Chapter Twenty One

  ‘How do you do it?’ asked Talorc.

  ‘Different ways. I will use mind-jumping,’ said Sariad. ‘I move out of my mind, into the mind of the nearest sea creature. Then from their mind into another, and another. Like a flea leaping from animal to animal. Every time I come to a new creature, I sense all the creatures around it. I search their memories for the one I’m looking for. Eventually… eventually I’ll find him.’

  ‘But there are so many creatures,’ said Runa.

  Sariad nodded. ‘It can be slow, but it’s a good way of moving while staying hidden. There are not so many creatures in the water now, so it’ll be quicker than before the Azawan came. And I think I know where he is.’

  ‘On Fin Island?’ asked Talorc.

  ‘Yes. If he is alone, and he is not diving, I can get into his mind. If I am lucky. If he is diving, he will probably notice me, or if he is with another diver, the other might notice me.’

  ‘What if he’s asleep?’ said Runa.

  ‘He doesn’t sleep much.’

  Talorc and Runa fell silent as Sariad prepared herself. Moving into the centre of the tiny chamber, she picked a selection of skulls from those against the walls and laid them out in a circle around her. She crossed her legs and straightened her back. Talorc noticed that since she had made the decision to help them she had moved differently, spoken differently. Perhaps it felt good to defy the one who tormented her, in spite of her fear.

  Sariad took a deep breath, in and out. ‘I can do this,’ she whispered.

  ‘You can. You must,’ said Runa.

  Sariad took another deep breath, then another; then she began to sing.

  It was a sound unlike anything Talorc had ever heard; except for once. On the beach, on Odhran, in the early morning. She sang the way the way the finman – Mordak – had sung. Deep, rasping – a sound no human should be able to make. But Mordak had taught her. He had taught her his art while he beat her, hurt her, kept her as his slave. Guilt at putting Sariad in danger mingled in his mind with wonder at what he witnessed.

  Help her, Sea Mother, Talorc silently prayed. He closed his eyes, imagining a spark of light that was Sariad's mind speeding through the water, from fish to bird to seal to sunshark, all the way to Fin Island.

  Sariad sang on. Her song was quiet, soft, wordless, changing only in tone; yet it was powerful. It felt like a claw, pulling on Talorc’s mind, drawing him towards hidden, watery worlds; but he resisted. Sariad must swim alone, unseen. The song was beautiful, but frightening too. She could be on Fin Island now. Her mind might be jumping through the minds of finfolk. Any moment she might sense the presence of –

  For a moment Talorc’s vision blurred. Sariad wasn’t singing any more. She was screaming.

  Runa was shouting but Talorc couldn’t hear her words. Everything faded but for Sariad, who was on the stone floor now, writhing like a fish in the mouth of an otter, screaming and sobbing amid her scattered skulls. She held her hands to her head as if something within tried to pull it apart; some nightmare spawn awakened in the depths of her mind.

  A dread presence filled the chamber.

  If Talorc had been deaf and blind; if he had been in deep sleep he would have known it. The finman was here. He was everywhere. The damp air was his breath; the cold walls were his scaled skin.

  Mordak.

  Sariad fell suddenly still as Mordak’s voice poured from her mouth and rang against the walls.

  ‘Sariad,’ he said. His voice was everywhere. ‘So long it has been. So long. I have been waiting for you to visit me.

  ‘I wish you had come sooner. You could have been by my side in all this, if you had been faithful. You could have stood with me to watch the Azawan rise from the water. But you hid from me and now you side with the dries.

  ‘Did you really believe I thought you dead, that I didn’t know where you hid? Do you think your master to be so blind?

  ‘All would have been forgiven if you had come home. Yet still you may serve me. Serve well and I may be forgiving when I come for you. For now, I have work for you to do.

  ‘Anga went to the speys, as I knew he would. The speys came to you, as I knew they would. Now you will go to Anga. You will be my voice in his hall. You will speak these words to him.

  ‘The war between the dries and the katra begins again. As you waged war on us, in the time of the dark sky, so we now wage war upon you. The islands that you took from us, we now take back from you.

  ‘We offer no mercy; we bring only vengeance. You may not flee east nor west, south nor north. The Azawan shall come for those that try, and they will burn.

  ‘Sariad, my servant, will remain in your court. Every week, she shall pronounce seven names; the names of your people, whom I have long watched. Those seven shall be brought to the beach at the place you call Skate, by noon on the coming Sevenday. The Azawan will come for them, and it shall come again for another seven, the next Sevenday.

  ‘This is how your people shall perish, Anga. The belly of my Azawan awaits every man, woman and child; save for those we shall come to collect, at the very end. Sariad shall be one of them. You shall be one of them. Your daughter shall be one of them.

  ‘These are the first seven.’

  Talorc listened as seven names were given. He knew none of them.

  ‘Fail to deliver the seven and an island shall perish,’ continued Mordak. ‘Allow any to attempt escape and an island shall perish. That is all.’

  With that Mordak was gone, as swiftly as lamp-light dispels darkness. Sariad no longer shook but lay with her chest heaving, her mouth hanging open, terror rampant in her eyes. Talorc opened his mouth to offer words of comfort; they died before he could speak them.

  He looked at Runa. Wait, she mouthed.

  Sariad's breathing eventually slowed. She sat up the way Grunna had done in her last years, as if it took great concentration and effort.

  ‘We have to go to the king,’ she said.

  ‘When morning comes, we will go,’ said Runa. ‘But not because he told you to go. We will take you to Gurn and protect you. I swear it.’

  ‘Don’t make a promise you can’t keep,’ said Sariad.

  ‘I can –’

  ‘You can’t!’ screamed Sariad. ‘I am his. I was always his. If I fight him I will fail, and he will punish me. If you fight him you will fail, and he will punish you. We must obey him.’

  ‘I won’t argue with you,’ said Runa. ‘Though I wish you believed me. We leave for Gurn in the morning. Lets sleep while we can.’

  ‘I won’t sleep,’ said Sariad.

  ‘Very well. Wake me up when the half-light comes.’ With that, Runa crawled out of the skull-chamber.

  Talorc looked between Sariad and the doorway. ‘I don’t think I’ll sleep either,’ he said. ‘I can stay if you like.’

  ‘Leave me,’ she said. He nodded and wriggled out of the chamber. Runa was curled up at the far end of the main chamber. Talorc lay down, taking care not to disturb the skulls stacked against the walls. Lamplight flickered on the ceiling and skull-covered walls.

  Talorc closed his eyes and prayed to the Sea Mother for sleep, whatever dreams may come. No nightmare could be as terrible as the one he was living in.

  The king’s chamber fell silent as Runa and Talorc led Sariad in. They had rowed through the day, arriving at Gurn as dusk fell. The guardians at the gate had looked at Runa with unconcealed relief.

  King Anga was sat in circle with Derran and a dozen or so other men, some of whom Talorc recognised as headmen or guardians from his days at Gurn before they left for Groda. Had it really only been two nights he had been gone?

  ‘I expected you sooner,’ said Anga to Runa, his tone not matching the relief in his eyes. ‘You had me worried.’

  ‘We went to Groda with the spey,’ said Runa, beginning her story rather than apologising. She told of their crossing, their journey into the Trowie Glen and the ritual on the hilltop. Some of the men exchanged disbelieving looks; she ignored them.

  Sariad kept her eyes upon the fire as Runa told the council what Skelda had said of her. She omitted any details of their journey to the bone-house, and Talorc could tell she fought not to hesitate or stumble as she recounted what happened there.

  ‘He spoke through Sariad, using her voice. He told her to give you a message,’ she finished.

  Sariad finally met Anga’s eyes. He nodded once.

  ‘The war between the dries and the katra has begun again,’ said Sariad, relaying Mordak’s message.

  The guardians and headmen stared at Sariad.

  ‘…And an island shall perish. That is all,’ Sariad finished.

  Mordak’s words hung in the air like a reeking smoke.

  Every set of eyes went to Anga.

  ‘We proceed as planned,’ said the king at last. ‘The muster begins in the morning. We meet at Otter Bay two evenings hence.’

  ‘And… and the sacrifices, sire?’ said an elderly headman.

  ‘There will be no sacrifices,’ growled Anga. ‘This finman was right about one thing. We are going to war.’

  Part III

  Chapter Twenty Two

  ‘We’re moving.’

  All around Talorc, men crawled from under sleeping skins, stood, stretched and pulled on their boots. A few whispered prayers to the Sea Mother. He forced himself to follow suit though cold fear whispered in his ear, telling him to stay nestled beneath his new sleeping skin, upon the warm straw.

  One by one the guardians left the lamp-lit store-house that had been allotted to them. The sacks of grain and feed that it housed had been piled high to make room for their sleeping bodies. Talorc waited until he was alone before hurriedly uncovering his feet and pulling on his boots. He blew out the lamp and followed.

  Outside a brisk wind whistled through the air. There was just enough light to reveal the squat shapes of the buildings that made up the farm, and the line of men heading away from the farm, down the path through the fields to Otter Bay. Talorc hunched his shoulders and shivered as he went after them. It was autumn but winter’s breath rode the wind.

  How many of the men and women here today would live to see winter? He feared it would be few. He had tried to get behind Anga’s plan to attack Fin Island. Anga knew war; he had fought and bled and killed in the wars of the Skollish kings. Runa supported the plan, and she had grown up training with weapons and listening to the talk of fighting men. Yet it seemed wrong to Talorc. It felt wrong, in his churning stomach and shivering bones.

  Was it really wrong, or was he simply afraid? Of course he was afraid; he was terrified. So were the guardians. He had lain awake half the night listening to men tossing and turning, coughing and sighing. At one point he heard a quickly-muffled sob. These were trained fighters; but all they had ever done was train, at Gurn for a moon each summer. This was real. The men must have thought of their families, wondering if they would ever wait out winter or reap the harvest with them again.

  Fields gave way to sand and dune-grass. Talorc crested the dunes and looked down on Otter Bay.

  There were more people on the crescent-shaped beach than he had seen in one place in his life. Was all of Orka present? Anga had put the call out for every able-bodied Orkadi who could fight to gather here. Talorc had travelled across from Gurn with Runa, Anga and the guardians the previous day. They had come ashore on a beach to the south of the island of Calag and carried their boats across the low-lying island to Otter Bay. Anga hadn’t wanted boats sailing round the north of the island, in case they were seen by watchers on Fin Island. Houses and store-houses in the nearby village had been offered to the royal party, while the other Orkadi that arrived had slept among the dunes and on the beach, without fires to warm them.

  Talorc had been astonished, as he and Runa wandered among the camps the previous afternoon, at how many people had come. Many more must have arrived late in the evening. Grunna had taught him to count up to dozens, but this was dozens of dozens of dozens of people, gathered in circles upon the beach, their boats lined up from one one end of the bay to the other. Thick fog sat upon the sea beyond the bay, cocooning the camp and hiding it, Talorc hoped, from prying eyes.

  ‘It makes me proud,’ said a voice, startling him. Runa came to stand beside him. She was wrapped in a cloak of seal-skin fastened with a bronze broach in the shape of a boar. Its hood flapped in the wind.

  ‘Orka has not seen war for generations,’ she continued. ‘The dark sky war is more a fireside tale than history to these people. Yet they came. Fishers, farmers, herders. They answered the call to fight.’

  And die, thought Talorc.

  ‘Do you think them brave?’ she asked. ‘Or foolish?’

  ‘I think it wasn’t your father that brought us here. It was Mordak. He has us like fish in a net.’

  ‘We are like fish in a net! Orka is the net. We cannot leave. So, we fight. What other way is open to us? Do you have some strategy in mind that you haven’t shared?’

  ‘We’ve been over this,’ said Talorc, trying not to let a note of irritation creep into his voice. Runa was spoiling for a fight and he didn’t want to give her any fuel. Yet he resented the mockery implied by her words; that Talorc the farm boy could be foolish enough to think his opinion was worth something.

  ‘We have. And you admitted that you couldn’t think of any better plan than this. Yes, many of us will die, whether the Azawan comes or not. But at least we have a chance this way. I would rather die fighting than watch my people die before being made a slave.’

  She was right. To attack the island was the only chance they had. He couldn’t think of another way. But there had to be one. There had to be a better way than this.

  ‘None of us like it,’ Runa said, lowering her voice as a group of men passed them on their way to the beach. ‘But if you show your fear, people will see, and it will give fire to their own. Fear could spread through our ranks and consume us before we have even begun.’

  ‘That’s true for you; you’re the princess.’

  ‘And you’re Talorc. Everyone knows who you are now. So be as afraid as you like, but don’t show it.’

  Word went out to head to the boats. There was no rallying speech from the king; he had given his instructions to the headmen last night, to be passed on to the islanders. As the crowds of Orkadi quietly made their way to the lines of curraghs, he caught a glimpse of Anga up ahead, his huge figure easily distinguishable among the mass of people. Talorc glanced at Runa to see her watching her father. The fight between the two of them had raged from when they had arrived at Gurn up until when they left. Runa had claimed she could never be respected as queen, if she had stayed behind when white-haired farmers and scrawny fisher-boys had gone to war. Anga answered that she would never be queen at all if she died today on a finman’s spear. Runa made it clear she wouldn’t leave him alone until she won the argument, and eventually he caved in.

  They threaded their way forward until they caught up with Anga and Derran. Talorc noticed many people looking their way and whispering as they passed. He thought he saw approval in their eyes when they saw Runa standing among them. It made sense, of course, not to risk her life as well as Anga’s; but wasn’t her life at risk anyway? Like she said, a quick death would be better than slavery. But it wouldn’t come to that. It couldn’t.

  Though it had done for Sariad.

  Talorc wondered what Sariad was doing now. Kretta had been given care of her. The smith’s wife had pushed out her husband so the two of them could share a house at Gurn. A guard had been posted to watch the door and make sure no-one unknown to Sariad entered, on Kretta’s orders. Kretta seemed to understand what Sariad needed to feel safe, and Talorc was grateful for it.

  He had looked in on Sariad a number of times before they left. Each time he came away with a heavy heart. She missed her bone-house and her skulls, though she had brought a sack of her dearest companions with her. The vole, otter and bird skulls gave her comfort; but it could never be enough. Sariad didn’t believe the war against Mordak and the fins could be won. She believed it was only a matter of time until he came for her. Talorc wanted to tell her she was wrong; he wanted to promise that Mordak would never harm her again. The words never left his throat.

  Anga and Derran were waiting for Runa and Talorc at the water’s edge. Father and daughter exchanged stiff nods. The condition to her coming was that she remain with Anga; he didn’t trust anyone else to protect her.

  The king gave a signal which was passed on in silence to each end of the bay. The Orkadi lifted their boats and brought them down to the shore.

  It was time.

  Talorc, Runa, Anga and Derran carried their craft into the icy water. Screeching gulls scattered as they pushed it out and jumped in one by one. Talorc went last, relieved he didn’t stumble and crash into the water. He was getting more used to boats.

  Derran and Talorc took the oars, with Talorc at the prow. They rowed in file with the other curraghs out into the open sea. The water immediately became rougher after they left the shelter of the bay. Was the Sea Mother warning them back? Tendrils of fog spun slowly through the sea air.

  Runa was scanning the sea over Talorc’s shoulder and stroking her sword-hilt. He knew what she was looking for, though they were barely out of the harbour. Were the fins out in their own boats, waiting to spring on them? Would the water start to bubble and hiss, signalling the coming of the Azawan? Whenever Talorc turned and glanced over his shoulder he saw nothing but mist. From the rear, Anga watched Runa, his eyes hardly leaving her.

  Talorc could feel the weight of the sword Runa had given him against his hip and thigh. She owned two: one slender and light, one heavier and more powerful. She had given him the lighter one; probably because he wouldn’t be able to handle the other. Her sword hung from her right hip, her dagger from her left. Anga and Runa were similarly armed. They all wore armour of boiled leather; again, Talorc wore Runa’s spares. He knew how lucky he was; most of the islanders were armed with heuk-knives and skinning-knives.

 

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