The Racing Tide
Irian could see the tide rising up the beach. It had come in slowly at first, but now it was fast: fast enough to send Koo burrowing in fear into the depths of her hair.
‘Today is the day that the tide will reach the top of the cage,’ said Carla.
She unlocked the door, and set it open. Irian made a sudden move towards it, but the chains on her ankles held her fast. ‘I would say I wish you luck.’ Carla pulled down a small iron lever set in the doorframe. ‘But I wouldn’t mean it.’
He came, Fidens Nighthand, over the water. His whole body pointed towards the northern shore of Paraspara like an arrow: he had never looked more terrible. The Ever Onward surged up the beach, and Nighthand dropped anchor and swung down into the water, ankle-deep.
The Berserker wildness was in him. This was not the man who had bustled about the kitchen, whistling through his teeth. This was the lawless Nighthand: the man who had struck terror into the hearts of those who met him. There was nothing in his eyes now but rage, and love, and rage again.
He scanned the beach. He saw grey sand, churning sea, and in the distance what seemed to be a rock, the waves creeping towards it. ‘Irian!’ he roared. ‘Irian!’
‘Nighthand!’ The cry came as faint as the wind.
He ran towards her along the shore, the glamry blade in his fist. The rock took shape as he grew closer, became a cage, a hunk of metal squatting on the forsaken landscape.
He had nearly reached the door when there was a cry, and a stymphalian bird dived out of the air and landed in front of the cage. It was ridden by Carla Venasque. She carried a sword.
‘Fidens Nighthand. Your instructions were to come unarmed.’
He stared at her in disbelief. ‘You!’
‘Lay down your knife, or I will put this sword through her neck.’
He hesitated, his eyes on Irian’s face. He laid down the glamry blade on the grey beach.
‘Back away!’ Carla dismounted. ‘Further! Further, or she dies!’ She picked up the knife, inspected it carefully. Then she stepped backwards and jerked her head at the cage.
‘What did you come for? Go and rescue your love. The door is open.’
Irian cried out, ‘Nighthand! Wait!’ She might as well have called out to the wind. He burst into the cage and seized her in his arms.
A spring under the floor of the cage shuddered and the door slammed shut behind him.
Nighthand swore. He seized hold of the bars and pulled. The whole cage shook, but the bars did not give way.
Irian’s face was very still. The tide was beginning to rush in over the floor of the cage. ‘They won’t bend even for you, Fidens. We’re trapped.’
Carla came to stand three paces from the bars.
‘How sad, to have come all this way just to die together. But romantic, which I’m sure will be some compensation to you, Nighthand, now that you’re so invested in love.
I shall watch you from the air.’ She lifted the glamry blade at them in salute.
‘While you drown. It’s a racing tide: it won’t take long. ’
The tide was surging, water eddying round their ankles.
Nighthand strained again at the bars. His expression had become deadly serious. His hands and voice shook. ‘I am sorry, my love. What a fool! I saw you chained, and I ceased to think.’
The waves were rough, smacking at Irian’s legs. ‘If I could just get to my knife!’ said Nighthand. ‘That woman …’
He stared upwards to where Carla Venasque swept in wide circles overhead on the back of the stymphalian bird, watching the sea take possession of the cage.
Nighthand braced his back against the bars and again tried to break them apart. He heaved; the bars vibrated, but gave no inch.
There was a peeping from Irian’s hair.
Nighthand stared at her. ‘Is … your hair nervous?’
Irian tried to smile. She reached into her braids, and brought out the small form of Koo.
‘You need to fly away now, Koo,’ she said. ‘The water’s coming. Get somewhere safe.’
‘No! Mine!’ he said, and he tried to wriggle back into her braids. ‘Mine, mine.’
‘By the Immortal! The rogue gagana!’ said Nighthand. The sea was all around them, water churning around the bars.
‘He tried to help,’ said Irian. She was controlling her breath now.
‘Help? How?’
‘He tried to bring me things. To fetch seaweed, and …’ She stopped speaking, and her eyes widened.
‘Koo!’ she said.
‘Yup?’
‘Listen to me now, Koo. Concentrate harder than you ever have before. I need you to fetch for me.’
The small bird erupted from the cage like a bullet. He flew straight upwards, straight at the stymphalian bird and at Carla Venasque’s face.
‘Fetch!’ he shrieked as he came. ‘Mine Irian! Fetch!’ Koo was small but his beak was razor-sharp gold and his claws solid silver, and he raked them at Carla’s face.
Carla screamed and put up both hands to fend him off.
The left hand held the glamry blade, and she slashed at the air with it.
But he was past it, snatching and pecking at her eyes, and she dared not bring the knife near her own face.
There was a terrible moment of feathers and chaos, his claws tearing at her arms, and then Koo was sweeping back to the cage, his jaw clamped around the hilt of Nighthand’s blade.
With every inch of his strength, every sinew of his small and exhausted wings, with every beat of love in his marble-sized infinite heart, Koo fetched.
He was almost overcome by the knife’s weight. His wings beat the air and he was more falling than flying, but he plummeted in through the bars and into Irian’s waiting hands.
‘Mine,’ croaked Koo gleefully. ‘Mine fetch! Mine!’
The glamry blade cut through the bars like they were made of silk.
Nighthand ducked under the waves and sliced through Irian’s chains.
Carla gave a great scream and turned the bird to wheel about as Nighthand seized Irian and they half ran, half swam out of the cage, up the beach and on to dry land.
Irian was shaking, from cold and shock; Nighthand too was shaking, though not from cold.
He snatched up a rock as large as a dog and hurled it up at the stymphalian bird, a Berserker cry rising on his lips.
Carla urged the bird upwards, and the rock that was aimed for her head caught at its beak.
It screamed, and beat its wings to launch further into the sky, but she held it back and brought it to hover six feet above the Berserker’s head.
‘Carla Venasque!’ Nighthand tipped his face up to the woman. ‘Why have you done this?’
‘For vengeance, Nighthand.’ She spat the words from the back of the bird. ‘For your cruelty.’
‘It was I who did you wrong, not her! Come and fight like the woman you used to be!’
Carla, up in the air, hesitated. She angled the bird downwards, towards Nighthand.
But the snake on her wrist writhed, twisting and tightening in a furious circle round her bones. She gave the bird a kick and soared into the air.
Soaking and panting, but with a fabulous care and flourish, Nighthand carried Irian towards the Ever Onward. She held Koo in her hands.
‘Carla spoke truth, Irian.’ His breath came in jagged bursts. ‘I was cruel to her. Unforgivably cruel. I am deeply ashamed to tell you now of what I was before I knew the Immortal – before I knew you.’
‘I know,’ she said gently. ‘She told me.’ She did not forgive, nor excuse it – it was not hers to forgive.
‘I did harm.’ He set Irian down on the sand. There were tears in his eyes.
She took his head in her hands. ‘It’s over. For now, my love, it is over. We’re safe.’
‘Safe,’ he echoed. ‘Yes. With you, I am always safe.’
He knelt before her on the sand. He bent, and with filthy hands made a twist of seaweed into a ring.
‘Irian.’ He spoke low. ‘I never felt, until I met you, that I had come home. I had not known that home might be possible for me. But you are my home. My heart belongs to you. It is yours: forever, and beyond forever, and whatever lies in the place beyond the beyond, it is yours.’
Irian laughed, though there were tears in her eyes too. He knelt before her, imperfect, unpredictable, hers. ‘I knew that a passion like this existed, but I never believed it would be mine. I thought I was too serious, too shy, too sensible to feel this way. You have shown me such wonders.’
‘Irian …’ And he held up the ring of seaweed. Koo bent down and tried to eat it and had to be pushed away. ‘Will you marry me?’
She laughed, and the sound rang across the barren landscape of the deserted beach like a trumpet call. It was music and fireworks and shooting stars, that laugh. ‘Yes, Fidens Nighthand. I say yes.’