‘Come along there, Bull,’ said father, waving a meaty and calloused hand; what nature gave a man when he attacked trees with an axe all the live-long day.
‘Ma’s probably still asleep. She likes her sleep. That and staring at the sea.’
The poor woman had never been the same since a plague took Bull’s father. Only his grandfather, Grey Barbo, remembered to feed and keep him.
‘Then walk with us,’ father told him.
They walked in silence for a while, letting the arguing of the others recede. Their feet swished through the wet, stranded seaweed, or kicked puffs of sand into the face of the cold wind. Mithrid’s father still held her by the arm, not painfully tight, but firm enough to let her know she was in trouble. Mithrid’s mouth dried up.
‘Why is it you old—elders are so scared of shipwrecks?’ Mithrid asked, breaking the silence so abruptly that she made Bull flinch.
Father liked to dwell on his words before speaking them aloud. ‘Jurilda Hag speaks the truth, at least in part. It ain’t that we’re scared of shipwrecks, it’s that you lot ain’t scared enough. You rush in, alone and without thought.’ He waggled Mithrid’s captured hand for her, showing her its tooth-marks.
‘Just a wrackle.’
‘It ain’t wrackles that worry me.’
Bull became curious. ‘Then what, Master Fenn?’
‘Look there.’
Father pointed them back towards the water’s edge, where old ones had started a more organised, stately looting of the wreckage. Here and there, men and women dragged corpses onto the sand. Mithrid could already count a score of them. Many wore leather armour, marked with the emperor’s crest of a white hammer. Others bore the crest on their cheeks or on their naked backs. Amongst them, here and there, were other bodies that did not belong to the warship’s crew. Some were dressed in finer scale armour, or black chainmail. Another shield was rescued from the sea and tossed near the growing pile of bodies. If Mithrid looked closely, she saw the mark she and every other child in Hâlorn had been taught to fear since birth: a red skull, upside-down.
‘The Outlaw King,’ grunted Bull.
‘Just a myth, Bull. Likely some warlord who thinks far too much of himself. They’re no better than rebels. Enemies of the empire we find ourselves living in. Scum, just like any bandit stalking the clifftops.’
‘But they’re already dead.’
‘Sometimes they ain’t, daughter,’ Father snapped, speaking while his eyes remained on the dead. ‘Children have always played this game. I did. Old Clifsson did. And Mam Hag. Treasures from the sea, right?’
Bull nodded. Mithrid had been told this story before. She also knew what was good for her and pretended to listen avidly.
‘We were lucky. Whenever a corpse came up gasping, it was always a fisherman, or sailor, or some pirate so glad to be alive that he ran straight off yelling his thanks. We got older and stopped playing, started treating it like work. Salvage, we called it, instead of a game. It’s how the cliff-towns and villages survive, see? Other children grew on up, and like us, they also snuck out of their homes at the crack of dawn and raced to claim what they could before the elders got wind of it. Just as you did. You were too young to remember, but one morning a skiff got washed up. A boy of fifteen winters by the name of Fisle went out to the wreck before anyone else could even get their trews on.’ Father took a moment. Mithrid felt his grip tighten on her arm. ‘He found a body in the surf. Thought him dead so he started going through his pockets. He rolled the man over and before he knew it, he got a knife in the throat. Now he was strong, that Fisle, so he didn’t die straight away. Instead, he tried to crawl back to Troughwake, but not before the man stabbed him a dozen more times. We found them both there, Fisle still warm and the man gasping and sobbing for air, staring at the bloody knife in his hand, and the boy its blade was still buried in. The boy who had only seen fifteen winters go by. One less than you, Mithrid. That is why we worry so.’
Mithrid spent the silence watching how the elders poked every body before touching it. She thought of the pale stump of the corpse she’d found and shuddered at what might have been.
‘He was a rebel. A cursed traitor. I owe the empire peace and prosperity, but I owe the Outlaw King a piece of my mind,’ added father. ‘Now come. There’s work to be done.’
‘What work?’
‘Not for you, daughter. You are going home,’ he said, his tone growing stern. Mithrid tapped her teeth together.
‘And what of me? What’s my punishment, Master Fenn?’
The winds of Father’s mood changed just as quickly, and he cracked a wide smile.
‘You, Bull, will get no punishment from me. That’s a job for your mother or grandfather, not me.’
Bull nodded, seeming pleased. Mithrid envied him.
‘Run home, now.’
‘Thank you, Master Fenn. Oh, and you can have this, Mithrid,’ added Bull, catching himself as he turned to leave. ‘Ma’ll sneeze something’ awful at it. And grandda might try to eat it. But I know you got your little garden. Maybe you can heal it.’
Mithrid couldn’t help but smile as she took the limpid flower out of his saucer of a palm. She lifted one of its leaves as if shaking its hand. ‘Thanks, Bull. I’ll try.’
With a nod, Bull hurried towards the rope ladders that led up to the village, perched on the cliff face like wicker and hide barnacles on a hull. Her father marched her on slow yet steady.
Mithrid placed her foot on a ladder rung and paused.
‘Go, up you get. And mind you don’t drop that bloody shield on me,’ he growled. ‘Of all the things you’d want to pull from a wreck.’
Mithrid hopped up the ladder, looking for all the world like a soldier scaling a castle wall. Father was right: though she could out climb a crag goat, the shield was cumbersome at best.
‘It’s not all I found,’ she admitted, once she’d climbed to the village. She was sweating, and not just from exertion. With her spare hand she plucked out several coppers and silvers and showed her father. ‘Treasures from the sea. They’re for us.’
He huffed. ‘They better be. I’m not having my daughter get rich and leave me here chopping trees until I die. Now go.’ He pointed to their cottage: a small, semicircle of thatch and wood affair that clung to the cliff at the end of the walkway. Its door was half-open. The night’s candles still burned within.
The latch snapped shut behind Mithrid. The shadow of her father enveloped her. With shield held down by her knees, she swivelled to apologise.
Though her muscles were already tense, the blow caught her off guard. The back of that meaty, calloused hand struck her across the cheek. She spun from the force, falling heavy on the shield and her chin. The candles danced around her.
The strong fingers gripped the scruff of her neck and hauled her to her feet. Mithrid’s feet dragged as she was marched to her bedding. She was still trying to count her teeth.
‘You, of all the lost souls in this godsforsaken, grubby village, should know better, Mithrid. How dare you disgrace her by being so careless?’
There wasn’t an answer in Emaneska that would have stopped his tirade. Mithrid owed it to the shipwreck, at least, to call him off. He dropped her on the floor with no more care than a sack of flour and thudded away.