“Look,” said Cabot, pointing abeam. “Four of them!” He handed me the Builder’s glass.
I was familiar with this instrument because I was one of several regularly sent aloft, to the platform and ring, that the horizon might be scanned, that large sea life might be noted, that land or a ship might be sighted. To be sure, we had seen no land since the farther islands, and the last of those, Chios. And how might one expect to see a sail this far at sea, for we had come farther than any vessel had formerly come, at least to our knowledge. To be sure, many ships had ventured beyond the farther islands. It was only that none, at least to our knowledge, had returned. Were there ships at World’s End? The Pani had insisted that regular watches be kept, from the platform and ring, even at night. Perhaps there were ships then, which might come forth, from the World’s End?
“Tharlarion,” I said. We had seen such things before. But they were unusual tharlarion, unlike those with which I had hitherto been familiar, prior to the last few weeks.
“They approach,” said Cabot.
I had never seen them come this close. I think they followed the ship for garbage, usually a half pasang behind, in the great ship’s wake.
They had learned no fear of us.
And we, as it happened, had learned no fear of them.
Never had they been this close.
“Look,” said Cabot, pointing down.
There was a shimmering in the water, like fluttering candles.
“Parsit fish,” I said. It was a large school. The passage of the ship had divided the school, and its motion had drawn several to the surface. Schooling protects fish. It is difficult for a predator to single out prey. One target replaces another. They flash in and out; they appear here and, in a flicker, there. Who could concentrate on a single flake of snow in a blizzard, a particular grain of sand in a Tahari wind? The predator is distracted, and confused. It flies at the mass but how shall it snap shut its jaws on the single victim it might manage, which it can scarcely note for less than a tenth of an Ihn, before another appears, and another. It will lunge into the mass, to break it apart, that single victims may be separated and tracked, but the schooling instinct, like that of flocking birds, swiftly returns the fish to the group. The school, of course, may be, and is, preyed upon. But the matter, as there are many fish that school, seems to be one of averages. One supposes that the school must increase the likelihood of the survival of any given fish. To be sure, the school is vulnerable to the nets of men. In such a case, the school, so obvious and visible, so large and slow moving, becomes a most perilous habitat.
“Parsit! Parsit!” cried several men, rushing to the bulwarks. Some mariner’s caps were flung in the air.
Many times we had launched the nested galleys, though not of late, in pairs, nets strung between them. Our concern was less with food than fresh water. He who drinks the water of Thassa, with its salt from a thousand rivers, from the Alexandra, to the Vosk, to the Kamba and Nyoka, soon dies, of misery and madness. Still, there was little danger at present, for the great casks, taller and wider than a standing man, were scarcely tapped. And spread sails, formed into great basins, given the frequency of spring rains, had supplied more than enough water for tarns and slaves.
Several of the men were striking their left shoulders with the palm of their right hand. Others were cheering.
Their elation had not to do, however, with the possibility of augmenting the ship’s larder, but with something, at least at the time, of much greater interest.
We were joined at the rail by Lord Nishida.
“The men are pleased,” said Lord Nishida.
“They see Parsit,” said Cabot.
The Parsit, as many similar fish, require vegetation, and vegetation requires light, and thus, typically, such fish school off banks, in shallower water, where light can reach plants tenaciously rooted, say, some dozens of yards below in the sea floor. The banks are usually within two or three hundred pasangs of land masses. Thus the jubilation of the men.
“We are near land,” said a man.
“It is too soon,” said Lord Nishida, quietly.
Aetius, second to Tersites himself, bespoke himself, to Lord Nishida, politely, “You think they are open-water Parsit?”
Strictly there are no “open-water Parsit,” that is, Parsit who would inhabit the liquid desert of a sea untenanted by a suitable food source, but the expression is often used of migratory Parsit. Great schools of migratory Parsit migrate seasonally, moving from the austral summer to the northern summer, as some birds, thus availing themselves of seasonal efflorescences of plant life. They fatten before each migration and, thousands of pasangs later, arrive, like migratory birds, lean and hungry, at familiar banks, thousands of pasangs from each other, where they are welcomed, again, with abundances of food. In this season they would be moving northward.
“Tarl Cabot, tarnsman?” inquired Lord Nishida.
“No,” said Cabot. “I do not see them as open-water Parsit. They were not moving north.”
“They are localized Parsit then, indigenous,” said Aetius, pleased.
“I think so,” said Cabot.
Men were cheering, near the rail, pounding on one another, clasping one another in joy.
“Then,” said Aetius, pleased, “we are near land!”
To be sure, it might yet be hundreds of pasangs distant. Much depended on the flooring of the sea.
“It is too soon,” said Lord Nishida.
If Lord Nishida was correct, I feared there would be, as days wore on, ugliness amongst the men.
“Clearly,” said Aetius, his hands clasped on the rail, “they are Parsit.”
“We know clearly,” said Cabot, “only that there must be a food source somewhere about.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“Tarl Cabot, tarnsman,” said Lord Nishida, “I would speak with you, privately.”
Tarl Cabot then followed Lord Nishida to the privacy of the stem-castle deck.
We had seen little of Tersites for several days.
“Aii!” cried a fellow, near me, pointing.
I gasped, and clung to the rail, looking down to the water.
The gigantic body rolled in the waves, almost at the side of the ship, the water washing over the glistening body. I saw the huge paddlelike appendages of the creature, briefly, and then they were again concealed in the dark waters of Thassa. A tiny head, small when taken in proportion to the whole, surmounting a long, sinuous neck, was raised from the water. The head was triangular, and the jaw, which it opened, revealed a dark tongue, and several rows of tiny teeth. Two round eyes regarded us for a moment, and then the head, on its long neck, disappeared beneath the waves, and the body, too, though I could see it for a few moments. The ship, great as it was, was jarred, as the creature must have brushed against it.
I had never seen tharlarion of this sort before the voyage, and never until now had I seen one this close. It was the size of a small galley. For all its bulk it, buoyed by the water, had moved with grace. It had come for the Parsit, whose school had been disrupted by the passage of the great ship.
Chapter Twelve
It was night.
It was cold.
The rain was fitful, I could see the Prison Moon.
I was on the platform, within the ring, that on the forward mast, or foremast.
Far below, on the deck, dimly, I could see the small, tunicked figure, still bound to the second mast, her
