The Oath Broken in Fire

TEMURBEK

A river ram costs forty ounces of cast iron. The oak hull it shatters is irreplaceable.

Fire eats the forward tarpaulins with a dry, snapping hiss. Down in the narrows, the lead war skiff charges through the river mist, its iron-plated beak pointed straight at our port bow. Behind it, two more skiffs loose a second flight of burning shafts into our rigging.

My cabin lies thirty paces aft, locked with three turns of brass. Kaya is inside.

"Hold the steering sweep!" I shout to the helmsman.

The man grips the ash lever with white fists. Soot coats his teeth. Spray flies twenty cubits over the bulwark as the Kerevet plunges into the gut of the Black Gorge.

I will not turn this barge into the shallows. I will not bleed out on an enemy shoal.

"Brace!" I roar across the waist.

The collision hits like a falling quarry stone.

The iron beak of the lead skiff bites deep into our forward strakes, three feet above the waterline. Oak screams against forged iron. The shock throws four deckhands onto the slimy deck. The skiff rolls under our sixty-ton momentum, its mast snapping like dry pine under an axe. Water churns black and white between the hulls as our keel grinds the smaller craft down into the dark.

Iron grapnels clatter over our port rail.

Ten river-lords in boiled leather vault onto the gangway. They carry barbed gaffs and short hacking blades, shouting the war cry of the Iron Reach.

"Captain!" the deck sergeant screams, stumbling from the companionway hatch with blood streaming down his neck. "The lower hold! The chained god is thrashing against its mooring pins! The council orders say you must stand guard over the stone!"

Every sworn word of my commission commands me down that ladder. The seals of the high reach bind me to the idol. If the stone slips its cradle before the falls, my life belongs to the executioner's block.

I do not move toward the ladder.

I look aft.

A burning arrow has punched through the cedar roof planks of my cabin. A thin line of black smoke curls under the eaves.

"Captain!" the sergeant begs. "The idol!"

"To hell with the stone," I say.

I draw my broadsword. The lead-weighted iron clears the scabbard with a dull ring.

Two raiders block the aft companionway. One thrusts a barbed boarding pike at my throat. I parry the iron head with the flat of my blade, step inside his reach, and drive my left fist into his throat cartilage. He chokes on his own blood. Before he hits the deck, I swing the broadsword two-handed, cleaving the second man through leather cuirass and collarbone.

They drop into the bilge wash. I do not look back at them.

Near the cabin door, Oyun-oglu dumps a bucket of stagnant river water over his left shoulder. Smoke rises from his scorched brigandine.

"My contract covers boarders, Captain," the mercenary draws out, flicking charred leather from his sleeve. "It never mentioned turning into a roasted boar."

"Hold the companionway," I say.

"For ten extra crowns, I will hold the moon," Oyun-oglu says.

I pull the heavy brass key from my belt pouch. I shove it into the twin tumblers. The deadbolt grinds open, and I kick the oak door inward.

Smoke rolls out in a thick gray sheet.

Inside, the canvas around Barlas’s corpse has caught a spark from the ceiling timbers. Smoldering hemp stinks of charred meat and bitter tallow.

Kaya stands pressed against the far bulkhead.

She holds the stolen skinning knife with both hands, the blade leveled at my chest. Her knuckles are gray. Her tunic is black with soot, but her chin stays up. She does not cower behind the cot. She is ready to drive five inches of iron into whatever enters the smoke.

Mine.

The thought is cold and simple. She is mine, not the river's. I will never yield her to the smoke, and I will never let another man decide when she bleeds.

"Put the steel away, dancer," I say.

"You left me to burn," she says. Her voice is raw, scraped thin by the smoke.

"I am here," I say.

I cross the floorboards in two strides. She does not lower the point until my fingers close around her wrist. I do not wrench the weapon from her grip. I tighten my hold until her fingers open, letting the knife drop onto the cedar planking.

I catch her waist with my left arm and drag her toward the open doorway.

"The idol is below," she says against my collar. Judging by her voice, she wants to know if I came for the god or for her. "Your men were screaming for you."

"The idol can drown," I say. "I want you on deck."

I shove her through the hatch onto the open deck just as the cabin ceiling collapses in a shower of orange sparks.

The deck is a slaughterhouse. Five dead raiders lie tangled in the port rigging. The second enemy skiff is pulling away, its rowers visibly panicking at our speed, but the river has already taken the fight out of their hands.

The Kerevet is running blind.

Ahead of us, the Black Gorge narrows to a throat of black slate no wider than forty paces. The river does not flow here; it boils. The whitewater roars like a thousand stampeding horses, throwing spray thirty feet into the twilight air. In the center of the froth sits the Maw, two jagged pillars of limestone waiting to tear our bottom strakes to kindling.

The port sweeps are smashed. The steering oar shudders violently, kicking the helmsman across the deck.

"We have no rudder!" the sergeant screams from the waist. "We are going onto the teeth!"

The crew drops to their knees. Hardened river men claw at their amulets.

Near the mast, Sarnai-tay emerges from the smoke, her face wild with zealot fury. "The god demands its debt!" she cries over the roar of the rapids. "Drown the vessel! Let the river take what belongs to the river!"

The barge yaws violently, sliding sideways toward the western rock pillar. Ten seconds of drift will gut sixty tons of oak.

I pull Kaya against my side, my left arm locking her ribs against my chest. My right hand grips the iron hilt of my sword.

"Can you hold this water?" I demand in her ear.

She looks at the boiling white froth. She looks up at my face. She sees the blood on my sleeve. She sees that I threw my command, my sacred orders, and my life into the fire for her.

She pulls out of my grip. She does not run for shelter.

Kaya walks three paces to the forward rail. She grips the smoking gunwale with bare hands.

She closes her eyes and opens her throat.

No human scream comes out.

The sound is low, pure, and terrible. The dead covenant-tongue rings across the wood, vibrating through the keelson and shaking the very marrow in my bones. It is the voice of the living anchor commanding the water that feeds her veins.

The boiling chute groans.

Before our eyes, the foaming rapids flatten. The white froth collapses into a sheet of black, glassy slate. The violent current turns smooth as polished jade, carrying our battered hull directly between the two limestone teeth without touching a grain of rock.

The Kerevet glides through the Maw in absolute, terrifying silence.

Behind us, the rapids begin to roar again, but the danger is gone. The barge drifts into the deep, quiet pools of the lower gorge.

No one speaks on deck.

The oarsmen, the sergeant, Oyun-oglu, and Sarnai-tay stare at the girl standing at the prow. The faint blue luminescence fades from her throat in full view of the deck. Her true nature is unmistakable.

I walk to the prow. I step up beside her, my broadsword held loose at my side.

I place my heavy palm upon her shoulder before eighty surviving men.

"This one breathes," I say to the silent deck. "Anyone who questions it will answer to my steel."

Every oath I ever swore to the high reach is ash on the river.

I will burn the rest of the world before I let them touch her.