Pain. Someone had burned a hole right through Arn, he realized, as he emerged from another restless night of the dreamworld. It had been two weeks since Emrez had brought Arn this suffering, but that wound never let up, it seemed. He lay face down on Morlo’s bottom bunk and groaned as he tried to sit up.
Ponark yanked him off the bed and Arn floundered across the floorboards of the doctor’s quarters. Gamden yelled defensively, rising out of the chair in which he slept. Ponark yanked the curved sword off his belt and pointed it at Arn’s head. Gamden was forced to stop, glowering at the second-in-command.
Arn slowly started to sit up. “It’s good,” he told Gamden. Then to Ponark, in the stranger’s tongue: “Awake.”
“Good,” Ponark said. “You scrubbing, Captain wants, tikio man. Get you karogia.” Karogia was like the word for strong, karos, but different. Stronger, Arn thought.
He followed Gamden out of Morlo’s cabin and down the row of bunks. The healer must have been tending to other responsibilities this morning. Gamden walked slowly, and Ponark shoved Arn to force the duo ahead of him to pick up the pace. As they climbed the steps to the top deck, Arn looked at the scars on Gamden’s back. He assumed they were similar to his own, but they were still too bloated and red to make out any distinction beyond a circle. Why had they been burned with circles? Why did the crew now treat them differently, like their secret was out?
Though they had previously kept their weapons bundled below deck, the sailors now wore them daily. Captain Emrez had ordered this. It was one of many changes established after they had passed through the line of guarding ships and into this new realm of the Deep. Arn had never seen so many vessels—he came above deck and gawked for the hundredth time. Scattered across the waves were dozens of ships. Many had one or two sails, but some had three. Others showed long spikes protruding along the water’s edge, while most had room for oars along their sides.
Emrez’s ship traversed the seemingly endless coast of this strange world—they were moving closer to the looming pillar of smoke that Arn had spotted the day before he had been burned. Their route was convoluted, often moving away from the land instead of keeping alongside it. Emrez regularly met with other Captains; twice he had taken most of the crew off his ship to carouse on others’. On those occasions, Morlo stayed with Arn and Gamden, along with a few guards.
Arn and Gamden were tasked with cleaning the deck for nearly the tenth time since their branding. They had only been required to do it once before that horrid day. The Captain had made it clear that they would do what he said or face further agony. The sun beat down and they knew a second enduring pain—that of the unwavering sun.
Once, while they paused to work their calloused hands dry after the dirty water pail, Gamden shifted his posture onto his backside and spoke quietly to Arn. “We should do something. We have the element of surprise.”
“Do something?” Arn asked, vaguely amused. Gamden had shown skill during the skirmish near the firepits of that town, but did he know how difficult it would be to slay twenty seasoned men—men with the wits and brawn to triumph over the Deep for months on end?
“They have weapons; we can easily get hold of them. Or wait until they are eating in the bunks—set a fire,” Gamden urged him. “They are taking us to nightmares far worse than what we have endured.”
“So?” Arn asked. In his life, nightmares were normal. Had he not crossed to Scoa of his own volition just to meet the screechers in person?
“We will wish for the island again,” Gamden breathed.
Arn picked up one of the dirty rags. “I already do,” he said. But, for the first time, he meant Razaad. He liked to think that if he abruptly woke up in his own bed—as a hunter once more—he would be content to stalk the water scales or shadow gulls. It was a warm daydream—and utterly untrue.
Gamden reluctantly grabbed another of the rags and started to rub one of the steps near the Captain’s rudder deck. A small cabin on this level allowed for Emrez’s superior cabin; Arn was scrubbing the salty planks in front of the door. Emrez cleared his throat and Arn looked up at the rudder deck above him. “Do not chadath,” the man said sternly.
Arn hissed at him wordlessly. This made the brawny leader grin and he said something under his breath.
An hour later, Gamden gasped. “Arn, look,” he said. He was looking over the wooden deck rail.
Quietly, Arn rose from a crawl to his knees. He could see the plethora of smoky trails close to the ship now—they had arrived at whatever enormous settlement was causing it. Here, the ships of this enormous fleet were close together and many were heavily protected with additional wooden beams, gleaming metallic plates, and jutting points at their bows. Arn slowly stood up, so he could see across the waves to the shore.
A smoldering mountain sat on the rocky cliffs—but it was nothing like the rocky slopes around it. This was a thing made by men or by the devilish spirits that Jorik claimed lurked beyond Razaad. Layer upon layer of rock was laid much like logs in a wooden building, supporting layer after layer of the city. The smallest buildings were twice or thrice the size of Stone Spear’s hut. Some structures spewed up smoky clouds like air bubbles through some monstrous fish’s gills. Others had openings large enough to swallow Emrez’s ship whole, open like maws and illuminated by glowing heat-sources within them.
The city was marred with burn marks and rubble heaps. Though the ships on the Deep faced toward this enormous settlement, Arn could see people walking along what must have been roads. Others held weapons and walked along the lower stone tiers. Black marks smeared the sides of many buildings, though Arn had no clue whether they had been left by the prowling of some sinister entity, weapons so advanced he could not conceive of them, or by the degree of smoke the city seemed to constantly exhale.
Wooden spikes ran along the cliffs and up the nearby rocky slope. This strange outer wall had small huts built outside of it. Hundreds of people could be seen in the largest gathering of shacks—many glinted with metal weapons or armour. Arn saw the wall emerge on the other side of the settlement, many miles distant. There—he realized—a ship from the fleet was anchored. Was this their settlement?
“Starath,” Emrez said, pointing toward the coast. He looked at Arn with discerning eyes. His strange fascination with the survivor seemed to be the only reason he had shared. Arn had heard the sailors speak of Starath before, seemingly as their destination. Emrez clucked his tongue. “War,” he said, and then disappeared across the half-deck to his tiller once more.
“They are taking us to die,” Arn said, quietly, in his and Gamden’s language. There was a strange sort of justice to this. Arn’s time on Emrez’s ship was like his favourite place on their island—it was a place of transition, the stretch where things were wet and dry at the same time. Here, Arn had his last breaths. It was a chance for him to dwell on the awful things he had done. He had beat Thalla—his dear friend—within an inch of her life.
Ponark slapped Arn across the scruffy scalp, nearly sending him reeling. “Scrub,” the man demanded, pointing emphatically at the deck. Arn sank to his knees and, with white knuckles, pushed his rag across the salt-stained boards. Gamden may have been right—maybe Arn could kill all these men. His fury was nearly bubbling over and Ponark would be an easy first target.
But Arn pushed his anger into the deck planks and kneaded until it turned to patience. Not anymore, he thought. Not in this In Between. I will face the next life as a hunter, not a killer. That thought made him realize how unlikely it was to get a next life. “Gamden,” he said quietly, once Ponark had paced away. “If I go first, make sure to remove and bury my heart.”
“What?” Gamden stopped scrubbing to gape at him. Arn smiled and kept working.