“You’re going to ship out, eh friend? You think they’ll take your rhymes and jingles instead of muscles and rope pulling?”
The smaller, in a white tunic looped with a thick leather belt, laughed beneath his friend’s rantings. “Fifteen minutes ago you thought it was a fine idea; said it would make me a man.”
“Oh, it’s a life to make,” his hand went up, “and it’s a life to break men,” and it fell.
The slighter one pushed back black hair from his forehead, stopped, and looked at the ships. “You still haven’t told me why no ship has taken you on in the past three months,” he said absently, following the rope rigging against the sky like black knife slashes on blue silk. “A year ago I’d never see you in for more than three days at once.”
The gesticulating arm suddenly encircled the smaller man’s waist and lifted a leather pouch from the wide belt. “Are you sure, friend Geo,” began the giant, “that we couldn’t use up some of this silver on wine before we go. If you want to do this right, then right is how it should be done. When you sign up on a ship you’re supposed to be broke and a little tight. It shows that you’re capable of getting along without the inconvenience of money and can hold your liquor, too.”
“Urson, get your paw off that.” Geo snatched the purse away.
“Now here,” countered Urson, reaching for it once more, “you don’t have to grab.”
“Look, I’ve kept you drunk five nights now, and it’s time to sober up. And suppose they don’t take us, who’s going—” But Urson, the idea having taken the glow of a game, made another swipe with his big hand.
Geo leapt back with the purse. “Now cut that out,” he began; but in leaping, his feet struck the fallen barrel, and he fell backwards to the wet cobbles. The pouch splattered away, jingling.
Both of them scrambled.
Then the bird’s shadow moved in the opening between the cargo piles, a slight figure bounded forward, swept the purse up with one hand, pushed himself away from the pile of cargo with another, and there were two more fists pumping at his side as he ran.
“What the devil,” began Urson, and then, “What the devil!”
“Hey you,” called Geo, lurching to his feet. “Come back!” And Urson had already loped a couple of steps after the fleeting mutant, now halfway down the block.
Suddenly, from behind them, like a wineglass stem snapping, only twenty times as loud, a voice called, “Stop, little thief. Stop.”
The running form stopped as though it had hit a wall.
“Come back, now! Come back!”
The figure turned, and docilely started back, the movements so lithe and swift a moment ago, now mechanical.
“It’s just a kid,” Urson said.
He was a dark-haired boy, naked except for a ragged breech. He approached staring fixedly beyond them toward the boats. And he had four arms.
Now they turned and looked also.
She stood at the base of the ship’s gangplank, against what sun still washed the horizon. One hand held something close at her throat, and wind, caught in a veil, held the purple gauze against the red swath at the world’s edge, and then dropped it.
The boy, like an automaton, approached her.
“Give that to me, little thief,” she said.
He handed her the purse. She took it, and then suddenly dropped her other hand from her neck. The moment she did so, the boy staggered backwards, turned, and ran straight into Urson, who said, “Ooof,” and then, “God damn little spider.”
The boy struggled to get away like a hydra in furious silence. But Urson held. “You stick around … Owww! … to get yourself thrashed. … There.” The boy got turned, his back to the giant; one arm locked across his neck, and the other hand, holding all four wrists, lifted up hard enough so that the body shook like wires jerked taut, but he was still silent.
Now the woman came across the dock. “This belongs to you, gentlemen?” she asked, extending the purse.
“Thank you, ma’am,” grunted Urson, reaching forward.
“I’ll take it, ma’am,” said Geo, intercepting. Then he recited:
“Shadows melt in light of sacred laughter.
Hands and houses shall be one hereafter.”
“Many thanks,” he added.
Beneath the veil, on her shadowed face, her eyebrows raised. “You have been schooled in courtly rites?” She observed him. “Are you perhaps a student at the university?”
Geo smiled. “I was, until a short time ago. But funds are low and I have to get through the summer somehow. I’m going to sea.”
“Honorable, but perhaps foolish.”
“I am a poet, ma’am; they say poets are fools. Besides, my friend here says the sea will make a man of me. To be a good poet, one must be a good man.”
“More honorable, less foolish. What sort of a man is your friend?”
“My name is Urson,” said the giant, stepping up. “I’ve been the best hand on any ship I’ve sailed on.”
“Urson?” said the woman, musing. “The Bear? I thought bears did not like water. Except polar bears. It makes them mad. I believe there was an old spell, in antiquity, for taming angry bears. …”
“Calmly brother bear,” Geo began to recite.
“calm the winter sleep.
Fire shall not harm,
water not alarm.
While the current grows,
amber honey flows,
golden salmon leap.”
“Hey,” said Urson. “I’m not a bear.”
“Your name means bear,” Geo said. Then to the lady, “You see, I have been well trained.”
“I’m afraid I have not,” she replied. “Poetry and rituals were a hobby of a year’s passing interest when I was younger. But that was all.” Now she looked down at the boy whom Urson still held. “You two look alike. Dark eyes, dark hair.” She laughed. “Are there other things in common between poets and thieves?”
“Well,” complained Urson with a jerk of his chin, “this one here won’t spare a few silvers for a drink of good wine to wet his best friend’s throat,
