Shaman's Crossing

Page 77

As we traveled west on the river, the land became more settled. Soon the dawns were showing us prosperous farms along the riverbanks, and the towns we passed were populous and large. Fishermen plied the river in their small rowing boats, setting nets or fishing with poles. Our captain, determined that our ship would slow down for nothing, often bore down on them, forcing them to scuttle like water bugs to be out of our path. The young ladies watching from the upper deck would gasp with trepidation and then laugh with delight as the little boats reached safety. For the final two days of our journey there was never a time when I could look out at the riverside and not see signs of human habitation and industry. By night the yellow lights of homes lit the shores, and by day the rising smoke from chimneys feathered up into the sky. I felt a sort of wonder as I thought of all those people living so close together, and on its heels followed a tinge of fear: soon I must live among all those people, day in and day out, with never a respite from human company. I found the prospect daunting. My once-glad anticipation dimmed to a grim foreboding.
I recalled the flatboat captain’s warning that Old Thares would smell far worse than the timber fires had. When I asked my father about it, he shrugged his shoulders.
“Much coal is burned in Old Thares, and it has been a city for hundreds of generations. It is bound to smell like a city. Old Captain Rhosher probably hasn’t left the river in twenty years. He can’t smell the smells of his own boat and crew, but he’s happy to tell you that the city stinks. It’s all in what one is accustomed to, Nevare, and a man can become accustomed to almost anything.”
I found myself doubting that. My father read my misgivings. He stood beside me as I leaned on the railing, staring glumly across the river toward the rows of smoke-blackened stone buildings that crowded right to the river’s edge. Scarcely any natural land remained. Stonework lined the banks of the river and the rise and fall of the water marked plainly by the slime. At intervals, foul coils of thick water oozed into the river from open trenches or gaping pipes, discharging their stench into the air and their filth into the river. Despite this, ragged hooligan youth fished and fought and wandered dazedly along the reinforced banks of the river. Stunted bushes and thick water plants blanketed the muck at the river’s edge. Above and beyond the hunched warehouses and factories was an undulating roof of housetops and smoking chimneys. It was as drear and forbidding a sight as any I had ever seen, and more ominous to my eyes than any arid stretch of desert or harsh prairie land.
The aromatic smoke from my father’s short pipe was a welcome mask for the lingering odors in the air. After a time, he knocked the husk of burnt ashes from the bowl. “I never went to the Academy. You know that.”
“I know that it didn’t exist when you were my age, sir. And that you had a great deal to do with its creation.”
“That’s true, I suppose,” he replied modestly as he tamped more tobacco from his pouch into his pipe. “I was educated at the Arms Institute. I attended at a time when those of us who expressed a desire to join the cavalla were regarded as somewhat…above ourselves. Cavalla assignments were the rightful domain of the families that had served the old kings as knights. Even though those families had dwindled, leaving our mounted forces undermanned, some felt it was almost against the will of the good god for a young man to want to be what his father had not been before him. Yet a soldier is a soldier, and I had persuaded my father that I could serve my king as well on horseback as I could on foot. I will admit that I was sorely disappointed when I was marked to be an artilleryman. It seemed the touch of the good god himself when that changed and I was sent off to the cavalla. Well.” He put the stem of the loaded pipe to his lips, gave flame to it from a sulfur match, and took several encouraging puffs to get it going well before he continued. “Here in this city, I fear you will live as I did during my years at the Arms Institute. No open air, not enough space to run, mediocre food, and living cheek by jowl with your fellow cadets. Some of them will be all a good officer should be, already. Others will be brutish louts and you will wonder why the good god made them soldier sons, let alone destined them to be officers. But when your days here are done, I promise you that you will return to living like a free man again, to roam and hunt and breathe the fresh air of the wild spaces. Think of that when the city smoke and endless gray nights become oppressive. It may give you heart.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied, and tried to find relief in the thought, but it was elusive.
We docked in Old Thares late that evening. My uncle had sent a man with a wagon. He hoisted our baggage into the bed of the wagon and tethered Sirlofty and Steelshanks to its tail. I rode alongside my father on the spring seat of the rather humble wagon and tried not to wonder if this was an affront to my father’s status. The night was chill, with a warning of damp in the air that promised that winter would soon arrive. We left the docks and rumbled through the poorer sections of Old Thares, then through a commercial district, quiet in the darkness save for occasional watchmen. Finally we emerged from the town’s clutter and climbed into the gentle hills to an enclave of manors and estates. When we arrived at my uncle’s home, the great house was dark save for one yellow lantern at the main entry and a single set of windows alight above us. Servants swiftly appeared, including a groom who took our horses. My uncle’s man greeted my father and told him that his mistress and my cousins were long abed, but that my uncle had had word of our imminent arrival and awaited us in his study. We followed my uncle’s man into his house and up a richly carpeted staircase while behind us servants struggled with our heavy trunks.