“If you drink the salt water, it will eventually kill you,” Lila warned. “Your thirst will only get worse.”
“No, the water in the bladders is filtered through the kelp skin. It’s strong and tastes terrible, but it is drinkable.” Using his thumbnails, he pressed into the squishy sphere, cracked open the rind, and peeled it apart. The nodule contained only a spoonful or two of liquid, which he offered to Lila.
She frowned skeptically. “Are you certain?”
“Fishermen knew this on Chiriya Island.”
“Then why are you giving it to me first? To see if it’s poison?”
Bannon was disappointed. “No, because I was being nice.”
“Thank you. Sometimes I don’t recognize that.” She drank, grimaced, then swallowed. “It is as acceptable as the fish guts.”
“High praise indeed.” Bannon pulled on the strands of kelp until he found another nodule, burst it open, and sucked on the liquid inside. It had a strong iodine tang, and he had to force himself to drink it, but his mouth and throat needed the water. Using the saw edge of the fishing spear, they cut the kelp stems and loaded the boat with twenty intact nodules while they drifted among the seaweed.
The kelp provided a habitat for fish, and Lila deftly caught six with her bare hands, scooping them out of the water and dropping them into the boat. Bannon relished the feast. “Thank you, Lila, for everything. You did promise to keep me alive.”
“I have not saved you yet, boy.”
“I’m alive so far. I count that as a temporary success.”
When the waves grew choppy and the wind picked up, the gray clouds thickened into what looked like a smoke pudding. The fishing boat moved on at a swifter pace, but Bannon had no idea if they were even going in the right direction. He had seen many ocean storms from Chiriya Island, where he and his mother would huddle together in their cottage while his father would rage at the weather, which prevented him from going to the tavern.
The sail strained against the wind, and Bannon’s long hair whipped about. When the clouds burst and rain sheeted down, he and Lila welcomed the first spattering of raindrops. As the rain increased, they turned their faces up to the sky, letting the droplets wash their salt-encrusted cheeks, opening their mouths to catch any of the moisture.
“We have no containers,” he groaned. “All this rain will be wasted.”
“Drink your fill,” she said. Like a baby bird begging for a worm from its mother, she kept her mouth open and turned her face to the sky.
Bannon cupped his palms until he collected a few thimblefuls of water, which he slurped through cracked lips. He repeated the procedure again and again, but he was frantic to capture and store more rain. Puddles filled the bottom of the boat, but it was filthy water.
“We have no pots, no basins, nothing! And all this rain is coming down! Sweet Sea Mother.”
“Your clothes,” Lila said. “Take off your shirt and trousers.”
“What?” He touched his already soaked cotton shirt.
“Take off your clothes now, boy.” She began tugging at the fabric.
In a few moments he sat in only his smallclothes in the open boat. Lila spread out his shirt and trousers to be soaked by the rain; then she rolled them up in a loose wad. “That will hold some water, at least a few mouthfuls that will last for a day or two.” She touched the black leather band across her breasts and around her waist. “I would do the same, but my garments are inappropriate.” She frowned. “Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown my other robe away.”
When the winds grew so strong that Bannon feared the sail would rip or the single mast would snap in half, they took down the canvas. By folding the fabric, they were able to form pockets that also filled with rainwater.
As the storm increased, Bannon wound the rope around himself and Lila, lashing it to the gunwales. “If either of us is thrown overboard, we’re dead. This will keep us in the boat.”
“Unless we capsize,” Lila said. Her spiky brown hair was plastered to her head, and rainwater ran down her bruised face.
“It’s a chance we have to take.”
The storm lasted for hours, and though Bannon was queasy from the churning waves, the stolen boat remained intact. And when the rain finally stopped, around midnight, the weather changed to a thick fog. Mist rolled in like a clammy blanket that obscured their view of the horizon, even though there was nothing to see.
He and Lila were drenched and cold, and as the temperature dropped, their sunburned skin made the deepening chill even more miserable. Bannon saw that Lila was shivering, and he began to shiver, too. Downcast, she said, “I don’t think we will ever make it to land, Bannon Farmer.” When she intentionally used his name, he knew how serious she was. “I may not save you after all, but I did try.”
They were isolated in the impenetrable fog, alone in the wilderness of waves. “I don’t know where we are or how far we’ve come,” Bannon said, “but I will not give up, and neither will you. Maybe it’s my turn to save you.”
“Our first order of business is to keep warm,” she said, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him down to the bottom of the boat. As the collected rainwater sloshed around them, Bannon returned the embrace, drawing her close. Lila pressed as much of her body against his as she could, and Bannon held her tight.
“We can share warmth,” he said. “I’ve heard it’s very good for people suffering from extreme chills.”
Lila tucked her bruised face against his bare chest. “Yes, I believe it is helping.”
As they lay together, the sound and rocking of the waves soothed them like a lullaby. For a while, Bannon forgot that they were lost, and he fell asleep in Lila’s arms.
The next morning he awoke to hear an odd and unexpected sound, a distant rushing and roaring. He blinked and sat up, disentangling himself from Lila. The morazeth snapped awake and sat up next to him.
“What is that sound?” she asked, as if they might be under attack.
The fog had thinned, leaving only a grayish veil that began to dissipate as the sun rose. Even before Bannon saw the coastline, he recognized the sound of waves crashing against a shore. “That’s it! We found land.” He stood up so quickly he rocked the boat. “I don’t know how, but we found the coast. It’s a miracle.”
“It won’t be a miracle unless we make it to land,” Lila said.
Together they raised the sail and tacked into the breezes that drove them closer to the shore. He remembered being similarly lost and adrift in a small boat off of Chiriya long ago, the fog bank …
He gazed back out to sea, away from the shoreline. When he shaded his eyes in the bright morning light, he saw a flicker of humanlike figures on the waves, smooth heads with slitted eyes and wide fang-filled mouths. A flash of fear struck through him. If the selka attacked now, he and Lila could never fight them off!
But he realized that the selka wouldn’t attack. They had saved him and Lila. Sometime during the night, the sea people must have taken the boat and dragged it close to shore.
Lila was too focused on the land to notice the selka. She sat on the gunwale and grabbed the oars, pulling as hard as she could. When Bannon glanced back again, the selka had disappeared beneath the waves.
As they approached the coast, Bannon saw the mouth of a river, a bay, and the buildings of a large town, as well as numerous fishing boats heading out into the morning. Bannon yelled and waved, though the harbor was still far away. “We’re saved!”
Lila kept pulling on the oars. “We don’t know where we are, but those people will help us. We will warn them about the Norukai fleet that is sure to come soon.”
Bannon continued to watch the boats sailing out of the harbor, then scrutinized the buildings in the town. He saw the bridge that crossed the river to span the small bay. A flash of recognition suddenly struck him. “I know where we are, Lila.”
Already one of the fishing boats had spotted them, and Bannon could see tiny figures waving. She pulled harder on the oars
as the boat headed in their direction.
“That is Renda Bay,” he said.
CHAPTER 60
The raucous festivities continued while the raiders prepared for full-scale war, but Chalk was dead. King Grieve sat on his imposing throne surrounded by wild Norukai, but he walled himself off with anger and grief.
Chalk was dead!
Lars kept feasting, drinking, and boasting, as if the success of his raids meant that he had been forgiven, but Grieve was not in a forgiving mood. As the revelry continued and the feasting tables were piled high with fish, bread, cliff tubers, and even hams and sausages brought in by recent raids, Grieve barely ate a morsel. His only movement was to clench and unclench his fists, feeling the squares of iron fused onto his knuckles. The scars on his cheeks rippled as he clenched his jaws. He exhaled a long hiss like the serpent god, but no one noticed the sound amid the pounding fists, laughter, and shouts.
Chalk was dead! His shaman, his advisor, his friend …
The repaired serpent ships had returned from Ildakar, fifty-one vessels remaining out of the hundred that had initially sailed, but they were as threatening as ever. Those ships, along with Lars’s raiding fleet and more than seventy new ships, gave the Norukai a powerful navy. If his ally General Utros fulfilled his promise with his vast army marching to the coast, the two forces would dominate the Old World. The Norukai people, having been driven off the mainland by Emperor Sulachan thousands of years ago, would now have the world again. Grieve’s people would rip a gaping wound along the coast.
In normal times, he would have relished the thought of blood and violence, but Chalk was dead.
When the rage reached a boiling point, he lurched to his feet and let out a wordless roar that echoed across the room and brought the shouting and revelry to a stuttering halt. The rest of the Norukai looked at him, stunned; then Lars raised his fist and let out a similar roar, as did the other raiders, until the walls of the Bastion shook with their enthusiasm.
But Chalk was still dead.
Grieve trudged down the stone steps from his throne to meet the shouting Norukai. Misinterpreting his mood, some clapped him on the shoulder, pounded his back, but the king ignored them. At another time he might have punched them senseless, but now he did not consider them worth his time or his ire.
Two slaves brought in another roast goat, a scrawny one this time, because most of the island’s flock had already been killed. Grieve didn’t like goat anyway.
He needed to find a target for his annoyance, but he didn’t know where to start. Prancing at his side, Chalk would have issued quirky and cryptic pronouncements, but why hadn’t the shaman foreseen his own death? He could have saved himself! How could he not have envisioned the attack of the selka, how could he not have known their slimy queen would tear him open? He was a poor shaman not to have predicted something so vital!
Or had he seen something after all? Grieve remembered Chalk chattering during the sacrifice of the slave on the day before the selka attack: “Serpent god will save some of us. But I won’t tell which ones!”
Had he known after all? Why hadn’t he warned anyone?
Grieve wanted to smash a face. He realized that what he really wanted was to gut one of the slaves, so he could watch the victim writhe in agony in a pool of blood, just the way Chalk had died.
Looking up, he saw old Emmett, the wrinkled old man who had been a fixture at the Bastion even before Grieve had killed his own father. Chalk had encouraged him to slay King Stern and take the crown. The albino had foreseen it in a vision, and he had helped Grieve choose the perfect timing.
Why hadn’t Chalk been able to avoid his own death?
The axe cleaves the wood. The sword cleaves the bone. What did his pronouncements even mean? Could anyone make sense of them?
When Emmett presented a braided pastry filled with chopped nuts, Grieve realized that the limping old man seemed more frightened than usual, probably because he and his slaves had been bullied by so many visiting Norukai. Grieve glanced around the dining hall, still looking for a victim who could alleviate his sadness. He saw neither Bannon nor the morazeth Lila, and he realized he hadn’t seen them for several days during the busy preparations for war.
He was surprised that Atta hadn’t killed her supposed female rival by now. Grieve had no sexual interest in the scrawny morazeth, since he would certainly break her fragile body if he used her roughly, but now that sounded like a good idea. Yes, he would eviscerate Bannon, then knock Lila down onto the banquet table and have her there, right in front of all of his men. He could strangle her when he was finished, and that would also please Atta. Maybe that would finally cure him of his malaise.
He looked around at the serving slaves, but he didn’t see them.
Old Emmett obsequiously offered the nut-filled pastry for him to eat. “You will find it delicious, my Grieve, a specialty of the kitchens for this celebration of your impending conquest.”
The king knocked the tray out of the slave’s hands and grabbed him by the long ponytail as if it were a leash, yanking Emmett’s head back. “Where are Bannon and Lila? I want them here now.”
The old man paled. “They are … they are on other duties, I’m sure, my Grieve.”
Atta had been fawning over Lars, no doubt to make Grieve jealous, and now she shoved the disgraced captain aside and took her place next to King Grieve. “Yes, where is the skinny bitch? I fancy drowning her in a piss bucket after all these men have filled it.” She let out a loud laugh.
“Bring them,” Grieve demanded of Emmett. “Now!”
The old slave limped off like an injured deer fleeing an oncoming wildfire. He hid for the better part of an hour, but the impatient king sent several Norukai to drag him back into the banquet hall.
Bannon and Lila were nowhere to be found. Guards searched the Bastion and returned to the king with the infuriating report that they had interrogated every slave, but those two had not been seen in some time.
“I-I know nothing about it, my Grieve,” Emmett whined, and the obvious terror on the man’s face turned his words into a lie.
Grieve threw the crippled slave down on the table, flat on his back among the platters. Emmett’s struggles inflamed the Norukai king’s dominance, and he slammed the old man’s head against the wood. With his right hand, he snatched the dagger at his waist and plunged it through the tendons of Emmett’s shoulder, skewering him to the table. The wrinkled slave gasped with pain. “I don’t know, my Grieve! I don’t know.”
The interrogation continued at length, and Grieve enjoyed the process, more joy than he had felt for many days. By the time he had cut off Emmett’s left ear and two fingers at the second knuckle, another Norukai entered the hall to report. “A fishing boat is gone from the jetty, King Grieve. Someone took it!”
“No, no!” Emmett whimpered, bleeding from multiple wounds. “Maybe it broke loose and drifted away in a storm.”
“Or maybe they stole it and escaped,” Grieve growled.
Impatient, he slashed off the old man’s other ear. He pinched the curved rind of flesh between his thumb and forefinger, waggling the ear in front of Emmett’s face. “Tell me what I need to know, or I have many more bits I can slice off.” He waved the dripping trophy again.
Finally Emmett broke down, sobbing. Grieve yanked out the knife that pinned the old slave to the table, releasing him. Emmett rolled forward, shuddering and bleeding, then babbled out a stream of words that coalesced into an explanation of how he had helped Bannon and Lila escape. The confession seemed cathartic for the old man, and he slid off the table, dropping to his knees and begging before King Grieve.
Grieve’s mood hardened, and he summoned all the terrified slaves into the dining hall. “Our fleet is about to go to war! I command you to prepare an appropriate feast to celebrate our impending victory.”
The Norukai let out a deafening cheer. When Grieve bellowed his instructions, the slaves quailed, and Emmett broke down into another flood of wordle
ss sobs. The king realized that at last he was hungry again.
* * *
Lars and five other prominent Norukai captains sat at the main table, while Atta remained at King Grieve’s side. She gave him a lascivious leer, blinking her cowlike eyes, but the king’s attention was focused on the slaves who plodded into the banquet hall. On their shoulders, as if they carried a stretcher with a wounded warrior, they brought an enormous serving platter. The terrified slaves kept their gazes downcast as they placed the serving platter with its roasted meat in front of Grieve.
The shriveled blackened body of the old slave had curled up in a fetal position in the fires of the ovens. Emmett had been roasted alive, because the Norukai knew that terror and pain enhanced the flavor of the meat.
“He was old and tough,” Grieve said. “I expect the meat will be stringy, barely edible.”
Atta used her dagger to poke through the crisp skin, splitting open the black crust to reveal juicy flesh underneath. “I’ll savor the feast just as I will savor our victory, King Grieve.” She hacked a hunk of meat from Emmett’s thigh and extended it to Grieve on the point of her knife.
He took the offering and chewed it. “Yes, it’s good. This old man served the Bastion for many years, and now we serve him.” He raised his armored fist. “Come, all of you—eat! This is our feast before war.”
The Norukai rushed forward and tore into the roasted body of the old slave.
CHAPTER 61
The townspeople hurried to the docks to see the two castaways fished out of the sea, eager to hear their story. Nathan received the news with more joy than he had experienced in a long time. Bannon was alive!
The young man and Lila were sunburned and bedraggled from drifting alone for days, but they were feeling stronger by the time a small fishing boat called the Daisy brought them to Renda Bay. Kenneth, the Daisy’s pilot, clanged his bell as he arrived.
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