Chapter 200
A great iron gate set into the cliff at the fjord's head, white water lapping at its threshold. On the walls above, Bastion guards in grey-and-white Registry armour, shields locked, firing crossbows down into the blank sea. Out of the white, the Unwritten wade in silent ranks toward the gate.
RANK PLATE ×20: BASTION GUARD · K-II MARKED · Registry Defence
hitting an Unwritten in the chest and passing through him like through fog. He keeps wading. No SFX.
The Marka coming alongside a broken jetty below the gate, the crew leaping off. Guards on the walls swinging their crossbows round at them.
putting her hand flat on the sergeant's crossbow and pushing it down. A narrow, pale young woman in Bastion grey, her eyes ringed with exhaustion, a finger to her lips.
LÄRKA · K-III TESTED · #6,617 · the Quiet · Bastion
(She says nothing. She shakes her head at the sergeant. Once.)
looking up at her, a lump in his throat.
(Lärka nods. She points at the white sea. Then she holds up her hands in the shape of a gate, and closes them.)
glaring down at Vigolas, then at the white, then back.
The Unwritten reach the gate.
Smurjan's Triple Pulse goes through an Unwritten, three strikes into grey, no impact, and the grey figure lays one soft hand on Smurjan's arm.
Smurjan's plate flickers over his head and goes out: — · — · —. Beside him, Kali frowns, turning: "Who— who are you?" For one terrible second she doesn't know him.
Kompis fires Ivar at the grey hand, and the shot passes through, but the jolt breaks the touch. Smurjan's plate flickers back. Kali gasps: "BIG MAN. Sorry. Sorry sorry—"
Rougeina's blades pass through another, and its touch brushes her shoulder. Her plate gutters. Öde shouts her name, "ROUGEINA!", and it steadies.
gripping her scythe, pale.
wading at the gate: human shape, grey robe, face smooth and blank like a rubbed-out drawing. But on one finger, a small gold ring. On the ring, in Greed-sight, a tiny emerald light.
Greed-sight on, eyes narrowing. The deeper Greed-sight from the Codex: over each of the grey figures, one small emerald light. A ring. A child's drawing in a pocket. A name stitched inside a collar. A lock of hair in a locket. The one thing each of them still values.
grinning.
Rougeina's blade, aimed not at the chest but at the hand with the gold ring, and this time it connects. The Unwritten staggers, real, solid round the ring, clutching the hand. For a second its smooth face shows a flicker of features: an old man, shocked.
The Bastion's iron gate in the black cliff, white blank sea lapping at its threshold, and a battle on the broken jetty and the walls: the crew and the Bastion guards side by side, Registry shields and pirate fists, against a tide of grey blank-faced figures wading out of the Null. Every Unwritten marked with one small emerald light (a ring, a locket, a folded letter), and every crewmate's blow aimed at those lights: Rougeina's blade at a locket-chain, Kompis's shot at a pocket, Smurjan's fist at a stitched collar, Öde's scythe-butt at a hand.
On the wall above, Lärka with her finger to her lips, eyes shut, a ring of silence around her where the guards' wounded lie and don't scream.
Behind it all, the white, and in the white, more grey shapes coming.
Bror's shove, BRA-DOOM, a wave of gold force through the grey, and it pushes nothing, passing through them. Kompis swears.
(Next blast: the white water heaves back from the gate in a wall, and the grey wade stumbles.)
trotting down the jetty through the Unwritten line, and the grey parts round him like smoke round a dog. Nothing they touch him with takes. He's never had a plate to lose. He growls at them, puzzled.
on the wall, eyes clear, holding, …ba—, and the Unwritten in her sight do freeze, at least the parts of them that are still counted: the ringed hand, the locket, the pocket. The rest of them stays soft and moving, half-held, half-not.
beside the Bastion sergeant on the wall, writing in the air.
MACRO : WALL = TALLER
(The gate's wall rises another four metres with a groan of stone.)
The first wave breaking. Unwritten falling back into the white, clutching rings and lockets and pockets, their faces flickering with half-features: real people, briefly, in pain.
watching one of them, a woman clutching a child's drawing to her chest as she wades back, and her face flickers: young, frightened, someone's mother.
on the wall, opening her eyes, letting her silence go. She looks down at Kompis. She lifts her hand: a small wave. Her lips move without sound.
(Kompis smiles back up at her.)
grudgingly, to Vigolas.
All along the Tideline, the grey figures still wading in the shallows stop, turn, and part, making a path in the white.
Down the path, wading slowly out of the blank sea toward the gate: one figure, smaller than the rest, hooded. Behind her, on the white water, her shadow, which isn't lying flat like a shadow should. It's standing up, and it's walking a full second behind her.
at the Marka's rail, spyglass to his eye, the bell-rope mask round his neck, going completely rigid.
The hooded figure, lifting her head. The hood falling back.
A young woman's face, but half of it fading: the left side whole, pale, solemn, with a dark grey eye; the right side drained to grey, soft-edged, rubbing out, its eye one that doesn't catch the light. Short dark hair, half of it grey. Round her neck, under the hood, the strap of a satchel.
YSEL · K-? · Scalelist — (flickering, failing, blanking:) UNCOUNTED
looking up at the Bastion's gate, at the crew on the jetty, without expression.
every one of them who was there in Saga I going still. Kompis. Rougeina. Vigolas. Trollmage, whose bag twitches, the book inside lunging toward her.
On the Marka's deck, Drekk lowering his spyglass slowly, slowly. His hands shaking. His bare face turned toward the half-faced girl standing in the white.
The spyglass slipping out of his fingers and clattering onto the deck. His voice, in his beard, very small.