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1146 Words
“The Red Gale.” He leans forward, vertebrae clicking. “I watched you die. Watched you spit blood in the Hound’s eye with steel through your heart. Watched you kill with a bone stump after your arm came off.”
His head tilts, sword-antlers scraping stone. “Impressive.”
“Glad someone enjoyed the show.”
He laughs. The sound scrapes out of him, dry and hollow, carrying no mirth. “Your thread still runs silver in the Great Weave. Still connects you to the living world.” He gestures at the blazing filament in my chest. “Someone paid a god’s ransom to keep it whole. To bind your fate to theirs before you ever fell.”
“Who?”
“The Lady. She Who Waits at Winter’s End. Hel of the Pale Threshold.”
He stands, joints protesting with sounds of snapping kindling. “She bought your death before it happened. Purchased your thread while you still breathed. Now she calls in the contract.”
“What’s she want with a dead mercenary?”
“Not the mercenary.” He descends from the throne, each step making the threads beneath us sing discordant notes. “The man who wouldn’t stop.”
He stops an arm’s length away. This close, I can see through the gaps in his armor. Nothing inside but darkness and the faint glow of thread-light.
“Death marked you when that witch’s fire took your eye. Everything after was borrowed time. But you kept killing. Kept moving. Your body was dead meat that refused to fall.” He taps the silver thread, and I feel it answer in whatever’s left of my chest. “Most men drop when death touches them. You fought death itself to a standstill. Beat it back with a broken spear and will alone.”
His black-stone eye catches the red coal-light, throwing it back in fractured patterns. “That kind of will interests her.”
“Interesting enough to bring me back?”
“Not back. Forward. Through.” He gestures, and a figure emerges from shadow.
One of the Pale Boatmen. He’s wrapped in oilcloth that drips water which never hits the floor. His face is worn smooth, jaw ground flat from centuries of chewing toll-coins from the mouths of the dead. He carries an oar carved from what might be a titan’s thighbone.
“The crossing requires payment,” the Boatman rasps. “Coin, memory, or proof of worth.”
“Fresh out of coin. Memories aren’t for sale.” I spread empty hands.
“That leaves the third.”
“Worth must be proven.” The Boatman’s wrapped face tilts, studying me. “Submit to judgment.”
“Submit?” I step forward. “That’s a word for living men who still have something to lose.”
“You will be tested.”
I’m already moving. Death hasn’t made me patient.
◇ ◆ ◇
My fist drives into his wrapped face. The impact travels up my arm and stops at the shoulder, absorbed by something that shouldn’t be able to absorb anything. The oar swings. I duck, grab it, use his own momentum to flip him.
We hit the thread-floor hard.
The Boatman’s stronger. He’s got the weight of every drowned soul behind him. But I’ve got thirty years of dirty tricks. I drive my knee into what should be his kidney, bite down on his wrist until something black leaks through the wrappings.
We roll, slamming into the throne’s base. Mawcaron watches, amused.
I get the oar across the Boatman’s throat, lean my full weight behind it. “How’s this for proof of worth?”
The Boatman goes still. Then that grinding voice comes again, and I realize he’s laughing.
“Adequate.”
He dissolves into river water that doesn’t touch me, reforming ten feet away. The oar stays in my hands, heavier than it should be.
“You fight like you’re still alive,” the Boatman observes, water still dripping from wrappings that are already dry. “Good. You’ll need that where you’re going.”
「Trial passed. Passage granted.」
Mawcaron’s ruined face splits into something that might be a grin. “The river’s full of the dead who won’t stay down. They’ll test you harder than any boatman could. See if that will of yours can handle what comes after.”
I test the oar’s weight. Heavy as regret, but it’ll crack skulls. “And if I make it?”
“Then the Lady gets what she paid for. A dead man too stubborn to know he’s dead.” Mawcaron gestures and a rib spreads apart, opening a gate in the cathedral wall. “She needs someone who won’t stop when ordered. When begged. When reality itself says enough.”
Through the gate, black water laps at a shore of ground bone. A boat waits, built from shoulder blades and storm-touched oak, its prow a giant’s skull with jaw hanging open, empty sockets staring at nothing.
The Boatman leads me to the shore. “You drew blood from a divine servant. The drowned will smell that violence on you. It will make them hungrier.”
“Good. Hungry enemies make mistakes.”
The water reflects nothing. Swallows light. Up close, I can see the boat’s held together with sinew and corroded nails. Teeth line the gunwales, too many kinds to count.
“The river will test you, Red Gale. The drowned smell that silver thread. They’ll want to cut it, claim it, feast on what connects you to the world above.”
“Let them try.”
I step toward the boat, then pause. Look back at Mawcaron on his molar throne.
“Why me? Plenty of dead sellswords down here. Plenty of stubborn bastards who didn’t know when to quit.”
“Because you’re the only one who kept fighting after death had already won.” He settles back, sword-antlers scraping stone. “Your eye was gone. Your arm was gone. Your guts were spilling through your fingers. And you still drove bone through steel. Still had enough in you to spit out a curse with your last breath.”
His hollow eye socket seems to deepen. “That’s rarer than gold down here.”
“Just too stupid to fall down.”
“Exactly what she needs.”
The boat rocks as I step in, oar across my knees. The bone hull creaks but holds. The Boatman shoves off with one boot, and we slide away from shore.
Already I can feel them down there. The drowned dead, drawn to my silver thread. Hundreds. Thousands. All wanting what I’ve got. I adjust my grip on the oar.
At least the work’s familiar.
Kill until you can’t.
Same as above, just wetter.
The shore vanishes into dark. Just me, the boat, the Boatman, and whatever’s waiting below.
- Writer
