The Day of Their Return by Poul Anderson

Author:Poul Anderson [Anderson, Poul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_space
Published: 2011-04-29T08:33:00+00:00

XI

After a boat, guided by Erannath, brought him aboard the Jade Gate, Ivar fell into a bunk and a twisting, nightmare-haunted sleep. He was almost glad when a gongcrash roused him a few hours later.

He was alone in a cabin meant for four, cramped but pleasant. Hardwood deck, white-painted overhead, bulkheads lacquered in red and black, were surgically clean. Light came dimly through a brass-framed window to pick out a dresser and washbowl. Foot-thuds and voices made a cheerful clamor beneath the toning of the bronze. He didn't know that rapid, musical language.

I suppose I ought to go see whatever this is, he thought, somewhere in the sorrow of what he had lost. It took his entire will to put clothes on and step out the door.

Crewfolk were bouncing everywhere around. A young man noticed him, beamed, and said, "Ahoa to you, welcome passenger," in the singsong River dialect of Anglic.

"What's happenin'?" Ivar asked mechanically.

"We say good morning to the sun. Watch, but please to stand quiet where you are."

He obeyed. The pre-dawn chill lashed some alertness into him and he observed his surroundings with a faint growth of interest.

Heaven was still full of stars, but eastward turning wan. The shores, a kilometer from either side of the vessel, were low blue shadows, while the water gleamed as if burnished, except where mist went eddying. High overhead, the wings of a vulch at hover caught the first daylight. As gong and crew fell silent, an utter hush returned, not really broken by the faint pulse of engines.

The craft was more than 50 meters in length and 20 in the beam, her timber sides high even at the waist, then at the blunt bow rising sharply in two tiers, three at the rounded stern. Two sizable deckhouses bracketed the amidships section, their roofs fancifully curved at the ends. Fore and aft of them, kingposts supported cargo booms, as well as windmills to help charge the capacitors which powered the vessel. Between reared a mast which could be set with three square sails. Ivar glimpsed Erannath on the topmost yard. He must have spent the night there, for lack of the frame which would suit him better than a bunk.

An outsize red-and-gold flag drooped from an after staff. At the prow the gigantic image of a Fortune Guardian scowled at dangers ahead. In his left hand he bore a sword against them, in his right a lotus flower.

There posed an old man in robe and tasseled cap, beside him a woman similarly clad though bareheaded, near them a band who wielded gong, flutes, pipas, and drum. The crew, on their knees save for what small children were held by their mothers, occupied the decks beneath.

As light strengthened, the stillness seemed to deepen yet further, and frost on brightwork glittered like the stars.

Then Virgil stood out of the east. Radiance shivered across waters. The ancient raised his arms and cried a brief chant, the people responded, music rollicked, everybody cheered, the ship's business resumed.

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