The final heavy bundle was passed overhead, and then his mates began slogging past him, pulling themselves hand over hand along the rope toward the ship.
“Low man untethers,” one sailor growled at him as he passed, as if Thomas had somehow forgotten his lowly station. “That be you, English. Mind the slack.”
Thomas turned his head to cast a grim look toward the termination of the rope on the rocky shore, which seemed leagues away as the waves buffeted him. The sky was growing darker, as if it was made of slate, and the angry waves reached up to wet it black. He struggled out of the loop but kept both hands firmly on the rough woven line as he labored up onto the sliding shore to where the rope was tethered. It grew taut, then limp, with no discernable pattern, sending dull twangs into Thomas’s ears. On the next instance of slack, he tossed the loop from the gray stone and followed it back down into the waves as it jerked in his hand, wrenching his shoulder.
Slack. Jerk. Slack.
A wave hit him full force in the face, filling his head with seawater. He choked and sputtered, pulling himself onward, his boots leaving the rocky shelf beneath the waves with each swell.
And then the rope was suddenly gone from his hands with a zing of heat.
Thomas thrashed out into the water as the prow of the ship, still too far away, rose sharply into the air and he was thrown back toward the shore.
Thomas saw the line of men on board frantically pulling and gathering the tether rope. They hurled it over the side once more in Thomas’s direction as he bobbed wildly in the undulating wilderness, but it landed out of his reach and vanished beneath the murk. And the ship was turning now. Turning to portside, wallowing a breathless moment. Thomas saw the burly captain clinging to the rail, peering through the spray as if searching for him. His mouth moved soundlessly, the roar of the wind stealing his words. The captain raised an arm.
“No!” Thomas shouted. He sputtered as water filled his mouth again, treading furiously to stay afloat. “No! Come back!” Another wave crashed over him, plunging him down onto a rock shelf. Thomas kicked up toward the surface again with every bit of strength remaining in his weakened legs, and when he at last gasped the misty air, the stern of the cargo ship was only just visible in the foggy gloom.
He turned and lashed out for the steep, rocky shore, his feet spinning madly at the firmness beneath them, scrambling up the treacherous surface before the next breaker could rush ashore and claim him. He crawled the last bit, dragging himself above the tidemark, falling onto his hip and then turning to his back on his elbows, his gaze searching the now-empty waves while the seabirds circled and screamed above his head. The icy wind cut his sodden clothes and exposed skin like a thousand knives.
They had left him. Left him on godforsaken Caedmaray.
The end of the earth.
He began to shake; from the cold, the wet, the shock—he didn’t know. His limbs felt as if they were made from stone as he struggled to his feet. He turned and saw nothing beyond the beach but painful green—no trees, no brambles. Only long grass, cleaved by a narrow, wet path to the foggy crest of the hill where it met the thick, darkening sky. He started up.
He was afraid, in a nonsensical way, that he would gain the top of the rise only to discover naught but more green on the other side. A lonely island of empty nothing. He knew that was impossible—he’d seen the line of villagers carrying the cargo over the hill himself while he’d been tethered in the violent bay. And yet the loud silence of the wind and sea, the triune landscape of grass and water and sky, gave the impression that he was the only man left alive here at the edge of the world.
But no, just down the hill, there it was—the little cluster of village, figures transporting the cargo along its narrow alleys. Small stone houses sunken into the earth more than halfway up their walls, all parallel with the length of the island. Raised hillocks in the lee of the land—crop beds, perhaps? The little piles of white, striking against the green: sheep. Short, cylindrical stone towers, whose purpose Thomas didn’t recognize, dotted the undulating green beyond the settlement.
The wind gusted, buffeting him on the hilltop path, turning his sodden clothes to ice. One of the villagers raised his head toward the hill, and then his arm to point at Thomas. The others paused in their work, turned, and stood, staring. Thomas couldn’t see their faces from so far away, but he was well familiar with their postures.
Foreigner.
Intruder.
English.
His only choices were to return to the sea and throw himself in or venture into what was perhaps a hostile settlement. The sky grew thicker, then; lower, like layers of icy batting being rolled out and pushed down over Thomas’s head—so low that he fancied he could feel them brushing the top, aching and wet from the cold.
He shivered his way down the steep, narrow path toward the figures who stared openly at him. The first few stinging drops of rain cut through his slicked-back hair to his scalp, stung his face. The wind burned his sea-seared lungs; his empty stomach squirmed against his backbone. Each jarring footstep brought him closer and closer to the people who watched him, slack-faced, as if they’d never seen another man before, and Thomas grew even more uneasy.
Would the people of Caedmaray give him shelter and sustenance through the long winter to come, until the supply boat returned from Thurso? Would he
