Whip-Tip, Whisper
Then did a voice lift high and bright, sweet singing such as the Goldspear’s folk had never before heard.
Then did they hear the wonder, not merely of a mortal’s gift. For there was an answer that day.
Many swore they saw it, too; many swore they witnessed
The Riversinger dancing, and their waters replied
One voice was two, and the second was of the Blessed…
—Ancilaen Gaeldflor, The Alkuine’s Tale
Tai-yo! Tai-yo!” Arn chanted. Eol and Tjorin had to do the work of twice their number, and they bent to it grimly.
Efain did not ride the rocking with grace as my shieldmaid did. He swayed, ever seeming at the edge of being cast from the boat’s shelter headfirst, his skin twitching like a wolf’s hide each time he avoided the fall. In his hands was a curved length, a bow of design even few Elder had seen. I hoped the string was not too wet for service, my heart hammering in my throat; Gelad shook sodden hair from his face with a quick irritated motion and handed his battle-brother the arrow.
The bend was approaching, and swiftly. I could not look. I gazed at the scarred man in his sopping black clothes, teetering as our craft heeled, Arn exhorting Tjorin to dig his oar deep, deep as Hel’s country, now, now.
Efain half-turned, and the boat rocked again. He nocked, and Gelad was wholly occupied with keeping his own balance as well as making sure the coil of line was not wrapped around an oar, a leg, an arm. Of Elder make was that rope, plaited finely, looking far too thin for what it was to bear.
I was praying, unheard in the rush of water, the sound of slapping oars, Arn’s chanting, the huffs of effort from our rowers. Efain was pale, though the scars upon his jaw, forehead, and cheek flushed, and his dark eyes shone with predatory glee.
In that moment I saw his wolf with clarity, instead of the merciful shaggy inkspot blur of shifting. It waited, teeth bared, for prey to appear, and his stance dropped slightly. He still swayed, but it was the lolloping of a four-limbed beast over rough ground, each foot placed near-thoughtless yet effectively, no motion wasted and no grace sought.
My heart nearly throttled me. I can feel the river shifting, I wanted to scream, do it now, by the gods!
But he waited, the bow dangling loosely. It was a complicated affair, for it had small turning pieces and clattered as it loosed, but the harpist of Nithraen was proud of it, and swore it the finest of its kind. Darker wood was inlaid along its curves, and it hummed with the force of a named weapon.
The arrow was strange too, its head ungainly with barbs in odd places and its fletching from no bird I had ever encountered or heard tell of. But I had to trust it would serve; so did my Arn, who was wholly occupied with her own work.
I shook not with cold, but with the urge to act. Holding back that flood was harder than weirding, worse than singing a long saga, more difficult than enduring the few confusing, clamoring battles I had seen upon our journey.
At the last moment, when the need for action chewed my bones like ague, Efain smiled. He raised the bow, the nocked arrow taking its place with an unheard click, and Gelad watched, hands busy with the line. He would have to loosen his grasp the instant the bow spoke, or risk losing a finger.
Possibly more.
Efain drew in one smooth motion, his chest swelling as he inhaled. He sighted, but his eyes were half-closed, and I do not believe he saw his target. Rather, he felt for it in some unphysical way, with the near-seidhr instinct of those who may whisper a shaft into flying as they will instead of as it prefers. His scars had drained of their flush, his cheeks ran with riverwater, and as soon as his fingertips reached his ear the bow spoke, a single hard sound with a whistle at its end.
I was aware then of other high sharp cries; those of Laeliquaende called these particular arrows kwislael, akin to the word for a sound the flag-tipped blades of orukhar made before they buried in flesh yet with a softness at the end.
The Elder rope smoked between Gelad’s palms, uncoiling swifter than a thought; he grimaced, but held to his task. Efain dropped the bow with seeming inattention, ending with its clatter into the bottom of the boat; I had to tap it into place with one foot without disturbing Arn’s rhythm or anything else in the chaos. The boat heaved as if it wished to throw us all into the depths, and my shieldmaid’s hawk-cry of warning fell from a sky now clear and blue, innocent of any cloud.
The mist was gone. Pitiless golden light drenched us, and Efain’s hands flashed out. The arrow vanished into a stand of old, massive trees and moss-shrouded boulders just before the tip of the triangle, hopefully burying itself deep in a surface strong enough to bear our weight.
Efain planted one foot against the boat’s side; Gelad wrapped the line about his own forearm and lunged, nearly upsetting us again. Arn screamed an imprecation, Eol’s oar slapped instead of digging…
… and the line snapped taut, a shock communicating through Efain to the rest of us. Our poor boat bucked like a horse pushed past patience into terror, Gelad threw his arms—one tangled with the line—around his battle-brother, and Efain leaned back, a wolf’s snarl distorting his entire face.
“Up! Up!” Arn called, and the two oars wielded by Eol and Tjorin rose free of the water’s skin. The rope added a thin singing noise of stress answered by its kin; we were not the only ones who had achieved this feat. Around the sharp bend we shot at the end of a spiderstrand thinness, like a cradled stone before it leaves a shepherd-boy’s sling, and we had to hope we would not tangle with another line nor find ourselves in the way of any other archer’s aim.
Skimming swiftly, my stomach jolting to my throat and crowding my wildly throbbing heart, a coughing growl from Efain’s lungs vying with Gelad’s scream of an obscenity in the Old Tongue I would blush to repeat if I could remember its exact dimensions, we were as the tip of a whip as it cracks through air. Arn dropped into a crouch again, whiteknuckle grasping at gunwales to keep from being flung, and a pair of oars rolled in a few fingerwidths of shipped riverwater, Daerith’s bow close to being crushed under Gelad’s bare toe-spread feet.
The most perilous moment, all annals of previous races agreed, was the releasing of the line so those in the boat could continue, having turned the water’s corner. But again, Efain’s eyes half-closed, and he was not listening to the sounds of effort, the cries of dismay as others missed their shot, a splintering crack from a craft which had found a rock hidden in smooth swift deepflow. His attention still focused wholly inward, and much sooner than I thought possible his hands loosened. He tumbled into Gelad’s lap, the other man somehow freeing himself with a convulsive motion as well, and the Elder rope’s now-freed end flew, curling, striking with snakelike swiftness diagonally across Eol’s back.
The captain of Naras stiffened before his shoulders hunched, but he did not let go of his oar. Nor did he cry aloud, though blood flew scarlet as the line vanished, its falling length now a danger for those behind us.
“To oar!” Arn cried. Quick and smooth she rose, shaking out her hands and gesturing, motions familiar from other races upon our home waters—a shieldmaid is lucky to have as a caller, though it was oft judged unfair for one bearing seidhr to compete. “To oar, my brothers, to oar! Tai-yo! Tai-yo!”
They caught her rhythm again, and now I had to turn once more to the prow. But I stared for a moment at Eol’s back, black cloth flapping free, blood now invisibly soaking into river-sodden fabric. I could not tell how deep the wound was, but he did not falter, bending to riverwork as fiercely as any son of Dun Rithell.
“Sol!” my shieldmaid shrieked, and the boat shook like a dog gaining a far shore, bringing drowned fowl to its master.
After the bend were more rapids, and the greatest test of all. Savage exhaustion filled my bones, and my vision shrank to the waters before me. A great liquid comb fell over a shelf of stone, the river wearing away but not quite managing to flatten this stubborn prominence, and beyond it an expanse of white foam rose again, hungry and beautiful.
Now every separate mortal in the boat had to trust the others, and do their own task besides.
My legs pushed me upright. My hands snapped free like birds uncaged, wet woolen sleeves falling free, and the song rose from my chest again.
This time the music did not soar. A droning undercurrent furled behind me, slapping-cold against my cheeks, striking the backs of the rowers. Strength I sang into them, weirding fusing to their bones. Any with the seidhr may spur warriors in battle with voice married to will; what came unbidden from my throat was an old, old chant Idra had taught me in the depths of a terrible winter. That particular half-song is said to be one of the first of its kind, ancient and strong, a recitation from the time before we knew the Elder or the Black Land’s master existed. Of monsters it howled, and those who left the shelter of caves to put an end to their depredations.
In those days we did not know how the weirding twisted when physical weapons were wielded with it, so the tales are largely tragic and a hero usually dead with their opponent amid shattered trees and stinking mud. But they gave their lives willingly, those considered and named mighty among our primeval ancestors, so the rest of the clan could survive.
Of Grivik I sang, and the very first Bjornwulf who hunted a foul many-limbed thing in the high fells under cold stars. Of Sigurl the manwoman who first spoke to wolves and made them hounds, leader of a pack bringing down a twisted mockery of a stag upon the smoking side of a shuddering, ash-choked mountain. Of Astranna, no shieldmaid but mighty enough that the Wingéd carried her bodily from her place-of-dying, of Gesilda the Firewitch from whom many a warlord claims descent if there is even a tinge of red to his beard. And to give him his due, of Odynn I sang, hanging upon the tree of seidhr to gain wisdom, and of the stars wheeling overhead as his sacrifice endured and his dripping godblood nourished the roots.
Later we mortals met the Elder and learned different songs; later we tamed both kine and granary cat. Later we built greathalls; later we plowed and spun. But though the Children of the Star might disdain our short history and call the South forgetful—no, we do not forget this.
How can we? The knowledge lies in our very bones and blood and skin, and needs only a whisper of seidhr to burst forth.
Arn’s voice throbbed counterpoint and the rowers called upon their last reserves in a glare of sunshine, white riverhair flung high as Naricie sought both to kill us and to bear us safely along. Between those two longings we spun, just barely avoiding the rocks, and so great was the effort I might have sung until my throat shredded itself, my heart torn free, my bones broken like dry branches, and all of me but a single wavering note upon the wind.
We burst from the last veil of riverbreath, rainbows like Fryja’s veils shimmering in every direction, and onto another great glassy section just as the sun reached his apogee. A bright clear noon enfolded us, and we were not alone. Two other boats crewed by Elder appeared, and upon the far shore a loud cry went up, though we did not hear it.
Or rather, I did not hear it, too far lost in my weirding. But Arneior’s rhythm changed, and the boat—named Swiftwing, named Leafwhisper, named Solveig in the depths of my song for I was her and she was me—hummed across the river like a fish-hawk whose wings almost brush the surface but not quite, not quite. So quick was their motion the oars nearly blurred, appearing to bend as they scooped and lifted. Spray curled upon either side, lifting high, and though more Elder craft freed themselves from the last rapids, even the two who chased us could not catch.
Like a well-rested hart before tired hounds we raced, and barely slowed as we aimed for the green shore where bright pennants fluttered and a crowd stood, some cheering, others singing, a medley of horns and pipes and harps lifting to the blue vault.
Arn’s chanting changed; my voice fell, a falcon plummeting earthward. The keel grated upon sand with tiny agate pebbles buried in its wet flatness, and my legs almost failed as I hopped from the wooden shell, something in me crying out as my soles left her skin. I pulled, and there was splashing behind me as the wolves of Naras staggered knee-deep. We hauled our faithful craft from the water she longed for, beaching her upon unforgiving ground, and Naciel burst from a crowd of Elder, the joy upon her so bright I could not bear to look. She carried a wreath of glossy dark-green leaves, and as Tjorin swayed with the exhaustion of a mighty feat accomplished, his princess crowned him.
Above the beach, on a slight shelf of rock with a balustrade of silvery wrought-metal seeming to grow from it like a hedge, Taeron Goldspear witnessed this. Draped in green like new leaves the king smiled, though the expression was pained.
My stomach quaked. I longed to retch. I reeled; Arn drew alongside, her arms closing around me like rope over a mooring-pole. We made a single pillar upon the shore, our feet sinking in sand, her face in my wet hair, my knees full of the water we had just been upon. The remaining wolves of Naras clustered their companions; there was much backslapping and shouting. Aeredh brandished a flask, holding it to Eol’s mouth as the captain, white-faced, stared over his Elder friend’s shoulder, drinking unwilling.
I rested my cheek upon Arn’s muscled upper arm, and could not tell if I smiled or wept. A pang passed between volva and the heir of Naras, some silent chord resonating unheard amid the tumult. Other craft were reaching the beach, each fresh arrival greeted with joyous tumult.
But we were first. The son of Hrasimir, nominal captain of our crew, was counted the winner of that spring’s river race.