Chapter 282

The Storm Fleet pouring across the water toward Tidekant: forty storms, each with thunderhead sails and a drowned captain at a wheel of cloud, a moving wall of black, and at its head the flagship, hail falling from it like a white curtain.

Tidekant ready: boats hauled up, the fisher-folk on the hill behind the village with the children. On the beach and the dock, two crews, and every fisherman who can hold a gaff, standing with them.

in Old Pike, rowing out in front of the beach, alone but for Sill in the bow and Mingus shaking water off in the stern. The rod across his knees. On it: five plain knots, one frayed bit of cord, and one very dark knot, whining like a kettle.

on the dark knot.

The dark knot untying: SNIK. And out of the rod, pouring up into the sky in front of the Fleet, Hagel's own dawn storm, the one that was meant to drown the village: enormous, coiling, a black hurricane uncoiling right in the Fleet's path.

The released storm hitting the Storm Fleet's front line: storms colliding with storms, cloud tearing into cloud, sails of thunderhead ripping, the Fleet's line buckling. And in every storm, lightning beginning to build, grey-white, all of it leaning the same way.

Vigolas stepping forward to the waterline, alone. Kompis behind him, eyes gold, fingers lifting toward the grey-white thread.

closing his eyes. In the middle of the noise, the wind, the hail, the shouting. Head tilted back. Listening.

Not storms but currents: forty storms and a hurricane, every one of them full of charge, and all of it leaning, straining along one long path across the sky, from storm to storm to storm, the whole length of the Fleet's line, toward the flagship. A path already drawn, waiting.

lifting toward the Fleet. The green lightning not winding up. Gathering. Waiting. Going where it's already going.

The Fleet's line raining away: storm after storm collapsing into great grey downpours, sails of cloud tearing into mist, wheels of cloud dissolving. Rain sheeting down on the lake from forty broken storms at once.

In the falling rain, the drowned captains of the broken storms, one after another, faint figures in sodden coats, looking up. At the sky. At the sun breaking through. One taking off his hat. One laughing. One reaching up as if to touch the light. And each one gone, like breath off glass.

(No balloons.)

opening his eyes. Staring at the rain. At the faces going.

in Old Pike in the rain, rod lowered, staring at a sky that has just been cleared of half a fleet in one bolt. Tears in his salt beard.

But not all of them. A dozen storms still coming through the rain at Tidekant, the strongest, the angriest, wheeling past the gap, and the flagship behind them, untouched, enormous.

Svala on a Flight-Line straight through a squall's mast of cloud and out the other side; the squall loses its sails and spins out of control into the lake.

Rougeina Swapping fishermen out of the surf with floating barrels as a storm-surge comes up the beach.

Jeppson, kneeling on the dry boards of the boathouse floor, chalking at a run: a sea-wall rising across the beach (TOK — VRRRMMP), the surge breaking on it.

Trollmage, flat on his back in the sand, a lazy finger lifting: MACRO : UPDRAFT = 1 WEEK OF NAPS. A storm-ship lifted straight up off the lake, spinning, into the sky, sails flapping.

Kompis, eyes gold, calling threads, and everyone going for the captains:

Kompis's Five-Gun Volley: Ivar, Lilla Ulv, Fru Gnista, Tyst and Bror, five shots on five Subtick lines into five storms' hearts. Five captains rain away.

Perne on the Upp Igen's masthead, Fjärran, the Long Look, a crimson tear: "…Captain, third storm, at the wheel. Got him." BANG.

his shadow pouring up into a storm's belly like ink into water and dragging its drowned captain out by the throat onto the beach, where the man, out of his cloud, is just a soaked old sailor, blinking in the sun, and fading.

Isa, on the dock, going still in front of a wave of storm-surge rolling up toward the fish-sheds, and the wave stopping, standing up like a wall of green glass, while Roffe and three fishermen run the old women out of the sheds behind it.

(Isa, still, says nothing. She can't.)

on the dock, drawing a circle round Isa's feet the second she lets go, the wave crashing down, and Isa, gasping, inside the circle.

The last of the dozen storms raining away over the beach. The surge going back down. The village standing: soaked, battered, roofs gone, standing. Both crews on the beach and the dock, breathing hard, alive.

on the dock, ten rings, counting the fisher-folk coming down the hill. All of them.

The rain thinning, the sun coming through. Where the Storm Fleet was, open water, steam rising off it.

And in the middle of the lake, alone: the flagship. Bigger than all of them were together. Black as tar. Hail falling out of it. Grey-white lightning in its belly. Sails of thunderhead, tier on tier, every one of them full.

forming in the front of it, lightning eyes sweeping the empty lake where his Fleet was. Not roaring. Very quiet.

the lightning eyes coming round to the beach. To Vigolas.

a sound like hail on a grave.

The flagship storm turning, hail swinging, the whole island of weather bearing down not on the beach, not on the village, but on the one small skiff in front of it all: Old Pike.

in Old Pike's bow, signing fast at Njord, white.

Njord picking Sill up under the arms and throwing her out of the skiff toward the dock, where Rougeina, with one look, blinks: Swaps herself with the falling girl, and Sill lands on the dock while Rougeina drops into the lake beside Old Pike.

still in Old Pike's stern, not moving, looking at Njord. Njord reaching down and gently tipping the dog over the side into the water, toward the shore.

An old man alone in a small tarred skiff on open water, and coming down on him, filling the whole sky, a storm the size of an island with a flagship's sails and a dead admiral's face.

standing up in Old Pike. Slowly. Feet planted. The tide-rod in both hands, line ready. His cloak blowing the wrong way, toward the weather.