Half the World (Shattered Sea #2)(31)

“Easy!” called Father Yarvi. “Gently! A little toward me! Yes! And down!”

They lowered the ship onto the barrels, and Odda shrieked and flapped his hand because he’d got it caught, but that was the only injury and the South Wind was steady on her back. Soaked, sore and gasping they slipped under the hull and crouched huddled in the darkness.

“Good work,” said Rulf, his voice echoing strangely. “Reckon we might make a crew of this crowd of fools yet.” He gave a chuckle, and others joined him, and soon everyone was laughing, and slapping each other, and hugging each other, for they knew they’d done a fine job, each working for one another, and were bound together by it.

“She makes a noble hall,” said Dosduvoi, patting at the timbers above his head.

“One I am exceedingly grateful for in this weather,” said Odda.

The rain was pelting now, coming in sheets and curtains, coursing from the South Wind’s top rail which had become the eaves of their roof. They heard thunder crackle close by and the wind howled icy-chill around the barrels. Koll huddled up tighter and Brand put his arm around him, like he might’ve round Rin when they were children and had no roof at all. He felt Thorn pressed tight against him on the other side, the woody hardness of her shoulder against his, shifting as she breathed, and he wanted to put his arm around her too but didn’t much fancy her fist in his face.

Probably he should’ve taken the chance to tell her that he’d been the one went to Father Yarvi. That he’d lost his place on the king’s raid over it. Might’ve made her think twice before digging him with her oar again, at least, or with her insults either.

But the gods knew he wasn’t much good at telling things, and the gods knew even better she wasn’t easy to tell things to, and the further it all dwindled into the past the harder it got. Didn’t seem like doing good, to put her in his debt that way.

So he stayed silent, and let her shoulder press against his instead, then felt her flinch as something heavy banged against the hull.

“Hail,” whispered Skifr. The rattling grew louder, and louder yet, blows like axes on shields, and the crew peered fearfully up, or shrank against the ground, or put hands over their heads.

“Look at this.” Fror held up a stone that had rolled under the boat, a spiked and knobbled chunk of ice the size of a fist. In the gloom outside the ship Brand could see the hail pounding the wet earth, bouncing and rolling.

“You think the gods are angry with us?” asked Koll.

“It is frozen rain,” said Father Yarvi. “The gods hate those who plan badly, and help those with good friends, good swords, and good sense. Worry less about what the gods might do and more about what you can, that’s my advice.”

But Brand could hear a lot of prayers even so. He’d have given it a go himself, but he’d never been much good at picking out the right gods.

Skifr was yammering away in at least three languages, not one of which he understood. “Are you praying to the One God or the many?” he asked.

“All of them. And the fish god of the Banyas, and the tree spirits of the Shends, and great eight-armed Thopal that the Alyuks think will eat the world at the end of time. One can never have too many friends, eh, boy?”

“I … suppose?”

Dosduvoi peered out sadly at the downpour. “I went over to the worship of the One God because her priests said she would bring me better luck.”

“How’s that worked out?” asked Koll.

“Thus far, unluckily,” said the big man. “But it may be that I have not committed myself enough to her worship.”

Odda spat. “You can never bow low enough for the One God’s taste.”

“In that she and Grandmother Wexen are much alike,” murmured Yarvi.

“Who are you praying to?” Brand muttered at Thorn, her lips moving silently while she clung to something on a thong around her neck.

He saw her eyes gleam as she frowned back. “I don’t pray.”

“Why?”

She was silent for a moment. “I prayed for my father. Every morning and every night to every god whose name I could learn. Dozens of the bastards. He died anyway.” And she turned her back on him and shifted away, leaving darkness between them.

The storm blew on.





READY OR DEAD


“Gods,” whispered Brand.

The elf-ruins crowded in on both sides of the river, looming towers and blocks and cubes, broken elf-glass twinkling as it caught the watery sun.

The Divine flowed so broad here it was almost a lake, cracked teeth of stone and dead fingers of metal jutting from the shallows. All was wreathed with creeper, sprouting with sapling trees, choked with thickets of ancient bramble. No birds called, not even an insect buzzed over water still as black glass, only the slightest ripple where the oar-blades smoothly dipped, yet Thorn’s skin prickled with the feeling of being watched from every empty window.

All her life she had been warned away from elf-ruins. It was the one thing on which her mother and father had always stood united. Men daily risked shipwreck hugging the coast of Gettland to keep their distance from the haunted island of Strokom, where the Ministry had forbidden any man to tread. Sickness lurked there, and death, and things worse than death, for the elves had wielded a magic powerful enough to break God and destroy the world.