replied, “Yes.” It was the Human way - to try to cover all the possibilities. Such an approach had its merits, Beauty conceded to himself, when Horse sense failed.
It was a standing joke between them, Beauty’s economy of words. Quiet Josh was positively garrulous next to his equine companion, and frequently teased the Centaur about his dour, parsimonious speech. Beauty, in his turn, would accuse Josh of logorrhea, of being a Scribe just to scribble, of meaningless chatter. And so it went.
Josh looked at his friend now, after the two monosyllabic retorts and said, “Tell you what, stamp your foot once for Yes, twice for No. Okay?” It was his great joy in life to tease his golden friend.
Beauty looked down his nose distantly at Josh, raised his right front hoof, and tapped the young man backward into the river. Joshua splashed, spluttered, and pulled himself out.
“Like that?” beamed the Centaur angelically.
With a gleeful whoop, Joshua jumped on top of Beauty’s back, leaned his full weight to one side, his hands in the Horse-man’s mane, and wrestled the Centaur to the ground. They rolled around the mud, horse-playing for a full minute before Josh looked up to realize they were surrounded by a party of hostile creatures.
He stood up slowly, hands away from his knives. Beauty jumped up in a single motion and stood perfectly still, waiting.
There was a big fellow, hair covering most of his face. He aimed a crossbow directly at Joshua’s middle. Beside him stood a gaunt, toothless woman holding a zip gun – these primitive firearms exploded as often as not, but one never knew. Next to her was a muscular man with no arms and the head of a large black bird. At his side a gorilla smiled, opening and closing its fists.
And the leader, a nearly naked woman with a saber in her hand and a black cloth hood over her head; her brilliant green eyes stared out through the two holes cut in the cloth. On her right shoulder was branded an upright trident.
Nobody moved. It was an animal thing. Each was sniffing the air, reading the wind. Josh felt a droplet of sweat congeal under his arm and creep down his side, precipitating out of the hot afternoon sun with tension in the air. Finally the woman in the hood spoke, in a low monotone.
“Are you a believer?” she said.
Josh tightened. The question identified the interlopers as BASS – Born Again ‘Seidon Soldiers – and though they looked pretty scruffy, they were known to be tough infighters. Furthermore, they considered themselves highly moral, and Joshua knew this meant they were labile and dangerous.
“Our journey is moral,” Josh said to the hooded woman.
“We are tied to no King,” explained Beauty.
“Nor the Pope,” added Josh. BASS were under the command of the Doge of Venice, and though the Doge was aligned with the Pope, there were factional hostilities. The BASS worshiped Poseidon or Neptune, God of the Sea. Their religion prophesied that someday the sea would reclaim the land, and then Neptune would rule the whole watery world.
“Are you believers?” repeated the hood-woman.
“Our mission is Venge-right,” said Josh. “Vampires have killed our people.”
“Perhaps they had a right,” said the hooded woman. The Bird-man made a raucous noise in his throat, like the sound of a ratchet being turned, then was silent again.
Josh noted Beauty’s hind legs flex, ready to spring. “They had no right,” said Beauty. The hairs on his mane stiffened.
“Nonbelievers lie for their own ends,” said the hooded woman. Her eyes were on Beauty and her hand on her saber.
“Our journey is moral,” repeated Joshua. He felt the situation deteriorating quickly; something had to be done. His fight was not with these people. He wanted only to show them that neither was their fight with him. So he decided to gamble. “Our power comes from the water,” he intoned.
He saw them tense. Beauty looked at him questioningly. Josh knew these people had a complex, mystical, baptismal relationship with the sea, and he suspected they would react strongly to his statement. He was right, the air was electric.
“Water is sacred,” warned the hooded woman. The Gorilla stopped smiling. The Bird-man opened his beak wide, as if he were silently screaming.
“The water gives us our power,” Josh pronounced. “I can make fire from water.”
The man with the hirsute face violently shook his head back and forth. Beauty looked ready to leap.
Josh walked away from the bank with slow, deliberate movements. He gathered up a handful of dried grass and bark, then brought it back down to the river and set it on the shore. The crossbow and the zip gun followed him like afterthoughts.
He picked a long blade of green grass and tied a little loop in it, too small to let a berry pass through. Then he dipped the blade of grass in the river. When he pulled it out there was a bead of water balanced delicately in the loop. The others watched these mysterious manipulations in fascination.
Holding one end of the grass blade, he positioned its loop six inches over his pile of dry grass, as the hot postmeridian sun glared through the refractive bead of water. He moved the liquid lens up and down a few inches until the focal point fell into the center of the kindling. Then he simply sat, motionless.
They watched him. No one spoke.
In a few minutes smoke began to rise from under the tiny glare of the water-beaded grass-loop. Joshua blew lightly on it. The smoke disappeared and then floated up heavier until the dry tinder erupted in soft yellow flame.
The creatures backed off except for the hooded woman. She stood, unmoving.
“Your power is from the water,” she said finally. She made a sign to the others, and they ran off into the forest that lined the south side of the river.
Beauty was amazed. “Where did you learn that?”
“In a book,” shrugged Josh.
“Scribes,” Beauty shook his head tolerantly. “You are lucky you were not hanged for a sorcerer.”
“Words make the strongest magic sometimes.”
“Silence is stronger,” said the Centaur.
“I’m talking about written words.”
“Then why did you not just scribble something in the sand for the BASS to read?” Beauty snapped.
“BASS don’t trust people who read or write.” He spoke with the tolerant condescension of one who knows himself to be right, but appreciates the ignorance of others.
Beauty became thoughtful. “They are far north for BASS.”
“Raiding party, maybe,” agreed Joshua.
Just then there was a soft humming noise behind them. They turned. Sitting on the bank was the Flutterby, its red-and-gold wings moving slowly up and down with a hopeful expectant smile on its black little face.
