Page 36

HENRIK

Waist-deep sludge gurgled around Henrik’s stomach. He attempted to hold his arms above the fetid, burning waste as the vittra swirled off to the side, keening and watchful. The vicious old hag seemed genuinely interested in their spar. When her giant nostrils appeared in the whirlwind, they sniffed a draught of air that stirred up more currents.

Intrigued, or simply waiting.

The acrid water sloshed against a scrape along his back, stinging and horrendous. A fitting tribute to Britt’s wounds, inflicted by his own Captain. He lunged for an attack, but Oliver sloshed away in deft avoidance. Desperation created greater speed than Henrik expected.

“You wanted to find Selma, you fool,” Oliver snapped. “Why did you search?”

“You knew Selma?”

Oliver scowled. “I knew all the soldat mothers.”

“How?”

“We watched you! We watch all potential soldat recruits. We know their strengths and weaknesses. We strive to serve His Glory from the very beginning. And Selma was a problem.”

The words rippled in Henrik’s mind. Was a problem. He didn’t have the strength to ask why, but Oliver, clearly on a roll, continued with merciless regard.

“Selma never wanted to give you up, though you were the most promising of the cohort. You and Einar.” He jerked a head back, his lips twisted in a sneer. “Son of a maid in your household.”

Maid.

Your household.

“Einar and I arrived together?”

“Yes!” he cried. “You never left each other. You, the strongest of all of them, were the one I was convinced would be the one to follow in my shoes. You who showed such promise. How, Henrik? How did you go astray?”

The final word issued as a lost question. At this critical juncture, Oliver fell prey to his own frustration. He leaned into emotion, seeking the source of his own failure. He thought Henrik was the perfect soldat, like the son he couldn’t raise on his own. He had plans for Henrik to create some sort of enduring legacy . . .

But Henrik’s curiosity mucked up Oliver’s plan. Instead of knuckling down and not asking questions like a good soldat, the year as a reefer created suspicions around Stenberg, His Glory’s dealings, and other islands. Henrik developed relationships. A definitive no-no for soldats. Einar, for one. The captains he sailed with, for another.

Then the final one.

Britt.

To Oliver and his unerring hunger for control, the islanders in Henrik’s life posed nothing but threats.

Oliver lunged, but Henrik splashed away, too lost in thought to do more than evade. Try as he might, he couldn’t keep his insecurities, his queries, from streaming past.

“His Glory knew!” Oliver shouted. “His Glory knew you sought your mother in the Archives. Knew that the girl he met was associated with you. We knew it all along. We watched you from the moment you returned up until the whipping block. You were meant to rise up as His Glory’s Second Captain. Of course he would vet you! You fool. You didn’t even find the twenty bags of jord!”

“Where were they?”

“Not far!” Oliver cried. “They were a test of your thoroughness, and you failed. You distracted yourself with a woman and threw away everything.”

“The child?” Henrik countered. “You had me find him to distract me.”

“Yes,” Oliver snarled. “So we could get to your ridiculous woman and demand what she knew. As a result, His Glory knows that he cannot trust you, and he’s sent me to dispatch you. You bloody fool,” he finished quietly.

“This ends now,” Henrik ground out.

Oliver beckoned with a surly clasp of his hands.

“All six soldats are gone, Oliver,” Henrik panted, circling him. The water lapped at his waist. Wails screamed behind him. “You’ve lost six of His Glory’s personal guards. If you somehow manage to kill Einar, myself, and Malcolm, you’ll never survive if you return. That’s eight soldats you’ll have to explain, and eight soldats His Glory will have lost. I’m sure that’ll help him sleep, with the mainland stirring up problems and the other soldats ready to rebel.”

Oliver attacked.

The water slowed him, allowing Henrik space to move. Instead of fighting the fluid, he eased into it, ducking and slipping away. Scalding drops spotted his cheeks. He wiped them off with a forearm, but they were replaced as Oliver frothed closer.

The heat billowed and radiated around the vittra, uncomfortably warm, but inescapable. The ground began to slip away beneath their feet. Trees canted, falling toward the spongy hole where the world sank. The gray fog tightened as it circled, moving slow, and then fast. The ikons gleamed, torrid green waypoints in the night.

Oliver scrambled to attack again, but Henrik moved too quickly. The water worked against them. Fog spiraled and a funnel formed, sucking and lowering. Oliver clutched a handful of Henrik’s shirt, yanked him close. Henrik slammed his forearm into Oliver’s elbow, forcing his hand to break grip.

They slipped away in the liquid. Henrik caught hold of Oliver’s shirt, but Oliver twisted free with a sputter. Oliver grasped for Henrik again, roiling in and out of the water. A deluge of molten liquid poured over Henrik as Oliver shoved him under the water. He ducked the advance, surfacing before his former Captain, but was unable to get a grip and drown him.

In the distance, Einar and Malcolm stood off to the side, edging away from a forming whirlpool. Ground collapsed away from Henrik’s feet. Oliver, popping out of the water a few steps away, hurried to the side. The vittra cackled, her hollow amusement ringing like bells. The sound felt like an ice blanket on scorched skin.

Was it acid swishing around his legs? Was it heat? Everything hurt as he clung to the side of the spiraling, whirling pool and into the draggled waters. Oliver, teeth clenched, launched himself across the forming whirlpool. He slammed into Henrik, taking them backward into the water.

Henrik struggled, hot liquid slipping between his lips. The foul taste expanded between his teeth. He slapped, lunged, kicked, flailed, but Oliver had an uncanny strength that legend remembered him for. They grappled in the superheated sludge.

A root appeared under Henrik’s feet. He used it as leverage, shoved away in a burgeoning slide, and burst into the open air. Sludge drained out of his nose as he gasped. The top of Oliver’s head bobbed to the surface. Henrik lunged for Oliver, though the attempt was weak. His hand grasped Oliver’s throat, but the filthy swamp made his skin too wet. Oliver escaped with a shout and a shove.

Dirt crumbled, giving way to a spinning, sludgy heart. The collapsing middle of a black tunnel. Of hellspawn.

Down.

Down into a forming, spinning hole.

It whirled like a hurricane, collapsing all around it. Henrik angled toward the edge as the ground vanished. The vittra screeched. Her lanky black hair hung over skeletal arms and shoulders, swaying in the whirling maelstrom. As the ground crumbled, succumbing to the whirlpool, another root sprang free from the ground. Henrik lunged for it, gripping a knobby center, and held fast.

Oliver, flailing for purchase, held the edge of a boulder, head barely above the whirlpool skimming by. The maw had no end, the hungry devil. The vittra’s howl rang above, ready to claim and consume their flesh. Old bones whipped past, drudged from the sand. The natives killed by Stenberg soldats, most likely.

How apropos.

Oliver, face blanched with a stroke of sudden terror, dove. He gripped Henrik’s ankle, wrenching them down. Henrik clung to the roots with mucky hands. Attempts to kick Oliver off failed.

The vittra descended.

Henrik gritted his teeth, shouting as he wrapped his hand so tightly around the root that it cut into his palm. Oozing blood, as warm as the foul waters, compromised his hold. Through squinted eyes, he cast a look overhead.

Where was Britt?

The draguls?

Einar?

If they survived, it would be worth it. Einar would carry the soldats forward to something better. Britt would have saved her draguls, her brother. Henrik could go down with Oliver, and wasn’t that right as well? If there was a life after this, he hoped to find Selma there.

One hand dropped. He looked down. Oliver, terrorized, screamed. His pale face lost all color, bleaching to white. A hiss broke through the ghoulish currents, whispering.

Henrik looked up, face-to-face with the vittra.

You .

A bony finger pointed at Henrik’s heart.

I see you.

The spinning gray web blurred to nothing as the vittra’s skinny finger hovered over his chest. A cracked fingernail, split down the middle and caked with tar, trembled. Her empty eyes had a life of their own.

“What do you want?” he asked. A whisper, but it roared amidst the blasts. They were in a cocoon as he dangled, perched above a cauldron of death, Oliver clutching greedily for purchase.

Peace.

“Can I give it?”

She paused, aged face canting. After an interminable time, she hissed, Not you. You are not they. I see in your mind that you are not one of them. You cannot pay for the blood.

The vittra plunged. She rushed through Henrik and toward Oliver, her swampy, icy spirit a welcome rush compared to the broiling heat. Quick as she whipped through, it ended. The vittra sped to Oliver.

A wordless scream wrenched from Oliver’s lips as the vittra grabbed his clothing and tore him away. Henrik’s legs swung over the whirlpool as Oliver’s weight disappeared. The vittra plunged them into the abyss. Oliver’s screams cut off all at once.

Henrik, relieved of his burden, grasped for another root. The gray, spinning walls abated. He hauled himself higher, thinking of Britt. Selma. His strength flagged, the heat was too great. As he struggled for another root, his grip failed. He fell.

A hand caught him.

A second.

A third.

He dangled over the open, spiraling chasm sweeping away sand and earth. Sea water poured in from somewhere, whipping to a frenzy of steam and cooling heat. The hands hauled him up.

He climbed.

Flailed.

Thrashed.

Each step brought him a little closer to the high ledge, closer to a new future. Like a final baptism, he burst out of the spiraling vortex and onto solid earth.