Chapter 4 #4
You’ll probably have noticed that not many bullocks end up as professors at any of the major universities. That would be because, like me, they’re not particularly bright.
Svangerd, like me, is sadly ignorant of the maritime arts.
She’s been on loads of boats, and she’ll tell you she always takes an intelligent interest in what’s going on around her, especially what people are doing.
She’s got the sort of mind that loves to pick up new skills, clever knacks and hacks and ways of doing things.
She wouldn’t ever apprentice herself for seven years to a master craftsman; she hasn’t got the patience, and seven years of being told what to do would kill her, or more likely the person doing the telling.
But she absorbs things, hardly aware that she’s doing it.
She can watch someone tying a complicated knot, and then she knows how to do it.
Sailing boats, though, is one of those seven-years-hard trades that you can’t figure out from observation and first principles.
You need to know which sorts of sail do what, how to arrange the sails to catch the wind, how the stupid things work, which ropes to pull, how to use the rudder.
I could no more sail a boat on my own than you could read a Sashan clay tablet.
“Steer,” she barked at me. She was untying a rope, hauling on it. “Watch out,” she yelled, as a boom swung round at terrifying speed, straight at me. I ducked, and it missed me by a thumb’s width. “Steer,” she roared, as I cowered in the bottom of the boat. “Can’t you do anything?”
I know what a rudder looks like. I figured that if I held it absolutely still and straight, we couldn’t come to much harm very quickly. Svangerd was hauling on a rope, a different one. For a small woman, she’s amazingly strong. A sail was sliding up the mast, a bit like water flowing uphill.
“That ought to do it,” she announced, knotting the rope round a rail.
“Looks like we’ve picked up a strong north-easterly, I’m guessing about five knots, so with any luck we should fetch up on the Stacheldorn peninsula about thirty miles south of Brinnen.
That’s good. We can either ditch the boat and follow the river down to Pracht or carry on up to the Schein estuary. ”
I frowned. “Stacheldorn is west of here.”
“That’s right.”
“We’re going east.”
She opened her mouth to yell at me, then glanced upwards. Say what you like about the Invincible Sun: he’s always quite punctilious about setting in the west. “Shit,” she said.
Due east of Angkola is a great deal of sea.
Eventually, assuming the wind doesn’t drop and becalm you, or suddenly whip itself into a frenzy and smash you to bits with a huge wave, you arrive somewhere on the western coast of Olbia, where the currents are the trickiest in the known world and fishermen never go, because of the submerged rocks. “Can you change direction?” I asked.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Only I thought maybe you could tack into the wind or something. I think that’s what they call it, when they make the boat go sideways.”
“Shut the fuck up and let me think.”
I could still see Angkola in the distance, but it was much too far away for us to think of swimming.
There was a column of smoke rising from the island, swaying in our direction, like a hand vainly trying to grab us.
Well, quite. Murder and arson on a monumental scale.
But not, curiously enough, theft, which was what we’d been sent there to do.
Not that it mattered, because at some point in the next twelve hours or so we’d both be dead.
“Svangerd—”
“I said shut up.”
Well, I thought. There were a number of things I wanted to say to her before we both died, but was there really any point?
No. I tried to analyse, in particular, why I was feeling so calm, given the situation.
I discovered that it wasn’t calm, it was shock.
That amazing library, as though the Fall had never happened, and Svangerd killing people just because they happened to be in the way.
You panic and scream and lash about because you don’t want to die, you want to stay alive. Right then, I wasn’t so sure I did.
The sun went down, which more or less put the lid on it.
There’s something uniquely terrifying about being on a silly little boat in the middle of a very big sea in the pitch dark.
It’s one of those experiences that changes the way you see and understand the world for ever, and I earnestly recommend that you don’t try it for yourself.
The wind changed.
Not entirely sure when; at some point in the hours of darkness, I can’t be more precise than that.
Nothing had happened for a long time, apart from the boat rushing forward through the water.
I was slumped on my narrow, hard bench with my hands cramped on the rudder.
She was somewhere up the other end. At some point in the night I heard her muttering away, but she does that a lot; praying, which she does very fast, under her breath.
Then she was quiet for a long time, but she wasn’t snoring either, so I guessed she wasn’t asleep.
I noticed it because, instead of the left side of my face being chilled to the bone, now it was the right. The wind was now blowing due west, quite hard. In which case, I thought – and ducked, just in time to avoid the boom, swinging round like Svangerd’s pet right hook to the jaw.
“About fucking time,” I heard her say. “Bring her about.”
“You what?”
“Steer left. No, right. Push the stick right.”
It didn’t want to go, but I’m strong. I was afraid I’d break it. “Like that?”
“I don’t know, do I? I can’t see a damn thing.”
The whole boat swayed and I thought we were going to capsize.
A huge spray of water hit me in the face.
I closed my eyes, too late of course, but I daren’t take my hands off the rudder to rub them.
“What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?
” I heard her shout over the roar of the sea.
“Keep her steady.” Unfortunately I didn’t know how to do that, but it didn’t seem to matter.
Dawn. The sun rising in the east, and we were heading straight at it.
“Due east,” she announced. She sounded a bit husky, probably from all the shouting. “I reckon we’re making at least seven knots. In five hours or so we ought to be able to see Stacheldorn.”
“What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?” She scowled at me. “The wind changed, and now we’re back on course. At some point we want to steer a bit south-south-west, but not yet or we’ll overcorrect. Stop worrying,” she added. “Everything is fine.”
No, I didn’t say, everything isn’t. But there are some things you just don’t speak out loud; like, you’re acting very strangely, what’s got into you?
The longer you don’t say it, the more impossible it gets to say.
That voice, the one I particularly dislike, was trying to get my attention.
She needs you, it was saying, because she can’t do the ropes and steer at the same time, but after that – don’t be so bloody stupid, I told the voice, that’s Svangerd.
Wisely, the voice didn’t reply, or I’d have held my nose and blown it out of my ear.
“Have you still got the money?” she asked.
Dead ahead of us was land; beautiful, solid yellow and green land, with a topping of bright blue sky. “I thought you had it.”
“Shit. Not to worry. We’ll manage.”
I know nothing at all about boats, but I gather that bringing a boat into shore can be every bit as dangerous as bobbing about on the open sea, depending on geography and stuff.
But that’s fine, I promised myself. I can swim half a mile, and the sea’s not too choppy.
As soon as we’re less than half a mile out, I’ll jump off.
“Six degrees starboard,” she called out.
I had no idea what she meant by that. “Oh, for God’s sake. Get out of the way, I’ll do it.”
She shoved me out of the way and grabbed the rudder.
I took the opportunity to edge my way up the boat, clinging on hard to the rail.
Easily within half a mile, more like a quarter.
My brothers taught me to swim by shoving me into a lake when I was four.
“Get a hold of that rope and pull on it,” she called out. “No, not that one, the other one.”
By the time I’d finished obeying her orders, we were gliding smoothly up a shingle beach. The boat stopped and stuck fast. “Piece of piss,” I heard her say behind me.
I realised my right hand was in my left sleeve, and the fist was clenched.
I could see why. One punch, when she wasn’t expecting it; deck her, tie her hands with the rope belt of my habit, probably her feet as well to be on the safe side, and then maybe we could have a sensible conversation.
You’ve been acting strangely for some time now, what’s the matter with you?
For instance, why did you kill all those soldiers, and why did you set fire to the library and burn down the citadel?
And, more to the point, why did you think that book was what we’d been sent to get, and why didn’t you take it with you?
But I didn’t, and you know why? No? Then think back to the beginning of this story, where I told you how much I hate it when people ask me questions to which they already know the answer. Do as you would be done by is my motto.
“We need money,” she said.
We’d been walking for a day, and my right boot had split. I packed it out with grass, but the grass rubbed the top of my little toe. The constant irritation gave me something else to think about.
“Are you listening? We need to get some money.”
Usually when we’re walking we talk to each other. I needle her, she snaps at me, I needle her some more, and before you know it we’ve arrived at where we were going. We’d hardly exchanged a word since we landed the boat.
“Fine,” I said. “You, me and ninety-nine per cent of the human race. Trouble is—”