Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 38

When she plunged into the river from the stern of the serpent ship, Lila swam deep. The shouting Norukai hurled their spears into the water, but she didn’t head toward the shore as they expected. Rather, she stroked powerfully down the current and moved far ahead of the three anchored ships. When her lungs were about to burst, she surfaced again and forced herself to exhale with only a whisper of sound. Far behind, she could still hear the raiders raging at her escape. She suspected Bannon would pay a price for her failure, but she knew he could endure it. She had made him tough.

She wrapped her arm around a floating log, and it kept her above the surface as she drifted downstream. With the serpent ships anchored for the night, Lila realized she would be able to cover a great distance if she simply floated on the current all night long.

Then she would be far enough ahead to make another attempt to rescue Bannon.

Resting, she let her thoughts drift just like the brown water around her. Lila tried to process how she had failed, and how Adessa could have been so brutally defeated. Lila felt dismayed and empty; although she had seen many trainees and morazeth sisters die in combat, Adessa had been different, seemingly invincible. She had fought the Norukai king so Lila could rescue Bannon. And they both had failed. Adessa was dead, and the young swordsman remained a prisoner.

“I will not give up on you, boy,” she muttered as river water lapped against the floating log.

Locking her arms and legs around branches, Lila dozed for an hour or two and woke when her feet brushed against a large slimy creature beneath her. Startled, she grabbed her dagger. The sword was still strapped to her back, but she couldn’t get it in time. As faint dawn suffused the eastern sky, she could see large forms swimming next to her, each smooth tan body as large as a canoe. The channel catfish lumbered along, not predatory, only dangerous because of their size. Lila drew her legs against the floating log, and the catfish swam past her into the widening channel.

In the light of sunrise, Lila looked around and saw how far she had traveled during the night. The sight struck her with awe, then alarm.

The widening river sprawled into a diverse delta of numerous channels and sandbars. Beyond the land’s end, she saw the estuary spill into the ocean, an open expanse of blue water that extended to the horizon. Lila had never seen such a sight in her life. The Killraven River ended here.

She released the log and drifted in the water, swimming to a low sandbar covered with tufts of grasses. Lila had gotten a substantial head start on the serpent ships, but they would come soon, on their way to the sea. Once the big ships passed the estuary and reached the open ocean, Lila knew she would never be able to catch them. This was her last chance to free Bannon.

She had to stop them.

For half an hour after Lila escaped, King Grieve coddled Chalk, touching the shaman’s battered face, wrapping a big arm around his scrawny shoulder. Consoling his albino friend seemed to make him even angrier. “I’ll make them all grieve.”

Chained to the deck while the ships remained anchored during the night, Bannon could not escape King Grieve’s fury. The big man strode up to him, his heavy boots ringing loud on the boards. His war axe was still stained with Adessa’s blood spray.

The bolt holding Bannon’s chain remained set in place, and when the young man tugged on it, he felt the sharp scabs and bruises of the manacle around his ankle. Big Erik sat nearby in the darkness, knees drawn up to his chest, shoulders hunched with contained sobs.

Bannon steeled himself, sure that Grieve meant to lop his head off, but Chalk scuttled over to them. The shaman was miserable from his smashed face, but he touched the king’s arm to stop him. Grieve shook him off and stood over Bannon, raised the weapon. The young man glared at him, knowing he couldn’t escape, and the Norukai king brought down the heavy weapon with a hard thunk into the wood of the deck, smashing the plank so he could uproot the anchor bolt.

Chalk bobbed his head and clapped his hands in delight. “The axe cleaves the wood! The sword cleaves the bone!”

Grieve uprooted the chain and dragged Bannon by the legs toward a pool of light from one of the lanterns. “Scrub the blood from the deck and get rid of the dead woman. Feed her to the catfish.”

Grieve kicked at Erik. “You! Help him!” The big man shuddered and moaned, paralyzed.

“I’ll do it myself,” Bannon said, climbing to his feet and grabbing the brush. “Leave my friend alone.” He realized it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words passed his lips.

“You have no friends,” the king said.

Dropping the axe, he wrapped his big hands around Erik’s head and pressed hard against his temples and cheeks. The captive’s eyes went wide, and his mouth dropped open in a wail. Grieve’s muscles bulged with the effort as he snapped the other man’s head sideways in an abrupt vicious turn. The bone cracked, and Erik’s feet jittered on the deck, clanking the ankle chain.

Bannon felt sick, his knees weak as he forced himself to remain standing. Other Norukai crowded close, making sure he did not try to dive over the side, but Bannon was paralyzed by the sight of his dead friend.

King Grieve wasn’t finished, though. With an additional grunt he twisted the head around even more, snapping and grinding the neck bones, stretching the skin and tendons. Erik’s head faced entirely the wrong direction. With another severe jerk, Grieve twisted again until the neck popped and tore, and then he wrenched Erik’s head off his shoulders, uprooting the spine with the ragged cord still dangling down.

Grieve shoved the limp body onto the deck boards. “Now you have another mess to clean up.”

The remaining slaves whimpered, but Bannon refused to reward the king with any reaction. He clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling murderous rage toward Grieve and all Norukai, as well as dismay that he had let his friend down. If only he had a chance …

With an offhand gesture the king tossed Erik’s head overboard, and Bannon heard it splash into the dark river where Lila had vanished more than an hour ago. If she came back, the young man imagined he and the morazeth together could kill a dozen of the ugly raiders … but it wouldn’t be enough.

“Clean up the woman’s body,” Grieve sneered. “I’ll dispose of this garbage.” Seeming to take pleasure in the labor, he raised his axe again and brought it down in an abrupt stroke that struck off Erik’s foot just above the iron shackle so he could drag the body from the chain.

Chalk let out a high-pitched laugh. “The axe does cleave the bone!”

Bannon knew that the albino had saved him, staying King Grieve, but he could have saved Erik, too. Chalk’s eyes were bright as he capered around, distracted.

Grieve heaved the headless body over the side of the serpent ship. Eager to help, Chalk ran up, grabbed Erik’s severed foot, and flung it into the river, following the larger body with a smaller splash.

“Feed the fish!” Chalk cried. “Make them grow big.”

Bannon hardened his heart with the certainty that someday he would be free and someday he would kill King Grieve.

Moving stiffly with pain, he went to the bow, where Adessa’s disfigured body lay on the deck. Her face, throat, and chest were like pounded meat. The king thought he was punishing Bannon by forcing him to see the bloody morazeth leader, but Bannon had hated Adessa, too, although he felt no elation at seeing the woman dead. He couldn’t understand why Adessa would have been any part of Lila’s plan to help free him, but she had provided a distraction that gave Lila a chance, though not enough.

Bannon slung the morazeth leader’s mangled body over his shoulder and grimaced when he felt the wet pulp of her skin, the oozing blood and tissue. She felt light, empty, for such a fearsome warrior. The Norukai sailors watched, amused, as he rolled her overboard into the darkness.

“Feed the fish!” Chalk cried. “Big fish.”

With a queasy stomach, Bannon turned to Maxim’s collapsed skull and sloughed, rotten flesh. He shuddered as he remembered the unmistakable maniacal laugh, the taunting voice of the dead. He feared the slain wizard commander’s spirit might return.

Bannon upended the barrel and dumped the mess overboard, where it joined Adessa’s body in the river.

Many of the Norukai lounged back and snored for the remaining hours of the night, though edgy guards stayed close to Bannon. He concentrated on scrubbing the blood and washing the deck clean with buckets of river water. The work wasn’t much different from cleaning fish guts and slime, but this was the smeared remnants of human beings.

As if keeping him company, Chalk pestered him for hours, even if his words were slurred due to his split and swollen lip. Bannon did his best to ignore the bothersome shaman, though each time he saw the scars from the myriad bite marks on the pale skin, he shuddered from the ordeal the outcast had endured.

After sunrise, when the deck was scoured clean five times over, the Norukai tied Bannon next to the other slaves again, and Chalk found a spot beside a wooden crate, where he curled up and went to sleep.

When the morning brightened enough for them to see the channel ahead, the Norukai raised their anchors and stretched the dark sails to drift down the river again. The slaves sat quietly under the hot sun, searching for remnants of hope. If they tried to speak to one another, the Norukai would beat them.

Near noon, the crew grew visibly excited when they could see the estuary ahead, the widening mouth where the river spilled into the vast open water.

“I can’t wait to be out on the ocean again,” Gara said, then let out a mournful whistle. “My ships were made for the open sea.”

With longing in his heart, Bannon remembered spending time on sailing ships, even the doomed Wavewalker. As a boy on Chiriya Island, he had watched the graceful vessels sail off to places he could only dream of. He had always wanted to sail the seas, and now he was a captive of the hideous raiders. He had no hope of escape, unless Chalk could help him.…

As the raider vessels cruised into the delta, shouts of surprise came from the bow. Norukai hurried to the front of the ship. Some of the raiders guffawed and joked, pointing over the side. Bannon strained against his bindings to see what had drawn their attention, but too many burly bodies blocked his view.

King Grieve stood by the carved serpent figurehead, and he let out an angry snort. “I can kill her just as easily as I killed the last one. Go get her.”

Out in the widening estuary where sandbars and hummocks confused the direct route to the ocean, a woman stood alone on a sandbar in the middle of the river, waiting for the serpent ships to arrive.

Lila.

When Bannon watched the Norukai bring the new prisoner on board, she was trussed like an animal killed in a hunt. Her wrists and ankles were bound, as if the raiders feared her, and with good reason. They dropped Lila heavily onto the deck, and she smothered her grunt as her head struck the wood. She glared at them in defiance.

When she saw Bannon, her stony expression softened and her eyes lit up. Chalk cringed and scuttled away from the woman who had struck him.

Grieve bent down to relieve Lila of her dagger, then—gingerly—her agile knife. “You won’t be using these again.” He threw both weapons over the side.

Next, he pulled the sword that was bound to her back, holding up Sturdy. Bannon’s heart surged at seeing his trusty weapon. He had bought the discolored blade from a swordsmith in Tanimura. Nathan had trained him in its use aboard the Wavewalker, and Bannon had killed many enemies with it, including countless Norukai. He strained against his bonds. If only he could get the weapon, his familiar blade—

“Ugly sword,” Grieve said. He unceremoniously threw it overboard into the river.

Bannon bit back an outcry. Sturdy! The sword tumbled and spun in the air before it splashed into the deepening water. The serpent ships sailed on, past the estuary toward the open sea.

Bannon slumped back. Sturdy was gone, sunk to the bottom of the river’s mouth.

Lila managed to sit upright, and Chalk pranced over to her, reluctant to approach the morazeth. His cheek and mouth were swollen, puffy with blossoming bruises, and blood from the split lip caked his pale mouth.

Glancing at the shaman’s damaged face, Grieve glared down at Lila. “This is for what you did to my Chalk.” He slugged her face hard, knocking her to the deck with blood pouring from her smashed nose and split lip. Though Lila didn’t make a sound, Bannon groaned in anticipation of what he knew was to come.

The serpent ships left the coast and headed out to sea.