I hunched myself up out of the pool at bottom of the boat, and forced my reluctant limbs to drag me in a clumsy, soggy crawl to the bulwark. I transferred my grip from one leg of the bench to another as I went, never entirely letting go as the ship continued to rock.
By the time I reached the low wall of the boat I was panting, shivering and feeling the cold again, wondering why I had bothered to move. I had imagined the sound. There was no human alive out there; it was impossible. Everyone from Volin’s ship must be dead. I hadn’t even recognised the strangely accented voice.
I raised my eyes cautiously above the edge of the boat, squinting against the cloud of spray that flew into my face. No. Nothing. I had dreamed it, or heard the cry of a seabird.
Lightning flashed, turning the tops of the dark waves white. There was something moving in them. Through them. Not tossed and rolled about as The Ice Blade was, but slicing smoothly across their curling peaks just as easily as I might stroll across a field of desert grass.
Thunder filled the air as the lightning pulsed again. I gasped, dragging myself up higher. The moving thing was an orca, a killer whale. Before I could panic at the thought that it was coming to overturn the boat and eat me, I saw – a person. That strangely shaped blur was a person. Clinging to the triangular fin on the creature’s sleek back.
Another flash of lightning.
The person was Uldar. Even sodden, the vivid red and gold of his coat was unmistakable.
Before I could feel anything, hope or happiness or sheer astonishment, the killer whale dived through a crashing wave, sending fat droplets pattering over my face and body, and appeared alongside The Ice Blade. The animal snorted air out of the hole on top of its head, manoeuvring so that Uldar – draped, apparently unconscious now – over its back, was nudged up against the side of the ship. The animal was offering him to me.
For a split-second I didn’t react. My body seized up, paralysed by instinctive refusal. If I let go of my grip on the rowing bench. If I knelt up. If I leaned over to try and pull Uldar over the side. I could fall overboard again.
I would not escape the sea a second time. It would never let me go. I would sink beneath the waves and drown, I knew it.
Forcing my fingers to open, my leg muscles to tense and lift me, my arms to extend, was more difficult than climbing aboard the ship had been in the first place. My own muscles, tendons and bones seemed to fight me. I felt as if I were moving in one of those odd nightmares where time slows down and, struggle as you may, you cannot seem to break free. I was too slow.
The orca, riding the swells and crashing waves that moved the boat, seemed to agree. It veered away abruptly into the sea, taking Uldar with it, and my heart broke into a panicked gallop. Without thought I released the bench to reach out one beseeching hand. The boat bucked. I fell back into the bottom with a thud and a splash.
As I clawed my way back up again I saw that the whale was only circling the boat. Circling the boat – as if to give me time to make up my mind.
Animals could be intelligent, but this was almost frightening. Who ever heard of a wild animal, a predatory animal, saving humans this way? Could this be some kind of strange hunting behaviour?
In another crash of thunder and lightning the killer whale arrived back at the place where I crouched. This time I did not hesitate. I lunged over The Ice Blade’s bulwark and seized the back of Uldar’s coat.
Lightning flashed again, and again, illuminating stark images of the orca, the sea, and the Prince. Uldar’s lifeless face, his flopping hand, and his hair, dark with seawater. The white markings on the orca’s cheek as it reared back amid the waves, manoeuvring its great body toward me, rolling the deadweight of the body into my arms. The terrible moment when I thought that weight was too much, and Uldar would slip down into the sea and drag me with him.
There was a sudden, indescribable blur of movement. In my panic I had somehow, impossibly, lost track of the vast shape of the whale. I couldn’t see it. But there was something new in the water; something slender and pale, streaked with black. A long, white branch – driftwood – bleached by the ravaging sea? But when it brushed my own brown arm it felt warm, pliant. Like skin, but rougher, with a texture like the sharkskin scabbard of my Mother’s sword. Like something alive.
Or something dead.
I saw – for an instant, I would have sworn I saw – a blur of a face, a black drift of hair. A woman. There in the water. There in the sea.
“Sereh?” I gasped, not knowing whether to shy back or plunge desperately forward. Was she alive – ?
Uldar seemed to leap upwards from the grasping ocean into my arms. I tumbled back into the boat with a splash, pinned down by his limp form.
I struggled under him, straining upward to keep both our faces out of the pool of water. He would breathe it in and drown in his stupor! By the time I managed to heave him off, get him onto his back and propped up safely, the sea was empty. Empty of the orca. Of white branches. Empty of – anything. Anyone. It was just us and the tiny boat and miles and miles of water. And the storm. And the icebergs.
I am not afraid.
I am not afraid.
I am not afraid.
6
Voices. There were voices – somewhere close – and splashing sounds, like oars hitting the water. A boat?
A boat!
I flailed stiffly back to consciousness through a haze of exhaustion, pushing away from Uldar’s side in the cramped, humid space beneath the decking at the back of The Ice Blade. My hands fumbled with the layers of waxed canvas – the tattered, tangled remains of the tent shelter that I had dredged from the bottom of the boat, and swathed around us in an effort to protect us from the cold.
Frigid blue light streamed into my face, along with icy air that instantly chilled my damp skin. I crawled forward, realising for the first time that the winds had gone quiet. The boat lay peacefully in the water. The storm was over.
I felt Uldar’s hand brush my bare ankle and heard him groan as I dragged myself through layers of salt-crusted material and out into the light. This was more of a sign of life than I had received from him during all the dark and terrifying hours of my vigil over his unconscious body last night, and it gave me a small spark of hope. But I had no time to turn back, slap at his face, or shake him again. The voices were getting further away – they were leaving. Why were they leaving? Couldn’t they see us?
Sheer desperation propelled me from the makeshift shelter and up into a standing position. My teeth chattered over a whimper as I was fully exposed to the cold in nothing but my damp shift, and felt what small warmth huddling with Uldar had preserved instantly leach away. We wouldn’t last much longer out here.
Eyes still puffy and half-closed, I sucked in a breath that burned with frost and then bellowed at the top of my lungs:
“Here! We’re here! We’re alive – we’re here!”
My voice echoed and flew back at me painfully. I clapped my hands over my ears and stared as my eyelids finally came un-glued.
We were surrounded by – by ice. A great, luminous arch of ice, curling, curving and spiking overhead, alight with pale green fire that stung my eyes as I stared. The Ice Blade had drifted inside one of the Numinast’s icebergs, and butted up against the inner wall of a sort of cave of ice. I shuddered as a delicate prickling sensation spread down my scalp and into my eyebrows. Ice crystals forming.