Chapter 323
drawing one clean black line across the first name in his book: ÖDE.
at the Marka's bow, mid-name, her arms raised, reading Värn: "Brita of the mill, Hild—", and stopping. Her mouth open. Nothing coming out. A black bar lying across the plate that flickers over her head, and the inked names on her arms greying, one after another, too faint to read.
A hundred and eleven little boats at the grey's edge that were held by her voice unholding: the gold going out of their outlines, the grey pouring over them, one by one, the people of a village she spent two sagas remembering.
grabbing Öde's shoulders, shaking her.
(He stops. He opens his mouth to say her name again and it isn't there. He's looking at her face and can't remember what to call it.)
in his black boat below the lashed ships, turning a page. Calm. Sorry.
a second line: DREKK.
at the wheel, calling "Old Stav! Ulla's—", and the bar settling over his mouth. His hands coming off the spokes. His head-count, the count he does by sound and weight, breaking off in the middle. He looks round at his own crew as if at strangers.
An old troll-mason's sleeping shape in the stands of the dead, held, going pale, the Kettle's old crew round him. The grey creeping up the steps toward them.
Svala, pointing at the black boat, the crimson mark blazing, launching a Flight-Line straight down off the Marka's yard at Jorvand's head: one line, faster than any heartbeat, the first thing in her path cut clean through.
Svala passing through the black boat and through Jorvand as if through a shadow on water, cutting nothing, and slamming into the river beyond in a fountain of grey spray.
(The pen moves. SVALA.)
TROLLMAGE: the troll mid-shout, "Ulla—", barred; his MACRO letters in the air going out like blown candles.
KALI: her sickle dimming, the seventeen names she was calling stopping in her throat; Smurjan grabbing her as she sways.
TIHI: deaf, still shouting names, and then her mouth barred, and for the first time in her life, silent, not even a giggle.
LEVLA: his ten rings going grey, every price tag he ever hung in the Current fluttering down, unreadable.
on the Upp Igen, chalking a circle round as many of them as she can reach at a sprint, the line closing.
(EMMA. The circle's chalk greys out under her hands.)
The two lashed ships in the river of the dead, and across both decks, black bars: lying across rank plates over every head, across mouths, across the names stitched on a coat, the name carved on a figurehead, the name on the Marka's own bow. Crew after crew member standing or kneeling or reaching, colour draining out of them, faces turning to one another without recognition: Kompis looking at Rougeina as if at a stranger; Roffe holding a ladle he can't remember is his.
And below, in a black boat on grey water, a kind tired man writing in a book, a column of names, a line through each.
And across the river, the grey advancing again, the held boats unholding one after another as their callers go quiet.
on the Upp Igen's rail, going down as the bar hits his name, flat on the deck. And getting up: ba-dum, ba-DUM, the silver double-ring flashing.
mid-rise, his mouth open on the motto, and the pen moving: KRYDOG. The black bar settling over him in the middle of getting up. And for the first time in his life, the rise stopping halfway. Kneeling. Grey. Not falling. Not standing.
(No balloon. A black bar where the motto was.)
chalking, shaking, a line across the deck toward the black boat, a bridge, anything. The chalk greying as he draws. JEPPSON. The bridge never rising.
leaning on the rail, three taps on the tin, tk tk tk, an emerald ruled line flickering across Jorvand's book: "The rule: a bar withholds—", pinching for a notch. And the taps making no sound, the line going grey under his fingers.
(FLEXSNUS.)
still on the rail, still saying her eight, steady as a metronome, "Torvik. Baldr. Stillmark—", while round her the ships go quiet. Kompis beside her, barred, mouthing the names silently, still trying.
pausing his pen. Looking up at her for the first time. At the eight glowing figures in the far stands that only she could ever see.
not stopping.
ROUGEINA. The bar across her mouth. Her blades dimming on her back. And in the far stands, eight glowing figures going out, one after another, Torvik last, his head still turned toward where her voice was.
(Rougeina, barred, keeps moving her lips. Nothing comes.)
The ships nearly silent. Bars on every face. Smurjan holding Kali; Roffe sitting down on Mätt holding his stomach, the amber gone out of his eyes; Isa perfectly still, not by choice; Ysel looking for a way into anything and finding none; Daniel with his hand raised in an appeal that makes no sound, then lowered.
And one voice still going, hoarse, from the Marka's rail.
the pen hovering over the last unbarred name at the top of the page: VIGOLAS. Not writing. Looking up at the man on the rail.
on the rail, still calling, not looking down.
Thirty-one little boats in a ragged line at the edge of the grey, the last gold left on the whole river, held by one voice. Everything round them grey.
very gently.
closing his eyes for a moment.
touching the page, the nib on the first letter of VIGOLAS. The black ink beginning to spread. Across the river, on the rail, Vigolas's voice thinning.
the bottle caps, and the ember Aska gave him, glowing through the cloth, small and steady.
(Nobody notices it.)
Thirty-one boats, the gold round them flickering, as the voice holding them falters.
on the rail of his ship in the river of the dead, every name he loves gone silent behind him, mid-name, and a black bar sliding, slowly, across his open mouth.
(The bar closes.)