Tiothlyn wins, it occurred to Tobias, he may not be entirely magnanimous in victory.
If Tiothlyn wins, it occurred to Tobias, I’m probably pretty much entirely fucked.
If Marith wins, it occurred to Tobias, I’m also probably pretty much entirely fucked.
Seeing as I sold the boy out to Landra Relast and all.
Why the fuck am I fighting for him? I wanted to kill him. He almost certainly wants to kill me. I almost certainly would.
He’d say the thought hit him like a bucket of cold water, but given his current position that would be too much like a nasty joke.
That fucking poison bastard Marith. That sick, vile, diseased, degenerate fucking bastard. His head felt odd, like a weight lifting from it, like a cloud moving off and the air changing from cold to hot.
I wanted to kill him. I wanted him dead.
What am I doing fighting for him?
Began to kick in the water, trying to move himself along in one clear direction. Preferably the direction of something resembling land. Preferably not the town. Preferably not anywhere with the battle between it and him. Which kind of left as the only option some jagged black rocks on the headland cradling the bay, very sharp and very nasty looking and really, again, you couldn’t help thinking about teeth. Like some huge fucking thing had sat down there and opened its mouth. Dragon rocks.
The thing about rocks, though, the thing about rocks, right, is that they’re dry land. People very seldom drown on rocks. If they can get onto the rocks. If he could get onto the rocks. He kicked and thrashed about with his burning bit of wood sinking further under the water still glowing with fire. His armour was so, so heavy. Felt sick in his stomach from the salt water he’d swallowed. Getting cold, too. Cold as ice, the water. Where it wasn’t boiling hot. The wind freezing on his wet hair. His teeth were beginning to chatter, a numb cold pain was jabbing at his legs. Squeezing his chest. His arm hurt. His leg hurt.
Shouts of triumph from a ship to his left, presumably captured by a boarding crew. Half Tiothlyn’s men were on Marith’s ships. Half Marith’s men were on Tiothlyn’s ships. Just somewhat unlucky perhaps that the other half were drowned. The shouts turned to yells as another ship bore down on it, drumming to get the oars going fast to ram. Splinter of wood as the two collided. The ramming ship moved to pull back but was stuck somehow, her prow locked into the shattered wound in her victim’s side. Desperate voices, figures running and pushing, the crew of the stricken ship clambering over with swords. The wounded ship was sinking, pulling the other down with her. Hugging and refusing to let go.
The water moved. Tobias had to look away from the battle, kicking and panting, splashing to keep his head up, wrestling with waves cold and heavy as dead muscle, again that sheen on the water, the slickness like the slickness of a muscular body moving that made you think the sea was a creature flexing itself, the smooth roll of its flank and then the broken white of the waves and it was almost a shock that his head sank in it, the water flooding over his mouth and eyes and up his nose making him shudder and choke and almost sink again. He shouldn’t be able to sink in it. He should be able to ride on its surface, glossy and moving like muscle and skin. Churning like a body convulsing in pain.
When he looked back the two ships had disengaged, the rammed ship was sinking, the ramming ship, her prow broken and letting in water, was moving back off in a judder of oars while men fought on her deck. Sailors scrambled up the mast, cutting at the ropes that held the sail furled. It opened, took the wind, the ship lurched forward with the oars flailing. The wind was blowing stronger. Blowing the ships away from the land. The snow covering them.
I’m freezing, Tobias thought. Freezing and drowning. He thought for a moment of trying to wave down the ship. But nobody would come. Nobody could see. Nobody cared. He kicked and wrestled and sank and got himself moving properly again, torn away from the magical spectacle of the black ships fighting, huge black dragons birds horses whales, fighting relentless. If I hadn’t seen a dragon, he thought, if I hadn’t seen a dragon, I’d think this the strangest and fiercest thing I ever saw. He kicked and wrestled, sank, floundered, suddenly a tide got him, pulling him moving in a rush of strength until the black toothed rocks were up gnashing towards him, the water white on them, their points like knives.
The waves took him. Dashed him towards the rocks. Oh gods and mercy and fuck. I should have been stabbed. I should have died by the knife. A soldier’s death. A warm death. A death where someone might feel some pride that you’re dead. Instead I’ll be torn up on a rock by the sea and no one will ever know and by gods it will hurt and be cold and lonely and cruel.
The waves took him. Dashed him towards the rocks. Hands, lifting him. The water broke in a great jet of spume. A hollow beating like the sound of his heart. He spun around trembling, his ears roared with water. The rocks tore gashes in his legs. Long slippery tendrils of green stuff that whipped his face; he tried to cling on to it but it slid through his fingers feeling vile as raw meat. And then suddenly his face clear of the water, the rock pulling back under him, he clawed and pulled, dragged himself and he was out of the water on a little ledge of rock tilting away from the sea. Water slapped over it when the waves broke, but he rolled and crawled and the water seemed to be receding and he scrambled up rock rough with encrusted shells and collapsed gasping and panting to look back and see ships sailing fast out of the bay away to the south, some maimed and limping, some smouldering still on fire, others making their way fast back into the harbour of Morr Town similarly smashed and broken, others still sinking and dying in the water before him, spreading slicks of planks and oars and dead men.
The battle was over. Marith had lost. Knew him, still, felt the draw of him, a tiny figure on one of the last ships fleeing the harbour, the rage and shame in him radiating out like the beams of the sun, the way you could see light on far hills in the dusk.
Failed! Ha!
You’re fucking delirious, Tobias thought to himself, and collapsed on the rocks of the headland soaking wet and wounded and still just sort of alive.
The ships pulled back raggedly, like crows flying up from a field when the farmer comes out with a sling and a pouch of stones. Moving fast, with a wind driving them. Sixty had departed from Malth Calien. Perhaps thirty remained. They straggled down along the coast, hugging tight to the line of the cliffs. Looked smaller, weaker, the planks of their sides crushed in like the flanks of a broken-down old horse.
The king’s ship was the last, as was fitting. It sailed blindly, the king looking back staring blindly, the dead thing that was a portent of nothing flopping from the mast with the crows and gulls fighting over its unborn eyes and the blue tongue lolling in its unborn mouth.
There is no plan to get out. There never was. You didn’t really think this bit through, did you?
Luminous creatures rose from the deep of the water, called up by the setting sun. The surface of the sea shimmered, solid as metal to a man’s fooled gaze. Usually they only came in deep water: Marith had only seen them this close to the land a handful of times, and seldom this bright. They’d gone out in a little boat once, him and Carin, paid a fisherman to take them. Sat floating on the water pulling up pure colour hand over hand over hand. It ran through the fingers like milk curds. Smelled sweet as rotten fruit. Eltheia’s tears, the shore people called them. The tears she wept for joy and for sorrow, that her husband was dead.
