Chapter 111
The Marka sails toward a red glow on the horizon, the brass clock-hand still standing in her deck, the crew on the rail.
at the bow, the wooden box of Ivar's pieces held against his chest in both arms, Mingus pressed to his leg.
in her holster, the soul-text bouncing:
A volcanic planet hanging in the starlight, its whole surface veined with rivers of lava that glow like arteries under black rock. Every mountain is crowned with an anvil, some the size of houses, some the size of towns, and on many of them, tiny figures are hammering, sparks fountaining up into the dark. Smoke rises in a hundred columns. The whole world rings, clang… clang… clang, a planet-sized forge.
And around it, a ring of ugly black ships, hulls slick with oil, chains hanging from their sides: a blockade.
peering through a spyglass at the black ships.
hand going to Lilla Ulv.
The black ships turn as one toward the Marka. Grapples fly, iron hooks on oily chains biting into her rail.
reading the Melters' threads with gold eyes. Their threads are black and slick, coated in oil, dulled, like rope left in tar.
Melters swarm over the rail: men and women in heavy leather, faces masked against the fumes, both hands sheathed in gauntlets dripping black oil.
RANK PLATE ×15: MELTER · K-II MARKED · Smedjan blockade
A Melter grabs Rougeina's blade, and the oil on his gauntlet smears the steel. For one moment the mirror-steel goes dull, like a dead eye. She rips it free, horrified.
Vigolas, coat on and clinking, punches green lightning through three Melters into the sea.
Smurjan's Triple Pulse sends three more flying in one beat.
Rougeina, wiping her blade frantically, Swaps with a gull overhead and drops onto a Melter's head.
Drekk swings the axe, through his bell-rope mask: "Off my SHIP!"
Trollmage, asleep on a barrel, is stepped over by every Melter. Nobody wants the troll.
Three Melters converge on Kompis, gauntlets reaching for his holster.
Subtick, the world grey. A thousand versions. In the one he keeps, he draws Lilla Ulv and fires before they touch her.
The wolf-cub bullet ricochets off a cauldron, a mast and a Melter's helmet, and bonks all three gauntlets off all three hands in one bound.
on the deck, oil pooling out of it. Where the oil touches the planks, the wood goes grey and silent. Not burned. Quieted. Even the Marka's bark-hull seems to shiver.
staring at it, holding Lilla Ulv close.
The crew drives the Melters back over the rail. The black ships pull off, regrouping, their cauldrons smoking. The Marka limps through the gap in the blockade toward the harbour.
wiping oil off his knuckles, frowning at the grey smear it leaves.
A crescent of black sand under a mountain crowned by an enormous anvil. Forges along the shore, every chimney smoking. People in leather aprons with soot-black faces stop hammering to watch the Marka come in.
pointing at the ship, shouting to someone up the mountain:
stepping onto the black sand, the box in his arms. And he hears something, faint and far, coming from high up the mountain, from inside the glow of the great anvil. A voice. Gruff. Familiar.
frozen, eyes filling.
bouncing in the holster.
laughing and crying at once, clutching the box.
The crew climbs a switchback path toward the great anvil at the summit, past forges, past lava streams, past racks of half-finished blades that seem to turn to watch them go by.
passing a rack of swords. Every blade on it tilts toward her, toward her blades, as if recognising something. She walks faster.
An anvil the size of a house, glowing red-hot from within. Beside it a forge-fire like a small sun. And on the anvil sits a short, broad, soot-black old man with forearms like anvils, in a leather apron burned through in a hundred places. One of his eyes is a glowing coal. He's humming, and it isn't his own song.
looking down at Kompis and the box in his arms.