Tale of Birle Page 6

  Birle could see the cooking flesh, the skin growing crisp and brown, and see the sudden spurt of flames when fat dripped into the fire. She couldn’t hear what the cloaked figures were saying to one another as they conversed around the fire. She stepped back behind the tree trunk.

  “I think the track must come in here,” the Lord said.

  They were silent for a time.

  “I’m tempted to join them, if only for the sake of a meal,” the Lord said, speaking softly into her ear. “We won’t, but I am tempted.”

  Birle nodded. She had felt, like the gesture of a moth, the momentary warmth of his breath on her cheek and her sadness threatened to choke her. She moved hastily away, as if to look again at the camp. The flames of the fire lit up the underbranches of the trees, and the low, curved arms of pines. The firelight moved through the surrounding darkness as restlessly as clouds through the sky.

  Birle saw the dog, then. It came out from among the beasts to walk behind the men. She heard the Lord’s voice pitched low to warn her, “See it?” and saw by his ears that the dog, too, had taken warning.

  She didn’t know whether better safety lay in drawing back so that she might be hidden, or in keeping still where she was so that she could see, and know what was happening. The dog walked out slowly from behind the men, slowly, low, across the clearing, to the edge of the firelight. It was big, big as a hound. It growled, deep in its throat.

  One of the men at the fire lifted his head, and turned around. He looked toward the tree, where she stood frozen. Birle thought the man must see her there, but she knew he could not, looking as he was from light into darkness.

  Growling, head low, the dog came closer.

  The Lord grabbed Birle’s cloak and pulled her back, behind the tree. He motioned her to come with him as he backed carefully, silently, away from the dog, and the clearing, backed into the sheltering forest.

  The dog stiffened, and barked. The sound cut through the night like a lightning flash. It barked again, deep and baying. The men at the fire jumped up. The rabbits fell into the flames. “Run!” the Lord said.

  Birle turned and caught her foot on a root. The sack on her back unbalanced her and she fell down onto her knees. Scrambling onto her feet, she heard the Lord running loudly away and the dog’s snarling pursuit. She turned to see the men at the fire, huddled together, their knives out but unsure of what to do, unwilling to risk the darkness and the forest. With her heart thundering in her ears, Birle moved slowly away from the clearing. She didn’t begin to run until she was sure the merchants would not hear her, over the sound of the dog on the hunt.

  So must the blind move through the world, she thought, following the sound of dog and running man. She dodged around dark shapes that rose up suddenly before her, trees, bushes, boulders, following. The ground was slippery under her feet. The burden on her back weighed her down.

  The dog’s voice was snarling now, and still she couldn’t see. The snarling was accompanied by a rolling, thrashing sound. She heard, running blindly forward, reaching down to pull her knife from her boot, no word, no cry nor curse, no human voice. She heard only the dog, at its prey.

  The roiling, dark mass she came upon was like the sight of a fish fighting the hook that brought him to the surface. It was all movement, and she couldn’t see what was happening. As she ran into that mass, she saw more clearly—the dog had leaped, and in leaping had brought the man down. They rolled like wrestlers. The dog bit, snarling, for the throat as the man tried to fend off the jaws and teeth, with his hands and arms. Birle fell down across them, reached her right hand underneath the dog’s chin, placed her left hand down its muzzle and into its mouth to pull the head up and, before it could think to close its teeth on her hand, she drew her right hand back, across, and slit its throat.

  Silence fell over them. The dog’s head fell limp. Her hand and knife were wet with the rush of hot blood. She couldn’t catch her breath, lying heavily there. She drew back to her knees and hauled the dog’s body away.

  The Lord scrambled to his feet. “Come on,” he said. His voice was weak, filled with the air he struggled for. “The river. Can you find it? The boat? Get up!”

  Birle stood up. “Aye, but—”

  “Argue later,” he told her. “The men—if there’s another dog—”

  Birle hadn’t thought beyond the immediate danger. His words frightened her. She set off running, and he came crashing along close behind her. She led them to the river and then—knowing they had come in upstream from the island—down its bank, across the shallow stream. There, he stepped out ahead of her, his cloak loose now. He reached back to haul her up over boulders.

  The boat was a dark shape floating out in the water, held to land by the rope. The Lord bent over to catch the rope and pull the boat to shore. “You get in,” he gasped, “hold the oars. Where’s the knot?” he cried.

  Birle clambered into the boat, which rocked dangerously under her feet. She shed the sack and sat down, facing the island. She held the oars ready. As soon as he had his feet in the boat, she lifted the oars, dipped them into the water, and pulled, as strongly as she could. The boat shot away, into the river.

  The sudden movement knocked his feet out from under her. He tumbled down onto the floor, facing her. Birle rowed backward until they were safe at midstream, then lifted her legs and swung around in the seat. She continued rowing, down the dark, southward-flowing river.

  Overhead, the sickle-shaped new moon shone peacefully among stars, and after a while Birle’s heart slowed, and her breathing slowed. She didn’t know about his heart, but she heard his breath grow steady, until she couldn’t hear it at all. “Are you hurt, my Lord?” she asked.

  His answer came from behind her. “I don’t think so, but—I’m covered with blood. Some might well be my own, but I don’t feel any pain.”

  “Aye, the blood’ll wash out,” she assured him.

  “And you?” he asked.

  “I’m not hurt.” She could have complained of fatigue, this night’s work after the day’s, but she didn’t think she had anything to complain of.

  “I couldn’t get my knife. Couldn’t get my hand to my knife. Or my sword,” his voice told her. “You were handy with the dog.”

  “It’s how pigs are slaughtered.”

  “I’m going to move to the seat.”

  The only answer she gave was to hold the oars out of the water. He climbed past her and sat down carefully, facing her. He rested his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands. Birle rowed steadily, along the quiet river with its dark, distant banks, closing safe around them like walls.

  When the Lord raised his head it was to say, “You saved my life. The creature would have chewed my throat out. I was so frightened—afraid for my life. And with reason. I didn’t know how fear tastes.” He laughed then. “I’ve hunted with dogs, and thought I was a brave man doing it, and rode proudly back with the game carried behind me. It brought me down, that dog, like running game. I’ve seen deer brought down so.” He seemed to be staring at her, but Birle could see only the whiteness of his face, not what his eyes saw. After a long time, the Lord said, “As if I were an animal. I’ve never been in battle, never killed a man. My brother is the soldier.”

  So it couldn’t be a murder that he ran from.

  “We might go to the shore now, my Lord,” she said. “It’s not safe to travel in darkness. I don’t know how far downriver the port lies,” she added. Without waiting for his order, she headed the boat to shore. She had forgotten the danger ahead.

  He didn’t protest. He didn’t say anything, not until the bank loomed up close overhead. Then he told her. “I cut the rope.”

  He sounded so sorry, like one of her sisters, like little Moll caught with jam on her face saying “I was hungry,” that Birle couldn’t be angry. That sound of his words, with the darkness shadowing his features so that she was no longer sure of his face, led her to ask him, “How old are you, my Lord?” Immediately, she
regretted the question. “Never mind the rope, we’ll stay close to the bank where the current isn’t strong. In the morning, when we can see, we’ll see what’s to be done for a rope.”

  “With my sword,” he said, going on with his own thoughts as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “I’ve been nineteen years in the world, Birle, and you’d think I’d have learned better sense, wouldn’t you?”

  “I wasn’t thinking that, my Lord.” He was quick to despise himself, she thought, and wondered why that should be so.

  “We’ll sleep in the boat,” he said. Without another word, he turned to lie down on the short seat, his knees rising up like a tent.

  Birle left the oars raised out of the water and moved off the rowing seat to the narrow bow. There, she arranged his sack like a pillow behind her. Somewhere ahead lay the port, but she didn’t know how far. Now she knew his age. And she had saved his life, so she had given him something he would remember.

  His voice floated out of the darkness, like the boat floating at the river’s edge. “I have a bed with a feather mattress, and hangings to keep the cold out. So what am I doing here, with blood drying all over my cloak and my shirt.” He didn’t expect her to answer. Birle imagined what a mattress filled with feathers might feel like. Her own was stuffed with straw, but feathers must be soft, softer than grass. “It’s too bad, really,” he said, laughter rising in his voice. “I would have enjoyed a rabbit. Why did we leave it behind, Birle?” he asked, laughing.

  Chapter Six

  DURING THE NIGHT, A FOG settled over them. Waking, Birle peered into the moist air, but could see no riverbank, on any side. The boat moved gently along, like a basket set adrift. But this was like no fog she had even seen on the river. Fogs lay down along the river like ribbons lifted on air, or the unbound hair of drowned women; river fog floated, soft and fine, until the morning brushed it away. This fog crowded gray-white around their boat. Birle knew it must be day, because it was daylight that caused fog to shine white, but how far into the day they had traveled, she had no idea.

  It should have been frightening, this blindness, this ignorance, but it wasn’t. She could see the Lord, where he slept, with his long legs hanging out over the flat water. She could see a little way around them. Such isolation was safety. The thickness of the fog made them invisible. At any time, she could pick up the oars and steer them to one bank or the other, and it didn’t matter which; but she judged that for the time they were safest in midstream. She didn’t think it necessary to wake the Lord.

  The moist, white world around her made no sounds except for the gentle sweep of the river, nuzzling up against the boat as a kid nuzzles up against its mother for milk. As far as Birle’s senses told her, there was only the boat and its two passengers in the whole empty world.

  When the Lord stretched, his heels splashed into the water. His eyes opened in surprise and he was immediately awake. He pulled his legs in, sat up, and looked around. “Is it late?” he asked. “It feels late.” He rubbed at his face with his hands. “I guess you can sleep deeply even without a feather bed.”

  “Aye you can, my Lord,” Birle agreed. If that were not so, only the Lords would get rest. “When the fog burns off, we’ll see where we are.”

  Wrapped around by fog they drifted on. After a time, he asked for his sack, and Birle passed it to him. He took out the map and spread it out over his knees. “How near are we to this port?” he asked.

  Birle had no idea. For a minute, looking at the map—at the line of river opening into the sea, at the emptiness once the sea began, and the unknown land falling away to the south—she felt a washing of fear go over her. It was a small thing, no more than a little wave washing on the river’s bank. She thought of her family at the Inn, and how they might worry, and she wished she could have sent them word, somehow, that she was well. The Lord’s stained cloak reminded her that those merchants might have taken word to the Inn; but there had been no chance to give them a message. It was odd, however, that the fog didn’t lighten.

  The Lord reached over the side of the boat to wash his face, splashing water over his eyes and cheeks and chin. His tongue licked at his lips. “Birle? Wash your face, as I have.”

  She wondered what marks were on her, but didn’t hesitate to do as she was told. There might well be dirt, and the blood, too, which would be an ugly sight. The water was cold, and she splashed it hastily over her face. It trickled cold down her neck and into her mouth. There was a salt taste to it, she thought, dipped her hand into the gray water again and tasting it on her tongue. She turned around to ask him.

  “We must be near the sea,” he said.

  Birle looked at the map. If it was seawater they floated on, they must have passed the port in the night, and they might be drifting out now into the landless area. “Should we turn back?” she asked. “You don’t want to go out there—” Her finger hovered above the broad empty space.

  “Could we have passed the port in the night and never know?”

  “If I could see the sun, I could know which way is south,” Birle said.

  “How do you know I want to go south?”

  “Aye, my Lord, that’s the only direction for you, if you would come at the end to a city.”

  “But how do you know that the cities lie to the south?”

  “Because north”—she pointed at the letter N with the arrow underneath it—“is that way.” Then she saw her error. Her hand drew back, as if it had touched fire, and she spoke quickly. “Or so I understood from the way the map looks. Because the Inn was here, you said it, and I know the Kingdom lies to the north of the Inn, and the river—everybody says—runs to the south and west.” If he knew she knew letters, and words, and how to read them, he would never trust her. “Or, is it that you don’t want to go to the cities of the south?”

  His bellflower eyes just stared at her, and he said nothing.

  “I thought—you were looking for a dragon,” she said, trying to make him smile.

  He folded the map up and put it away. “No, you’re right, it’s to the south I’m traveling. My grandfather says, it’s never wise to underestimate what the people know. But I don’t think we can be at the sea, not yet.”

  “Why not? What do you know of it? I know only what I’ve heard, that it lies there at the end of the river.”

  “I don’t know anything, but I’ve heard things. When entertainers come to the castles, they pay for their dinners with the tales they tell. The waves of the sea, they say, are tall, even on a calm day, tall as a table. The water rises and falls, pulled somehow by the moon, in tides—twice a day if they are to be believed. I don’t believe everything they tell. Great twisting grasses grow in the water, and there are creatures that come up from the bottomless depths of it, to raid the shores or to attack boats. These long-necked creatures rise suddenly up out of the water to come crashing down on a boat. They have heads, teeth—eyes—but their heads are scaly, like snakes, without ears or hair or feathers. No man lives to tell the tale.”

  Birle looked out into the fog, but could see nothing.

  “Which makes you wonder how the tale gets told, doesn’t it? But I think we aren’t on the sea,” the Lord said, “because it seems to me that where the river joins into it, the sea must mix back up into the river, and that would cause the river water to taste of salt.”

  Within the circle of the visible world there was the man, the boat, and the colorless water. What lay beyond Birle could not see. If she couldn’t see it she couldn’t concern herself with it. Thinking that, she smiled; seeing her smile, he answered it with his own, and opened his mouth to tell her something.

  “Hold your oars.”

  The man’s voice came out of the fog. Birle couldn’t say which direction it came from, before or behind them, to right or left.

  “Did you hear—?” the voice asked.

  “I didn’t hear nothing,” a second voice answered. “You, you’re hearing things now.”

  Birle heard the sound of oars. S
he peered into the fog, to see from which side danger approached, and how close it lay. She moved forward to take their oars in her hands, but “No,” the Lord whispered.

  “There,” the first voice spoke out of the fog.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I wish I were. This hag’s breath of a fog is poor company for a sober man. And you’re no improvement. The only thing that smells worse than your clothes is your breath, and the only thing that stinks more than your breath is the words you puff up with it.”

  Birle had her knife in her hand, and looked about her, right and left, back and front. The Lord had drawn his sword. The voices were drawing closer, but she couldn’t see any boat, or man. She didn’t know how long she could sit still, waiting for danger to attack. She didn’t know how the Lord could be so at ease, as if he were waiting for his servant to bring him a goblet of wine.

  “Watch your mouth,” the second voice said. Oars splashed, but the fog made sound seem to be where it was not. The sound of that other boat came from all around Birle. “Cap’n said if you was drunk I should slit your throat, and good riddance. That’s his exact words.”

  The first voice laughed. “And you believed him? If you did, you might as well try it. But I should point out that if you succeed at the attempt—which is not highly probable—you might find the captain not entirely grateful to you. He has uses for me. For myself, I’ve little use for the world, and the world has no use for me, so you’re free to find out for yourself if I’m sober or drunk.”

  Birle hoped the voices were drawing away now. She thought they were becoming fainter. But she was afraid she was deceiving herself.

  “An’ don’t think I wouldn’t,” the sullen voice said.

  “Although you’d be wise to hold your hand at least until we’ve relieved these travelers of their burdens. As the captain knows, they’d prefer to be robbed by a gentleman.”