Myrrima drew closer, but one of the Walkin women strode forward and acted as voice.
“Need help?” one of the men called from a boat. “We’re from Fossil!” another shouted from a raft. “Is anyone injured?” a third cried.
The men paddled, doing their best to row the clumsy vessels in unison, and a fine tall man with a blunt face and long brown hair hanging free stood up in the boat.
“We’ve got a child dead,” the Walkin woman, Greta, shouted. “She’s beyond anyone’s help.”
“Do you need food or supplies?” the tall man asked.
“We got away with nothing more than what’s on our backs,” Greta said. “We had fish and crabs for dinner last night, but we daren’t eat it today.”
The boat floated near and finally bumped against the shore not far below them. “Where are your menfolk?” the leader called.
“They went west, searching for survivors,” Myrrima answered.
The leader gave them a suspicious look. Then he put on a pleasant face and called up, “I’m Mayor Threngell, from Fossil. We don’t have much in the way of supplies, but you’re welcome in our village. There’s food and shelter for any that need it.”
He searched the faces of the Walkins as if looking for someone familiar. “Are you locals?”
The Walkins hardly dared admit that they were squatters. “New to the area,” one of them answered. “We’re looking to homestead.”
Myrrima had met Mayor Threngell two years back at the autumn Harvest Festival; she recognized him now. “I’m local,” she said. “Borenson’s the name. Our farm was destroyed in the flood.”
The mayor grunted, gave her a cordial nod. “Go east, not twenty miles. It’s not an easy walk, but you should make it. You’ll find food and shelter there,” he affirmed. But the welcome in his voice had all gone cold, as if he wasn’t sure that he wanted to feed squatters. “Tell your men when they get back. Tell them that there is to be no looting of the dead, no salvage operations. This land is under martial law.”
Myrrima wondered at that. Law here in the wilderness was rather malleable. Vandervoot, the king, had lived on the coast. Most likely, Myrrima imagined that he was food for crabs about now. This mayor from a backwater town could hardly declare martial law.
More than that, she could see no justice in what Threngell proposed. Here he was: a man with land and horses, crops and fields, demanding that folks who had nothing take no salvage from the dead. But she knew that often lords would find reasons why they should grow a little fatter while the rest of the world grew a little leaner.
“Under whose authority was martial law declared?” Myrrima asked.
“My authority,” Mayor Threngell said, a warning in his voice.
7
Acts of Love
Rage can give strength during battle; but he who surrenders to rage surrenders all reason.
Sweating and grunting, Borenson used a log as a lever to pry the bow of the ship up so that it groaned and scraped.
For two long hours he’d been trying, with Draken, Baron Walkin, and the baron’s younger brother Bane to get the ship free. It was grueling labor—pulling wreckage from under the vessel, setting up logs to use as rollers under the ship, setting up other logs to use as pry bars, shoving and straining until Borenson felt that his heart would break.
Now, as the ship began to nudge, he realized that all of their labor might have been for nothing. The rising tide had lifted the back of the ship. Had the tides been extra high, he imagined that they just might have borne the ship out into open water. But the tide wouldn’t rise high enough today, so he shouted, “Heave! Heave!”
As one, all four men threw their weight into their pry bars, and the bow lifted into the air. Suddenly there was a groaning as the roller logs took the weight of the ship, and it began to slide backward into the ocean.
Bane Walkin let out a cry of pain, shouting, “Stop it! Stop it!”
But there was no stopping the vessel now. It rolled backward and splashed into the ocean, spewing foam.
As the bow slid away, Borenson spotted Bane—fallen, clutching his ankle. His foot had obviously gotten caught between the ship and a log.
Borenson rushed to Bane’s aid, and had the man pull off his boot. Draken and Baron Walkin knelt at his side. Gingerly, Borenson twisted the young man’s ankle. It had already begun to swell, and a bruise was setting in. But the man was lucky. At least he still had his foot.
“Good news,” Borenson teased. “We won’t have to amputate!”
Bane gritted his teeth and tried to laugh, though tears had formed in the corners of his eyes.
“Well, at least we won’t have to be hiking home,” Baron Walkin said, and he turned and looked at their ship, bobbing proudly on the waves.
Borenson grinned. I have my ship!
So it was that the four men claimed their prize. With a sail and rope salvaged from another wreck, they set sail nearly at noon. A breeze had kicked up, making small whitecaps on the waves, and with a little trial and error they managed to set out, plying the waters north. The ship had no proper wheel, but instead relied upon a rudder, so Borenson manned it from the captain’s deck while Baron Walkin and Draken trimmed the sails. Bane merely sat on the prow, nursing his foot. He’d wrapped it in wet kelp to keep down the swelling, and now he held on his rubbery green bandage.
In less than an hour they reached the mouth of the channel and turned inland, then retrieved their salvage from the earlier wreck.
Borenson had just loaded the last of the crates and barrels aboard when Draken raised a cry of warning. Borenson looked upstream. Several rafts and a small boat paddled in the distance, perhaps a mile out upon the water.
“Rescuers!” Bane Walkin said.
Borenson doubted it. The men were rowing toward them, hard.
Borenson didn’t like the look of it. “Let’s get under way, quickly.”
“Agreed,” Baron Walkin said, face grim. He nodded toward the wreckage floating nearby. “Looks like we’re done with the salvage. It’s going to turn into a free-for-all out here.”
Draken untied the knots that bound the ship to a tree and shoved off, pulling himself topside at the last moment, while Borenson raised the sails, then took the tiller from Baron Walkin.
As the wind swiftly began driving the ship up the channel, the rafts began to spread out, as if to intercept.
“Give them a wide berth,” Borenson suggested, “until we know what they’re about.”
He pushed hard on the tiller, taking the ship directly north, toward the far shore, some four miles in the distance, while Walkin tacked the sails.
The men in the flotilla waved frantically, trying to hail the ship. There were more than thirty of them.
“Halt!” one man shouted from the boat, his voice carry ing over the water. “How long have you had that ship?”
Borenson recognized Mayor Threngell from Fossil. He was a nodding acquaintance. Borenson knew of only one reason that he would ask that question.
“Four years!” he cried out in return, knowing full well that the mayor wouldn’t recognize him, not with the change to his form.
“Bring her about!” the mayor cried. He and his men waved frantically.
“What?” Borenson called. He cupped a hand to his ear, as if he couldn’t hear. Then Draken and the Walkins all waved back, as if to say “good day.”
“That’s the mayor from Fossil. You think he’ll give us trouble?” Draken asked under his breath.
Borenson felt embarrassed to have such a lackwit for a son.
“Of course they’ll give us trouble,” Baron Walkin said. “A ship like this is worth twenty thousand steel eagles, easily. Everything else out there in the water is just leftovers. He’ll be out to steal it before sundown.”
“He’ll have to catch us first,” Borenson said.
Borenson didn’t think that the ship was worth twenty thousand eagles— it was worth far more. Fossil had always been a nothing town, out in the middle of nowhere. But now with the flood, with the water moving inland, it was in prime position to become a port city, perhaps the largest in Landesfallen.