Genesis by Poul Anderson

Author:Poul Anderson [Anderson, Poul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 0312867077
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2000-01-30T16:00:00+00:00

IV

Storm-battered until men must work the pumps without cease, the Gray Courser limped eastward along the southern coast of an unknown land. Wind set that direction, for the huukin trailed after, so worn and starved that what remained of its strength must be reserved for sorest need. The shore rolled jewel-green, save where woods dappled it darker, toward a wall of gentle hills. All was thick with life, grazing herds, wings multitudinous overhead, but no voyager had set foot there. Surf dashed in such violence that Kalava was not certain a boat could live through it. Meanwhile they had caught but little rainwater, and what was in the butts had gotten low and foul.

He stood in the bows, peering ahead, Ilyandi at his side. Wind boomed and shrilled, colder than they were used to. Wrack flew beneath an overcast gone heavy. Waves ran high, gray-green, white-maned, foam blown off them in streaks. The ship rolled, pitched, and groaned.

Yet they had seen the sky uncommonly often. Ilyandi believed that clouds—doubtless vapors sucked from the ground by heat, turning back to water as they rose, like steam from a kettle—formed less readily in this clime. Too eagerly at her instruments and reckonings to speak much, she had now at last given her news to the captain.

“Then you think you know where we are?” he asked hoarsely.

Her face, gaunt within the cowl of a sea-stained cloak, bore the least smile. “No. This country is as nameless to me as to you. But, yes, I do think I can say we are no more than fifty daymarches from Ulonai, and it may be as little as forty.”

Kalava’s fist smote the rail. “By Ruvio’s ax! How I hoped for this!” The words tumbled from him. “It means the weather tossed us mainly back and forth between the two shorelines. We’ve not come unreturnably far. Every ship henceforward can have a better passage. See you, she can first go out to the Ending Islands and wait at ease for favoring winds. The skipper will know he’ll make landfall. We’ll have it worked out after a few more voyages, just what lodestone bearing will bring him to what place hereabouts.”

“But anchorage?” she wondered.

He laughed, which he had not done for many days and nights. “As for that—”

A cry from the lookout at the masthead broke through. Down the length of the vessel men raised their eyes. Terror howled.

Afterward no two tongues bore the same tale. One said that a firebolt had pierced the upper clouds, trailing thunder. Another told of a sword as long as the hull, and blood carried on the gale of its flight. To a third it was a beast with jaws agape and three tails aflame… . Kalava remembered a spear among whirling rainbows. I o him Ilyandi said, when they were briefly alone, that she thought of a shuttle now seen, now unseen as it wove a web on which stood writing she could not read. All witnesses agreed that it came from over the sea, sped on inland through heaven, and vanished behind the hills.

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