Chapter 370

in the smoke over the Gate. The eldest mouse sitting up in the middle of it, unfolding a crumpled scrap of paper with both paws. On it, in tiny hands, years apart: EKEN. / BREAD-MAN. / FRIENDS. THE ONE WHO DIDN'T HIT YOU. THE DOG HAS YOUR TOOTH. / STAV. And the mouse, very carefully, folding it so only the top line shows, and holding it up.

bent down over the paper, his empty grey-green eyes on it, his bark lips moving.

A half-troll in a crumpled cloak walking up the silver road between drifting wreckage to the giant's feet, a crow on his shoulder, a fresh loaf in his hands. Stopping. Holding it up. Eken looking down at him with no recognition at all. Politely. The way you'd look at a stranger.

leaning on the rail of a stopped smack nearby, quietly.

(Trollmage's face, for one panel, is the face of a man who has been forgotten by his oldest friend and has decided to keep bringing the bread.)

climbing up onto the road beside Trollmage, her book of names open on her arm, a stub of pencil in her earth-stained fingers, writing in big careful capitals: EKEN.

unfolding the paper himself, slowly, a fold at a time, and reading the next line.

on the Upp Igen's bow beside the chipped fist, her sails full again, every oar out. The gap in front of him a quarter of a mile wide and nothing in it but light.

The Upp Igen surging forward down the road, through the broken middle of the line, past the giant with a loaf of bread, past a heeling black-and-silver hulk. And behind her the troll longships, Young Pike, the black barge, the lamp-boats, a grey cutter with an abacus on her bow, and everything behind them, coming.

dismasted and drifting, her deck a tangle of fallen spars. The old admiral on his knees by the rail, the brass trumpet dented in his hand. The young admiral on the next hulk, shouting across.

In the water round the wreck of the Gate, grey figures pulling themselves up out of the sea onto spars, onto wreckage, and not onto the Order's ships. Turning, all of them, the same way. Toward the tree. Walking up the silver road, swimming, clambering wreck to wreck, every faceless head turned to the trunk.

Allies hauling Order sailors out of the water: a troll lifting two Sentinels out by their collars like wet cats; a Gate City skipper dragging a young marine over her gunwale; the plateless net-maker throwing a knotted line to a man in a black coat; Pyssel in Compound fishing out a ship's boy with a boathook and going through his pockets on the way.

flat on the Upp Igen's battered port rail, reaching down into the sea with a bandaged hand. In the water below him, clinging to a spar: the First Admiral, grey side-whiskers plastered flat, the dented trumpet still in his fist.

(He grabs it.)

The two halves of the Order's line withdrawing, the young admiral's signal flying from a hulk: WITHDRAW. The Council's banners coming down one by one along the chained hulls, four lit chairs, eight dark, lowered into the smoke.

The First Admiral sitting against the mainmast in a blanket, a bowl of Roffe's soup steaming in his shaking hands, staring at it. Daniel crouching in front of him, neat in his grey coat.

The Marka and the Upp Igen nosing up to the great root over the pool of cork-foam, the bark of the world tree rising like a cliff above them. And on the root, plastered from head to foot in dried white cork, a small figure in a white scarf waving both arms, and beside her, standing up, tail going like a flag, a golden dog.

Kompis leaping from the Marka's bow onto the root before the ship has even stopped. Mingus launching himself off the root at the same moment. Kompis going over backward into the cork-foam with eighty pounds of wet gold dog on his chest. And along the bottom border of the panel, back: a golden pulse line.

flat on his back in the foam, the dog licking his face, laughing and crying at once, both arms round the gold neck.

at the Marka's wheel, his lips moving, counting heads out of a lifetime's habit, and stopping, and starting again to be sure.

Down the silver road behind the fleet, through the gap, walking: Eken. Eleven metres of grey bark taking slow, careful steps on the light like someone learning to walk, mice clinging in his ferns, the loaf in one hand. And cradled in his other arm, against his black-ringed chest, the cracked slate giant who carried him, glowing faintly, the small bird riding on his head.

Mingus trotting up to the giant's foot as he reaches the Road's End, and sniffing his knee. Once. Thoroughly. Eken looking down at the dog. Then at his paper. Reading, slowly, the line he hasn't understood yet.

(Mingus's tail goes.)

Eken setting Tyngd down on the planks, gently, the way Tyngd once put things down. Krydog crouching over him, holding out a bandaged hand.

(He takes the hand anyway. Just to hold it.)

Svala perched on it again, cork in her hair, knees up, the crimson line on her arm dark and resting. Looking up. Up the bark. Up and up.

A mile of grey bark rising sheer from the water, ridges like mountain ranges, cork running down it in slow pale rivers. And far, far up, at the curved rim of the amphitheatre carved into its side, the last grey lines of hunters pouring over the rim into the bowl. Gone. The bark below the rim bare again.

And on it, black square letters writing themselves, slow, each one taller than a ship:

THE FIVE.

The second line, under the first, across the bark above the whole fleet:

COME UP.

without meaning to be, standing apart at the Marka's bow looking up: Vigolas with his hands on his hips; Kompis dripping cork with the dog against his leg; Rougeina on the rail; Smurjan with Kali rising out of his shadow; Trollmage awake, a crumb of the giant's loaf on his cloak.

The whole allied fleet crowded at the foot of the world tree, a thousand hulls against the bark like boats against a harbour wall, the lamps still burning at their bows in daylight. And far behind them, the wreck of the Order's chained blockade, broken through the middle, its two halves gone small on the horizons. A troll jarl at the bow of a longship whose stem is touching the bark itself, craning his head back, and back.

on the Upp Igen's deck, looking up the mile of bark at the letters, at the rim, at the five on the Marka's bow. Then at his own crew. Then at one of them in particular, who has gone very quiet.

battered, one mast down, her port rail stove in, lashed alongside the Marka against the foot of the world tree. At her bow, beside the chipped pale-oak fist, a wiry man with brass goggles pushed up on his forehead and a pencil behind each ear, one eye shut, his boxwood rule held out at arm's length, sighting up the bark of the world tree, a mile of it, to the curved rim of the Arena.

the rule at arm's length, the mile of bark measured against it like a mountain against a matchstick, his lips pursed.