Antimony came to help him, and after watching with grim amusement for a while as they struggled, Jasper and his men joined too. At last they all managed to roll the deep ettin’s corpse away. The figure under it was smaller than Antimony, and the weight of the creature that had fallen on it had pressed its face into a distorted death mask, but it was still plain even to Vansen what it was.
“By the gods,” he said, “I think it’s a Funderling!”
“Earth Elders protect us,” Antimony said in a breathless voice. “One of our own?”
“No such thing,” Sledge Jasper snapped. “Look. Look at his hands. Do I have hands like that? Do you?” The small corpse had broad, square fingertips and the nails were as long and thick as a mole’s claws.
Vansen looked at the twisted, gape-mouthed face, the lower half of which was covered in a beard as thick and unkempt as black moss. “I’ve seen people like this before. In Greatdeeps, behind the Shadowline.”
“By the Pool’s Light, he’s right,” said Antimony softly. “It’s a drow.” He made a sign on his forehead and breast. “Now I have seen everything. A drow in Funderling Town.”
“What is a drow?”
“They are our… relatives, Captain,” Antimony told him. “Long ago, they followed the Qar into the north, but I did not know any still survived.”
“I’ve seen more than a few,” said Vansen. “These must have come down from the Shadowlands with the fairy army.”
“This is bad,” Jasper said. “Very bad. They are just as clever in the ground as we are. If it comes to a fight, we could baffle the upgrounders… but drows?”
“More important,” Vansen told them all, “whether it is these drows they send or others—although I will pray they send no more ettins—the fairies have finally begun their attack on Southmarch itself. Or at least on the tunnels down here. But why now, when they could have attacked any time? There must be a reason! Why should they abruptly end what you’ve told me has been a long time of quiet, almost of peace?” He stared up the tunnel as though he could see all the way to the councils of the fairy folk and discover what he burned to know. “By all the gods, why now?”
“No one can understand the ways of the Old Ones,” Jasper said. “And now they send our own lost cousins against us.” He straightened up, glaring down at the bearded corpse. “I will gladly kill Funderling Town’s enemies—I will wipe their blood on my breeches and laugh—but I will not take much pleasure killing drows. ”
“Hold now, hold,” said Antimony thoughtfully. “Yes, this all seems bad—but perhaps there is some good fortune here, too. We will find it hard to hold off this Twilight army for long, even with Captain Vansen’s help. We do not have the men, the weapons, or the training. They will soon overrun us.”
“I must have missed the part where you explained our good fortune,” Vansen said.
Antimony smiled a little. “Simply this. If we can talk to no one else on the other side, we should be able to talk to our own cousins, however distant they might be.” He looked to Vansen. “Do you see my meaning?”
“Ah. Ah, yes, I think I do.” Vansen’s estimation of the young monk rose even higher. “Which means we must capture one of these… drows… alive.” He frowned. “But what of this one?”
“We will bury him properly,” said Antimony. “Under stone, as we do our own. Help me make a cairn.”
“A cairn?” Jasper almost shouted. “For this? But he… he was… !”
“Properly. Under stone.” The young monk spoke with such cold conviction that even Sledge Jasper, taken aback, could only nod. “If his kin come back, it will show them we still hold to the old ways—that whatever the Twilight folk have told them, we are still one people.”
17. Fish Heads
“Rhantys wrote, ‘Far larger than a man is the Ettyn, a murderous ogre with thick clawed hands like a mole who makes his home in the earth.’ It is known that during the second war against the Qar ettins undermined the defensive walls of Northmarch castle, which led to the defeat and destruction of that city, now lost behind the Shadowline.”
For a long time after she had caught hold of the piling Qinnitan could do no more than cling to it while the breakers dragged her up and down against the pier’s armor of barnacles. The salt water made her dozens of scratches and cuts burn like fire, but she had strength enough only to hang on and try to catch her breath. When Pigeon’s arms began to slip from her neck she nearly let go of the slimy wooden pier to hold onto him, but she was terrified the current would drag them both away under the dock and she wouldn’t be strong enough to find another safe haven.
“Wake up!” She choked and spat green water. “Pigeon! Hang on to my neck!”
The boy made a guttural noise of exhaustion and renewed his grip as well as he could. She had been fortunate her foot had touched him when she had first risen to the surface after plunging off the ship, and fortunate again that a piece of flaming mast had missed them when it hit the water a few moments later, just as she surfaced with the boy.
Another wave, small compared to open ocean but still far beyond her power to resist, flung Qinnitan against the piling again. When she opened her eyes several new cuts crisscrossed her arm, a net made of little streaks of red that disappeared as another wave splashed across them.
People were shouting and thumping across the planks above her head and the smoke of the burning ship was beginning to creep along the water. It was hopeless to stay here, only a matter of time until she lost her grip or the smoke overwhelmed her again. She was already rasping at every breath like a cart with a broken wheel. She had never been so exhausted in all her life.
There. A crude ladder of some kind hung down to the water on the far side of the dock. She hoped it was a ladder, anyway—it was a hundred yards away and her eyes were stinging from seawater and blood. She thanked Nushash and the Hive that she had spent lots of time in the deep bathing pool at the Seclusion and had learned how to swim a little. Still, she couldn’t swim that far with one arm.
“You must stay on my back and hold on no matter what,” she told Pigeon. “Can you hear me? ” She waited until she heard him grunt. “Don’t let go, even if I go under the water for a moment.”
As she pushed away from the pillar, aiming for the distant ladder, the boy wrapped his arms around her neck. She couldn’t breathe, and she floundered until she managed to yank his arms down so they were across her collarbone. Qinnitan had gone four or five strokes and was beginning to find a rhythm that allowed her to keep Pigeon mostly on her back when she saw the first triangular fin cut the water in front of her. A moment later she saw a second. Her limbs seemed to grow cold and heavy.
Sea-wolves. Not the thick bodied, axhead sharks of the Xixian canals but something sleeker and longer, pale gray and as slender as a knife blade. For a moment she paddled in place, afraid to go forward and afraid to go back, but the fins were moving away from her instead of toward her. Qinnitan prayed that they were after some other quarry.
Within moments of the disappearance of the first two she saw several more moving in wide loops as though not so sure of their destination as the first pair. Bodies in the water, Qinnitan realized with a horrible pang, sailors from the Xixian ship, wounded and dead—men she had killed by setting the ship on fire.
She couldn’t think about any of it, not about the sailors and soldiers, not about the sharks. Pigeon was clinging to her back and his arms were tightening around her neck again as he began to understand why she had stopped swimming. In another moment terror might steal away his resolve—he might let go or even begin to fight her. She had heard sailors on her voyage to Hierosol talk about the hopelessness of struggling with a frightened, drowning man. She began to swim again, as quickly as she could.