Chapter 278
The flagship storm coming across the water toward Tidekant, slow, enormous, an island of black cloud. Hail falling out of it in a white curtain, hissing on the lake. Lightning crawling grey-white in its belly. Tier on tier of thunderhead sails, rigged like a ship of the line.
Both crews lined up along it, wet from the morning, weapons out. The fisher-folk behind them. Njord at the end in Old Pike, not moving, his rod across his knees.
The storm stopping over the middle of the lake, a mile off, and the front of it folding, cloud rolling and shaping, into a face. A colossal face of black thunderhead leaning down over the water: a storm-coat, a tricorn of cloud, a beard of hail, eyes of grey-white lightning. At its throat, on a chain of rain, a lantern, dead.
rank plate drawn on the cloud in grey-white letters, as on the DEAD board.
HAGEL · K-IV SHAPED · THE DEAD · #1,099 · Admiral of the Storm Fleet
on the Marka's deck, staring up.
the lightning eyes sweeping the dock, the crews, the village. Bored. Then stopping, on one man in a long coat at the end of the dock.
leaning lower, the hail-beard dragging on the lake, the lightning eyes narrowing on Vigolas.
very still. The green lightning under his skin starting to crawl, up his arms, toward his throat.
A black-sailed ship at night. A forty-metre wave standing up out of the sea like a cliff. And on the deck a pirate captain with gold-sight blazing, looking from the wave to the hold, and turning the wheel toward the wave.
the present, jaw tight.
the lightning eyes going soft, almost fond.
The green lightning under his skin straining toward the storm, toward the sky, like a dog toward a whistle.
Hagel's storm reaching for him: a colossal wind pouring off the flagship down across the lake onto the dock, and lifting Vigolas off his feet, dragging him toward the water, his coat streaming, the cubes in his sash rattling, green lightning pouring off him into the wind and up into the storm in long emerald ribbons. Above him, in the black clouds of the flagship's rigging, faint shapes of storm-captains at their wheels, leaning down to watch a new one join them.
Krydog diving off the dock, catching Vigolas by the back of the collar with one bandaged fist, and hooking his other arm round a piling. The wind trying to tear them both off it. Krydog's feet off the ground.
hanging on, roaring up at the storm.
lightning eyes narrowing at Krydog.
The wind dropping off Vigolas and Krydog all at once, both of them crashing onto the dock. And Hagel's whole storm swinging, sails turning, heaving round to the north, toward the open lake, away from the village.
The flagship storm wheeling back in the same heartbeat, not north at all, but straight across the fishing grounds south of the dock, where six boats are still out, small, with men in them hauling nets. Hail coming down on them like stones.
two old men and a boy in it, looking up at the black wall coming down on them.
at the end of the dock, ten rings on his fingers, staring at the six boats. Holding up his hand. Six brass price tags flipping into the air over the boats, one each, swinging on their strings in the hail.
The storm hitting the boats: every hull smashed to kindling, masts snapping, nets torn away into the sky. And the men, every one, tumbling into the water and bobbing up, untouched, the hail bouncing off the air an inch above their heads, the wind sliding off them like water off oilskin.
staring down at six empty-handed fishermen floating unharmed in the wreck of their boats, a tiny brass tag swinging over each one.
already pushing out in rowboats to pull their men out of the water. Sill in the first one, rowing like a demon.
a long rattling look at Levla. At the tags. At Njord in Old Pike. At Vigolas on the dock, getting up.
The flagship storm withdrawing: the face unfolding back into cloud, the sails turning, the whole island of weather sliding back across the lake to the storm-wall, slow and unhurried, hail hissing behind it.
The six rescued men wrapped in blankets on the dock, their wives round them. Smashed boats washing in. Both crews standing in the wet, silent. The sun coming back out over the lake as if nothing happened.
staring at his hands. The green lightning quiet again. He closes them into fists.
beside him, eyes gold, looking at Vigolas's threads, at the lightning inside him: and seeing, in it, a thread he's never noticed before. A grey-white thread, very old, running from Vigolas's heart out across the lake, toward the storm-wall.
turning slowly to look at him.
Old Pike tied up, rocking. And Njord climbing out of her onto the dock, slowly, and then just sitting down, heavily, as if his legs had been cut, his rod across his knees, his boots in the lake. Sill running to him.
staring out at the storm-wall, an old man with his whole face falling in.