Half the World

READY OR DEAD

“Gods,” whispered Brand.

The elf-ruins crowded in on both sides of the river, looming towers and blocks and cubes, broken elf-glass twinkling as it caught the watery sun.

The Divine flowed so broad here it was almost a lake, cracked teeth of stone and dead fingers of metal jutting from the shallows. All was wreathed with creeper, sprouting with sapling trees, choked with thickets of ancient bramble. No birds called, not even an insect buzzed over water still as black glass, only the slightest ripple where the oar-blades smoothly dipped, yet Thorn’s skin prickled with the feeling of being watched from every empty window.

All her life she had been warned away from elf-ruins. It was the one thing on which her mother and father had always stood united. Men daily risked shipwreck hugging the coast of Gettland to keep their distance from the haunted island of Strokom, where the Ministry had forbidden any man to tread. Sickness lurked there, and death, and things worse than death, for the elves had wielded a magic powerful enough to break God and destroy the world.

And here they went, forty little people in a hollow twig, rowing through the midst of the greatest elf-ruins Thorn had ever seen.

“Gods,” breathed Brand again, twisting to look over his shoulder.

There was a bridge ahead, if you could call a thing built on that scale a bridge. It must once have crossed the river in a single dizzying span, the slender roadway strung between two mighty towers, each one dwarfing the highest turret of the citadel of Thorlby. But the bridge had fallen centuries before, chunks of stone big as houses hanging from tangled ropes of metal, one swinging gently with the faintest creak as they rowed beneath.

Rulf gripped the steering oar, mouth hanging wide as he stared up at one of the leaning towers, crouching as if he expected it to topple down and crush the tiny ship and its ant-like crew into nothingness. “If you ever needed reminding how small you are,” he muttered, “here’s a good spot.”

“It’s a whole city,” whispered Thorn.

“The elf-city of Smolod.” Skifr lounged on the steering platform, peering at her fingernails as though colossal elf-ruins were hardly worthy of comment. “In the time before the Breaking of God it was home to thousands. Thousands of thousands. It glittered with the light of their magic, and the air was filled with the song of their machines and the smoke of their mighty furnaces.” She gave a long sigh. “All lost. All past. But so it is with everything. Great or small, the Last Door is life’s one certainty.”

A sheet of bent metal stuck from the river on rusted poles, arrows sweeping across it in flaking paint, bold words written in unknowable elf-letters. It looked uncomfortably like a warning, but of what, Thorn could not say.

Rulf tossed a twig over the side, watched it float away to judge their speed and gave a grudging nod. For once he had to bellow no encouragements-meaning insults-to get the South Wind moving at a pretty clip. The ship itself seemed to whisper with the prayers, and oaths, and charms of its crew, spoken in a dozen languages. But Skifr, who had something for every god and every occasion, for once let the heavens be.

“Save your prayers for later,” she said. “There is no danger here.”

“No danger?” squeaked Dosduvoi, fumbling a holy sign over his chest and getting his oar tangled with the man in front.

“I have spent a great deal of time in elf-ruins. Exploring them has been one of my many trades.”

“Some would call that heresy,” said Father Yarvi, looking up from under his brows.

Skifr smiled. “Heresy and progress often look much alike. We have no Ministry in the south to meddle with such things. Rich folk there will pay well for an elf-relic or two. The Empress Theofora herself has quite a collection. But the ruins of the south have often been picked clean. Those about the Shattered Sea have much more to offer. Untouched, some of them, since the Breaking of God. The things one can find there …”

Her eyes moved to the iron-shod chest, secured by chains near the setting of the mast, and Thorn thought of the box, and the light from inside it. Had that been dug from the forbidden depths of a place like this one? Was there magic in it that could break the world? She gave a shiver at the thought.

But Skifr only smiled wider. “If you go properly prepared into the cities of elves, you will find less danger than in the cities of men.”

“They say you’re a witch.” Koll blew a puff of wood-chips from his latest patch of carving and looked up.

“They say?” Skifr widened her eyes so the white showed all the way around. “True and false are hard to pick apart in the weave of what they say.”

“You said you know magic.”

“And so I do. Enough to cause much harm, but not enough to do much good. So it is, with magic.”

“Could you show it to me?”

Skifr snorted. “You are young and rash and know not what you ask, boy.” They rowed in the shadow of a vast wall, its bottom sunk in the river, its top broken off in a skein of twisted metal. Rank upon rank of great windows yawned empty. “The powers that raised this city also rendered it a ruin. There are terrible risks, and terrible costs. Always, there are costs. How many gods do you know the names of?”

“All of them,” said Koll.

“Then pray to them all that you never see magic.” Skifr frowned down at Thorn. “Take your boots off.”

Thorn blinked. “Why?”

“So you can take a well-deserved break from rowing.”

Thorn looked at Brand and he shrugged back. Together they pulled their oars in and she worked off her boots. Skifr slipped out of her coat, folded it and draped it over the steering oar. Then she drew her sword. Thorn had never seen it drawn before, and it was long, and slender, and gently curved, Mother Sun glinting from a murderous edge. “Are you ready, my dove?”

The break from rowing suddenly did not seem so appealing. “Ready for what?” asked Thorn, in a voice turned very small.

“A fighter is either ready or dead.”

On the barest shred of instinct Thorn jerked her oar up, the blade of Skifr’s sword chopping into it right between her hands.

“You’re mad!” she squealed as she scrambled back.

“You’re hardly the first to say so.” Skifr jabbed left and right and made Thorn hop over the lowered mast. “I take it as a compliment.” She grinned as she swished her sword back and forth, oarsmen jerking fearfully out of her way. “Take everything as a compliment, you can never be insulted.”

She sprang forward again and made Thorn slither under the mast, breath whooping as she heard Skifr’s sword rattle against it once, twice.

“My carving!” shouted Koll.

“Work around it!” snarled Skifr.

Thorn tripped on the chains that held the iron-bound chest and toppled into Odda’s lap, tore his shield from its bracket, blocked a blow with both hands before Skifr ripped it from her and kicked her over backwards.

Thorn clawed up a coil of rope and flung it in the old woman’s face, lunged for Fror’s sword but he slapped her hand away. “Find your own!”

“It’s in my chest!” she squealed, rolling over Dosduvoi’s oar and grabbing the giant from behind, peering over his great shoulder.

“God save me!” he gasped as Skifr’s blade darted past his ribs on one side then the other, nicking a hole in his shirt, Thorn dodging desperately, running out of room as the carved prow and Father Yarvi, smiling as he watched the performance, grew mercilessly closer.

“Stop!” shouted Thorn, holding up a trembling hand. “Please! Give me a chance!”

“Do the berserks of the Lowlands stop for their enemies? Does Bright Yilling pause if you say please? Does Grom-gil-Gorm give chances?”

Skifr stabbed again and Thorn leapt past Yarvi, teetered on the top strake, took one despairing stride and sprang, clear off the ship and onto the shaft of the front oar. She felt it flex under her weight, the oarsman straining to keep it level. She tottered to the next, bare foot curling desperately around the slippery wood, arms wide for balance. To hesitate, to consider, to doubt, was doom. She could only run on in great bounds, the water flickering by beneath, oars creaking and clattering in their sockets and the cheering of the crew ringing in her ears.

She gave a shrill whoop at the sheer reckless excitement of it, wind rushing in her open mouth. Running the oars was a noble feat, often sung of but rarely attempted. The feeling of triumph was short-lived, though. The South Wind had only sixteen oars a side and she was quickly running out. The last came rushing at her, Brand reaching over the rail, fingers straining. She made a despairing grab at his outstretched hand, he caught her sleeve-

The oar struck her hard in the side, her sleeve ripped and she tumbled headfirst into the river, surfaced gasping in a rush of bubbles.

“A creditable effort!” called Skifr, standing on the steering platform with her arm draped around Rulf’s shoulders. “And swimming is even better exercise than rowing! We will make camp a few miles further on and wait for you!”

Thorn slapped her hand furiously into the water. “Miles?”

Her rage did not slow the South Wind. If anything it caused it to quicken. Brand stared from the stern with that helpless look, his arm still hanging over the side, and shrugged.

Skifr’s voice floated out over the water. “I’ll hold on to your boots for you!”

Snarling curses, Thorn began to swim, leaving the silent ruins in her wake.