Chapter 103
The Marka sails away from Urverket, the brass clock-hand still standing in her deck like a mast of its own. The sea is calm.
The compass needle is bent, the metal itself curving downward toward the deck, as if pulled by a magnet the size of a world.
The ship drops. Not sinking, dropping, as if the sea had fallen out from under it. Every crew member slams into the deck. The sails hang down like wet sheets.
The Marka is being dragged down through the Current, the starlight-water streaming up past her hull, toward something below the sea: a dark, heavy shape.
flattened on the deck, Mingus flattened on top of him, both of them trying to lift their heads.
face pressed to the planks, the coat with 36 shards dragging him into the deck like an anchor.
The Marka crashes out of the bottom of the Current onto a planet that shouldn't exist: grey-black, low, crushed flat. No hills higher than a man. Trees growing sideways along the ground. Houses built like bunkers, half-sunk into the rock. Birds walk, waddling in the mud, wings useless. And the rain falls like a hail of bullets, each drop punching small craters into the stone.
The ship hits the ground keel-first and its timbers groan. The Kettle's bell is torn from its mount on the bow and slams down into the deck, embedded in the planks up to its rim.
The whole crew pinned flat, spread-eagled, as if pressed under glass. Rain hammering them. Trollmage is the only one who looks comfortable.
at the wheel, on his knees, both hands locked on the spokes. Everything in him is pulling him to the deck, and he will not let go of the wheel.
flat on the rail, trying to Swap with a rock ten metres away.
She arrives at the rock and falls the last inch, hard, as if Swapping had carried her weight with her. She cries out.
Out of the bunkers, out of the mud, out of slits in the ground, figures crawl toward the ship. Dozens. Grey armour bolted flat to their bodies, faces down, moving on elbows and knees with terrible speed, like lizards. Long hooked pikes dragged beside them.
RANK PLATE ×30: BALLAST · K-II MARKED · Tyngden
crawling up the hull with hook and elbows, eyes cold under a flat helmet.
The crew fights lying down:
Vigolas, pinned by his coat, punches sideways along the deck: green lightning skids across the wet planks like a bowling ball and bowls over three Ballast.
Smurjan, flat on his back, opens his third eye and draws the Sightline straight up; it hits a Ballast's helmet from below.
Kali can't rise out of the shadow, so she swims along it across the deck, sickle first.
Bakasura's maw opens sideways out of Smurjan's flattened shadow like a trapdoor and swallows a crawling Ballast whole. "…Heavy."
Kompis, flat, can't raise his arm to aim, so he holds Lilla Ulv on the deck and fires along the planks. The wolf-cub bullet bounces low, under every helmet. "i'm a GROUND wolf now!"
hooking Rougeina's ankle with his pike, dragging her across the deck toward the rail.
Rougeina, dragged, Swaps with a raindrop falling toward the Ballast's face (light things move easier), and appears in the air above him. She falls on him like a hammer, all her weight coming down with her.
panting, on top of the flattened Ballast.
The Ballast keep coming, endless, crawling out of every slit in the ground. The crew is tiring fast. Every move costs ten times as much here.
Subtick, the world grey. A thousand versions of the next ten seconds, and in every one he's too heavy to move in time.
still kneeling at the wheel, a Ballast's hook in his shoulder, refusing to let go.
on the deck, his hands on the wheel: a man on his knees and not on his face.
Vigolas, inspired, gets his good knee under him. Then a hand. The coat drags at him like an anchor. He pushes, roaring, and gets up to kneeling, swaying, lightning sputtering.
One by one the others push up to their knees: Smurjan, Rougeina, Kompis with Mingus wobbling on four legs beside him, Kali one-armed. Trollmage stays face-down, asleep.
The Ballast stop crawling. Thirty grey soldiers on their bellies stare up at strangers on their knees, the highest anyone but their king has ever risen in front of them.
Through the bullet-rain, slow and enormous: footsteps. Each one cracks the stone. THOOM. THOOM.
The Ballast press their faces into the mud. Through the rain, one figure walks upright: broad as a doorway, built like a landslide, a crown of lead on his head, rain bouncing off him like pebbles off a cliff. Every step is a decision. The stone cracks under each one.
TYNGD · DRIFTING-6 · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #388 · General of the Order
looking down at the kneeling crew, his voice so deep the puddles shiver.