Days of rowing left their mark. Skin burned and peeled, blisters burst, and calluses formed. The river flowed on forever, indifferent to their labor. Making progress on the Rakkar took constant effort. To stop rowing was to be swept backward.
When their journey began on the Gray Quay, Fish had eyed Rigel’s scrawny arms and wondered if the boy was up to the task. To his surprise, Fish was the one struggling to keep pace. His ancient joints griped and groaned with every dip of the oar.
Fish pushed on anyway, unwilling to let a child out-row him. Rigel was relentless. The boy must have thought Fish would scourge him if he slowed. They plowed upriver, yoked together by pride and fear.
Fish was pleased with his choices, both companion and canoe. The boat was a reefer’s canoe: stitched whale hide, stretched over a chusquea frame, and impregnated with gale gum. Reefers were strong enough for the open lake and light enough to be carried over shoals, to the deep pools where the most elusive fish hid. Fish had worried her bottom might be torn out in the rapids but, so far, she’d held up admirably.
As they made progress up the Rakkar, the valley bared its teeth. They rowed past towering crags, beneath guano-streaked bluffs chattering with nests, and through tranquil canyons, ancient beyond measure. The trees were taller here, and the forests were darker. All around them were the songs of strange birds. In the distance, they could hear the lowing of unseen beasts.
As dusk approached, Rigel and Fish found a shattered stone watchtower on an island at the center of the river. They hid their canoe in the brush and climbed up to explore. Fish drew his sword, and Rigel clutched the silver dagger. There was no need.
It looked like no one had been there in a century. They set up camp inside the ruin and watched sparks from their fire drift up to greet the first stars.
Later, Fish saw Rigel glance across the fire at him with an expectant look on his face. The boy wanted to hear some spiel of the ones who’d built this tower, or an account of the battles fought in its shadow. Fish had nothing for him. He couldn’t remember this tower at all.
As they ventured farther north, his memories grew scattered and sparse. The absence of memory disconcerted Fish. When he failed to recall, there was a sense of theft, as if his pocket had been picked. He slept poorly that night, feeling he’d lost something vital.
The next morning, Fish rose early and climbed down to the canoe. He left the rods behind for Rigel and paddled to the sandy western shore. Dawn broke as he strung his bow and shouldered a quiver of broadheads. His knees creaked with every step, but there was nothing to be done.
After a lonely mile along the river’s edge, Fish spotted nothing bigger than a squirrel. He didn’t mind. After days of rowing, it felt good to stretch his legs and to forget how much he’d forgotten. He climbed over an ancient oak tree that had fallen from the bank across the shore. The oak’s branches had been stripped bare by the current. Fish ran a hand through the sparse gray hairs atop his head in sympathy.
Beyond the fallen giant was a desolate sandy stretch, where the banks were high and stony. Fish was about to turn back when he noticed splashes of color in the bushes at the end of the beach. Better to come back with berries than empty-handed. On a jutting rise, he found a copse of mulberry trees, heavy with red and black fruit.
As he climbed to pluck them, he heard splashing upriver. Fish crept from trunk to trunk. At the edge of the mulberries was a thicket of buckeye bottlebrush in full bloom. Fish parted the flowers and looked to the river. Below, four dappled gray yili piglets pranced and gamboled in the shallows. Their spiral tails popped straight, and then coiled back as they snuffled up great snootfuls of water.
What a prize! Though they had the mottled skin of piglets, the yili were already five feet tall at the shoulder. At the edge of the copse, he was forty paces from the closest. Fish drew an arrow from his quiver, nocked it, and began the ritual.
Three breaths. With his first breath, he lined up his shot. With the second, he drew the string. Holding the third breath in his lungs, he took careful aim and slowly let out air. When half his wind was gone, he would loose the arrow.
Farther upriver in the thicket, a crash startled the piglets. They sprang out of the river and leapt about in circles, spry as goats. Deep in the brush, branches snapped, and flowering fronds shook. Something large lurked within. The piglets froze, stiff as statues with their tails stuck straight out.
Fish let down his arrow. It would be wiser to wait and see what happened. But the stunned pigs would bolt soon, and now he had a perfect shot. Thoughts of bacon crackling over a spit ate at his caution. Fish glanced from the drift of piglets to the thicket, and then drew back his arrow. If the beast in the brush wanted to fight over the kill, Fish’s sword was at his side. Three more breaths.
TWANG!
Fish’s arrow flew true, but the sound of the string gave him away. Spooked, the piglets leapt a foot into the air. The arrow shot under its target and snapped against a stone. Fish could only blink in disbelief. When pigs fly…
Now, the yili piglets were beset on both sides. Fish expected them to run off, but they clustered close together and squealed out their famous cry: Yi! Li!
Fish seized his second chance and nocked another arrow. He resolved to lead the target higher this time. As he took aim, he felt the ground drum against his feet. A wave crashed through the thicket, some great beast knocking saplings aside with ease.
Too late, Fish realized his error. The noise in the brush wasn’t a predator, it was a protector. A great yili sow burst from the bottlebrush thicket and roared down the slope like a runaway cart.
She was huge! Bigger than a bull and twice as mad. Fish could feel each stamp of her cloven hooves ringing in his back teeth from forty paces away. The yili sow took command of the beach, and her troop of squealing piglets fell silent.
Fish was frozen in the mulberries, afraid his slightest movement might draw the wrath of the sow. He dared not breathe or even let down the tension in his bowstring. His arrow would be a pinprick against the bristling hide of the yili matriarch. Three silver blazes ran along her side, and rows of teats as big as pumpkins swayed beneath her.
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The yili sow squinted her bloodshot eyes and snuffled around until she found the broken arrow. She dug a curving tusk into the beach and flung a spray of sand halfway across the Rakkar.
Fish prayed he was upwind. Pigs were meant to have poor eyesight, but they only needed to see what was in front of their snouts. She snuffled the air and grunted. Her displeasure boomed through the woods like a kettle drum.
Fish had held his shot for too long. He tried relaxing the string, but his hands betrayed him. A tremble shot up his bow, and the sow’s eyes flew wide. Her jowls rumbled with a deep growl, and she pawed at the beach with her front hoof.
“Oh, fuck,” Fish groaned.
He let the arrow fly, flung the bow aside, and ran for his life through the mulberry trees. It was a six-foot drop to the shore. He hit the beach with a terrible jolt and rolled forward in the sand. As he sprang up, his left knee nearly gave out. Fish pushed through the pain and sprinted downriver along the shore. If the sow decided to follow him, he was in trouble.
Fish heard a tremendous crash and glanced backward. The sow charged through the mulberry trees and blasted them in all directions like dandelion fluff. Fish ran as hard as he could, bad knee be damned. The heavy hooves of the sow thundered closer.
He could not outrun her.
Fish dug his feet into the sand, drew his sword, and spun to face the behemoth. What an error! His sad arrow dangled from her ear, a mere ornament. He was doomed.
Fish should have been terrified. Instead, he was stung by a strange déjà vu. The gigantic foe, the inadequate weapon, the certain death, they were all so familiar. If only he could remember!
There was no more time. The sow bore down on him like an avalanche. Fish feigned a dive, and the pig tilted to intercept. He ducked under her slashing tusk and lunged with his rapier. The Lhaz steel blade pierced the sow’s thick hide and bit deep into her shoulder. His movements felt practiced as a dance. His memory was faded, but the reflexes remained.
The sow squealed in pain and turned away from the strike. She nearly wrenched Fish’s arm out of its socket, but he held on with all his strength and pulled the blade free. Fish saw he’d scored a solid touch. Blood spurted from her shoulder as the sow wheeled round. The bristles on her spine stood, and her yellow eyes were wide with indignation. She stamped the earth with her injured leg, snorted contempt, and charged.
Fish was cornered, with his back to the river. No feint could save him now. He fell into stance. If he was fated to die here, he wouldn’t go alone. One chance, one thrust, through the eye, to the hilt!
But their clash was a washout. The sow’s injured leg gave out mid-charge. She slammed against the sand like a felled tree and plowed into the river. As she slid past, Fish scrambled out of the way and jabbed his sword into the thick ham of her rear leg. He backed away, hoping he’d done enough to put the giant down.
“Leave me be, pig!” Fish warned.
Twice bitten, the sow was far from finished. With a snort, she hauled herself onto the beach and shook from snout to tail. Everything around her was deluged with sheets of river water that reeked of wet pig.
“Fuck off already!” Fish cried, blinking away the bloody rain.
The sow advanced, and Fish turned from her and ran downriver. It was an awkward chase. Fish’s knee throbbed with every step. Behind him, the sow grunted every time her vast weight fell on the injured leg.
Fish had an early lead, but three good legs were better than one. The sow gained ground until Fish felt hot pig breath snort against the back of his neck. The rank wind uncorked his last reserve of energy. Fish sprinted forward, fueled by pure terror.
It couldn’t last. There were burrs in his knees and knives in his sides. Every inch of his body howled out: Too old! Too old!
Ahead was an unexpected ally. The bald oak lay across the path. Fish scrambled onto the trunk. A twinge shot up his arm when he planted his weight on his left wrist. Taking the high ground atop the trunk, he wheeled back with his sword. Of course, the insufferable sow was still trotting toward him.
“Stubborn swine!” Fish hissed.
He waved his sword, but the sow took no notice. She lowered her head and charged in a three-legged gallop. Her skull slammed into the trunk with a thunderous crack that would have surely sent Fish flying. But the moment before impact, he leapt off the log and onto her bristling back.
He regretted the decision at once, struck by an eye-watering musk. He took his hilt in both hands and drove his rapier deep into her back. The sow screamed and spun. With a mighty buck, she threw Fish off and sent him sailing into the Rakkar.
Fish plunged into the cold water and hit the bottom, hard. With a terrible lurch in his chest, he sputtered to the surface. He’d been lucky enough to hang on to his blade, the point jutted from the surface. Blinking water, Fish saw the sow had thrown him nearly twenty feet.
If the river hadn’t broken his fall, he’d be stone dead. His hand shot to the pocket he’d stitched shut, afraid the orb had cracked. It felt whole.
Back on the beach, the sow was staggered but still standing. She whined and twisted in circles, trying to reach the wound on her back with her snout. She noticed the source of all her suffering, Fish treading water in the river. Her yellow stare fell on Fish. The sow pawed the sand once more, then snorted a dismissal.
Run little man. If I wanted, I could swim after you and kill you.
Fish stayed still as he could and let the current carry him downstream. The other side of the oak trunk was splintered and cracked. The sow had nearly broken it in half. The Rakkar was no place for men.
* * *
Fish returned to Sentinel Island, battered and empty-handed. Rigel was still fishing. The boy gave him a curious look but did not ask why he was all wet or what had become of his bow. Laid out in the grass was a long bony pike that must have given him a hell of a fight. Beside it was a slimy, coiled eel, with iridescent black skin and blank, cobalt blue eyes. Fish scowled at it.
“That’s a tar eel, boy. Deadly poison. If you eat one, your blood turns petrified, all black and thorny. Bad way to go.”
“Oh! I didn’t know!”
"No real way you could have.” Fish shrugged. “They don’t like lake water. There’s none near Lhaz.”
Rigel shoved his hands in the river and scrubbed them, vigorously.
“Ahh, you’re fine. You’d already be dead. Lucky for you, the poison’s in the glands not the skin. That’s what killed Lucus the Wheeze, you know.”
“Who was he?”
“He thought himself the Prince of Thieves. Others disagreed and slipped a bit of tar eel into his stew. They say, after his flesh rotted away, his veins were still there, a filigree on his bones.”
Rigel scrubbed harder, and Fish grinned for the first time that day. He didn’t smile for long. The pike would be just as slimy as the eel, and a devil to bone. His bad knee shrieked as he bent low to pick up the heavy fish.
If only he’d landed the shot!
Rigel would be butchering a fat piglet right now, and there would be smoked bacon for days. Fish hoped he could find the bow on the way upriver, otherwise he’d be stuck cooking the whole way to High Mountain. The boy was a hell of a fisherman.
After they ate their fill, Fish resolved to teach the boy how to defend himself with the stolen fencing dagger. Still aching after the scuffle with the sow, Fish took it easier than he might have. Still, at the end of the lesson, he was dismayed.
All of Rigel’s natural inclinations were wrong. The year of slavery had conditioned him to accept blows without flinching or retaliating. Rigel explained Halfking would beat him worse if he squirmed.
"Don't fight. Ever. Run away, unless you’re completely cornered, and then beg,” Fish ordered Rigel. The boy didn’t argue, which proved Fish’s point. It would take months of training to turn him into even a bad fighter. A bad fighter was worse than anything, worse than no one at all. They got in the way and got better men killed. It was a terrible shame. The danger ahead would make the yili sow look like a kitten. They packed up the canoe and prepared to shove off.
“So, want to know what happened to my bow?” Fish offered.
Rigel nodded, eager. Fish began the tale.