Deep Water (50 page)

Then the first rank of soldiers realized what was facing them. “Ghosts!” they screamed. “The dead are come back!” They backed
away, their faces white, until they stood at the edge of the cliff, and had to stop. They were terrified. Some crouched to
pray, some cast around wildly for a way out.

The women held back, but Tern and the ghosts moved forward. One of Acton’s men screamed, “I killed you, I killed you, you’re
dead!” and jumped from the cliff. His fellows barely noticed.

As they neared Acton, Bramble was struck by how small the ghosts seemed. Much shorter and slighter. They looked almost childlike
compared to the tall, strongly muscled fighting men.

“Who is the leader here?” Tern demanded.

Acton stepped forward. In contrast to the ghosts, he seemed full of color. His blue eyes were bright, his hair shone deep
gold, his skin glowed with health. Even the simple dun and cream of his clothes seemed rich in comparison to the whiteness
of the Turvite men. He was vividly alive; more alive, it seemed to Bramble, than anyone else there, even Tern. She felt relieved
to see him, which was ridiculous, because she knew the gods always brought her to him, in every time she visited. He wore
the brooch on his cloak. Baluch stood at his shoulder; paler hair, paler eyes, but fully there, listening as he always did.

“I am Acton, son of Asa. I am the lord of war,” he said.

“Go from here,” Tern declaimed, “and you will be spared, as you spared the women of Turvite. Stay and be slaughtered.”

Behind Acton, his men shifted uncomfortably, muttering among themselves. Some were praying. Acton tilted his head, listening
to them, and turned to face them, smiling.

“Lord,” one said, “let us go from here.” It was the man Red, whose friend had been killed by the water sprite. He looked shaken
and tired. The other men murmured agreement, watching the ghosts with terror and fascination.

“We faced these men when they were alive, and killed them all,” Acton reassured them. “Why should we fear them dead?”

Then, without warning, he laughed, spun, and swung his sword straight at the nearest ghost. Salmon. Salmon raised his own
sword, but of course it was futile — Acton’s blow went right through his sword and then through him as though he were not
there, leaving Salmon unharmed, untouched — and no threat at all. All the women made some kind of sound: gasp, cry, moan.
Acton’s men whooped and cheered. They yelled, “Ac-ton! Ac-
ton
!” and beat their swords on their shields.

“You’ll never scare our lord of war, bitch!” a man yelled. “Our lord fears nothing!”

Tern moved aside, toward the cliff. At first Acton let her go, assuming that she was retreating. Then she turned to face him
again, and he saw her face. His laughter died, and his eyes narrowed. Bramble, through Baluch, had seen him look at enemies
like that. Tern raised her hand and pointed at him.

“I curse you, Acton son of Asa. You shall never have what you truly want.”

Bramble had known what she was going to say, and yet the words cut through her. It was her reaction, not Piper’s. Piper was
watching, but her attention was mostly on Salmon, who was staring bleakly at his useless sword. She didn’t care what Tern
said to the blond man. But the curse seemed to drain strength and warmth from Bramble. She felt shaky, as though her own body
were close to fainting. She had felt like that a couple of times before, when she had been thrown from the roan and had the
breath knocked out of her; panicky and shaky with shock. She didn’t understand it. Why would she react like that to something
she had heard in stories a dozen times before?

But Acton clearly felt none of her disquiet. His face lightened and he laughed again, eyes creasing up in genuine merriment.
His hand went out, gesturing toward Turvite.

“I already have it,” he said gaily. Bramble felt the shakiness begin to leave her. Acton’s strength seemed to steady her as
well as his men. His laughter was comforting. She felt vaguely ashamed of that.

Tern shook her head. Bramble felt the gods flow around Tern, but she couldn’t tell if they were arriving or leaving.

“Never,” Tern said. “Brothers of mine, I give you my strength.”

The gods were leaving Tern. Something was missing. Bramble felt that Tern should have given something else — other words,
some other action. No — feeling. That was what was missing. Feeling. Tern didn’t really care about the dead men, and her words
were only words.

Baluch had moved forward at the first moment that the gods had begun to move, instinctively reaching out for Tern, but he
was too late. She stepped over the cliff and dropped out of sight. It was so sudden that even Bramble was startled. Piper
and the other women cried out. Acton’s men shouted, half of them jubilant, half appalled.

They all crowded to the cliff edge to peer over, but there was no sign of her in the churning surf below.

Piper turned back to watch, eagerly looking for Salmon. The ghosts had been startled by Tern’s disappearance, but now they
hefted their weapons. One of them, the one Crab had walked beside up the hill, looked at her. She nodded. He nodded back,
then threw his spear with all his might at Acton.

Acton raised his shield but the spear never reached it. It vanished in thin air once it left the ghost’s hand, melting as
the water sprite had melted. Some of Acton’s men jeered, but other Turviters gripped their spears and rushed. Acton’s men
scrambled to meet them, training and experience pushing them to present shields as a solid fence. Acton and Asgarn were in
the center. Baluch took the rear, organizing another line of men behind them in case any attackers broke through. Bramble
almost expected the clang of spear on shield, all the unholy noise of battle that she had come to know so well.

But the ghosts silently slid into and through the fence of shields, through the line of swordsmen, and out the other side,
stumbling to a stop before they got to Baluch’s line. Acton’s men shivered and made faces of disgust as the ghost chill hit
them, but then they realized what had happened and broke ranks, laughing and jeering and whooping with relief.

The women watching cried out in despair. Piper’s heart was beating too fast for comfort; too fast for safety. It seemed to
swell in her chest as though it were going to burst. Bramble realized that Piper felt like she was going to die — wanted to
die, to join with Salmon. No! Remember the baby, Bramble thought toward her. Willed her to look at Searose, to remember that
her baby needed her. Astonishingly, Piper did. She turned her face away from Salmon and looked at Searose, clutched her tighter
and cried over her wispy black hair. Bramble wasn’t sure if Piper had really responded to her thought, or if it were just
mother love working. It didn’t matter. The dangerous moment had passed.

At least, one dangerous moment.

The ghosts had backed away toward the cliff behind Acton’s men, leaving nothing between them and the women. Acton’s men, now
the first jubilation had worn off, were glowering at the women. They were tossing down their swords and shields. Some of them
were smiling, and it wasn’t a smile Bramble liked. Then Acton stepped forward.

“I gave you until sunset to bury your dead and leave your houses. I think you have just forfeited the right to bury your dead.
Clearly, you don’t care if they sleep in peace or not. So I say now: take your things and go.”

“They’ve forfeited more than their right to bury their dead,” Asgarn objected. He came to stand next to Acton, glaring at
the women. “They’ve forfeited everything.”

Acton shook his head, and smiled irrepressibly. “Come now, Asgarn. It was a good try, but it failed. You would have done the
same, if you thought it might work. I would have.”

Asgarn looked exasperated and wiped one hand over his chin as though buying time to decide what to say. “The men deserve —”

Acton cut him off, his face for once serious. “The men deserve to be treated as though they are men of honor and not rutting
drunken hogs.”

“Honor operates between equals,” Asgarn said. He gestured to the women in disdain. Piper’s heart leapt in fear as his glance
passed over her and the baby yelped as she gripped her too hard. “These are not equals. Look at them. They’re barely human.
Runts.” The last word was spoken with scorn, a contempt that Bramble had heard many, many times on the Road. “Shagging Travelers,”
were the words usually spoken in her time, but the tone was the same. The men rumbled their agreement, but Acton wasn’t moved.

“I gave my word,” he said. “Go,” he said to the crowd of women.

Some of them turned to head down the hill, but Snapper folded her arms. “Where do we go?” she asked. “A bunch of women and
childer, with no way of making a living. We know how to fish, but this is the only harbor from here to forever. Easy to save
our lives and feel good about yourself, but we’re still dead by the end of winter, with no shelter and no food.”

Asgarn turned away with a shrug of distaste, but Acton listened, his face growing serious. Baluch said something quietly in
his ear, and he nodded.

“There’s a village,” he said. “It’s abandoned. You can have it on two conditions. One is that our boats are left undisturbed
as they go up and down river. The other is that you accept any other . . .” he searched for a word, but failed to find it,
by the look on his face, “any other people who need shelter. I don’t know what the place is named, but it’s a few miles upstream
of here. Call it Sanctuary.”

“Go on, then,” he added to the women, as though shooing a flock of chickens from his door, “go on, get going.” Laughter threaded
underneath his words and Bramble felt a mixture of annoyance and admiration. He was such a — an
idiot
! He could be as generous as a rich man on his deathbed, but he couldn’t see that Asgarn was dangerous. He was too straightforward
himself to recognize the point where shrewdness turned to deviousness. That was a point that Asgarn had reached long ago.

The women gazed at their men, gathered on the cliff edge. Acton’s men didn’t like it. They glared at the women and then one
of them started to bang his sword on his shield and shout, “Ac-
ton
! Ac-
ton
!” Others joined in. Where before it had been a noise of celebration, now it was a threat.

The women hastily gathered their children and turned to go, talking about the new village as if to pretend that they weren’t
frightened. Some of them knew it. They carefully didn’t mention why a village would be abandoned, but after the threats from
the soldiers, they were filled with relief to turn toward their houses. Except Piper. She looked helplessly toward Salmon.
He pointed to the north, toward a group of large boulders down the hillside about fifty paces away. She nodded and gave the
baby to Snapper, kissing her on the head first. Then she walked down with a group of other women, slipping between a gap in
the boulders as they passed so that Acton’s men wouldn’t realize she was there.

Salmon was waiting for her. They came close together, but couldn’t touch. He curved his hand as though touching Piper’s face,
and the tears flowed hot down her cheeks. Bramble was tired of grief. She felt exhausted by it. There had been so many deaths:
Sebbi and Elric and Asa and Friede and Edwa, so much grief and so much mourning and so much revenge. She wondered why the
gods were keeping her here, now the important part of the story had happened. What use was it, forcing her to see, to feel
this, too?

“Herring got away on the boat,” Piper said to Salmon, talking around the lump in her throat, sobbing a little. His face lit
with relief. His son then, too, was safe. Bramble wondered how old Herring was. Where the boat had gone, if this was the only
port “from here to forever.” The Wind Cities, maybe. Surely these people had heard of them?

Then Acton appeared through the gap in the rocks, fumbling with his trousers. He had clearly slipped away for a quiet piss,
and he stopped in surprise and a little embarrassment as he saw Piper and Salmon.

“You’d better get going,” he said to Piper. “My men are drinking again. I can hold them a while longer, but after that, I
make no promises.”

“I don’t understand why you are stopping them,” Piper said. “I always heard the blond barbarians raped and tortured women.”

Acton’s face filled with incongruous enjoyment, as though she had made a joke. “My mother had strong views about rapists,”
he said, his eyes dancing, and even Piper, standing by her dead husband, was warmed by that smile. Bramble felt a stab of
irritation with her. He’s your enemy, she wanted to say. But he was also Piper’s protector, which had not been part of the
story. Bramble had never heard of Sanctuary.

Acton looked at Salmon, who was glaring at him, and back at Piper. “Your man will be fine, you know,” he reassured her. “He
died fighting, his sword in his hand. Swith the Strong will welcome him into the hall of heroes, and he will feast in the
company of the brave forever.” His tone was earnest. There was no doubt that he believed it.

Piper looked at him, bewildered. “What are you talking about?” she said. “Death is just a door. Afterward, we go on to rebirth,
if we have lived well and justly and pleased the gods.”

Acton’s face twisted in surprise.

Astonishingly, this was what the gods had wanted her to see, to hear, because the waters rose up like a breaking wave and
smashed her away into darkness.

K
EEPING
A
RROW, HIS
chaser, in condition was the perfect excuse to get away from the fort. Leof felt ashamed that he needed to, but it had been
two days since Arrow had been exercised, and she was getting restive. His groom was quite capable of riding her usually, but
in this mood Leof wouldn’t trust her to anyone but himself. That was his excuse, anyway. He rode down the valley, inspecting
the ditches and stake-traps which were being built in rings around the hill. Every man from the town who could be spared was
working there, for all the daylight hours, but even so, it was progressing slower than Leof would have liked. That was another
good reason for a ride, to encourage the workers and speed up the work.