Chapter 414

The grey tide coming in: thousands of faceless hunters climbing out of the sea onto every hull of a thousand lashed ships at once, over every rail, up every rope, onto the foot of the Bridge, palms first. Bells ringing on every deck and stopping, one by one, mid-swing.

a row of lanterns on hooks, and a hunter walking past them with its palm out, brushing each one. And each flame, a thing in progress, finishing: going out, calmly, one after another, the dark coming down the deck behind it.

A Brygdar troll's charge finishing in mid-stride, the troll standing still on the deck, puzzled. A fishwife's oar-swing finishing halfway. A sailor with a grey palm on his shoulder sitting down peacefully on a hatch, DONE: "I've done enough." Levla and Pyssel back to back on Compound's deck, hurling finished marbles.

All through the dark raft-city, Iskall's lamp-bearers standing up in their little boats and holding their clay lamps high, white flames with no heat, and wherever a lamp shines, the hunters turning their faces away from it, backing off a deck. Small lit islands in a grey flood. Too few.

Hunters over every rail at once. Rougeina on full burn: blink, blink, blink, a silver-rose afterimage at every point she's been, a thousand phantom trails hanging over the deck like a glowing net, a map straight to her, and she doesn't care.

at the starboard rail, holding a whole wall of hunters frozen at the top of a beat, her eyes clear, her hair suspended, frost spreading from her bare feet across the planks. And Emma, behind her, gripping her collar.

(Isa lets go. Drops to one knee, both hands on the frost-scar on her chest, a race of heartbeats running across the panel.)

Jeppson running across the deck on his knees with chalk in both fists, drawing as he goes, long single strokes: a wall, TOK VRRRMMP, a wall, TOK VRRRMMP, pale walls with violet ticks rising out of the planks across the deck in a horseshoe round the berth. Finished walls. Hunters stopping against them, palms flat, finishing nothing.

standing on the berth roof, his three shadows spread across the deck, Kali on her knees beside him with a borrow running out, Bakasura rising behind them and closing his jaws on hunter after hunter and not eating one.

Vigolas on his feet in the doorway, his coat long since empty, hunters three deep in front of him, grey palms on his shoulders, his arms, his chest, reaching past him into the dark of the cabin. Faint grey letters stacked over his head like frost: DONE DONE DONE DONE. And Kompis at his side, eyes gold, nose pouring blood, both hands knotting the thread from his brother to the sleeper back together as fast as the hunters finish it.

A grey palm laid flat over the round window from outside. Iskall's lamp behind the glass, its white light blocked, the Look stopped. Iskall's small face behind it, white.

A grey hand coming through the doorway past Vigolas's ribs, reaching into the dark toward the hammock, toward the sleeping face. And Mingus, standing up four-legged on the captain's chest, hackles up, between the hand and the face. The palm coming down on the dog's head. And nothing happening. Nothing at all. A golden retriever, standing on his person, not moving an inch.

(No SFX. Nothing finishes Mingus.)

his face gone quiet and empty under all the grey letters, done, still in the doorway only because his feet can't leave it. His lips moving.

A farm girl stepping out of the dark into the lamplight beside the bucket: sun-bleached braid tied with baling twine, sleeves rolled, her grandmother's scythe over one shoulder, grass bursting up out of the planks round her boots. And up both her palms and forearms, the emerald names, a hundred and eleven of them, all lit at once like a field at sunrise.

short, broad, brown as a nut, forearms like rope, white hair under a faded headscarf, her scythe over her shoulder, squinting at the grey shapes in her barley the way she'd squint at crows.

standing very still in the middle of the field. Not swinging. Remembering. Sweat on her face. Every name on her arms burning.

a hunter's grey palm laid flat on his broad chest. And nothing: the palm sliding off him the way the hunters' faces slide away from Iskall's lamp. The hunter flinching back from a man it can't do anything to. The smith looking down at it.

swinging the scythe down off her shoulder and setting her feet.

(All across the field, a hundred and eleven people picking up a hundred and eleven scythes.)

A line of Värn's people moving through the gold barley shoulder to shoulder, the way they moved through it every autumn of their lives, scythes sweeping in one long even rhythm. And every grey hunter standing in the field going down under them like barley: cut low, folding over into the stalks, and where each one falls, a sheaf: a bundle of grey straw lying in the gold. Behind the mowers, women and children binding the grey sheaves with straw bands and standing them up in stooks, the way you always stood them.

Halm, nine for ever, pinging his slingshot at faceless heads ("Got one! Got ANOTHER!"). Brygdar trolls wading into the barley to help stand the stooks up, clumsy, delighted. Roffe binding sheaves with a cook's knots. Tihi laughing so hard she falls into the barley. Daniel, very seriously, learning to tie a straw band from a seven-year-old Värn girl.

the shaggy black-and-white farm dog, barking at everything, bounding through the barley to the berth's door and sniffing Vigolas's boots. And inside the cabin, on the captain's chest, a golden tail thumping against the hammock. A living dog and a remembered one, nose to nose across a threshold.

(No balloon. Bonde's tail going like a flag.)

in the doorway, in noon sunlight, the hunters gone from round him, the grey letters breaking up over his head like frost in the sun. His face coming back. Blinking at the sky.

The church tower's shadow moved round across the field. The barley cut. And from the harbour to the windmill, stooks of grey straw standing in the stubble in long rows, a thousand of them, the whole Arbiter's army harvested. Värn's people leaning on their scythes in the sun, wiping their foreheads. The allies sitting in the stubble, laughing, done in the good way.

sinking to her knees in the stubble in the middle of it all. The names on her arms still burning. Looking at the people round her. The smith. The harbour-master. The miller's wife. Halm with his slingshot. Bonde. One. She has to choose one.

walking over through the stubble, wiping her scythe blade on her apron, and crouching down in front of her granddaughter with a grunt.

taking Öde's face in two rough brown hands.

foreheads together in the cut barley.

(Öde, laughing and sobbing at once, says a word her grandmother taught her. It is lettered in a jagged balloon full of symbols. Three trolls nearby go red to the ears.)

The hour ending: the summer sky folding in from the edges like a cloth, the village, the windmill, the church, the harbour folding away, and a hundred and eleven people in the barley waving, getting smaller, folding. The last to go, at the front, a small broad old woman with a scythe, lifting it high over her head, grinning.

The raft-city in the lamplight, the lanterns being relit one by one. And everywhere, on every deck, standing in long rows where a field was a moment ago, stooks of grey straw: the whole army of hunters, harvested, bound, still. On the Marka's deck, the barley folded back into Öde's tubs. Vigolas in his doorway on his bucket, staring. Mingus lying back down on the captain's chest.

on her knees among the barley tubs. One emerald name near the wrist, the oldest ink of all, fading, letter by letter, like breath going off a window. S… I… G… gone.

looking at a bare patch of skin on her wrist. Frowning at it. Tears on her face she doesn't understand.