Chapter 368
Svala perched on the chipped pale-oak fist, bouncing on her toes. Levla below her on the bowsprit in the too-short grey Ränta coat, lifting one ringed hand. A little paper tag on a string flipping into the air over the girl's head.
alongside, Pyssel at the tiller. Levla climbing down into her. And after him, without a word, a small, perfectly upright girl with silver-white hair to the small of her back, stepping down into the cutter barefoot, a beat late.
Compound running alone down the silver road toward the Gate, a grey pennant at her masthead (a chain-link in a circle: the Ränta's mark), her ledger-chains rattling. Behind her, a mile back, the allied spearhead forming up on the road: the battered Upp Igen with a swallow on her fist, Young Pike, troll longships, a white flame at every bow. Ahead, all along the Order's line, guns run out and aimed at the spearhead.
Gun-crews with slow-matches lit. And the young admiral at her rail, spyglass up, shouting across to the old one.
Compound gliding up under the First Admiral's flagship, under a row of black gun-muzzles, close enough to touch the hull. To her right, across the gap, the nearer Gatepost, six hundred grey faces turned toward the little grey boat. Levla standing in her bow, hood up, the ledger open on his arm.
leaning over his rail, exasperated, frightened.
pushing back the grey hood. Platinum hair. Coin-gold eyes, emerald-rimmed.
reading from the ledger, his voice ringing off the hull.
the emerald script running up every finger under his rings, blazing, the pages of the ledger lighting up like windows.
the trumpet slipping in his hand.
In the powder-room of the First Admiral's flagship, every keg on every rack lifting off the deck.
In a Sentinel's shot-locker far down the line, every iron ball rolling up out of its rack.
Out of every gunport, from horizon to horizon, a stream of black kegs and iron balls pouring into the air.
A river of them, a black-and-iron river over the water, all bending toward one small grey cutter.
the river pouring into them. And dissolving: every keg crumbling to black sand, every ball to iron dust, running out between his ringed fingers into the sea in a long grey hiss.
Gun-crews from horizon to horizon staring into empty kegs. Rammers going down empty barrels. Slow-matches burning down over touch-holes with nothing behind them. And the whole wall of the Order's last fleet, for the first time in four days, silent.
one hand on the gunwale, swaying, grey-faced. On the ledger's last page, a new line writing itself in the Ränta's own grey ink: COLLECTED BY: LEVLA.
Six hundred faceless heads turning toward Compound: toward ten rings with tags out, toward a ledger with a line just written in it, toward everything on that little boat that isn't finished.
Krydog at the rail, listening to the silence along the line. Svala on the chipped fist. Smurjan on the bowsprit beside her, his third eye open, a thin crimson line lifting off it and running straight down the silver road, through the Gate, to one link in the middle of the Great Chain. Ysel at the rail, no shadow under her. Torva on her coil of rope, eyes dawn-gold. Vigolas standing on the bow with one arm out, pointing.
crouched on the fist, the crimson line from her right shoulder to the tip of her index finger blazing, the white scarf streaming back. Her face very young.
The launch. One dead-straight streak leaving the fist, crimson and white, the scarf a contrail, the girl at the tip of it. And in the corner of the panel, her plate, already flickering, already climbing.
SVALA · K-III TESTED · Scalelist #1,196
The sea at the foot of the world tree in morning light, and across both pages, one perfectly straight line, crimson and white, ruled from the Upp Igen's chipped fist at the bottom left, down the middle of the silver road, through the Gate, across a mile of open water, to the very foot of the trunk at the top right. A girl at the tip of it, so fast she's barely there.
At the Gate, grey hands reaching into the line from both Gateposts, dozens of them, a forest of them, and every one of them shoved aside an inch ahead of her as if by a bow-wave, a little paper tag swinging over her head on its string.
And across the Gate, the Great Chain, the first thing in her path: one link of it parted clean, a bright straight gap drawn a heartbeat behind her, the cut ends just beginning to spring apart.
And at the far end of the line, on a root over a pool of white foam at the foot of the bark, a golden dog, standing up.
The Great Chain's two cut ends, under the strain of half a fleet each, whipping back like snapped hawsers: one lashing toward the far Gatepost; the other scything along the line, a hundred tons of iron links swinging down out of the sky toward a small grey cutter running for her life.
Isa, standing perfectly still, not breathing, frost spreading from her bare feet across the planks, one hand lifted. And the swinging chain-end stopped dead in the air a mast's length over the cutter, every link frozen, hanging. Pyssel ducking under it at the tiller, wide-eyed, steering out from beneath. Isa letting go. The chain-end crashing into the sea behind them.
in the line, past the Gate, the mile of black water flashing under her like a blur, the bark ahead growing: grey ridges as big as mountain ranges filling the whole panel. Her heart's skipped beat drawn as a gap in the panel border. She can't turn. She can't stop. Her plate in the corner climbing: #1,140… #1,061…
rushing at her. And on the root over the foam, the golden dog with his front paws planted and his tail going like a flag, barking at her, barking her in.
Svala hitting the pool of cork-foam at the foot of the world tree at full speed. A fountain of white froth exploding up the bark thirty feet high.
Froth settling, pattering down like snow. A golden dog leaping in off the root. A head coming up out of the foam, white-plastered, spitting cork, coughing, and a warm wet tongue all over its face before it can even open its eyes.
sitting in the shallow edge of the foam against the root, her arms round his neck, her face in his wet gold fur, laughing and sobbing at the same time.
hanging in the steam over the pool, settling at last: #998. And far back across the water, on a grey cutter, a man in a stolen coat squinting at it through the morning haze.
The Great Chain gone from it, its two cut ends sunk. The silver road glowing through the gap, one road wide, and nothing beyond it but open water to the trunk. On every allied deck, a roar.
And on both of them, on every grey figure, the same small movement at the same moment: twelve hundred faceless heads turning. To the gap.
The hunters stepping down off both Gateposts onto the road, because anyone may walk it, row after row, settling shoulder to shoulder across the Gate, ranks and ranks deep, faceless, still. And from black-and-silver ships all down the line, more grey figures walking along the chained decks toward the Gate, joining them.
A wall of grey standing in the Gate on the road of light, hundreds deep, every palm raised out toward the allied fleet, the open sea and the bark behind them. On the Upp Igen's bow, Krydog, very quiet.