Текст книги "Ice Country"

Автор книги: David Estes

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter One

Huck

Standing on the deck watching the sunrise, I can’t hold back my smile. The air is crisp, a little colder than usual for this time of yar, numbing the tip of my nose, filling each breath with the distinct smell of salt and brine. While endless yellow clouds patrol the ocean, the half-sun splashes purples, pinks and oranges on the ever reddening morning sky.

To the starboard side I can see the shoreline, sandy at first, and then green, rolled out like a welcome mat. Above the land, the yellow clouds darken to black.

In the waters surrounding the ship, I see the familiar dark triangles of sharp-tooths breaking the surface, patrolling the ocean, hoping for an execution or a natural death to give them the chance to taste human flesh yet again.

But even the constant presence of the sharp-tooths can’t wipe away my grin. Not today.

The ship lurches beneath me, riding the crest of yet another big rolling wave. But I don’t stumble, don’t lose my balance, don’t so much as sway from the ship’s movements or the tumultuous wind that whips my shirt in a frenzy around me.

Steady.

Balanced.

A seaman, through and through.

And smiling, bigger than the ocean, relishing the salt spray splashing my face as a wave crashes against the hull, living for the feel of the power rolling and throbbing beneath my feet, laughing when a flock of white-winged big-chins dive bomb the water, each emerging with a nice-sized fish clamped tightly between their beaks.

This is the life. The life of a Soaker. A typical morning in water country.

My life, all about to change.

“Huck,” a deep voice rumbles from behind. Not a murmur, not a greeting: a command.

Startled, I turn quickly, my smile vanishing in an instant. “Father?” I say.

“Admiral Jones,” he says, but I don’t understand. Admiral Jones is what his shipmen call him.

“Sir?” I say.

“Son,” he says, taking two steps forward to reach my side. “Today you become a man.” His words are the truth but I know he doesn’t mean them. Not after what happened. Not after what always happens.

Today’s the start of my fourteenth yar, the yar I cast off my childish ways and become a real seaman, not just the son of one. “I’m ready,” I say, wondering if it’s true. I desperately want to look down, to look away, to escape the piercing stare of my father’s crystal blue eyes, but I don’t—

–because men don’t look away for anyone;

–men aren’t scared of anything;

–men don’t cry.

My father’s creed, one I’ve heard a million and a half times.

And men don’t fail their fathers, like I have so many times before.

Resting a hand on my shoulder, my father—Admiral Jones—says, “Are you? Ready?”

Uh…I think? Maybe? “Aye,” I say, keeping my gaze on his but feeling his disappointment tremble through me.

“Hmm,” Father says, chewing on his lip. “I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?”

I hold my breath because the way he’s looking at me, so full of doubt, so uncertain, with one eyebrow raised, his nostrils flared slightly, his expression lopsided, seems to pick me apart from the outside in, like a big-chin tearing at the flesh of a fish. If I breathe I’m afraid it will come out in a ragged shudder, and then he’ll know.

He’ll know I’m not a man, even if I’m fourteen now.

I feel my face warm while I hold my breath for ten seconds, twenny, as he continues to stare at me, his eyes probing, closing in on the truth.

Just when I start to feel a little lightheaded, he looks away, turns, stomps off, his boots hammering the wooden deck like a funeral drum. I let my breath out as slowly as I can, closing my eyes. “I am a man,” I whisper under my breath, trying to convince myself. “I won’t fail you. Not anymore.” If only I had the guts to say it loud enough for him to hear.

“Walk with me, Son,” my father says without turning around.

“Aye, aye, Father,” I say.

“Admiral Jones,” he replies, and I finally understand. By blood he’s still my father, but by rights he’s the admiral, and I’m one of his men, subject to all the same rules as anyone else.

“Admiral Jones,” I correct, wondering why saying it this time doesn’t feel nearly as good as it always did when I practiced in my cabin.

I hustle to catch up, trying to stride the way he does across the deck. Long steps, chin up, eyes sweeping the ship, taking everything in. As we walk aft, toward the rear of the ship, two of my father’s lieutenants are swashbuckling to the left, or starboard side. Their swords ring out loud and shrill and practiced as they parry and slash and block. It’s a morning ritual for these two, Cain and Hobbs, one I’ve watched with a boyish interest many times before.

When we approach, they stop, planting their blades point-first into the deck. They each raise a flat hand to their foreheads in a rigid salute. “At ease, lieutenants,” my father says.

They relax their arms but continue to stand at attention. “Mornin’, Admiral…Huck,” Cain says, his blue uniform turning dark with sweat stains beneath his armpits. He flashes me a smile.

“Mornin’, Cain,” I say, smiling back.

“Lieutenant Cain,” my father corrects sharply. I look up at him and he’s giving me those dark eyes again, sparkling blue under the morning sun but shrouded in shadow from the brim of his admiral’s cap.

“Lieutenant Cain,” I mumble, feeling stupid. How can I be a man if I can’t even talk right?

“Mornin’, Huck,” Hobbs says with a sneer. Unlike Cain, he’s never liked me.

I frown at his half-smirk. “Mornin’,” I say under my breath.

“Lieutenant,” my father says again.

Stupid, stupid. “Lieutenant,” I say.

“So you’re a man today,” Cain says, slapping me on the back with a firm hand. It hurts a little but I’ve never felt better.

“I am,” I say, beaming.

“That remains to be seen,” my father says, wiping the grin off my face with his words. How do I prove myself to him after what happened two years ago? My mother’s face flashes through my mind: her quick smile, her green eyes, her long blonde hair. The way she’d read to me at night. Tales of great battles against the Stormers, our independence won and lost and won again. Many years ago.

Her face again, not smiling this time: awash with terror, twisted and stricken and looking up at me, pleading—her eyes always pleading…

“Huck!” my father barks.

I snap out of the memory, shake my head. Hobbs is snickering while Cain looks at me under a furrowed brow. Father’s lips are unreadable beneath his thick salt-and-pepper beard. “Wha—what?” I stammer.

“Lieutenant Hobbs asked you a question,” my father says.

I glance at Hobbs, who looks smug, his hands on his hips. “Aye?” I say. Catching myself, I add, “Lieutenant.”

“Have you been practicing your sword work?” he asks.

Not the question I expected. For a moment I let the warmth of pride fill my heart, because I have. Been practicing, that is. Every spare moment I’ve been practicing with the wooden blade my father gave me when I turned seven. Fighting the other young boys on the ship, parrying with masts, battling heavy bags of potatoes and rice. Swinging and swinging my practice sword until it’s become a part of me, an extension of my arm and hand.

I stick my chest out and say, “Aye.”

“Show us,” Hobbs says, a gleam in his dark brown eyes.

I look at him sideways, wondering what he’s up to, but not wanting to disappoint my father yet again, I start to pull my wooden sword from where it hangs loosely from my belt.

“No,” Hobbs says. “Not with that. With this.” He reaches down and picks up a sword, shorter than his, but shiny and sharp and real. And the hilt…

–it has the Admiral’s markings on it, a woman, beautiful and shapely, her hair long and falling in front of her shoulders to cover her naked breasts. And beneath: the skin of her stomach gives way to a long tail with scaly fins, like a fish. A merwoman. Identical to the figurehead at the bow of the ship. The ship’s namesake. The Merman’s Daughter.

The sword is my birthright, the sword I will wear until my father dies and I inherit his long blade. With a slight bow, Hobbs holds it in front of him reverently, offering it to me. Through his long blonde bangs, which hang over his eyes, I see him wink at me as I take it.

Something’s up. Hobbs never winks.

In my grasp, the sword seems to gain weight and I almost drop it, awkwardly bringing my offhand up to balance it. I hear Hobbs snort, but I ignore him, because this is my time, my day.

My right.

Slowly, I raise the sword to eye level, watching in awe as it seems to catch every ray of red sunlight, sending them shooting in all directions.

My right. My sword.

“Why don’t you give it a try?” Hobbs says, and I sense something in his voice—a challenge.

“Hobbs,” Cain says sharply, sounding sterner than I’ve ever heard him.

“Uhh, aye,” I say, looking between them, wondering why Hobbs looks so mischievous and Cain so angry.

I move a safe distance away, raise my sword to attack position, my feet planted firmly as I’ve been taught. I start to swing, but stop when Hobbs laughs. “I mean against a real opponent,” he says.

I look back, my prideful chest deflating. “Sir?” I say. I can’t possibly fight him. He’s a man, and I’m….not, regardless of my age and who my father is.

I can feel a crowd gathering, their boots shuffling on the deck. I whirl around, taking them in, the eyes—so many eyes—staring, waiting, watching. To see what I’ll do. A test. This is exactly the kind of thing my father would do.

My chance—

To prove myself—

To him.

Maybe my last chance. My mother’s face, open-mouthed and screaming. Pleading and pleading.

I grit my teeth, shake my head, nod firmly at Hobbs. Raise my sword with two hands in his direction.

He laughs, deep and loud. “Me? You thought you were going to fight me? Please, kid, don’t insult me. You’ll fight someone closer to your own size.” At the same time as I feel angry heat swallow my neck—because he called me kid on the day I become a man—I breathe out a silent sigh of relief. Perhaps I have a chance after all.

I look around, seeing a couple of the guys I practice with, Jobe and Ben, looking almost as scared as I feel, afraid they’re about to be asked into the circle with me to prove their manhood in front of an audience. “Who?” I say, my voice quivering around the single word.

“We don’t want to give you more than you can handle for your first real fight,” Hobbs says, walking a lazy circle around me. Meaning…what?

“You’ll fight one of the bilge rats,” he says, the edge of his lip turning up.

“What?” I say, more sharply than I intended. What the hell is going on? “But I can’t possibly…”

“You can and you will,” my father interjects. “Remember what I taught you, Son.”

I frown, remembering his lessons well. The bilge rats are nothing more than swine, less than human, here to serve us and be trodden under our feet. Nary better than animals, they are. When I asked him where the bilge come from, he said, “From nowhere,” like they just popped out of the ground or were fished from the ocean or dropped from the sky. He wouldn’t say any more than that and I knew better than to ask.

I nod. If this is what I must do to become a man, I’ll do it.

“Bring him in!” Hobbs hollers and I sense movement on the port side of the ship. The crowd parts and a skinny, brown boy stumbles toward me, being half-dragged by a strong man I recognize as one of the oarsmen. The bilge rat’s eyes are wide and scared, darting around him, like at any moment someone might hit him. I’ve seen the boy before but have never spoken to him. Usually he’s on his knees, scrubbing the decks, his head hanging in defeat and resignation.

Less than human.

The big oarsman shoves him forward and he trips, nearly falls into me, but I catch his arm firmly, hold him up. He stares at the sword in my other hand, his jaw tight. For a moment I look at him—really look at him—like I never have before. For this one time, he’s not just an animal, not just an object to be ignored, like my father always taught me. He looks so human, his skin browner than mine, aye, but not so different than me after all.

He jerks away from my grip and a piece of his dirty, tattered shirt comes away in my fist. I stare at it for a moment and then let it drop to my feet. Hobbs hands the boy an old sword, even shorter than mine and blunt and rusty around the edges. Unblinking, the boy takes it, swallowing a heavy wad of spittle that slides down his throat in a visible lump.

How can I fight someone like him?

I have to.

But how? He’s so weak-looking, so scared…

I have no choice.

“Fight,” Hobbs says, backing away, smiling bigger than ever.

I raise my sword, which has fallen loosely to my side. The bilge rat continues looking at his rusty blade, as if it’s a snake, but then suddenly grips it tightly, his brown knuckles turning white. He lifts his chin and our eyes meet, and I see…

–hurt

–and anger

–and fear, too, but not as much as before.

His mouth opens and he screams, right at me, a cry of war.

I take a step back just before he charges, cheers rising up around me like sails on a summer wind.

Chapter Two

Sadie

The wind rushes over me and around me and through me, blasting my dark hair against my back, flattening my black robe against my chest.

I lengthen my strides, the dark skin of my legs flashing from beneath my robe with each step. Muscles tight, heartbeat heavy, mind alive, I race across the storm country plains, determined to surprise my mother with the speed of my arrival back at the camp.

Lonely dark-trunked leafless trees force me to change my direction from time to time, their bare scraggly branches creaking and swaying in the wind like dancing skeletons.

I can already see the circle of tents in the distance, smoke wafting in lazy curls from their midst, evidence of the morning cook fires. Although I left when it was still black out, the sky is mixed now, streaked with shards of red slicing between the ever-present dark clouds.

With the camp in sight, I call on every bit of strength I have left, what I’ve been saving for my final sprint. I go faster and faster and faster still, unable to stop a smile from bending my lips.

I close in on the tents, sweat pouring from my skin as excitement fills me.

That’s when I hear the scream.

Carried on the wind, the cry is ragged and throat-burning.

I stab one of my dark boots in the ground, skid to a stop, breathing heavy, swiveling my head around to locate the bearer of the yell. My breath catches when I see it: a ship, moving swiftly along the coast, the wind at its back filling its white sails, propelling it forward as it cuts through the waves.

A boisterous cheer rises up from the ship, and I exhale, forcing out a breath before sucking another one in. The Soakers are here!

Instinctively, my gaze draws away from the ship, following the coastline, easily picking out the other white triangles cutting into the base of the scarlet horizon. More ships—at least a dozen. The entire Soaker fleet.

I’ve got to warn the camp.

I take off, pushing my legs to fly, fly fly, muttering encouragement under my breath. Before I reach the camp, however, a cry goes up from one of the lookouts, Hazard, a huge man with the blackest skin I’ve ever seen, even blacker than a cloudy, starless night. He yells once, a warning, and soon the camp is full of noise. Commands to rush to arms, to secure the children, to ready the horses are spouted from the mouth of the war leader, who I can just make out between the tents.

His name is Gard, and if Hazard is huge, then he’s a giant, as tall and as wide as the tents. He’s already on his horse, Thunder, which is the largest in the herd, the only one strong enough to carry our war leader’s weight. Gard and Thunder turn away as one to the south, where the other horses are tied.

I dart between the first two tents I come to, slip inside the camp, and narrowly avoid getting trampled by a dozen men and women warriors charging to follow Gard. The Riders. Trained from birth to be warriors, to defend my people from the Soakers, they ride the Escariot, the black horses that have served my people in peace and war for every generation since the Great Rock landed on earth.

Trained like me, by fire and the sword.

“Sadie!” I hear someone yell.

I turn, see my father beckoning to me, his face neutral but serious. Hesitating, my eyes flick to where the warriors are disappearing behind the tents, soon to emerge as Riders, their steeds snorting and stomping in preparation for war. All I want is to watch them go, to see my mother flash past on Shadow, her face full of the stoic confidence I’ve seen on the rare occasions she’s been called to arms.

Unbidden, my legs carry me toward my father, who graces me with a grim smile, his dark skin vibrant under the morning sunlight. His thin arms and legs look even thinner after seeing Hazard and Gard.

“Come inside,” he says.

“I want to watch,” I admit.

“I know,” he says. “Come inside.”

Of course he knows. He knows everything. But I follow him into our tent anyway.

Even when my father seals the flaps at the entrance, the thin-skinned walls do little to block out the rally cries of the Riders as they organize themselves.

When my father, the Man of Wisdom, turns to look at me, I say, “I’m almost sixteen, Father.”

“You’re not yet,” he says patiently, motioning for me to sit.

I ignore the offer. “I need to see this,” I say.

Father sighs, sits cross-legged, his bony knees protruding from the skirts of his thin white robe. “You do not need to see this.” Who am I to argue with the wisest man in the village?

“I’m not your little girl anymore,” I say, pleading now. I kneel in front of him, my hands clasped. “Just let me watch.”

He grimaces, as if in pain, and I wonder how I came from him. My mother makes sense. She’s strong, like me, like Gard, like the other Riders. But my father is so…weak. Not just physically either. I know he’s wise and all that, but I swear he’s scared of his own shadow sometimes.

“Please,” I say again.

He shakes his head. “It’s not your time,” he says.

“When will be my time?” I say, slumping back on my heels.

“Soon enough.”

Not soon enough for me. It’s not like I’m asking to fight, although Mother Earth knows I want to do that too. I want to see what the Riders do, for real, not some training exercise. I want to see my mother fight, to kill, to knock back the Soakers to their Earth-forsaken ships.

I’ve got nothing else to say to the great Man of Wisdom sitting before me, so I don’t say anything, keep my head down, study the dirt beneath my fingernails.

The cries outside the tent die down, dwindling to a whisper as the clop of the horses’ hooves melt into the distance. The world goes silent, and all I can hear is my father’s breathing. My heart beats in my head. Weird.

I look up and his eyes are closed, his hands out, his forearms resting on his knees. Meditating. Like I’ve seen him do a million times before, his lips murmuring silent prayers. In other words, doing nothing. Nothing to help anyway. Meditating won’t stop the Soakers from killing the Riders, from barging into our camp and slaughtering us all like the frightened weaklings that we are, hiding in our tents.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, I rise and move toward the tent flaps, careful not to scuff my boots on the floor.

I creep past my father, and then he’s behind me and my hand’s on the flap, and I’m about to open it, and then—

–his hand flashes out and grabs my ankle, his grip much—much—firmer than I expected, holding me in place, hurting me a little.

“Nice try,” he says, and I almost smile.

When I start to backtrack he releases me. Dramatically, I throw myself to the ground and curl up on a blanket, sighing heavily.

“There’s nothing to watch anyway,” he says in The Voice. Not his normal, everyday speaking voice, but the one that sounds deeper and more solid, like it comes from a place deep within his gut, almost like it’s spoken by someone else who lives inside of him. A man greater than himself, full of power, barrel-chested and well-muscled—like Gard, a warrior.

The Voice.

When people hear The Voice, they listen.

Even I do. Well, usually. Because The Voice is never wrong.

I set my elbow on the ground and prop my head on the heel of my hand. “Why not?” I ask, suddenly interested in everything my father has to say—because he’s not my father anymore. He’s the Man of Wisdom.

Maybe the meditation wasn’t him doing nothing after all.

His cheeks bulge, as if the words are right there, trying to force their way out. But when he blows out, it’s just air, nothing more. Then he says, “Listen.”

I cock my head, train my ear in the air, hear only the silence of a camp in hiding.

Silence.

Silence.

And then—

–the chatter of horses’ hooves across the plains, getting louder, approaching a rumble, then becoming the distant growl of thunder.

“Now you can go,” Father says in his normal voice, but I’m already on my feet, bursting from the tent opening, running for the edge of the camp while other Stormers are emerging from hiding.

I charge out of the camp and onto the plains, my footsteps drowned out by the grumble of the horses galloping toward me. Gard’s in the front, leading, and he flies past me like I’m not even there. Another few Riders pass in similar fashion before I see her.

My mother, astride Shadow, her skin and robe so dark she almost looks like she’s a part of her horse, a strange human-animal creature, fast and dangerous and ready.

She stops in front of me, perfect balanced, her sword in her hand.

“What happened?” I say.

She motions with her sword behind her, where, with the sun shimmering across the water, the white ships are sailing off into the distance, barely visible now.

“They’re gone,” I murmur.

Water & Storm Country by David Estes, coming June 7, 2013!