On Blue's waters

We were lucky, perhaps. There was no lake or river where we settled to provide fresh water, but there were a couple of well-diggers among us, and a ten-cubit well there provided better and purer water in abundance. To the west we have a fine harbor and a sea full of fish, and on the lower slopes of the eastern mountains, more timber than a hundred cities the size of Viron could ever need. The mountains themselves are already providing us with iron, silver and lead, as I believe I have mentioned before.

Most cannot have been so fortunate. Gaon has little access to the sea; ten leagues from where I sit, the River Nadi reaches us from the Highlands of Han in a succession of rapids and falls we call the Cataracts. Downstream are the Lesser Cataracts, then tropical forests and swamps, as well as a seemingly endless string of foreign towns, many of them hostile to us and some hostile to everyone. In theory, it might be possible to sail from here to the sea; but no one has ever done so, and it seems likely no one ever will.

Still, we have fresh water and fish from our river, timber, three kinds of useful cane, reeds for matting and the like, and a rich, black, alluvial soil that yields two generous crops per year. Even quite near town, the jungle swarms with game, and there are wild fruits for the picking. It seemed a poor place to me when I arrived, but no one needs warm and solid houses with big stone fireplaces here. Metals are imported and costly, which in the long run may prove the gods’ blessing.

The gods (I should say) are very naturally those we knew in the Whorl. Echidna gets more sacrifices than all the rest together, but is generally shown as a loving mother holding the blind Tartaros on her lap while her other children swarm around her vying for her attention. A snake or two peeps from her hair, and her image in the temple has a snake coiled around each ankle. (Our people are not in the least afraid of snakes, as I ought to have explained. They seem to think them almost supernatural, if not actually minor gods, and set out bowls of milk laced with palm wine for them. Even a mother-goddess with a roving collection of pet snakes seems entirely normal. I have not been told of a single case of snakebite while I have been here.)

In my last session I intended to write about the settling of Blue, but I see that I wandered from the topic to describe this town of Gaon.

I nearly wrote “this city,” but Gaon is nothing like the size of Viron or the foreign cities I saw from General Saba’s airship. Viron had more than half a million people. While I have no way of knowing exactly how many we have in Gaon, I doubt that there are a tenth that many.

The pirate boat came from no town, but from a little freshwater inlet where drooping limbs had concealed it from me until it put out. I shall never forget how it looked then, so black against the warm green of the trees and the cool blue and silver sea. Hull and masts and yards had all been painted black, and its sails were so dark a brown that they were nearly black, too. When I think back upon it here at my bedroom writing table, now that I am no longer afraid of it, I realize that its owners must have expected someone to hunt it, and wanted it to vanish from sight the moment the sun went down. It was half the sloops’ beam, or a trifle less, and must have been more than twice our length, with two masts carrying three-cornered sails so big that a good gust should have laid it over at once. There were eight or nine on board, I think, mostly women. One in the bow shouted for me to haul down. I got out the slug gun Marrow had given me instead, loaded it, and put extra cartridges in my pocket.

“Haul down!” she shouted again, and I asked what she wanted.

Her answer was a shot.

I put the slug gun to my shoulder. I have seldom fired one, but I tried very hard then to recall everything that I had ever heard about them-Sinew’s advice, and that of a hundred others-how to hold the slug gun and aim, and how to shoot well and swiftly. I still recall my trepidation as I pushed off the safety catch, laid the front sight on the pirate boat, and squeezed the trigger.

The report was an angry thunder, and the slug gun seemed to convulse in my hands, nearly knocking me off my feet; but my first shot was as ineffectual as theirs, as well as I could judge. Before I could fire a second time, Babbie was beside me gnashing his tusks.

The sound of the shot had awakened my intelligence as well as Babbie, however; I put down my slug gun and turned the sloop into the wind until we were sailing as near it as I dared, and trimmed sail while trying my best to ignore the shots aimed at me. When I looked back at the long black craft pursuing us, I saw that I had been right. She could not hold our course, which was nearly straight out to sea.