A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

The other warrior above her spun around to peer blindly into the gloom. He’d hardly turned when a streak of steel struck him in the face.

‘In more damn trouble, I see.’ Valrik pulled his blade free. ‘Where’s the Hel’s Bayan?’

‘There.’ She pointed up the track. ‘He’s dead.’

‘We will be too if we don’t make the ship. We’re out of time.’ There was a thrum. He suddenly grunted and arched his back, clutching at his side. She gasped, seeing the arrow buried there, expecting him to fall, but he only sucked a breath and snapped off the shaft. ‘Go! Go!’

‘Aren’t you hurt?’

‘Move, damn you!’

In a hundred paces they were at the river. She saw others there, crewmen desperately heaving bales of furs and other cargo onto the ship. ‘Leave the rest, you fools! Cut her loose – now! NOW!’

Some of the crew were already aboard. Three or four were waist deep in the river, shoving and shunting the hull which was moving but too slowly. Lilla threw herself over the sheerstrake, landing on a ruptured bale of pelts. The Varkonni were hanging back, content to hurl spears and loose arrows from a distance. Valrik was still yelling for someone to cut loose the stern, then he was there himself, his sword falling, and at last the ship lurched free.

‘Einar! Einar!’ That was Gerutha’s voice. Thank the gods, she’s here, thought Lilla. She looked over and saw Gerutha was leaning over the steer-board side trying to reach something in the water. ‘Help me! A rope! I need a rope!’

There was something coiled on the deck in front of her. She snatched it and flung it to Gerutha. Somehow her servant caught one end and tossed the rest over the edge.

Lilla felt the ship stir as the current caught the hull. Exhaustion suddenly hit her like a wall. She collapsed to her knees and crawled over to Gerutha and peered over the side. At first all she could discern were two meaty fists gripped tight to the rope which Gerutha desperately clung to, then she saw Einar’s ruddy face streaming through the water. ‘Help him,’ Gerutha wheezed through gritted teeth.

Lilla reached over and grabbed one of his big hands. He shifted his weight to her and nearly pulled her over with him, and would have, but for her knees locking against the strakes. He heaved, she resisted, and at last his face appeared over the gunwale. She braced her knees again and pulled, and all of a sudden he flopped onto the deck like a landed seal.

Einar the Fat-Bellied was flat on his face, puffing like a winded horse into his wet whiskers. ‘Much obliged to you, lassie,’ he gasped. ‘Always knew I should’ve learned to swim.’

But Lilla couldn’t answer. She lay on her back, her heart hammering, looking up at the cold indifference of the stars. . .

The night was warm. She lay there a long time. Long after the last of the screams from the bank had dwindled to silence. There was only the rush of the river, the creak and yaw of the boat, a few words exchanged between the survivors.

Twenty-six men had become twelve, she heard someone say.

Twelve. And two women.

She shuddered. The wound across her shoulders ached and felt hot. It seemed to be growing worse the longer she lay there, listening to the others breathing while they drifted into sleep and the current carried them onward.

The deck creaked. ‘Can’t sleep?’ Valrik’s voice, hoarse now from all his shouting. He sounded suddenly very old.

‘No,’ she answered softly.

He squatted down beside her. ‘Conscience.’ It wasn’t a question.

Lilla bit at her lip. ‘All those men. It’s my fault. They wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me.’

He snorted softly. ‘So it goes. . . Just tell me one thing, Lady. Is there any world in which you could have sat by and watched that girl die?’

‘No.’

He nodded. ‘Then you did what you had to do.’

Was it that simple? Then why did her hands feel soaked with other men’s blood? ‘You saved my life,’ she said.

‘I suppose I did.’

‘Your debt is repaid.’

‘I guess it is. . .’

‘Your wound,’ she blurted suddenly, she hadn’t thought of it before. ‘Is it—’

‘It’s taken care of.’ He gestured at the crude bandaging around his midriff.

She reached out. ‘I can look at it—’

‘No.’ He pushed her hand away, a little too forcefully. ‘It’s done.’ She noticed the trace of a frown cross his brow. He flicked his gaze out over the water, as if that could shake away whatever thought was in his mind. ‘The river will take you where you need to go.’

‘Take us,’ she corrected him.

He nodded slowly. ‘Us.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Get your wench to look at your wound. And get some sleep.’ Then he left her. She listened to his footsteps pick their way to the stern. She closed her eyes. . .

She drifted into a time of dreaming. But she knew something was wrong, knew that she was falling into a deep darkness from which she might never escape. The fever must have taken hold of her that first night. Einar and Gerutha wasted much time arguing whether the arrow-tip had been poisoned or merely dirty. It made little difference. They did all they could for her as the river carried them further and further south. She drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes seeming responsive to Gerutha’s healing arts and others only a breath away from death.

Her blood burned hot as lava. Her skin grew cold as a corpse. She sweated rivers and murmured ceaselessly in her delirium until Gerutha almost wished her torment would reach its inexorable end. And all the while, Lilla was trapped inside the caverns of her mind. She saw pale horrors there, lands of fire and ice, awesome skies the colour of blood and scalded wastelands that stretched to every horizon. All of which seemed to presage some great day of doom, some awful rending in the skein