Maia (Beklan Empire 1)

By now they might have had almost long enough to get ashore and out of bowshot.

At this point the matter was taken out of her hands. A sudden, sharp impulse of the current tilted the boat yet further, though still it hung against the ropes. Water came pouring over the starboard side. It was going to sink.

Maia plunged forward and under water. Although she kept her eyes open, she could see nothing. The current was swift and full of frightening drags and counterflows in which she was tugged helplessly one way and another. Obviously she was going downstream, but in which direction--right or left--she had no idea. She swam on for as long as her breath would hold, then came up, turned her head and looked quickly behind her.

Her heart sank. She must have gone from side to side, for she was no more than thirty or forty yards down from the rope, if that. On either shore there seemed to be something like twenty men, all gazing intently downstream. At that very moment one of them saw her and pointed.

"There she is, look!"

"Come in to the bank, girl," shouted the tryzatt, "else we'll have to shoot, and I mean it!"

She dived again, trying, in the swirling mirk, to swim to her left. Her head seemed splitting, now, and she felt so feverish and ill that she hardly knew what she was doing. Yet when she came up once more she was much further downstream and closer in to the left bank, where the water was lying almost level with the top of the dyke.

"There she is!" came the cry again. She looked round. Two or three soldiers, their bows in their hands, had run along the bank from the guard-hut and were approaching her. She was utterly spent, yet she turned and swam on. She had not gone ten yards before a swift "Whaup!" sounded close to her ear. A moment later she saw the arrow floating a foot or two ahead.

I can't do any more: I'm drowning: I'll have to come ashore. Lespa be praised, they haven't seen Zenka and Anda-Nokomis: they must have got away. I shan't even be able to try to escape: I'm as sick as ever I've been in my life. O Zenka, just when we'd found each other again! I'm so sorry, my darling!

With a few last, failing strokes she reached the dyke wall. The top was only a few inches above her. She put her hands on it, pushed feebly upward and got her chin on the coping, but she could do no more.

Trying to pull herself up and out she sank back, sobbing with pain, with the grief of loss and the bitterness of defeat. And now, in her delirium, it seemed as though Queen Fornis herself was standing on the bank, her green eyes staring as once in the archery field. "Two of them I did myself!" What cruelty would be devised for her?

Two soldiers were striding towards her through the nightfall. Their footsteps came crunching over the loose shingle and as they drew closer she could see the Leopard cognizances on their shoulders.

"Ah, my lass! Not so clever after all, were you?" said one. "That's the end of that little game, then. Come on, now, up with you!" He stopped, gripping her wrists and dragged her roughly over the wall.

"It's not all that far back, Yellib," said the other. "We can carry her easy enough." They had her between them now, holding her by the arms and legs.

"Stop!"

Both men started and looked round. Anda-Nokomis, soaking wet from head to foot and almost as tall as the splintered oar he was still carrying, was stalking towards them. As he strode up they stood rooted to the spot. Authority surged from every inch of him as menace from a crouching wolf.

"You are violating the frontier!" Without taking his eyes from them, he indicated Maia with a gesture like that of Frella-Tiltheh pointing to the tamarrik seed. "You have no business here! Leave that girl instantly and get back where you belong!"

They obeyed him, laying her down on the soggy, granular shingle. As they straightened up, however, one of them found his voice.

" 'E's only one man, ain't he?"

"That's right," said the other. Then, to Anda-Nokomis, "Who are you, anyway?"

"How dare you question me?" thundered Anda-Nokomis. "I am the Ban of Suba, and if you do not immediately take yourselves back over the frontier--"

In that moment an arrow, flying out of the half-dark, struck him with terrible force just where neck met shoulder, burying itself four inches deep. A great spout of blood gushed out. Anda-Nokomis staggered and fell to the ground as a third soldier came running up, triumphantly waving his bow.

But now, from a little distance away, came cries of anger and attack, running feet and threats uttered in a foreign tongue. The newcomer pulled at his comrades' arms.

"Come on, here's the basting Katriaris! We'd best get the hell out of it, quick! Have to leave the girl, else they'll have us!"

And thereupon all three turned and disappeared upstream.

Maia dragged herself to her hands and knees. Specks of light were floating before her eyes and all manner of water sounds, real and unreal, coming and going in her ears. Slowly she gained her feet.

Anda-Nokomis had fallen on one side. His blood was pouring over the gravelly shingle. She staggered across to where he lay, knelt beside him and took his head on her arm.

"Anda-Nokomis."

He stared past her, and she laid one hand against his cheek.

"Anda-Nokomis, it's Maia! It's your Maia here!"

Suddenly his eyes saw her, he recognized her. His terrible, blood-slobbering mouth moved and seemed to smile. He was trying to speak. She bent her head and kissed him.

"Anda-Nokomis--"

He grasped her wrist. Quite clearly, he whispered, "When Suba's free, you and I, we'll--" Then his hand dropped and his head fell sideways on her arm.

Someone was standing beside her. She looked up. It was Zenka. There were others all around--soldiers, some of them, and rough-looking villagers like those she'd seen in Suba, carrying clubs and mattocks, their hair and beards beaded with the rain.

"Maia! I brought them as quick as I could Oh, gods, what's happened? Anda-Nokomis--"

She clutched him round the legs, sobbing hysterically. Then everything grew indistinct, and she fell unconscious across the blood-drenched body of the Ban of Suba.

They carried her up the slope from the river to the houses--Zhithlir, southernmost village of Katria. The women and children crowded at the doors, staring silently as they slipped and staggered along the mud-churned street towards the Elder's house. Zen-Kurel limped beside Maia, himself scarcely able to keep up with the soldiers.

"You'll give her a bed and look after her, won't you?"

"Don't worry, sir," answered the Katrian tryzatt. "She couldn't have struck luckier, as it happens. There's an army doctor here on his rounds of the frontier posts."

"Lucky?" said Zen-Kurel. "Yes, she's always been lucky, tryzatt, you know. The gods are with her, else I wouldn't be here now." He turned and looked back at those carrying the body of Anda-Nokomis, the arrow still embedded above his collar-bone.

"Henever had any luck, poor man. Not once."

"Oh, really, sir? That's bad, now," replied the tryzatt stolidly, riot knowing what else to say.

Zen-Kurel looked round him at the pall of wood-smoke, the dripping thatch of the roofs and the muddy alleys channeled with rivulets. Every hut, he n

ow saw, had fastened to its door a wreath of yew or of cypress. The soldiers were wearing black ribbons at their shoulders, and from the roof of the Elder's house, as they approached it, a black flag drooped like a great, dead crow hung on a post.

"What's this, tryzatt? That flag, the wreaths--"

The tryzatt turned to stare.

"You mean you haven't heard, sir?"

"Heard what?"

"The king, sir. King Kamat was killed in battle four days ago, over on the western border. They've brought the body back to Kenalt for burning tomorrow."

Stunned, Zen-Kurel made no reply, halting a moment and then wandering on a few paces apart. Yet by the time they reached the Elder's house he had recovered himself sufficiently to be able to give an account of how the Ban of Suba and himself had escaped from Bekla, thanks to the heroic help of none other than Maia Serrelinda, who had brought them safely through Purn and then down the Zhairgen to the frontier.

They heated water for him, gave him wine and food and prepared him a bed. Throughout the night, however, he sat watching beside Maia. Towards morning she woke, still weak and feverish but clear-headed, spoke to him and wept bitterly for Anda-Nokomis. She told him, too, how in the misery of her heart she had reflected that if love could not express itself in fulfillment it could do so only in sacrifice. "But it wasn't me," she sobbed, "it wasn't me, in the end, as made that sacrifice!"

At this Zen-Kurel wept too. "He insisted on waiting for you on the shore. He said I was the one who must go for help, because they'd take more notice of a Katrian."

"If he hadn't done what he did, they'd 'a come too late."

Maia remained low and grief-stricken for several days.

But she was a strong, healthy girl, the doctor said, and with rest and care would be right enough in a week or two.

103: REUNION IN KERIL

It was nearly two years later. The summer was proving prosperous, pasture and stock thriving and crops ripening towards harvest. There were some weeks to go until the dog days: trees, grass and flowers were still fresh and verdant, the breezes cool but the streams, even in northern Katria, delightfully warm for splashing and lazing. For a one-year-old it was perfect weather; weather for crawling about in the sunshine and getting into everything, picking things up and stuffing them in the mouth unless or until they were removed; standing up and taking a few triumphant steps before falling flat with a howl to be snatched up and comforted by the Suban nurse; for being bounced up and down by one's joyous mother in the shadows, with screwed-up face and vocal noises interpretable by the affectionate and indulgent (and what other kinds of people might inhabit the world, pray?) as intelligible speech. The gold-and-purple kynat had come, bringing warm days and the gods' blessing, filling fields, woods and the hearts of hearers with its fluting call, "Kynat, Kynat will tell!" The bluefinches sang, black-and-white plovers tumbled headlong from sky to earth and of an evening the trout rose to the gfyon fly.