House of Chains
The slavemaster attempted to retreat further.
Near the three emaciated lowlanders lay the remains of a fourth, his bones picked clean.
‘Teblor!’ Silgar implored. ‘You must listen to me!’
Karsa slowly advanced.
‘I can save us!’
Torvald tugged at Karsa’s arm. ‘Wait, friend, let’s hear the bastard.’
‘He will say anything,’ Karsa growled.
‘Even so-’
Damisk Greydog spoke. ‘Karsa Orlong, listen! This island is being torn apart-we all need your boat. Silgar’s a mage-he can open a portal. But not if he’s drowning. Understand? He can take us from this realm!’
Karsa looked down at the Daru beside him. ‘You trust Silgar?’
‘Of course not. But we’ve no choice-we’d be unlikely to survive plunging through that breach in the dory. We don’t even know this wall’s height-the drop on the other side could be endless. Karsa, we’re armed and they’re not-besides, they’re too weak to cause us trouble, you can see that, can’t you?’
Silgar screamed as a large section of the logjam sank away immediately behind him.
Scowling, Karsa sheathed his sword. ‘Begin untying the boat, Torvald.’ He waved at the lowlanders. ‘Come, then. But know this, Slavemaster, any sign of treachery from you and your friends will be picking your bones next.’
Damisk, Silgar and Borrug scrambled forward.
The entire section of flotsam was pulling away, breaking up along its edges as the current swept it onward. Clearly, the breach was expanding, widening to the pressure of an entire sea.
‘Then why didn’t you leave a long time ago?’ Torvald demanded, as he slipped the last line loose and clambered back aboard.
The dory scraped free of the crumbling island, swung wildly into the sweeping current. Karsa pushed and pulled with the oars to angle their bow into the torrential flow.
‘Follow?’ Torvald repeated. ‘Where?’
To that Silgar simply shook his head.
Karsa abandoned the oars and made his way to the stern, taking the tiller in both hands.
They rode the tumbling, churning sea of wreckage towards the breach. Where the wall had given way there was an ochre cloud of mist as vast and high as a thunderhead. Beyond it, there seemed to be nothing at all.
Silgar was making gestures with both hands, snapping them out as would a blind man seeking a door latch. Then he jabbed a finger to the right. ‘There!’ he shrieked, swinging a wild look on Karsa. ‘There! Angle us there!’
The place Silgar pointed towards looked no different from anywhere else. Immediately beyond it, the water simply vanished-a wavering line that was the breach itself. Shrugging, Karsa pushed on the tiller. Where they went over mattered little to him. If Silgar failed they would plunge over, falling whatever distance, to crash amidst a foaming maelstrom that would kill them all.
He watched as everyone but Silgar hunkered down, mute with terror.
Darkness swallowed them.
And then they were falling.
A loud, explosive crack. The tiller’s handle split under Karsa’s hands, then the stern hammered into him from behind, throwing the Teblor forward. He struck water a moment later, the impact making him gasp-taking in a mouthful of salty sea-before plunging into the chill blackness.
He struggled upward until his head broke the surface, but there was no lessening of the darkness, as if they’d fallen down a well, or had appeared within a cave. Nearby, someone was coughing helplessly, whilst a little farther off another survivor was thrashing about.
Wreckage brushed up against Karsa. The dory had shattered, though the Teblor was fairly certain that the fall had not been overly long-they had arrived at a height of perhaps two adult warriors combined. Unless the boat had struck something, it should have survived.
‘Karsa!’
Still coughing, Torvald Nom arrived alongside the Teblor. The Daru had found the shaft of one of the oars, over which he had draped his arms. ‘What in Hood’s name do you think happened?’