Pirate and King, chapter twenty

20

Elsewhere in time and place, not so much lost as abandoned:

Rykkan Hunt spent two days recovering from the nightmare job of carrying a thankless old river wight. He ought to have rested another day, but the hunter was never one to just lie around and be served. At first, he was too sore and feeble to move, and he drank as much willow bark tea as Nusie could flood him with. His fever and chills she treated with blankets, herb smoke and a cooling poultice of egg whites and feverfew.

Besides the duck eggs (which she never took all of, from any one nest), Nusie's foraging turned up the remains of the river wight's iron-bound chest, plenty of fruit and a tall stand of big-stalk; a sort of hollow, strong grass that was worth more than gold for its thousands of uses. The green shoots were tasty, too.

In this mixed-up place, everything seemed to be sprouting, nesting, fledging and fruiting at once. It made no sense at all, but Nusie didn't complain. Just made use of the bounty as Rykkan slowly got better. There was so much! Fat, lazy fish were easily trapped, but Ryk wasn't ready for straight solid food. Not with a raging fever tearing him up. Nusie gave the hunter a broth, instead, made with water and fish, a bit of egg yolk, some cress and sliced river root. Old Arla had taught her well. The treatment worked, but half the battle was mental. She sang to Ryk as he recovered, soothed him when he raved, told stories when he grew fretful and bored.

"I should be up and doin'!" he complained, struggling to rise.

"You'll kill yerself tryin'," she chided, smoothing his sweat-dampened hair with a cloth.

"We only got two months, Nus!" wailed her intended, ashamed of his own weakness.

"And the faster ya heal, the sooner we start movin' again. Besides, Big Man, this here's a river. Maybe the Laran, maybe not... but it's goin' our way, and once y'r back on yer feet, we might build a raft."

Rykkan stopped feebly thrashing to look at Nusie. A smile split his reddish-brown beard, and then he began to chant craft-lore, same as any mortal could do, when pressed. Though no one in Burrough'd had to construct a raft since time out of mind, they still remembered and passed down the lore. Just something you learned by heart, along with your letters and craft.

"You'll be takin' eight logs, of willow or pine, cuttin' em square, with notches so fine..." he began. Nusie joined in for the rest, laughing.

“Rope ‘ll be wanted, fer four corners each, plenty ter wrap up and all logs ter reach.”

There was more, and halfway through the next day, they switched from chanting about rafts to building one. Fallen logs were readily available, though not all the same size. That made for an uneven surface, so Nusie suggested using some of that big-stalk.

“It floats a treat, Ryk,” she assured him, “and it won’t get waterlogged, neither. Arla uses the segments fer potion bottles and mugs.”

“I dunno,” he said, doubtfully, shaking out muscles that still felt like dough. “I never heard of no big-stalk raft, Nus… and what’ve we got ter cut it with?”

“We’ll look fer dead stalks,” she answered firmly, hands on her hips, looking up into Rykkan’s face. “Besides, I’ve got my skinning knife and my sickle too, haven’t I?”

One way or another, they got the job done, using a combination of willow and big-stalk lengths notched and lashed to create a broad square, then topped with seven more logs that they’d stripped of branches and bark. Their raft wasn’t the prettiest thing that ever sailed the big blue, but on the other hand, they’d never seen one before, so they had nothing at all to compare it with. (And it did float.)

Rykkan cut poles to steer it with, then carved out a paddle using Nusie’s poor, overworked skinning knife. They assembled the raft in the water, at a point where the river bank curved, forming a calm, reedy bay. Nusie surprised Rykkan with four bits of the old-timer’s slimy wood chest.

“They sparkle,” she pointed out, holding three long splinters and part of an iron lock. “There’s magic in ‘em, from whatever the gaffer were carryin’, and it’ll help our raft float better. I’m sure of it.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Ryk didn’t argue. It never did any good, when Nus set her mind to something.

“All right,” he grunted. “Lash a bit in, Nusie, and hope the Old-timer don’t curse us fer stealin’.”

As she set about jamming pieces of soggy cask and corroded iron between the logs, Rykkan looked around, taking in mixed trees that seemed to flower and fruit at the same time, waterbirds both fat enough to hunt and setting on eggs, and fish in all stages of growth. Strange and unnatural, he called it.

“You suppose this place is enchanted? Special, like?” Rykkan asked, a little uneasily.

“There now, Gaffer,” Nusie whispered, slipping one final bit of cask-wood into a knot. “If ya never done no one a lick of good in all yer long life, here’s where ya start.”

She was knee deep in water beside the raft, barefoot and wriggling her toes at the curious minnows. Job done, she smiled at Rykkan and said,

“I figure there’s more than one kind of enchantment, Ryk Hunt. Maybe time can eddy and whorl just like a river does, and this place is one of them eddies.”

That was too much philosophy for Rykkan. He waded in, seized Nusie about the waist and lifted her onto their raft. Next came the two poles, his spear and paddle, a heap of supplies and their packs. Himself, Ryk flipped aboard last of all.

Neither young mortal had ever stood on a boat. Neither knew how to swim, so they lashed themselves to the raft for safety. Its pitching and spinning motion surprised them, as did the fact that it just ducked down and shot forward, when someone tried climbing on top.

Ryk spent some time in the shallows, working out how hard to shove with his pole, and how to turn the raft where they wanted to go. The river bed was stony rather than muddy, but he still fell off three times, creating a giant splash when he hit the water, flailing and howling. Lost hold of the pole, every time.

Nusie laughed at him, but it was fond, joyful laughter, not meant to hurt. River otters watched all this from the bank, then the water, then climbed up onto their raft for a game. Cheeky beggars tried stealing, too, but Nusie stopped them.

“Shoo! Be off with ya!” she cried, striking her paddle against the raft. “We need all of that!”

The otters chirped and purred like slick brown cats, diving off one side to pop back up at the other. At last, Rykkan felt confident enough to pole them out deeper. They were very cautious at first. The trouble with craft-lore was that it had been nothing but words for so long, it had lost much of its meaning. Those ancient terms had to be pinned to moving water, a real raft and actual navigation.

“Oh, that’s what it means!” was a frequent refrain. Mostly, they kept within splashing distance of shore, where they could see the bottom and schools of darting silvery fish. The current took them without the need for much intervention, a sensation of speed and smooth motion like nothing they’d ever experienced.

With sunshine and birdsong and one persistent young otter, Nusie and Rykkan passed their first day on the river quite pleasantly. Their only concern was the total lack of other people, and the mischievous water-rat who’d adopted their raft.

The closest they came to ‘folk sign’ was the broken remains of an old stone roadway or bridge that had collapsed into the river. Huge broken segments were tilted up into the air, making dark caves and casting long shadows. Ryk poled them to shore, for the sun was setting, and the water was rougher around all of that broken stone. Far down below, between bridge pylons like green, slimy teeth, they could see tumbled and rusted carts.

“Poor blighters,” said Ryk, pushing the raft away from a jagged stone pylon with rusted bars sticking out. “Gotta hope it were quick.”

“Aye,” breathed Nusie, making the sign against evil.

They camped in a copse of poplars, but did not spend a comfortable night, even with Smotter the Otter dragging up fish for them. Rykkan pulled their raft halfway onto the riverbank and tied it to a tree, but he got up several times in the night to check, even so.

“Big man, y’r supposed ter be restin’,” groaned Nusie, the fourth time he rolled out of his blankets.

“Oh, aye. Fer certain, Nus. Just checkin’ them knots, is all. Might not’ve tied ‘em tight enough,” he explained, honestly just too restless to sleep. The forest was quiet, the eyes that shone like lamps from the darkness very few, the river a constant rustle and splash at their backs. Nothing like Burrough. Nowhere near home.

“Take a brand,” sighed Nusie, dividing her attention between Ryk and those eyes in the forest.

“I’m sorry, Nus. Last time, I promise,” he told her, dropping a kiss on the top of her head and pulling a stick from the fire before starting down to check on their raft.

The moon had risen, gliding silently up past the eastern hills. It made a broad and shimmery path on the water; the sort of roadway you could walk across to the fey-lands in epics and tales. Zelf had trod such a path, when he looked for the underworld. Rykkan wondered about that, and about people lying smashed up in their magical carts at the base of a shattered bridge… but he didn’t come up with an answer.

“Did y’ not control things as well as you thought?” he asked the night, and all of those missing elves. Only the wind replied, mussing his hair and his beard.

The knots were still firm, as it turned out, and their raft unmolested. The otter was curled up asleep on its rough-hewn surface, surrounded by fish bones and droppings. It raised its head and chirped at him; a friendly and smelly, whiskered brown face.

“You’ll be cleanin’ that mess before Nus sees it, if y’ know what’s good fer you, Rat,” Rykkan advised, shaking his head.

Before starting back to the campsite, Ryk had another long look at that moonlit river and shattered bridge. How could folk with so much magic fail so completely, he wondered? How could they just disappear?

“I dunno if anyone’s left ter listen,” he said, after a moment, “and I’m not much of a talker, anyhow. It’s Nus y’ want, fer fine speech… but there’s a lot of folk dependin’ on our success and… and I guess we could use some help, is all. Please?”

Night-jars and water and the crackling hiss of his burning branch were all Rykkan heard; moonlight and ripples and broken dark stone all he saw.

“Well… think about it, anyway,” he mumbled, giving up and returning to bed. The next day around noon, they finally came to a town.