The Sea Peoples(20)
Deor was Woden’s man and had been since childhood. The All-Father gave battle-fury and victory to His chosen warriors, but He also sent the mead of poetry to inspire men . . . and to some, the knowledge of seidh, the workings of things beyond common ken. After all, had He not given His eye for wisdom?
The villa was private enough, brightly open, cool with the sea-breezes and comfortable, though odd to Montivallan eyes since it was more a matter of pillars of coral limestone than of solid enclosing walls, columns holding up a high steep roof of shining black-streaked borassus timbers covered in neat palm-thatch. Inside the rooms were partitioned with bamboo, and the floors were smooth cool cream-colored marble over the concrete slab foundation.
“We don’t have all that much time,” Thora said. “They’ll suspect, if we wait too long.”
“And Johnnie can’t eat solid food,” Pip said.
You could see the slight shadow of wasting on him already. They’d all had bowls of rice and spiced fish; the body and the spirit strengthened one another.
“He’s not getting enough fluids, either,” Ruan said. “I may have to intubate him. But that’s risky in itself. Infection . . .”
Prince John had not regained consciousness during the long days of the journey, though there had been times when he stirred and moaned as though his spirit were still fighting somewhere far away. The rest of the time that sense of absence was, if possible, even more apparent, if one could say that of a negative, although his body had stayed visible, perhaps because Pip had never let go of his hand if she could help it.
“But there has to be something we can do!” Pip exclaimed.
A knock at the door showed Captain Ishikawa. The Nihonjin sailor had shepherded the catapults back and was overseeing their repair in the Raja’s machine shops and remounting on the ships.
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked quietly.
Pip started to shake her head angrily, then snapped her fingers. “Ishikawa-san, I think there is. You can go to the machine shop and stage another fight with the Raja’s chief engineer.”
The local engineer did not like foreigners in general, or ones from Nihon in particular; there were memories of great war of the last century current here, even after a full hundred years. The hand of Dai-Nippon had rested on these islands then, and not lightly.
He was startled into a grin. “Ah so desu! You seek a distraction! That will be easy!”
The bow he gave her was both courtesy and a genuine gesture of respect. She returned it, then sprang up and paced, her vital energy in almost shocking contrast to the absolute immobility of the man on the bed, who made no movement but the slight rise and fall of his chest.
“Well, if his spirit isn’t here, we’ll just have to seek him elsewhere,” Thora replied.
“I know.” Deor felt his flesh pebble despite the heat. “Watch my back.”
“Always . . .” she said. Then briskly to Evrouin: “We need you to keep everyone local out of here.”
The valet-bodyguard nodded. “I’ll see to it, my lady, my lords.”
Thora added: “But it has to be done quietly. We don’t want them wondering why, either. Moishe . . . Captain Feldman . . . is taking care of the Raja, but he’s not the only pair of prying eyes on this island.”
Evrouin grinned; he was exhausted enough that he looked twenty years older than his true early thirties, or possibly newly dead.
“That’s why I’ll go help Sergeant Fayard,” Evrouin said. “He’s a brave man and a good soldier and loyal to the death, and they don’t let dunderheads in the Protector’s Guard, but tact isn’t his strong point. The Queen Mother picked me for this job, and for my wits as much as my quick hand with a blade.”
Deor nodded. And you’re glad that your duty takes you out of this room, knowing what we must do, he thought. Strange folk in truth, Christians.
Even though his eyes were closed, Deor could feel Thora’s spirit, though veiled by the vivid envelope of flesh as through closed lids one can still see a candle burn. And he thought it was a little brighter because of that added point of radiance that was the child.
“I want you with me in the link,” he said aloud to Thora. “I will have to journey to find him, and that will help.”
“And me?” snapped Pip.
“I’ll need your help too”—Deor looked from Thora to Pip and back again—“because of your connection, and—”
One eyebrow lifted as his focus sharpened. In her womb, tiny but intense, was another point of light.
He coughed. “And because you are carrying his child. . . .”
For a moment Pip’s gaze went inward. “You can see that?”
“He saw it for me—” Thora said dryly.
Deor sensed consternation, but Thora had always been able to hide her reactions, and to take a joke.
Pip’s eyes widened. “You mean that he’s knocked up both of us?”
Pip glared first at Thora and then at Prince John; then her eyes crinkled and she loosed a bark of half-willing laughter.
“Busy little bastard, isn’t he, our Johnnie!”
Some creatures, thought Deor, are compelled to reproduce when death is near. . . .
He thrust it away.
“Understand,” he said aloud. “We will have to journey to find him. A man’s spirit—or a woman’s—is not a single thing. Parts may be absent, though the man walks and speaks and eats. If more is gone, as with Prince John, then the body is an empty shell . . . but always until death bound to the spirit with a cord that some eyes can see and follow.”