Deathwater
What happened to Lord Restimar?
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A/N: This is not a nice tale.
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It was no good. Lord Restimar picked the last stray crumbs from his share of the meagre bannock cake off his tunic and ate them carefully. But it was no good.
It was no good for Revilian to argue passionately, face flushed and voice rising, that they must go back. It was no good for Mavramorn to argue equally passionately, hands clasped to white knuckles and voice low and level with anger, that they must go on.
On was unknown league upon league of uncharted, unmeasured seas, and the ever retreating lands beyond the sunset. Back was league upon league of uncharted, unmeasured seas they had been storm driven over, all the many but uncounted days since they had lost Octesian and escaped the pirates.
None of them, Restimar was certain, would wish to go back there. But wishing was no good either. On or back, wish or dream, hope or reason, argument or silence – all was no good! All was vain! All as worthless as the water barrel they had salvaged from the waves, which had turned out to be ruptured and no use.
Nay, it had been a little use. Its tarred staves had made their feeble camp fire better than the few pieces of driftwood or the coarse grass and stemmy heather which covered the rest of this small island would have done. Restimar leaned forwards to poke the fire again. His tunic was still damp. Not that the fire would dry it, while he still wore it, but it was at least a reason for the idle motion of his hands. Nobody noticed. He poked a moment longer, and then stopped. The barrel was a metaphor for their own lives, wasn't it? Once full, then empty and afloat, now shipwrecked in the Eastern Ocean and soon to perish into dust upon this nameless island.
All was useless. They had no ship any more. The last broken timbers of her ribs had sunk beneath the waves even before Restimar had been washed ashore. They had her pinnace, as both Revilian and Mavramorn put fiercely forth, having between the two of them somehow got her to shore. But they had holed her doing so. She might be mended, should enough wood wash in from the wreck. She was still useless.
She could only carry four men at the most.
Perhaps it was weariness, or hunger, or the amount of salt water he had swallowed, floundering in the shallows before Rhoop had spotted him and hauled him ashore. Whatever. Restimar suddenly felt faint. What was the point? Why had Rhoop bothered? Death would only come more slowly on land than in that teasing, dragging undercurrent which had flung him down, again and again.
New lands? Great wealth? Fame everlasting? This place, this voyage, was death – as Miraz had intended. Restimar stared round at the faces of his four companions at the campfire. Rhoop, ever the peacemaker, had said something, and Mavramorn and Revilian had fallen silent, with eyes averted and jaws clenched on their stubborn views. Rhoop was looking weary and far away, as he did ever more, the further they sailed and the more dire their situation. He, of all of them, Restimar noted to himself, had left a girl behind to break her heart.
Argoz, next to Rhoop, looked merely worried. Dreams of past or future did not rest deeply on Argoz. His thoughts had ever gone only as far as dinner. This had its uses. He had broken up the barrel and lit the fire and made the meagre, smoky bannock cake out of the supplies they had managed to salvage.
Supplies which would not feed them very long.
"I'm sure this would be better for a bit of mustard," Argoz broke into the tense silence, searching for a comradely laugh.
It was the last straw. Restimar sprang up and crammed his helmet on. For what purpose he knew not, but it was a habit. "I'm going for a walk! Maybe I'll find a – a – a rabbit!" he finished vainly. Rabbits did not live in heather. "Or gulls' eggs." It was too late in the year, and there were no cliffs. He turned. Telmar! Were they to end their days living on shrews and insects?!
"If you see any wood-!" Mavramorn called after him.
Wood? This island had heather, and heather, and heather. One shrubby willow tree clung to the edge of the beach by their makeshift camp. There were no other bushes, nor any driftwood so far from other land. The stream they had been washed up by ran fresh; there was another small stream on the opposite side of the bay; and the sandy beach itself. You cannot make a ship from water, nor live on sand.
Restimar stopped at the top of the low hill. Heather was not easy stuff to stride through, and he was tired. The whole of the small island spread out about him, silent except for the whining of the wind. If the others were talking again, the sound of their voices was lost in the vastness of the ocean, just as they were, from here, lost as bright dots of colour on the shore amid the wafting heather.
Which would last longer: clothes or bodies? Life would fade, as colour would fade, in the air and the wind; but there were no animals, no birds even, to pick over the bones. His thoughts crept back to shrews and insects. He wouldn't be here to care, of course, but-
Restimar wretched into the heather. It was a sad waste of the bannock. But – but – but-! He gulped air as he had gulped water earlier, as doomed by the one as the other! It was all in vain! Miraz had not killed them! The sea had not killed them! Dragons, pirates, serpents – none of those had killed them – that they might die of air and water on this vain little isle!
A man, a knight, a lord – does not run. Restimar plunged through the sea of heather as none of those, nothing but a trapped and doomed animal! How could the others talk and argue?! How could Argoz weigh the sack of meal and figure how many days meals it might make?! Did they not see that it was all as empty and hopeless and meaningless as – as – as –
He stopped, unable to think of a metaphor bleak and barren enough for their fate. As those empty old tales of the mythical past of Narnia, in which all was well if you could find a golden lion who granted you four wishes.
Wishes! Restimar's laugh whirled away on the wind. Four wishes!
Aye, and again and again, there was the number four. The pinnace would bear four! It had four intact water barrels! Four unbroken oars! It was even a quarter weight of meal in the sack! The wind blew, empty and hopeless, about him. Restimar stood and clasped and unclasped his hands. Then he put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the few worthless Narnian coins he had somehow been washed ashore with. A handful of small change. Aye, sixteen coins. Four by four.
Restimar turned and looked slowly about him. He was near to the small lake which seemed to be the source of the other stream, after that wild coursing through the heather. It was a queer little lake, for this low island, hemmed in by sharp rocky cliffs except for a narrow break where the water flowed out. The others, on the shore, were out of sight. It was probably just as well.
He trod slowly, carefully, down the slope to the edge of the cliffs. At the edge, among the heather, he put down the handful of coins he had been so tightly clutching. He took off his helmet and put that down, his sword beside it. A man's fate lay in his hands, and in his hands alone – that was true. There was no other power, unless it was the impersonal vastness of the earth and sea. But a man's fate was not – always – in his sword. The others might find it, but he hoped they would not search too long.
Restimar slipped off his mail shirt. It had so nearly drowned him, and Rhoop too, with its weight as they had struggled up out of that undercurrent. That had been a mistake. Better to have not had to do this – but since he must, he and he alone would do it. By his free will, not by his chain-mail.
Mavramorn had his dreams. Revilian had his haunting regret of their broken word to their late friend and king. Rhoop had his girl. Argoz had his pleasure in the little things of life.
He alone, last son of the House of Restimar, had nothing to bind him to the world. Water would be kinder than the sword.
He stepped to the edge and looked down into the golden tinted water. If the others found him, they would think he had fallen.
It was a trick of the light that there seemed to be the face of some kind of animal reflecting back up at him. It was a trick of the wind that his name seemed to blow upon it.
Let the others live!
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