“Tip her!” roared Rulf as they heaved her from the water. “But gently now! Like a lover, not a wrestler!”
“If I tip her like a lover do I get a kiss?” called Odda.
“I’ll kiss you with my fist,” hissed Thorn through her clenched teeth.
It had grown dark as dusk, and He Who Speaks the Thunder grumbled in the distance as they heaved the South Wind over, prow and stern digging deep into the boggy earth. Now they took her under the top rail, upside down, and carried her up the bank, boots mashing the ground to sliding mud.
“Easy!” called Father Yarvi. “Gently! A little toward me! Yes! And down!”
They lowered the ship onto the barrels, and Odda shrieked and flapped his hand because he’d got it caught, but that was the only injury and the South Wind was steady on her back. Soaked, sore and gasping they slipped under the hull and crouched huddled in the darkness.
“Good work,” said Rulf, his voice echoing strangely. “Reckon we might make a crew of this crowd of fools yet.” He gave a chuckle, and others joined him, and soon everyone was laughing, and slapping each other, and hugging each other, for they knew they’d done a fine job, each working for one another, and were bound together by it.
“She makes a noble hall,” said Dosduvoi, patting at the timbers above his head.
“One I am exceedingly grateful for in this weather,” said Odda.
The rain was pelting now, coming in sheets and curtains, coursing from the South Wind’s top rail which had become the eaves of their roof. They heard thunder crackle close by and the wind howled icy-chill around the barrels. Koll huddled up tighter and Brand put his arm around him, like he might’ve round Rin when they were children and had no roof at all. He felt Thorn pressed tight against him on the other side, the woody hardness of her shoulder against his, shifting as she breathed, and he wanted to put his arm around her too but didn’t much fancy her fist in his face.
Probably he should’ve taken the chance to tell her that he’d been the one went to Father Yarvi. That he’d lost his place on the king’s raid over it. Might’ve made her think twice before digging him with her oar again, at least, or with her insults either.
But the gods knew he wasn’t much good at telling things, and the gods knew even better she wasn’t easy to tell things to, and the further it all dwindled into the past the harder it got. Didn’t seem like doing good, to put her in his debt that way.
So he stayed silent, and let her shoulder press against his instead, then felt her flinch as something heavy banged against the hull.
“Hail,” whispered Skifr. The rattling grew louder, and louder yet, blows like axes on shields, and the crew peered fearfully up, or shrank against the ground, or put hands over their heads.
“Look at this.” Fror held up a stone that had rolled under the boat, a spiked and knobbled chunk of ice the size of a fist. In the gloom outside the ship Brand could see the hail pounding the wet earth, bouncing and rolling.
“You think the gods are angry with us?” asked Koll.
“It is frozen rain,” said Father Yarvi. “The gods hate those who plan badly, and help those with good friends, good swords, and good sense. Worry less about what the gods might do and more about what you can, that’s my advice.”
But Brand could hear a lot of prayers even so. He’d have given it a go himself, but he’d never been much good at picking out the right gods.
Skifr was yammering away in at least three languages, not one of which he understood. “Are you praying to the One God or the many?” he asked.
“All of them. And the fish god of the Banyas, and the tree spirits of the Shends, and great eight-armed Thopal that the Alyuks think will eat the world at the end of time. One can never have too many friends, eh, boy?”
“I … suppose?”
Dosduvoi peered out sadly at the downpour. “I went over to the worship of the One God because her priests said she would bring me better luck.”
“How’s that worked out?” asked Koll.
“Thus far, unluckily,” said the big man. “But it may be that I have not committed myself enough to her worship.”
Odda spat. “You can never bow low enough for the One God’s taste.”
“In that she and Grandmother Wexen are much alike,” murmured Yarvi.
“Who are you praying to?” Brand muttered at Thorn, her lips moving silently while she clung to something on a thong around her neck.
He saw her eyes gleam as she frowned back. “I don’t pray.”
“Why?”
She was silent for a moment. “I prayed for my father. Every morning and every night to every god whose name I could learn. Dozens of the bastards. He died anyway.” And she turned her back on him and shifted away, leaving darkness between them.
The storm blew on.
READY OR DEAD
“Gods,” whispered Brand.
The elf-ruins crowded in on both sides of the river, looming towers and blocks and cubes, broken elf-glass twinkling as it caught the watery sun.
The Divine flowed so broad here it was almost a lake, cracked teeth of stone and dead fingers of metal jutting from the shallows. All was wreathed with creeper, sprouting with sapling trees, choked with thickets of ancient bramble. No birds called, not even an insect buzzed over water still as black glass, only the slightest ripple where the oar-blades smoothly dipped, yet Thorn’s skin prickled with the feeling of being watched from every empty window.
All her life she had been warned away from elf-ruins. It was the one thing on which her mother and father had always stood united. Men daily risked shipwreck hugging the coast of Gettland to keep their distance from the haunted island of Strokom, where the Ministry had forbidden any man to tread. Sickness lurked there, and death, and things worse than death, for the elves had wielded a magic powerful enough to break God and destroy the world.
And here they went, forty little people in a hollow twig, rowing through the midst of the greatest elf-ruins Thorn had ever seen.
“Gods,” breathed Brand again, twisting to look over his shoulder.
There was a bridge ahead, if you could call a thing built on that scale a bridge. It must once have crossed the river in a single dizzying span, the slender roadway strung between two mighty towers, each one dwarfing the highest turret of the citadel of Thorlby. But the bridge had fallen centuries before, chunks of stone big as houses hanging from tangled ropes of metal, one swinging gently with the faintest creak as they rowed beneath.
Rulf gripped the steering oar, mouth hanging wide as he stared up at one of the leaning towers, crouching as if he expected it to topple down and crush the tiny ship and its ant-like crew into nothingness. “If you ever needed reminding how small you are,” he muttered, “here’s a good spot.”
“It’s a whole city,” whispered Thorn.
“The elf-city of Smolod.” Skifr lounged on the steering platform, peering at her fingernails as though colossal elf-ruins were hardly worthy of comment. “In the time before the Breaking of God it was home to thousands. Thousands of thousands. It glittered with the light of their magic, and the air was filled with the song of their machines and the smoke of their mighty furnaces.” She gave a long sigh. “All lost. All past. But so it is with everything. Great or small, the Last Door is life’s one certainty.”
A sheet of bent metal stuck from the river on rusted poles, arrows sweeping across it in flaking paint, bold words written in unknowable elf-letters. It looked uncomfortably like a warning, but of what, Thorn could not say.
Rulf tossed a twig over the side, watched it float away to judge their speed and gave a grudging nod. For once he had to bellow no encouragements—meaning insults—to get the South Wind moving at a pretty clip. The ship itself seemed to whisper with the prayers, and oaths, and charms of its crew, spoken in a dozen languages. But Skifr, who had something for every god and every occasion, for once let the heavens be.
“Save your prayers for later,” she said. “There is no danger here.
”
“No danger?” squeaked Dosduvoi, fumbling a holy sign over his chest and getting his oar tangled with the man in front.
“I have spent a great deal of time in elf-ruins. Exploring them has been one of my many trades.”
“Some would call that heresy,” said Father Yarvi, looking up from under his brows.
Skifr smiled. “Heresy and progress often look much alike. We have no Ministry in the south to meddle with such things. Rich folk there will pay well for an elf-relic or two. The Empress Theofora herself has quite a collection. But the ruins of the south have often been picked clean. Those about the Shattered Sea have much more to offer. Untouched, some of them, since the Breaking of God. The things one can find there …”
Her eyes moved to the iron-shod chest, secured by chains near the setting of the mast, and Thorn thought of the box, and the light from inside it. Had that been dug from the forbidden depths of a place like this one? Was there magic in it that could break the world? She gave a shiver at the thought.
But Skifr only smiled wider. “If you go properly prepared into the cities of elves, you will find less danger than in the cities of men.”
“They say you’re a witch.” Koll blew a puff of wood-chips from his latest patch of carving and looked up.
“They say?” Skifr widened her eyes so the white showed all the way around. “True and false are hard to pick apart in the weave of what they say.”
“You said you know magic.”
“And so I do. Enough to cause much harm, but not enough to do much good. So it is, with magic.”
“Could you show it to me?”
Skifr snorted. “You are young and rash and know not what you ask, boy.” They rowed in the shadow of a vast wall, its bottom sunk in the river, its top broken off in a skein of twisted metal. Rank upon rank of great windows yawned empty. “The powers that raised this city also rendered it a ruin. There are terrible risks, and terrible costs. Always, there are costs. How many gods do you know the names of?”
“All of them,” said Koll.
“Then pray to them all that you never see magic.” Skifr frowned down at Thorn. “Take your boots off.”
Thorn blinked. “Why?”
“So you can take a well-deserved break from rowing.”
Thorn looked at Brand and he shrugged back. Together they pulled their oars in and she worked off her boots. Skifr slipped out of her coat, folded it and draped it over the steering oar. Then she drew her sword. Thorn had never seen it drawn before, and it was long, and slender, and gently curved, Mother Sun glinting from a murderous edge. “Are you ready, my dove?”
The break from rowing suddenly did not seem so appealing. “Ready for what?” asked Thorn, in a voice turned very small.
“A fighter is either ready or dead.”
On the barest shred of instinct Thorn jerked her oar up, the blade of Skifr’s sword chopping into it right between her hands.
“You’re mad!” she squealed as she scrambled back.
“You’re hardly the first to say so.” Skifr jabbed left and right and made Thorn hop over the lowered mast. “I take it as a compliment.” She grinned as she swished her sword back and forth, oarsmen jerking fearfully out of her way. “Take everything as a compliment, you can never be insulted.”
She sprang forward again and made Thorn slither under the mast, breath whooping as she heard Skifr’s sword rattle against it once, twice.
“My carving!” shouted Koll.
“Work around it!” snarled Skifr.
Thorn tripped on the chains that held the iron-bound chest and toppled into Odda’s lap, tore his shield from its bracket, blocked a blow with both hands before Skifr ripped it from her and kicked her over backwards.
Thorn clawed up a coil of rope and flung it in the old woman’s face, lunged for Fror’s sword but he slapped her hand away. “Find your own!”
“It’s in my chest!” she squealed, rolling over Dosduvoi’s oar and grabbing the giant from behind, peering over his great shoulder.
“God save me!” he gasped as Skifr’s blade darted past his ribs on one side then the other, nicking a hole in his shirt, Thorn dodging desperately, running out of room as the carved prow and Father Yarvi, smiling as he watched the performance, grew mercilessly closer.
“Stop!” shouted Thorn, holding up a trembling hand. “Please! Give me a chance!”
“Do the berserks of the Lowlands stop for their enemies? Does Bright Yilling pause if you say please? Does Grom-gil-Gorm give chances?”
Skifr stabbed again and Thorn leapt past Yarvi, teetered on the top strake, took one despairing stride and sprang, clear off the ship and onto the shaft of the front oar. She felt it flex under her weight, the oarsman straining to keep it level. She tottered to the next, bare foot curling desperately around the slippery wood, arms wide for balance. To hesitate, to consider, to doubt, was doom. She could only run on in great bounds, the water flickering by beneath, oars creaking and clattering in their sockets and the cheering of the crew ringing in her ears.
She gave a shrill whoop at the sheer reckless excitement of it, wind rushing in her open mouth. Running the oars was a noble feat, often sung of but rarely attempted. The feeling of triumph was short-lived, though. The South Wind had only sixteen oars a side and she was quickly running out. The last came rushing at her, Brand reaching over the rail, fingers straining. She made a despairing grab at his outstretched hand, he caught her sleeve—
The oar struck her hard in the side, her sleeve ripped and she tumbled headfirst into the river, surfaced gasping in a rush of bubbles.
“A creditable effort!” called Skifr, standing on the steering platform with her arm draped around Rulf’s shoulders. “And swimming is even better exercise than rowing! We will make camp a few miles further on and wait for you!”
Thorn slapped her hand furiously into the water. “Miles?”
Her rage did not slow the South Wind. If anything it caused it to quicken. Brand stared from the stern with that helpless look, his arm still hanging over the side, and shrugged.
Skifr’s voice floated out over the water. “I’ll hold on to your boots for you!”
Snarling curses, Thorn began to swim, leaving the silent ruins in her wake.
ITCHING
Brand went down hard, practice sword spinning from his hand, tumbled grunting down the slope and flopped onto his back with a groan, the jeering of the crew echoing in his ears.
Lying there, staring into the darkening sky with his many bruises throbbing and his dignity in shreds, he guessed she must have hooked his ankle. But he’d seen no hint it was coming.
Thorn stuck her own sword point-down in the knobbled turf where they’d set out their training square and offered him her hand. “Is that three in a row now, or four?”
“Five,” he grunted, “as you well know.” He let her haul him up. He’d never been able to afford much pride and sparring with her was taking an awful toll on what little he had. “Gods, you got quick.” He winced as he arched his back, still aching from her boot. “Like a snake but without the mercy.”
Thorn grinned wider at that, and wiped a streak of blood from under her nose, the one mark he’d put on her in five bouts. He hadn’t meant it as a compliment but it was plain she took it as one, and Skifr did too.
“I think young Brand has taken punishment enough for one day,” the old woman called to the crew. “There must be a ring-crusted hero among you with the courage to test themselves against my pupil?”
Wasn’t long ago they’d have roared with laughter at that offer. Men who’d raided every bitter coast of the Shattered Sea. Men who’d lived by the blade and the feud and called the shield wall home. Men who’d spilled blood enough between them to float a longship, fighting some sharp-tongued girl.
No one laughed now.
For weeks they’d watched her training like a devil in all weathers. They’d watched her put down and they’d watched her get up, over and over, until they were sore just
with the watching of it. For a month they’d gone to sleep with the clash of her weapons as a lullaby and been woken by her warcries in place of a cock’s crow. Day by day they’d seen her grow faster, and stronger, and more skillful. Terrible skillful, now, with ax and sword together, and she was getting that drunken swagger that Skifr had, so you could never tell where she or her weapons would be the next moment.
“Can’t recommend it,” said Brand as he lowered himself wincing beside the fire, pressing gently at a fresh scab on his scalp.
Thorn spun her wooden ax around her fingers as nimbly as you might a toothpick. “None of you got the guts for it?”
“Gods damn it, then, girl!” Odda sprang up from the fire. “I’ll show you what a real man can do!”
Odda showed her the howl a real man makes when a wooden sword whacks him right in the groin, then he showed her the best effort Brand had ever seen at a real man eating his own shield, then he showed her a real man’s muddy backside as he went sprawling through a bramble-bush and into a puddle.
He propped himself on his elbows, caked head to toe with mud, and blew water out of his nose. “Had enough yet?”
“I have.” Dosduvoi stooped slowly to pick up Odda’s fallen sword and drew himself up to his full height, great chest swelling. The wooden blade looked tiny in his ham of a fist.
Thorn’s jaw jutted as she scowled up at him. “The big trees fall the hardest.” Splinter in the world’s arse she might be, but Brand found himself smiling. However the odds stood against her, she never backed down.
“This tree hits back,” said Dosduvoi as he took up a fighting stance, big boots wide apart.
Odda sat down, kneading at a bruised arm. “It’d be a different story if the blades were sharpened, I can tell you that!”
“Aye,” said Brand, “a short story with you dead at the end.”
Safrit was busy cutting her son’s hair, bright shears click-clicking. “Stop squirming!” she snapped at Koll. “It’ll be over the faster.”
“Hair has to be cut.” Brand set a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Listen to your mother.” He almost added you’re lucky to have one, but swallowed it. Some things are better left unsaid.
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