Chapter 41
The thin stiletto in Lärka's hand, coming down toward Kompis's chest. Kompis is on his knees, grey-faced, his heart barely beating.
The rifle on the deck beside Kompis moves by itself. It lifts and swings, an old hunter's ghost gripping it with both hands like a club, and catches the blade across its stock.
for the first time surprised, staring at a rifle standing on its own in the air with a grey-moustached ghost behind it.
solid and furious, rifle braced.
Lärka pulls the blade free and strikes again, faster, at Kompis's heart. Ivar swings the rifle into the blade's path again. The pale steel bites deep into the wood and the old metal.
a crack running through the stock, through the barrel and through the old engraved metal. Light leaks out of the crack, gold light.
half conscious, seeing it happen.
The sea is calm now. Vigolas and Smurjan face each other ten metres apart on the black water. The dead watch in their rows.
grinning at the same time. This is the fight they actually want.
Vigolas wraps both fists in green lightning and comes in swinging.
Smurjan reads every blow and steps half an inch.
Kali's one good arm lashes out of his shadow with a sickle, and Vigolas ducks it.
Bakasura's maw rises out of the water behind Vigolas, and Vigolas vaults over the teeth, using the maw as a springboard, laughing.
In mid-air, Vigolas punches downward. Smurjan catches the fist in his open palm. Crack, a shockwave rings out across the water, and the dead in the front rows lean back.
fist in palm, faces inches apart.
gathering everything he has left, all the lightning in his body into one ball of green fire.
seeing it coming. His third eye flashes crimson, and he reads the exact path. He could step half an inch and let it miss.
He doesn't.
Vigolas's green lightning strikes Smurjan full in the chest, a column of emerald fire thick as a tree trunk, lighting up the whole Arena: the sea, the rows of the dead and the low clouds, green from horizon to horizon.
At its centre Smurjan stands with his arms spread, taking it, his head thrown back. Across his grey skin, from where the lightning hits, crimson script has begun to crawl: line after line of glowing writing in no human alphabet, spreading over his chest, his shoulders and up his throat, like a book writing itself onto him.
on his knees on the water, smoking, staring down at the crimson script on his own arms.
horrified, rushing over.
and slowly a laugh breaks out of him, three voices laughing at once, Kali's sharp, Bakasura's slow, and his own.
standing in the air in front of Kompis, held up by an old ghost. The crack runs the whole length of it now. Gold light pours out of it.
turning his head to look down at Kompis. Not furious any more. Fond.
tears running down his grey face, laughing and crying with no sound.
grinning under the moustache.
The rifle shatters.
It bursts into pieces of wood and old engraved steel, scattering across the deck. Lärka's blade is caught in the pieces and twists out of her hand.
From the broken pieces a spark of gold rises, small, bright and warm, like an ember from a hearth. It hangs in the air over Kompis for one moment.
The spark flies off over the rail, out over the sea of starlight, away, toward the horizon, where very far away, among the drifting islands, a red volcano glows.
reaching after it with one hand from his knees.
empty-handed, looking at the broken rifle, then at the spark disappearing over the Current. Something crosses her calm face that might be confusion. What was that?
Drekk has found the edge. Trollmage's glowing words still hang in the air (FIND THE EDGE), and Drekk has worked out that the silence is a cone, pointed where she faces. He comes at her from directly behind, outside her feeling, and cracks the flat of his boarding axe into the back of her head.
Lärka staggers. The cone of silence flickers. For one instant there is sound: the bell, the ropes, the wind, Rougeina's furious shout. Then silence again.
swaying on the rail, hand pressed to the back of her head. For the first time, she's afraid. Something reached her that she couldn't feel coming.
on his knees among the pieces of Ivar. Under his hand, for a single instant during that flicker of sound, he feels Mingus's heartbeat: ba-DUM. The golden pulse line jumps once along the bottom of the panel, a single spike, then flat again.
Smurjan rises from his knees, crimson script still crawling slowly across his skin, writing, writing. Vigolas stands facing him, out of lightning, swaying. Both are exhausted. Neither can finish it.
A hard square balloon, slower and colder than before:
NO CLEAR WINNER.
THE WITNESS CLAUSE APPROACHES.