Rawhide upon the Bow

How long wet rawhide took to crush the small bones of a man's wrist depended entirely on the wind, and Menyhért wanted to know whether the woman in otter skins intended to leave him with working fingers or five dead twigs. Bound chest-first against the curved cypress stem of the war-canoe, he tested the knots behind his back. The rawhide was green ox-hide, soaked in river brine and knotted three times around the oak deck knees. With every breath of autumn air passing over the open dugout, the leather shrank half a thumbnail, biting through skin to scrape the wrist bones.

Behind him, Rozsa Iron-Tooth dumped his woven rush satchel onto the floorboards between her bare feet.

Dried pond-lily tubers, two river-mussel shells used for scraping fish scales, and a lump of sulfur-smelling marsh resin rolled across the bilge water. With the toe of her seal-hide boot, Rozsa kicked the tubers into the sloshing bottom muck.

Her scarred hand stopped on three hollow tubes wrapped in greased pig bladder.

\"Leave the grease on them, Warlady,\" Menyhért called over his shoulder, twisting his neck until the fresh cut from her stingray dagger flared hot against his collarbone. \"Cranes do not yield their wing bones to careless hands, and the delta dampness splits dry marrow before noon. Treat them gently, or you will have to sing your own funeral dirge when the mud-gars smell your blood.\"

Csente, towering over the third thwart with a basalt war club resting across his knees, raised a thick forearm to strike. \"Shut his jaws, Rozsa. One crack to the ear-hole.\"

\"Hold,\" Rozsa commanded.

Her voice fell flat and heavy as an anchor stone. She unwrapped the greased bladder with slow, deliberate precision. The pale crane bones caught the pale morning light, polished ivory scored with circular finger stops and sealed with black pitch along the split lines. She lifted the longest pipe to her lips, blew a hard, dry gust across the bevel, and produced a sharp, discordant squeal that sent three white egrets flapping out of the reeds.

Menyhért winced, his wrists throbbing against the rawhide. \"Sacrilege. Absolute slaughter of the ears. A gull choking on an oyster shell makes a sweeter sound.\"

Rozsa lowered the bone. Her amber eyes held his, unblinking and devoid of anger. She did not strike him; she merely weighed the pipe in her palm, testing its heft against the balance of her stingray blade.

\"The sound travels under the water,\" she said.

\"Only if the breath comes from the belly and the lips stay slack,\" Menyhért muttered, easing his weight forward against the damp timber to take the strain off his shoulders. \"Keep them in the bladder. Keep them dry. Or your paddles will strike sleeping catfish before sunset, and those grandmothers do not care how many notches you carved into your seal-skin skirts.\"

Rozsa rewrapped the bones and shoved the parcel into her belt beside the white stingray dagger. She gave his bindings a short, testing tug that sent a jolt of fire up his forearms.

\"They stay dry if you keep us in deep water,\" she said. She turned toward the stern, raising a bronze arm scarred by old harpoon lines. \"Paddles up. We take the middle channel before the fog burns off.\"

Twelve oarsmen drove their wide basalt-tipped blades into the brown river. The forty-foot dugout surged forward, cutting a clean furrow through the floating duckweed. Behind them, three smaller war-canoes fell into the wake, their spray skirts lashed tight against the river chop.

Menyhért rested his forehead against the damp cypress rim, breathing the sharp stink of river silt and otter grease.

The Sárvidék delta did not tolerate heavy keels. Coastal dugouts were built for rolling ocean swells and sandy bars, wide-bellied and stiff. In these winding bayous, where dead cypress roots reached up like submerged ribcages, a deep draft was an invitation to drown. The current pulled hard to the left, running dark and sluggish toward a thicket of black willows whose hanging vines trailed in the foam.

Ahead, where the channel divided around a sunken mud-spit, the surface looked smooth as poured tallow.

Menyhért lifted his head. His eyes narrowed against the glare of the pale sky.

The middle channel looked deep, but two paces past the willow bough, the river wrinkled into faint, diamond-shaped ripples that vanished as quickly as they formed. Underneath that calm glass lay thirty yards of dead-water oyster shoals—clusters of freshwater razor-shells cemented to sunken logs, their edges sharp enough to slice an otter's pelt to ribbons in a single scrape.

Csente leaning into his steering paddle, threw his weight to guide the dugout straight into the center of the glassy bend.

\"Csente,\" Rozsa ordered from amidships, her hand resting on the gunwale. \"Drive through. The current runs fast along the willow bank.\"

Menyhért jerked hard against the timber, the rawhide tearing skin from his thumbs. \"Starboard paddle! Back-water, you blind sea-oxen! Pull starboard!\"

Csente did not check his stroke. His thick brow knotted in fury, and he spat into the river. \"Silence the thrall, Rozsa, or I'll break his neck against the bow!\"

\"Starboard, you ocean-born idiot!\" Menyhért roared, throwing his entire torso against the bow timber to point his chin toward the brown boil near the reeds. \"Look at the foam! The water isn't moving over silt, it's breaking over shell-bars! Two more strokes and you'll gut this cypress log from stem to stern!\"

Rozsa stepped forward along the narrow thwart. She moved without a hand on the gunwale, perfectly balanced on the rolling deck. Her amber gaze swept from Menyhért's straining neck to the smooth surface ahead, then down to the yellow froth gathering against the willow spit.

She saw the diamond ripples.

\"Back starboard!\" Rozsa snapped, her voice cutting through the thud of the paddles. \"Port side dig! Sweep right! Now!\"

Csente's jaw hardened, but he obeyed without a breath of delay. He wrenched his massive steering blade sideways against the rushing current, muscles corded like knotted willow vines across his back. The port oarsmen plunged their basalt blades deep, dragging water until the ash handles groaned under the strain.

The war-canoe swung sideways with a violent shudder.

A terrible, rasping screech tore through the bottom timbers as the keel grazed the outer rim of the oyster bed. The impact threw Menyhért against the deck knees, the rawhide biting deep into his flesh as spray erupted over the bow. Two paces to the left, the submerged reef rose clear through the brown swirl—a jagged forest of razor-edged oyster mounds that would have sliced the dugout's hull into kindling.

The canoe scraped free, riding the deep green current into the clear bayou channel. Behind them, the second war-canoe took the wide turn, following their altered wake into safe water.

Silence settled over the lead canoe, broken only by the ragged breathing of twelve paddlers and the drip of silt from Csente's blade.

Csente stared back at the boiling foam over the oyster bar, the blood drained from his scarred lips. He looked at Menyhért, his grip loosening on the steering wood, but spoke no word.

Rozsa walked to the bow. Water dripped from her otter tunic, dark drops pooling on the cypress deck.

She knelt directly in front of Menyhért, so close he could see the amber flecks in her irises and the fine grain of salt dried along her high cheekbones. She did not speak. She drew the stingray-spine dagger with a slow, smooth scrape against its leather scabbard.

Menyhért did not flinch, though his pulse hammered against his throat. He let out a breathless, uneven chuckle, shaking damp hair from his brow.

\"A simple 'thank you, Menyhért' usually suffices among civilized folk,\" he murmured. \"Though if you prefer to express your gratitude by carving my liver, do make it swift. This kneeling posture is terrible for my hips.\"

Rozsa reached behind his back.

With one clean stroke of the serrated barb, she severed the center cord binding his shoulders to the deck knees. The wet rawhide snapped, and the suffocating pressure vanished. She did not free his wrists, but she sliced the trailing lashing, leaving his hands bound loosely in front of his belly instead of pinned behind his spine.

Menyhért rolled onto his side, drawing his knees up and rotating his swollen, stinging wrists. Blood seeped from the scrapes, but sensation rushed back into his cold fingers.

Rozsa sheathed her blade. Her amber gaze remained locked on his face, dark with something far sharper than mere suspicion.

\"You stay in the bow,\" she said, her voice dropping to a low murmur meant for him alone. \"You watch the river. Next time, call the turn before we scrape.\"

Menyhért looked up at her, winking through the mud-caked strands of his hair with shameless insolence.

\"Warlady,\" he said, his lips curling into a lazy, crooked grin, \"the deeper waters ahead will drown your pride long before we reach your enemies.\"

Rozsa's mouth tightened into a hard, dangerous line, but she did not strike him. She turned her back, stepping to the center thwart to survey the black willow channel opening before them.