Empire of Ashes

Chapter XCV - The Homecoming

The sailors had ways of staying entertained when they were not on shift, as did the oarsmen, who were rarely needed. Mostly, they drank or they wrestled. Sometimes they drank and they wrestled. It didn't take Anlai and Glyn long to integrate themselves into that society. Not long at all.

When I had regained a little strength, I joined them. At first, it was only a few minutes at a time. I learnt where to hit and how to put all of my body weight behind a blow. Anlai seemed to enjoy the opportunity to pummel me a little too much, but it kept both of us distracted. There was only so much grief a person could stomach at once.

Melia seemed content to watch from the railing. She had used the time to start learning Cambrian, too, and we managed to have short, stilted conversations about the weather before long. In exchange, she taught us a few words of the flitting and musical Sapphirean language. We butchered the pronunciation, of course, but I liked the feel of the words on my tongue.

Of course, we couldn't fill every waking hour with lessons, and there were too many spent in the cramped confines of the cabin, all five of us too quiet. We didn't talk about Tem. Not if we could help it. On a few occasions, Melia broke down into tears without warning or explanation. I tried to tell her it hadn't been her fault - not Tem, not any of it. We all tried. If she believed us, she gave no indication, and there were only so many times I could bear to dredge it all back up.

On the second day aboard Wave Rider, we caught our first glimpse of the northern coast. I could see jagged mountains, sheer cliffs and very occasionally a deep, rich valley. It was a stark contrast from the soft, rolling hills of my childhood, but I liked it. There was something fierce and defiant about all of those sharp edges.

We followed that coast along. When we passed the Creiton warband, I caught only glimpses of colourful fields and longhouses scattered across the seaside. The Sierrans aboard spat and made impolite hand gestures. They had been feuding before the Anglians had invaded, I remembered. And now that Tem was dead, I supposed they would soon be feuding again. No - we not they. I needed to get that through my head.

On the fifth day, we reached Sierra itself. As the sun rose over the horizon, it was hard to make out anything but a grey and green blur, but the higher the sun climbed and the closer we got, the more we could see. Leaning against the rail, I drank in the cliffs with seabirds wheeling above, the long golden beaches and the huge, looming mountains behind them.

"There's the beacon," Glyn announced cheerfully. He pointed at a nearby hill, where a fire the size of a small house blazed. "They've seen us - think we're Sihons."

"Oh, excellent," I muttered. It wasn't quite the welcome I had been hoping for, I would admit.

We turned north so that we were sailing alongside the coastline itself, and we followed it to the very tip of the peninsula. According to the northerners, Sierra's bay wasn't deep enough to let ships dock. But a league east, there was a pier jutting out into the ocean with a dozen longships tied along its length. Those were the vessels that carried the northerners to Sihone in the spring raiding season. So the captain leaned on the tiller, and the ship's prow swung towards land at long last.

We docked at the very tip of the pier, almost scraping one of the longships as we came in. By then, the sun was beginning to set, and we struggled to extract Nightmare from the stall because there were a dozen knots to be unpicked and only a greasy lantern to light them. While we worked, the white stallion kicked at his stall door, clearly thinking he had been forgotten. Grudgingly, Anlai went over to say goodbye.

"You've been brilliant," he told the stallion, scratching his withers. "But ... you are Anglian."

"Don't be horrid," his wife said, folding her arms across her chest. She was ignored, though, and the white stallion was left behind without a second glance. Valuable as he was, I had not forgotten that he had bitten off half of Nightmare's ear at Canton.