The Sea Peoples(106)
Not me, thought Pip. I’m just now realizing how much I . . . well, yes, it’s bloody well love . . . how much I love John.
She’d been waiting for anything else so long that it took her a double heartbeat before she realized that John’s eyes were open. The wax-mask immobility of his face, so much worse than mere sleep or even unconsciousness, turned back to life. Confused bewildered life, eyes darting around the room and obviously wondering where he was, but life.
You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
There was a saying to that effect, or it might be a song. That was even more true when you thought something was gone and then you got it back. She lunged forward, but Toa stepped in and plucked her into the air with one huge arm that pinned hers to her waist as well.
“Wait a bit, Cap’n,” he said. “Make sure, like, after all the shite we saw in that . . . other place.”
Deor dropped the drum and staggered. Then he stepped forward and gripped John’s head between his hands, looking deeply into his eyes.
“Yes,” he said after a minute, walking backward and half-falling into a rattan chair that creaked under his lean weight. “Yes, that’s him.”
Thora knelt beside the chair and put her arm over his shoulders. “Well done, old friend,” she said gently. “Well done and very well done, oath-brother.”
Ruan knelt at his other side, offering a mug of water; Deor seized it and drank, coughed, drank again with a long sigh.
Toa released her, and Pip scrambled to John’s side, cradling his head. His hazel eyes sought hers.
“It was . . . so bright,” he murmured, still distant. “So bright . . . so kind . . .”
Then they snapped into focus on her. “Thank you, Pip. Thank you. You came for me in that awful place.”
“I need you, damn you,” she said, and kissed him. “You’re the only man I’ve ever met who doesn’t bore me!”
“Let me get up,” John said, and she helped him.
He staggered a little and felt . . .
“I’m hungry,” he said. “I could use a steak.”
They all laughed . . . but Ruan suddenly stopped. “What’s this?” he said.
“No!” Deor barked. Then: “I’m sorry, my heart, but that is a thing of peril. And it should not be here.”
A knife was suddenly lying on the floor. A rune-graven blade that the four of them all remembered. They looked at each other in silence, until John spoke: “Shit,” he said crisply.
There was a growing clamor outside, voices raised in shouts. A man in the glittering dress and cloth-of-gold sarong of Baru Denpasar’s royal court burst through.
“A ship has come, a great warship!”
John forced himself upright, and hobbled out to fling the slatted shutters wide despite the aches and twinges of a body long disused, as if age had struck him before his time. A ship was standing in towards the entrance to Baru Denpasar’s harbor, a three-master with the Crowned Mountain and Sword of the High Kingdom of Montival fluttering from the mizzen. A frigate he recognized . . .
“Stormrider!” he shouted.
EPILOGUE
YALU RIVER
NORTH BANK
The shaman put down her rattle and took a long swig of arkhi, the potent clear spirit distilled from fermented mare’s milk. Snatching up the knife whose blade had been heating in the fire she spat some of the liquid on the red-glowing steel, and it hissed like a dragon. Then she licked it twice and held the knife as she danced.
The drums thuttered and boomed as she did, and her helpers chanted. Her feet moved in the slow shuffling movements, and the fringes and beads that covered her long deerskin robe fluttered in the cold wind. A headdress covered the front of her face, a tall screen of feathers from the Golden Eagle—the bird of noyons and warrior khans—and a leather band with the stylized shape of a horse burned into it, and below a fringe of tassels that hid her face to the chin.
When she had danced three times around the bonfire she stopped, hands raised to the sky. An eagle hung there, and its harsh cry echoed on the chilly breeze.
She opened her eyes, panting harshly—the sheer effort involved in the rituals was like pushing a balky colt away from its mother so you could milk the mare again and again, and she was old now. Before her the ordu stretched around, covering the bare ground with horses and warriors. Those nearest were nobles in silk and mail and spired steel helmets, their bow-cases and quivers of leather tooled and inlaid with gold; beyond were the dun-colored masses of the tribal levies in leather and felt, the fighters of the herding clans on their stocky hairy ponies. Silence fell save for the whistle of the wind, full of ice and the green earthy smell of horses and their dung, the sweat-soaked leather and wool of the warriors.
Toktamish—brother of the Kha-Khan, Commander of Fifty Thousand—sat cross-legged on a priceless carpet, his armor glinting even in the wan winter’s sun. His narrow hazel eyes looked impassively, waiting a moment before he leaned forward with his hands on his knees and barked:
“Yuu süns gej khelekh ve?”
What do the spirits say?
The idugan drew breath, knowing how she must reply. The words were ancient prophecy, but the horde waited breathlessly.
“K?ke M?ngke Tngri speaks! The Eternal Blue Heaven speaks; Qormusta Tengri the King of Heaven speaks! The thirty-three great Gods and the ninety-nine tngri of earth and sky, lightning and thunder and rain, speak, the spirits of land and beast and bird speak!”