The Dire Sea was a dark endless thing, refracting the glow of a sun sinking west. With night on the rise, the sky was transformed into greens and violets— hues exclusive to the far north, ribbons of ghostly light, flowing. The bustling ship had calmed in its new anchorage; some of the crew had taken a boat to an outpost along the shore, but most were standing or sitting topside, watching the sky, enjoying the quiet. A young tono woman was singing a song.
"Dawdling in the shrouds, I see."
Peter glanced down from the netting, one arm hooked on the weathered ropes. Anouk was on the gangway below, squinting up with a crooked smile. Sourly, he scowled back at her. "Go find someone else to pester," he retorted. "I've earned a break."
"Aye, we all have." Anouk surveyed the cluttered decks. But then her cloudy-day eyes climbed up to the sky. Her smile spread, pleasantly. "It's a fine sight, isn't it?"
"It is," Peter admitted, sharing the view. "It's almost enough to forget the cold."
"The north can be tough," she said. "But sooner or later, everyone falls in love with her."
Peter dropped down from the shroud. Anouk's expression was indecipherable. "It's a few hours more to reach the city," he said. "What can I expect to be met with?"
She laughed at that. "Oh, you're blood, alright."
"I'm serious. I'm flying blind."
"We're all flying blind. You're just not used to being in charge, making all the big decisions."
Peter foolishly rose to the bait. "I make plenty of big decisions."
Anouk tilted her head to appraise him, smiling outright at his reaction. "We heard all about what happened out west," she told him. "Them Oldden highborn jammed up the chain from here to Arneth to Clearwater Canyon. Far as any of us can tell, you're eating the scraps of a bigger wolf."
"He's no wolf. You don't know what you're talking about."
She cackled a little, almost sheepishly. "Aye, maybe," she said. "We'll see."
"What's with you, anyway?" he demanded. "What's your stake in this? What's the play?"
Anouk leaned forward on the bulwark, raking at hair. She was still sort of leering, but something had changed. She squinted sidelong. "What am I, then, cousin?" she teased. "Am I a common bully, scheming up ways to get under your skin? Is that what you think of me?"
"It's easy enough, the way you shoot your mouth off."
Her smile gradually faded. "Jammed up the chain," she repeated. "Here to Arneth to Clearwater Canyon. It was the last we heard of them."
"What do you mean?"
"Oldden hasn't reported in since Founder's Day. Reports say it's as much leveled." Her eyes slid away. "And there's war," she went on. "Not just out there, but here, in the Dire. At our borders. At our doors." She glanced back at Peter, suddenly angry. "Grandfather died while we were in Harken. I had a single job to do, and it didn't include aligning with the same crazy rosspot who did in Gladius."
Peter made a face. "Don't call him that."
"I wasted three days." She was quieter now, but no less annoyed. "Three days— one spent tied to a fucking tree. Do I look easily persuaded to you? Do I look like someone who'd join a fight for a cause she didn't believe in? With everything else going on in the world? Do I?"
"No," he answered, growing impatient. "Your point?"
Oddly enough, she fell silent. She glared out at the dark, bleak sea. "The point is I did," she said, sulking. "Crafty spriggan. I was after him next I knew, fool enough in the blood and the snow until I finally came upon him. I could've just as well killed him for witchcraft."
It took a moment to register. Peter let out a bark of laughter, inviting her eyes. "The great Anouk Battlefrost," he hailed. "Tamed by an innocent crush."
She glowered at him. "It's not a crush."
"Pretty sure it's a crush."
"I went out there to hunt him," she said. "He was mine."
"Aye," Peter scoffed, unfazed. "Where'd you mount his head to your wall?"
"Right next to where I hung yer clackers, ye gangly one-copper turnip-farming crust muffin."
He smiling, but then, so was she. "You're even crazier than he is."
They laughed a little. Anouk hung her head over the water, becalmed. "Say, Peter," she said. "Are you gonna go over his head?"
"If I need to."
"You don't want to, then?"
"It's not like that. He wasn't wrong to stop me." Peter joined her at the bulwark. "Una's rightful heir to Karna," he said. "I can't be with her if I'm busy overseeing the north."
She was watching him, he knew, gray eyes reading him better than he wished they would. "Assign the position to me," she suggested. "I'll gather the men you need within reason. My father's never been fit, especially not since my mother passed. Support me and I'll return the favor."
He quickly met her persuasive gaze. "You would do that?"
She smirked. "Just don't piss me off."
"Savage."
"Crust muffin."
"What kind of numbers are we talking here?"
Anouk eyed the sea, weighing figures. "Five thousand, let's say."
"Five thousand won't cut it," Peter countered. "The Bonesteels are twice that."
"You're not fighting the Bonesteels. You're taking Wulfstead."
"Only to start. Ethos said— "
"Peter." Anouk's voice had gone low. She looked at him. "I can't leave my city undefended," she said, with finality. "Five thousand is the best I can do."
"Ethos won't like it."
"Ethos isn't in charge here. We are." She sank against the briny bulwark, stretching her arms into open air, reaching. "If your plan is to stick it out with the princess, you can't be this reliant on him," she advised. "A king's word is law."
"I'm not reliant. I value his advice."
"You follow his lead instead of trusting your gut."
He snorted at her. "And here I thought I was better on scraps."
Anouk imparted a gleam of laughter. "You're family," she said. "I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't give you a hard time."
Someone shouted behind them, portside. The jolly boat was in sight, on approach, but aboard was a blur of wild movement. Violent movement. Peter was about to ask what was happening when Anouk swore and tore down the gangway, a blur herself in many ways. He took a step forward, another, a third, before his eyes made sense of it.
Howlings. Five, at least. It was hard to be sure. He'd only ever seen them in books or on flyers, but no depiction had done them justice. They were repulsive, all skin and bone and stringing saliva, nearly the size of an average man. The jolly was full of them, close to capsizing.
Everyone topside leapt into action. Anouk barked orders to initiate takeoff. "Now's the time to find something sharp!" she shouted. "Orrin, the lodestar!"
The ship rumbled deep down below: fires kicking on. A whistle blew. But a quieter sound, a nearer sound, forcibly drew Peter back to the bulwark. There at the edge, its yellowed claws raking lines in the timber— a howling. It scrambled, slavering, onto the deck.
Its face was round and mostly flat, but its head was long behind the ears, scarred and pocked like a veteran whale. A flaxen trail of snarled hair ran the length of its curved, crooked spine, down to the tip of a ratlike tail, which, thick around as a grown man's arm, whipped all about, throwing off seawater.
It went to all fours. It opened its lipless mouth and it shrieked. A terrible sound, like something dying. Timid Ashbrook was immediately there, plunging a gleaming, viridium blade into the creature's oblong skull, which promptly, bewilderingly, burst into fire. Blue fire. It screamed for several ghastly seconds before collapsing. The charred remains flaked, spitting up ash.
Ashbrook paused over the mess. To Peter, he said, "Pay attention, yeah?"
Peter met his eyes just in time to catch a bow and quiver. He hadn't heard what Ashbrook had said, hadn't heard much else than the screaming.
"From Baroona," Ashbrook explained. "You know how to use it?"
Swallowing rapidly, Peter nodded and shouldered the bow. "I have a knife," he said, numbly, preferring the bright viridium steel. "It's one of yours."
But, like Anouk, Ashbrook was already stringing curses and sprinting away, assailing a howling down the fore. Peter stared after him, privately awed by the unassuming helmsman. Suddenly, horribly, it occurred to him that even the humblest member of the crew had him beat.
A third howling appeared, again at the bulwark. Its eyes were mostly white. Peter flinched and ran it through, more out of terrified instinct than talent. Blue fire filled his vision. He threw out a foot, freeing his knife, and sent the monster overboard.
The sea swallowed it up. Peter ran his eyes down below, where countless more were surfacing at the waterline, sinking their claws into the hull. The ship was surrounded.
Somewhere, Anouk snarled, "Batten down, seadogs!"
"Battening down!" someone answered. "Slacken the line there, Walter!"
At once, three voices rang out. "Hoisting the mainsail!"
Tono huntsmen were landing down, weapons at the ready. Anouk was directing them, pointing them aft or into the rigging, off to whichever task needed doing. There were howlings now at every turn, hissing, shrieking, scrambling. It was as if they were desperately hungry— starving.
There was canvas yet to be properly hoisted. Sei had taken advantage of his high position on the masthead to fuss with some of the flapping topsails, but Peter seriously doubted he'd be able to figure out how to work the halyards in time. The barrelman, Digby Atherton, was frantically trying to direct him from the drum while dealing with his own tangled lines.
Howlings crowded the companionway hatch. Fearing that they might get below deck, Peter fell in to clear the area, bumping shoulders with Surin. Their eyes met for only a moment. Brushed by soot and blood and sweat, he saw in the elder a reflection of himself.
Without warning, Kacha and Una burst forth from the hatch and launched their beams of light at the swarm, clearing paths, burning hair, reminding Peter perforce, and unkindly, of the vicious attack on Harken, of how weak he'd felt while watching them fight just as well, if not better, without him.
He seized Una's arm and shouted, "Go back below!"
She surprised him by turning and baring her teeth. It was a startling expression to see on such a beautiful face. "Back off," she snarled. "Cover Clancy if you want to be helpful."
"The helmsman's fighting on the fore."
A fallen blade sprang from the deck and leapt into Kacha's waiting hand. "Fools," she muttered, sparing a glance. "Fight as one or don't fight at all."
Baroona spilled next from the wicked hatch. He joined the fight without any greeting, adding his curious power to theirs. But he'd neglected his back; Peter notched an arrow and loosed it, dropping the howling behind them. Seeing another, he repeated the action. Again. Again. Fit the arrow, bend the bow, loose the gooseshaft after its mark. Again. Again. Again.
All across the main there were knots of activity: howlings, assembled to devour the fallen. Peter's pulse was in his throat. "We'll never be able to take off with this kind of added weight," he said, to those close enough to hear him. "We need to get away from the mainland."
Kacha bludgeoned one of the foul-smelling creatures over the head with her cudgel. She stopped just long enough to respond, "We'll hold this position."
She was telling him to take care of it, to figure it out, to do his job. Peter stayed low as he made for the bridge, cursing the terrible ache in his knees. Smoke filled his lungs like a poison. He tripped in haste up the steps to the quarterdeck, part feeling his way, part failing and falling.
The climb spanned eternities. Peter took up the unmanned helm. A spoke was snapped, but the hub was intact. He scanned the main for signs of Anouk, blinded by flashes of light down below. She was defending the forward hatch with Orrin, whose bulk filled the entire entrance. Peter shouted out to them, but his voice was lost to the wind and the violence.
Loose canvas was flapping overhead, but the anchor was up and the wind had promise. Peter heaved the helm to port. To Sei, who was still in the rigging with Digby, useful in that he could fly place to place, Peter cupped a hand at his mouth and shouted, "The rudder's in line!"
Digby waved wildly at a cross beam while the tawny bowman in question glanced down at Peter in confusion, holding the ends of two different ropes as if to ask, "What do I do?"
"Leave it!" Peter charged. "I need you abaft! The mizzen!"
"Abaft?!" Sei echoed, dubiously. Then, even more so, "Mizzen?!"
There was a deafening shock of light; it tore clear through the quarterdeck's banister, ripping up clouds of wood and oakum. A gaping hole was left in the rise. Peter went to it as he shook the splinters out of his hair. "Oi!" he barked, at his comrades below. "Watch where you're aiming!"
Digby suddenly shouted, "Incoming from the north!"
Peter stopped to squint downwind. A ship had emerged from the blanket of night, dark as the murky sea itself. It was a smaller vessel than the Retaliant, and, unless his eyes were deceiving him, it was also incredibly fast. He hardly had time to register it before it was upon them.
A signal rang out as it stopped broadside to the carnage. All at once, its topside members trained their sights, fitting viridium arrows to bows, and with a final signal, they loosed. Peter could only watch as the deadly blue rain came down on the fight. There wasn't time at all to take cover.
But as it turned out, there wasn't any need to. One by one, the howlings alone were shot to the deck, and fire spilled like tainted water from their monstrous, yawning, unhinged jaws, chasing away the pervasive darkness.
The assist had well over halved them in number, but Peter was robbed of his respite. Something crashed into him roughly enough to have him collide with the poor, battered helm. A howling, of course, its teeth clacking together, claws flashing, spittle dripping. It knocked him down. Another joined it, a sight which had him slashing at air for fear that they might overtake him.
Peter saw an opening. He kicked away the nearest howling and scrambled into Anouk's private cabin, located behind the helm. But the door wouldn't close; there were monstrous arms and heads in the way— four of them now, jammed there between safety and harm. He was bleeding, he realized, though he didn't feel pain. The floor was red. His boots were sliding in it.
And slide, they did. The howlings won the battle of strength. Peter brought up the bow, knife lost somewhere behind in the scuffle, but all he could do was defend with it. One of them had the yew in its teeth, eyes bulging, unthinking. The wood shuddered and cracked and splintered.
Anouk was unexpectedly there, tearing through the farthermost one. She shouted his name and flung him a blade, one that he'd later boast about catching. It was a fine viridium cutlass, curved where it ought to be curved and sharp where it ought to be sharp. He'd never fought with anything like it, yet somehow, effortless, he eluded the howling upon him and split it straight from gut to throat, free hand guiding the spine of the blade. Blue fire danced in his eyes.
Meanwhile, Anouk had slain the other three. He tried not to let that particular fact ruin the high he'd achieved. Breathing heavy, they traded glances and smiled in exhaustion. There were sounds of triumph from the main deck, stomping and cheering. The dead would have to be seen to.
"Peter."
A new voice. An old voice. Anouk looked at the newcomer standing in the doorway, and Peter reluctantly followed suit, if only to confirm what he already knew.
She was dressed like a northerner, swathed in furs and Battlefrost blue. A bloodied cutlass hung at her side; its hilt was a complex silver thing, swallowing her hand with intricate rings that flared from the weapon's crosspiece. She held it like she knew how to use it.
Aria Battlefrost. The Northern Wolf, as some preferred. She entered the cabin, slow-moving, and the light within spread to her face, to the turns of her jaw and the grays of her eyes. She'd cut her hair short since he'd seen her last, just below the ears, so pale blond it was just as well white.
There were laughter lines around her mouth, but she wasn't laughing now. A head or so smaller than he, actually rather tall for a woman, she leaned in to study him, frowning. "You look different, sea slug," she noticed. "Your eyes have changed. And not for the better."
"A lot's happened," he said. "We ought to have a talk once I stop bleeding out."
"You're not bleeding out. It's your shin. Get a pother."
"You cut your hair."
"You're growing a beard."
"You said you'd only be a week."
"You told me you'd rather I stay a month."
Peter dimmed, remembering. "It's been longer than a month, mom."
"Aye, so it has." She finally smiled, just a little, and gently squeezed his shoulder. "It's a dirty job, sea slug," she told him, searching his eyes. "But it's yours if you really want it."
She meant Flint. Peter sighed and smiled with her, relieved enough just to have her near, alive and well and tough as ever. With a shake of his head, he said, "I've missed you."
She chuckled at that, softly. "How's your father?"
"He'd like us home."
"And Lena?"
"I didn't get to see her."
Her smile faded. "What do you mean?"
"She wasn't a high priority at the time. I had too much on my plate." She looked confused by his answer, like she didn't quite recognize him. Slowly, he realized, "You haven't heard."
Behind him, Anouk cleared her throat. "Could be I failed to send in a statement," she said, yet she grinned when he glanced at her. "Guess you'll have to play messenger."
He scowled. "Thanks for that."
"It's nothing."
Peter sighed and returned to his mother. The combative gleam had returned to her bearing. "Ten minutes," he conceded. "Give me ten minutes to get everyone in order."
Her eyes narrowed. "Do it in five and bring me a drink."