Chapter 241
Both ships readied at the jetty: the Upp Igen's bow-gash chalked and patched by Jeppson (his hands still shaking), the Marka's bark hull scraped from the reefs. And on the horizon, coming on under full sail, twelve ships, crude chair flags snapping at their mastheads.
at the lantern-room glass, white-eyed, Natta at the top of the stair behind him, sniffing.
on the jetty, shading his eyes, grinning.
with his notebook, very dry.
calling down, a foghorn, very grave.
very quietly, behind him.
The sea before the Mouth, the wall of mist at the edge of the world, and the Beam sweeping across it all from Fyren's tower, white-gold and huge. In its light, every ship gets its silver thread: the Marka and the Upp Igen, side by side, their threads running toward the mist; and twelve chair-hunter ships, bearing down on them, their threads running straight at the two ships they're hunting. The same light, on all of them. No choosing.
On the tower, a blind old keeper with both hands on the lens, his face full of pain, lighting his friends and their hunters alike.
at the Marka's wheel, reading the threads, all of them, at once, his eyes not burning.
The chair-hunters closing in a wide ring, grappling hooks swinging, harpoon guns on their bows, crews shouting the bounty.
RANK PLATE ×12: CHAIR-HUNTER CAPTAIN · K-III TESTED · bounty crews
Two crews against twelve ships, on the threshold of the Deep.
Perne, colour back in her right eye, firing Fjärran from the Upp Igen's Perch: harpoon lines parting one after another.
Kompis, the Five-Gun Volley, every line a different ship's rigging.
Flexsnus bending a chair-hunter's anchor-chain one notch heavier, and the ship slewing round on it.
Isa holding a whole incoming broadside, …ba—, a wall of harpoons hanging in the air, while Rougeina Swaps along them, cutting their lines.
Roffe, from the galley hatch, hurling hot stew in great arcs onto a boarding party. "Lunch!"
Tihi in a chair-hunter's rigging, stealing their flag. "I'll take the CHAIR, thank you!"
Krydog and Vigolas, together, leaping onto the biggest chair-hunter's deck from both sides at once, back to back in the middle of thirty bounty-crew.
Krydog going down under six hunters and getting up, healed, harder to drop; Vigolas Emerald-Knuckling his way across the deck. The hunters' chair flag coming down in tatters.
on his back on his own deck, staring up at two grinning captains.
on the Upp Igen's deck, drawing a circle round the whole quarterdeck, the wounded of both crews inside it.
on the Upp Igen's bow, one hand raised at an approaching chair-hunter ship, calm.
(The chair-hunter ship's crew looking at each other, uncertain, their charge faltering.)
Out on the sea, the Beam coming round again. And as it passes over the chair-hunter fleet, Hallbard lighting them, every one of them, their silver threads running honestly: at the two crews.
on the tower, both hands on the lens, his white eyes wet.
beside him, her lightless eyes turned toward the sea, sniffing, and then grabbing his oilskin sleeve.
and something deciding in his old face. Not choosing who to light. Choosing what to say.
hearing it, spinning the wheel hard.
The Marka swinging away from three oil-laden ships as they try to grapple her, and Bror's shove, BRA-DOOM, rolling all three back into each other, oil-barrels tumbling into the sea, harmless.
The chair-hunter fleet broken: ships tangled, chains bent, sails shot to ribbons, crews swimming. Two ships turning tail. The flag-ship with its chair flag in Tihi's hands.
on the Upp Igen's rail, waving the chair flag over her head, giggling.
(She does, on the rail, in the flag, swinging her legs.)
back on the Marka, breathing hard, looking up at the tower on Fyren.
on the tower, wiping the lens with his rag, his hands shaking, muttering to the lamp.
turning the great lens, slowly, with both hands, toward the wall of mist at the edge of the world. Searching for the angle he's found once a century for four hundred years.
on the Marka's bow, ears straight up, staring at the mist.
The Beam turning, slowly, and settling on the wall of mist at the Mouth: a white-gold blade laid flat against grey cloud from horizon to horizon.
And the mist parting: not torn, not blown, but opening, like a curtain drawn back, like lips, a vast round gap in the wall of cloud, and beyond it dark: a starless, northless sea.