Читать книгу The Elder Gods - David Eddings - Страница 10

Zelana rode the wind westward from the coast of Dhrall for many, many leagues across Mother Sea. She knew that there was land far to the west – at least there had been before she’d become so enamored of the pink dolphins of the Isle of Thurn. Perhaps it had wandered off again.

Night was settling over Mother Sea when Zelana saw something rather peculiar far below. There seemed to be a small fire floating on the surface of the water. Fire and water do not usually mix well, Zelana knew. Overcome with curiosity, she descended to investigate.

She drifted down through the twilight air, and as she came closer to the face of Mother Sea, she saw what at first she thought might be a floating house. Then she realized that it was probably a larger version of the canoes the people of her Domain used when they went out on the water to hunt fish. The fire she had seen appeared to be burning in a small glass box near the back of the oversized canoe.

She settled quietly onto the water and tiptoed closer. The floating object was obviously more advanced than anything the people of Dhrall could build, but it had probably been constructed for the same reason that the people of Dhrall made canoes. The outlanders were most likely fishermen. The pink dolphins of the Isle of Thurn ate fish, and Eleria had said that fish tasted quite pleasant – as long as they were fresh.

The oversized canoe Zelana had found was very large, long and narrow, and the outlanders had even built low-roofed houses on it to shelter them when the weather went bad. For some reason, they’d seen fit to put a large tree-trunk in the center. As Zelana approached, she noticed that there was a distinctly unpleasant odor hanging over the entire canoe.

Then a couple of man-creatures with hairy faces came out of the low, flat-roofed structure near the back of the alien canoe. They were both very tall and muscular, and their clothing was an odd mix of cloth and leather. They also had what appeared to be weapons of some sort belted to their waists, and that aroused Zelana’s immediate attention. If these man-things were merely fishermen, they wouldn’t need to carry weapons all the time. That strongly suggested that these two weren’t out here on the face of Mother Sea looking for fish. Zelana stepped back out of the light and adjusted her hearing as Veltan had suggested to make the speech of the outlanders understandable.

‘Looks to be a fair night, Cap’n,’ one of the creatures was saying.

‘Aye,’ the other rumbled in a harsh voice, ‘and it’s none too soon to suit me. I’ve had me a belly-full of foul weather here lately.’

Zelana was a bit surprised to discover that Veltan’s theory actually worked the way he’d said it would. Veltan’s experiments seldom turned out exactly the way he wanted them to. She was having no trouble understanding these two outlanders, though.

‘You’d better get a look-out aloft, Ox,’ the one called Cap’n suggested. ‘Now that the weather’s settled down, other ships might be underway hereabouts. We’re not sailing the Seagull out here for entertainment, you know.’

‘Aye, Cap’n,’ the huge one called Ox replied. ‘The Trogite vessels usually hug the coast, but the storm might have swept a few of them out here to deeper water. If our luck’s running good, we might be able to harvest a fair amount of Trogite gold while they’re still floundering around out of sight of land.’

‘You’re starting to think like a real Maag, Ox,’ Cap’n said with an evil grin. ‘The notion of picking Trogite vessels like apples off a tree lights a warm fire in my belly. Come morning, put the crew to work patching the sails and clearing away the wreckage that storm made out of most of the rigging. It well-nigh drove us under a few times.’

Zelana sat cross-legged on the surface of Mother Sea considering some interesting possibilities. The two outlanders, Ox and Cap’n, had referred to their canoe as ‘a ship’, and there were obviously other ships in the vicinity as well. It was fairly clear that these man-creatures who called themselves ‘Maags’ were not out on the face of Mother Sea in search of fish. Evidently they searched for the ships of other outlanders in order to take gold from them. Apparently, Dahlaine’s assessment of the outlanders had been correct. They were interested in gold, though Zelana could not quite understand why. The Seagull, it seemed, might be too good an opportunity to pass by. Now that Zelana could understand the speech of the outlanders, and if things went as the one called Cap’n seemed to hope they would, Zelana would be able to observe the outlanders who called themselves Maags in action. Should they prove to be suitable, their ship would make things very easy. A word or two with Mother Sea could produce a current which would sweep the Seagull to the west coast to the Land of Dhrall almost as fast as the wind could carry a mote of dust.

The more she thought about it, the more Zelana came to believe that these Maags might be exactly what she was seeking. She would need to watch and listen, though, and that suggested that she’d probably need to be somewhere inside the floating house called Seagull. That wouldn’t be a problem of any magnitude. There were ways she could make herself inconspicuous while she watched and listened. Then, if these Maags proved to be suitable…

They all seemed to have peculiar names that were descriptive, though not always flattering. The one they respectfully called ‘Captain’, or ‘Cap’n’, was Sorgan Hook-Beak. Zelana, walking fly-like across the ceiling of the low-roofed structure at the rear of the Seagull, noticed that Sorgan did have a nose that was much like the beak of an eagle – or maybe a vulture. The one known as ‘Ox’ had shoulders like a bull, and there was another who gave orders who was called ‘Kryda Ham-Hand,’ although ‘Bear-Paw’ might have served as well. ‘Ham-Hand,’ Zelana noticed, gave orders with his fists, and nobody seemed inclined to ignore him.

Among those who took orders from Cap’n, Ox, and Ham-Hand were ‘the Fat Man’, who prepared their food, ‘Ado the Slow’, who appeared to be almost as bright as a tree-stump, and ‘Kaldo Tree-Top’, who was very tall. There was also a ‘Big-Feet’, a ‘Buck-Teeth’, a ‘Jug-Ears’, and a small, wiry one known only as ‘Rabbit’.

The tree that grew up out of the middle of the Seagull was called a ‘mast’, and the sheet of heavy fabric the Maags attached to the mast was called a ‘sail’. Zelana didn’t quite grasp the significance of the sail until she saw the Maags raise it to catch the morning breeze the next day. The Maags, it appeared, were clever enough to let the wind do most of their work for them. Zelana was fond of the wind herself, so she approved of the notion.

It was about mid-morning of that day when Ox shouted. ‘Sail ho, Cap’n!’ and there was an immediate flurry of activity. The Maags brought out their weapons – metal knives with long blades they called ‘swords’, large axes, spears, and various other implements that appeared to have been designed to hurt people.

The Seagull raced across the water and soon overtook another ship, and the Maags stood along the Seagull’s rail brandishing their weapons and howling threats at the men on the other ship.

The ship that seemed to be of great interest to the Maags was larger than the Seagull, and it seemed to be wide and slow. The man-things on that ship were clothed mostly in cloth, and there seemed to be more of them than there were on the Seagull.

Then, much to Zelana’s surprise, the man-things on the other ship all jumped into Mother Sea and tried to swim away as fast as they could.

The Maags quickly tied the Seagull to the side of the other ship and began to carry all sorts of things across to their floating home. When they had finished, they cut the ropes that bound the two ships togther.

‘Should we burn her, Cap’n?’ Ox asked Hook-Beak hopefully.

‘I don’t think so,’ Sorgan replied. ‘Let the Trogites have their ship back. We’ve got what we wanted. Maybe they’ll go back and fill her up once more. Then we can chase them down and rob them again.’

Zelana considered some options at that point. The Maags of the Seagull had spoken of a number of times when they’d attacked various coastal settlements, so it appeared that they knew how to fight on the ground as well as out on the face of Mother Sea. They also seemed to be in the habit of bragging about their various adventures. If a sudden sea-current ‘just happened’ to carry the Seagull to the Land of Dhrall, and the crew also ‘happened’ to come across a great deal of gold and then went home to brag about their good fortune, it wouldn’t be long before hundreds of Maag ships would descend on the coast of Dhrall. Once they were there, a bit of manipulation would be all it should take to get them to attack the forces of the Vlagh. The word ‘gold’ did seem to get the immediate attention of the Maags.

Zelana sent her thought out to Mother Sea and made a brief suggestion. Mother Sea thought it might be sort of amusing.

Not long afterward, the Seagull was placidly quartering the wind and moving in a generally southeasterly direction. Then a sudden swirling turbulence caught the ship and swept it sideways toward the east. Hook-Beak, Ox, and Ham-Hand started bellowing conflicting orders, and their underlings tried to do several different things all at the same time, but nothing they tried – and probably nothing they could have tried – made the slightest bit of difference. The Seagull continued to move easterly, sometimes sideways, sometimes front first, and sometimes backward. Mother Sea’s grip was very, very firm.

Zelana rode the wind high above and watched with a certain satisfaction as the Seagull moved inexorably toward the Land of Dhrall. Whether they liked it or not, Hook-Beak and his crew had just joined the forces of good in the eternal struggle with the evil of the Vlagh.