Now or never, he thought. The Elders have shown me the way, I hope.
Of course, it could also have been that the Elders were showing him which way not to go: the devastation was astounding. The front of the gateway cavern had become a chaos of broken stone and swirling dust, and the cannons were still crashing outside.
Chert ducked his head and ran forward, stumbling over loose rocks. He had to step over a body buried under shattered stone, pale skin smeared with dirt and blood. He could not even tell if it was a Funderling or one of Durstin Crowel’s guards.
When he got out into the open, he kept his head down. The cannonball had struck the facing of the ancient cliff above the entrance to Funderling Town, just beneath the high, pale wall of the inner keep. The dust thrown up by the bombardment was nearly as thick here as inside the gate, but Chert was still struck by the sudden immensity of having sky over his head again for the first time since he and Flint had gone to the Drying Shed.
I can only pray to the Elders that the Rooftoppers will…
His thought went unfinished.
“Here he is!” cried a loud, unfamiliar voice, then someone pushed him to the ground from behind and yanked off his pack. “Got him.” A moment later, with Chert still pressed facedown against the stones, his captor pulled something like a sack over him. A few jerks as it was made tight, then a moment later he was lifted up and carried away at a fast, bouncing pace.
“Let me go!” he said. “You don’t understand! I have something important to do—lives are at stake… !”
“Shut your mouth and keep it shut,” growled his captor, and thumped the sack so hard against something that the little man’s teeth rattled. Chert didn’t try to speak again.
32. A Coin to Pay the Passage
“After Zmeos ate his eggs and porridge, he sat back in his chair. The Orphan quietly played his flute until the god fell asleep, still holding the great disk of the sun in his lap ...”
Rafe could not have been happier. His seventeenth Year-Moot had finally come and his father, the headman of the Hull-Scrapes-the-Sand clan, had given him beautiful black Sealskin to be his own. Rafe had long dreamed of this day—the day he could finally earn the necklace of a man! No longer would even his most impressive feats be undercut by the scornful words, “He still paddles his father’s boat.”
He had already made a name for himself, not just as a fisherman but also as a warrior. Had he not been one of the first to take fire to the ships of the southerners? Had he not braved the terrors of the Old Ones more than once, landing right on the Porcupine’s doorstep as he conveyed nobility back and forth from the Mount? Now Sealskin was his at last. All the years of his childhood, he had dreamed of this day, keeping her always waterproof and slippery as an eel by painting and repainting her hull with pitch. And most important, all that he earned now would no longer go into his father’s great jar. He would have his own jar, and soon enough his own house. Then he would take Ena away from her brute of a father and make her his wife. When they had enough money, they would marry and he would never again have to listen to any voice except hers and the ocean’s.
He slipped out through the secret way that led from the Western Lagoon and out to the sea road to Egye-Var’s Shoulder—M’Helan’s Rock as the drylanders called it—but Rafe did not plan to go anywhere near the Drying Shed nor any other part of the island. Clan curfew was an hour gone, and the last thing Rafe needed was to get into trouble again his first night as a man. He didn’t think his father Mackel would go so far as to take Sealskin back—he would be reluctant to shame the clan that badly in front of his rival Turley Longfingers and the Sunset-Tide folk at the Little Moot—but Rafe knew the old man would probably be very rigorous with whatever punishment he chose instead, which almost certainly meant a beating. Rafe didn’t want another beating. So although his heart felt as full as a bellied sail, he would not be singing or cutting capers on this, his first voyage with his own boat.
The southern ships had stopped burning, although many of the floating wrecks still leaked smoke into the dawn sky. Rafe swung widely around one of them, trying to decide whether it was one of those onto which he himself had thrown spears wrapped in flaming rags. He had never done anything more exciting in his life (except perhaps for some of the things he and Ena had got up to) and still could not quite believe he had even been allowed to do such a thing. But the Skimmer clan leaders, those stodgy old fellows like Turley Back-on-Next-Year’s-Tide, had suddenly changed: a single mysterious audience with some of the Old Ones and they had become warriors. Who would ever have guessed? Rafe had asked his father several times what had changed things so, but all Mackel would tell him was: “They have reached out a hand. We are forgiven.” When he asked, “Forgiven of what?” his father had told him to shut his blowhole and go catch some fish.
But what did such things matter anyway? No matter who won this war, it meant nothing to Rafe. If he had to, he would pack up all his belongings, set Ena on Sealskin’s bench, and together they would paddle away somewhere else, upcoast or down. Perhaps it was time for the Ocean Lord’s folk to return to the Vuttish Islands? He and his sweetheart could surely find a deserted skerry and live out their lives there in happy solitude…
Musing on this and other fantasies, Rafe guided his boat in and out among the flotsam of the burned ships, looking for things to salvage. He had discovered a floating cask of southern honey this way the night before, the wood only lightly singed and the insides still protected by wax and cotton cloth, a find that had delighted his father who said he could get several silver coins for it at the least. In fact, Rafe felt sure that the goodwill caused by that discovery was why Mackel had finally told him the boat was his. Reminded of his good fortune, he patted Sealskin’s strong but delicate frame. The next cask of honey would be for Rafe himself to sell. Perhaps he could buy Ena a wedding necklace.
He passed through the ghost fleet and made a wide swing along the coast below the Marrinswalk headlands. The sun was coming up soon, and he knew he should not be staying out so long. Daylight would make it harder to sneak back in. He supposed he could pretend to have fallen asleep in the boat shed while cleaning Sealskin. He had certainly done it enough times in his youth.
Rafe’s planning was interrupted by something moving on the shore. He stared, trying to make sense of what he was seeing—something tall that stood almost at the waterline and was shrouded in cloth that whipped fitfully in the freshening breeze. What was it? Some bit of useful wreckage that had floated ashore and that another scavenger had found and might be coming back for? Was that why it was covered by that tattered cloak? Did someone really think that was enough to claim it as their own?
Rafe swung his bow toward the shallows until he could not get any closer and still remain in the boat. The thing standing where the water splashed up onto the rocky strand was man-shaped, although still motionless but for the ragged, windblown cloth that covered it. Was it a statue? Or had some lonely wanderer died here, so slowly that he had remained standing? Rafe had found corpses on the beach before, most of them drowned, but others as unmarked as though they had come to such a lonely spot just to die. He had never found one still standing. A superstitious shiver went through him.