Chapter 377

The Brygdar longship at the bark of the world tree burning: fire up her mast, pitch-barrels bursting on her deck, trolls hurling buckets, the fireship jammed burning into her bow. And standing on that bow, the first span of the Bridge of Every Ship, cork-sheathed, leaning out from the bark, a mile of bridge above it creaking with the lean.

the fireship's iron ram punched through it, the sea pouring in. The longship settling by the bow. The first span settling with it.

Krydog at the edge, staring down at the fire. Jeppson on his knees beside him with a chalk stub jammed in his locked fist, two spans from the rim, staring down too, his face white.

looking down at the longship, then along the raft-city. At the battered carrack lashed beside the Marka, five bands of new wood at her rail. His ship.

(He turns.) · ROUGEINA!

on the span, already looking at him, already knowing.

Krydog gone from the top of the bridge; in his place, a coil of tarred rope dropping onto the span. And a mile below on the Upp Igen's deck, by the mast, Krydog, landing, staggering, coat flapping, already shouting.

at the Upp Igen's rail with a knife already out, staring.

on the deck, all five of them, looking at each other. Roffe. Emma. Tihi. Daniel. Flexsnus. And all at once knowing what he means. And not one of them arguing.

Flexsnus slashing the lashings. Roffe putting his shoulder to the Marka's hull and shoving the Upp Igen off along the lane between the lashed ships, groaning, enormous. Emma at the tiller. Daniel and Tihi poling. The battered carrack sliding, listing, low in the water, between the hulls toward the burning longship at the bark.

Drekk at her rail as the Upp Igen scrapes past, his face working.

The burning longship going down by the bow, trolls leaping off her into the sea. The first span tilting with her. And the Upp Igen coming in under it, sliding her bow in alongside the longship's, between the sinking ship and the bark of the tree, her bowsprit scraping the bark.

slipping off the longship's sinking bow as she goes under, sliding, a mile of bridge above it groaning, and landing, with a crash, on the Upp Igen's foredeck.

Her old timbers taking the weight. Creaking. Holding. Every one of the eleven thousand scraps that Jeppson fitted back together by hand, two years of evenings, glowing faintly violet under the span's foot.

on his knees at the top, staring down, his voice cracking across the whole height of the trunk.

an old wound from the ending's night opened wide by the longship rolling against her as it sank. The sea pouring in.

at her bow under the first span, a hand flat on her rail, feeling her settle under him. Knowing.

climbing out of the bark beside the first span, ninety centimetres of tired cork-oak, panting, sap on her chin. Looking down at the sinking carrack. At the root-shelf just under the water at the foot of the trunk, pale, broad, one of Ferdinand's own great roots.

Flisa pressing both small hands to the bark, her burl flaring sap-gold, and under the water, the root swelling: rising, broadening, a shelf of living wood lifting toward the Upp Igen's sinking keel like a hand coming up under a falling cup.

the water at his boots on the deck now. Turning to his crew.

Krydog with a pry-bar at the figurehead: the new one, the fist Jeppson carved in the first days of this war, bandaged, a scar cut into one knuckle. Prying. The nails squealing.

Roffe hauling Krydog out of the sea one-handed by the coat, the wooden fist coming over the rail with him, dripping. Krydog sitting down hard on the deck. Then standing up, because he doesn't sit.

at the rail, staring at the mast-top, her face crumpling. Then, fiercely, not crying.

Krydog with a mallet, nailing the carved fist, scarred knuckle and all, to the Marka's stem, beside the Kettle's bell.

Along the lashed ships, captain after captain at their rails, looking at the mast-top in the water. A Brygdar troll captain, dripping from his own sunk longship, thumping his chest:

(All down the raft-city, ship after ship: "And us!")

Jeppson on his knees, locked fists, staring down at the mast-top in the black water, his goggles fogged. His mouth working.

(Beside him, Daniel is not there to write it. He will remember it himself until his hands open.)

beside him, a hand on his shoulder. Then pointing up. Two spans to the rim. The hourglass on the bark nearly empty.

Jeppson drawing, with a chalk stub jammed between the knuckles of a locked fist, using his whole arm, his whole body, like a child with a crayon: the ugliest drawing of his life, a span with wobbly edges and a stair with crooked treads, lines that cross, a tick-mark that's a smear. Krydog isn't there to snap the chalk-line. Vigolas is, holding the reel, all wrong, too tight.

The second-to-last span rising, lopsided, and holding; Flisa's cork creeping up over it from the plank at its foot. Jeppson already on it, already drawing the last.

drawn in four strokes by a fist: a deck, a stair, a crooked rail, reaching up the bark to the Arena's rim.

The last span rising and touching the Arena's rim, its crooked rail against the carved lip of the amphitheatre, the whole Bridge of Every Ship complete: a mile of cork-armoured road from a sunk carrack on a root to the edge of the Arena in the side of the world tree.

And in the hourglass on the bark, the last grain falling.

The hourglass fading out of the bark like breath off a mirror. And in its place, the black square letters:

AT DAWN.

Jeppson flat on his belly on the last span, his locked fist with no chalk left in it, his cheek on the chalk, laughing weakly. Vigolas beside him with the chalk-line reel tangled round both arms. And Vigolas reading the letters, and grinning, and looking down a mile of bridge at a mile of table.