Chapter 367

The crush-planet under a black sky. Rain falling like sling-stones, pocking the rock. Sideways trees. Everyone in sight crawling, or lying flat, or bent double. And in the middle of the plain, on the roof of a squat hall of lead, the only upright shape for a thousand miles.

on the roof of the Leaden Hall in the rain. 2.4 metres and as broad as a doorway, built like a landslide, slate-grey skin webbed with burst blood-vessels, a crown of lead sunk into his cropped grey skull, amber cracks glowing dully along his spine and knuckles. His small bloodshot eyes, for once, looking up.

Behind him, a tiny ancient woman standing perfectly upright in the bullet-rain, eighty and more: Mor Lyft. And along the roof's edge behind her, Risers, and men in the grey armour of the old Ballast, and children: all standing. Shaking. Standing.

not turning round.

turning at last. Looking down at her.

The people on the roof's edge taking each other's hands, Riser and old Ballast and child, a ring of them all the way round the roof, all standing, braced.

laying both huge hands not on the roof, not on his world, but flat on his own chest. Closing his eyes. Rain bouncing off his crown.

Two hundred years of a world's weight in his bones, told to weigh nothing. Amber light bursting out of every crack in his slate skin at once, a hundred new cracks splitting open, his face twisting, his jaw locked against a scream. His bare feet lifting off the roof. And the lead roof buckling under the ring of standing people as the weight drops back into the world, and the whole ring staggering, holding each other, and staying up.

Tyngd rising into the bullet-rain, slowly, rain bouncing off his shoulders, amber light streaming from his cracks like water from a cracked dam. A small brown bird that has never flown, that walks, as everything on Tyngden walks, hopping up the roof and onto his shoulder as he passes. Riding up with him.

high above the plain now, the planet curving away under him, the rain falling away from him. Tears on his slate face, and his mouth open, and the sound coming out of him half a sob and half a laugh. The bird on his shoulder spreading its wings, testing, and lifting off him, flying, in circles round his head.

The falling star low over the sea now, close enough to see: a giant drifting down out of the morning sky like a seed-head on the wind, amber light pouring out of him, a small bird circling him. Every face in both fleets turned up.

Signal flags racing up the halyards: GENERAL TO THE LINE. The old admiral with the grey side-whiskers at the rail, his brass speaking-trumpet up, his voice cracking with relief.

TYNGD · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #388 · General of the Order

Dread. The troll jarl's stone axe coming up. Fishermen ducking. Krydog on the Upp Igen's battered bow, squinting.

Tyngd drifting low over the Order's line. Over the Gate, where twelve hundred grey palms lift toward him and close on nothing but air. Over the four flagships, the admirals' faces turned up, the flags flying GENERAL TO THE LINE. And past them. Out over the mile of open water. Toward the allied fleet. On the First Admiral's flagship, the speaking-trumpet slowly lowering.

Two bare grey feet touching down on the planks, light as a leaf. The deck not even creaking. Amber light pooling round them like spilled lamp-oil. Krydog standing square in front of him, fists up, not sure.

white to the lips, the trumpet hanging at his side.

All four flagships running out every gun on their near sides at once, and firing, broadside after broadside, a wall of white smoke along the middle of the line, and a hundred iron balls coming across the mile of water at one ship.

Tyngd stepping to the Upp Igen's rail, light as smoke, every crack in him blazing, and reaching out one huge grey hand into the air in front of the ship. A ball arriving into his palm, smack. His fingers closing on it. And the ball floating up out of his open hand like a soap bubble, slow, turning, iron and weightless, drifting up and away into the morning sky. Every face on the deck following it up.

He can't catch the rest. The Upp Igen's foremast struck at the deck and coming down in a tangle of rigging. Her port rail stove in along half her length. A ball skipping off the bow and off the new pale-oak fist, chipping a knuckle, the fist holding. And a falling spar striking Krydog across the back and flattening him on the deck.

Krydog flat on the planks, silver light leaking through his bandages.

And the rise, one arc, spar and all rolling off his back: HUP.

on his knees at the bow beside the scarred fist, running his thumb over the fresh chip in its knuckle, his jaw tight.

turning from the rail, and his feet lifting off the deck. Drifting up, slowly, a hand's breadth, two, like a man stepping off a ledge into water. His face grey with pain under the amber.

Krydog grabbing a coil of rope off the wreck of the foremast, throwing a loop round the drifting giant's chest, and lashing him to the mainmast, knot over knot, hauling him back down until his toes just touch the planks.

Tyngd roped to the mainmast, floating a hair off the deck, cracked and glowing, the little bird on his crown. Looking out over the fleet. Over troll longships. Over three of them lashed together with a square of sawn stone floor across them, and on it, kneeling, a giant of grey bark with nine axes down his back and three thousand rings on his chest.

staring.

looking at each other across the giant roped to the mast.

Gold light running down the trunk of the world tree. Along the whole Order line, the clatter of rammers, guns being sponged and reloaded for the day. On the Upp Igen's bow, on the chipped pale-oak fist, a small figure in a white scarf perching, bouncing on her toes, looking down the road. And far down it, at the Road's End, a gold dot on a root, still sitting.

Compound alongside, ledger-chains rattling, Pyssel at the tiller with the grey collector's cap pulled down to her nose. And climbing down into her, a tall man in a long grey Ränta collector's coat, too short in the sleeves, ten rings glinting, the fat grey ledger with the chain through its spine under his arm.

pulling the grey collector's hood up over his platinum hair, his eyes going coin-gold, emerald-rimmed, looking across the water at four flagships and nine thousand kegs of powder.