. Bosun asked, what was going on? Stag said he thought he could guess. “Sniffed a she come into her season and followed her here,” he said. The bosun nodded. That was probably the reason, he agreed. But it was not quite as they had thought. There was a waste space they shortly came upon, very open, more gravel than grass upon it. There was the onager and there was the she. He neighed softly and trotted up to her; she turned so that her head faced him, and she backed away. He neighed impatiently and began to rack around behind her, but she turned and turned so that always she faced him. He brayed his hot desire and reared up towards her flanks, but always she eluded him, always she turned; more than once she turned as though to make swift flight, and always he cut her off and drove her back.

“She doesn’t want that
at all
,” the bosun said.

“Who would? — except a she-onager,” said Stag.

And the she in question was not. She was a she-centaur, and young, perhaps even a maiden-mare. She made no vocal sound, and, from the heaving of her sweaty sides, she had run or been driven a long way: perhaps she was deliberately saving her breath. Her hair from crown to tail was golden, and the two creatures, so similar and so dissimilar, flashed in the sun together as they whirled and turned, turned and whirled: she all golden, he a sandy, randy red.

“Look at the size of him!” exclaimed Bosun. — Then, amazement giving way to something else: “I don’t like this … no … I’d like to stop it….”

The hobble-rope was still attached to one of the onager’s legs, and whipped about as he danced and stamped and sounded his eagerness and his outrage at that eagerness’s not being met: but to dart behind those flashing hooves was to court death and the conclusion of that courtship was more certain than the courtship taking place before their eyes. They were out of their depth, the handling of even ordinary animals — or animals in an ordinary state — was not their field, and as for handling an “entire” onager, never a totally safe beast, in his present state of excitement and outrage — It was as they quickly discussed what they might possibly do that they were attacked.

At first they thought only that rocks had fallen of their own, perhaps loosened by last season’s rains, and they were intent only on getting out of the way. In their confusion they moved, first away from the cliff — instinct — then they moved back towards it in joint hopes — reason — of finding another overhang such as the one they had rested in the day before. In doing this they fell, so to speak, between two stools: they collided with each other, and as they struggled to be free to move a rock struck the bosun, and he collapsed in Stag’s arms. Hard as the blow was, it was the saving of at least one of them, for as Stag, stumbling beneath the sudden weight, went down with him, something sang past his ear and buried itself in the ground where he had a second ago been standing. It was a spear.

Shouts sounded, he was sure that they were not all his own or his companion’s, and, acting upon an unreasoned impulse, he snatched up the spear, tugging at it as he half-lay, half-knelt, the bosun on his other arm. No more rocks fell, but confusion and fear and alarm suddenly coalesced into a rage which overwhelmed him: and he hurled the spear at the only thing resembling an enemy in sight — the onager.

It was hardly, and hardly could have been, the best cast he ever threw. It did not kill the beast, neither did it wound him mortally. It scored his shoulder and fell to the pebbly ground. But the shock of the wound was enough to shake the stallion out of all thoughts of courtship, passion, or any other intention except flight. It gave one great anguished, whinnying cry, skidded around, and charged off to the left, spraying blood, and was gone from sight.

And in that very moment the thickets on the right parted, and there came leaping out the silvery-haired centaur himself, pounding his frosty breast with the palms of his hands, and uttering loud cries. The maiden-mare, no doubt taking the meaning of them better than any Fourlimbed Folk could, did not pause or tarry, but, with a snap and a shake of her golden mane, was off to the left at a gallop. But this time not silently; whether from fear or from being set loose from fear or perhaps out of the sixy equivalent of hysteria … or for another and unknown but perhaps not unknowable reason … she now found her voice. As the men, one sitting, one sprawling, one bleeding, one cursing (though still but two of them), looked about them in pain and perplexity, they heard above hoofbeats the hueing and bellowing of the old (though patently still vigorous) sixy and the shrill cries of the female as she fled, echoing.

Presently the bosun said, “It was so safe at sea. Nothing to worry about except storms and dragons and Rahab and Leviathan and corsairs and reefs and rocks and sea-serpents and krakens and shoals.” Tenderly he touched his fingers to his bleeding ear and bruised shoulder. “Let’s get your woman and go back to sea, eh, Captain? I’ll get one for myself, she can keep her company, tend to her …” His voice sank into a sigh. With a groan and a grunt he got to his feet.

The laden onagers, as indifferent to their partner’s passion as to all the rest of the scene, had drifted off, but not far, and on coming to a division of the trail, without hesitation chose which way they were to go. The two men followed them. Now and then the bosun grimaced. Stag, coming abruptly out of a long silence, said, “Lean on this,” handed him the same spear which he had flung at the ass-stallion and picked up before leaving the scene; at once the two suddenly reflected that it was the same spear which had been flung at
them
.

“Who?”

They had no certain answer. “Those we’d hoped wouldn’t find us? The sixy? If the first, why only one spear? Did they dislodge or throw the rocks, too? Was there only one of them? And if the sixy,
why
the sixy? Did he figure he’d repaid the favor of the life-saving wine by restoring the onagers driven off by the younger sixies? — and was now free to follow his natural bent of hating all Fourlimbed Folk? — particularly such as are in some way connected with the house of Hobar? Was it perhaps the coward onagerer, creeping back in hopes of recovering not only his beasts but our gear as well, and loath to miss a chance to close our mouths? And if none of these, who, then?”

So their conjecturings went, back and forth and round about, but never to any conclusion, till at last Bosun said, after divers clearings of his throat and sidelong looks and scannings of the wilderness, “But if it was
them
, you know, Captain, even if they didn’t pin us, well, if they know where we are …” And Stag not rising to this bait or chum, his man plucked up his boldness and said, “You know what I’m referring to, Captain. That place which the other place, on the way, the one looked like that beach you, me, we …” His voice died. “Well, I didn’t — ”

And Stag, his ruddy face now flushed to the lobes of his ears so that the very ring in the one of them seemed to shine the more, flushed to the thicket of his swart beard and said, “If you weren’t afraid to name it then, why the sudden shyness now? There’s none to hear us. Allitu, you mean. So say it, then. Allitu.”

His man swallowed the reproof. And then, as though obedient to an order, repeated, “Allitu … Allitu … Allitu…. As you say, Captain, rightly, there’s none to hear us.”

They paced along a grove of beech trees and all was silent. For once there were no birds on wing or in voice. Nothing fluttered or rustled or scuttled. Something with dull eyes lay unmoving and unblinking, half hidden by a bush, half concealed by a stone. It was a creature of the sort which some call wyver or wyvern or wyvert. Some call it airsucker and some call it gossip. But nobody saw it here and so nobody called it anything at all.