about his head. After a few moments the panic passed. He stilled his body, spread his arms and legs in an effort to retain some buoyancy. Slowly, he reached under the edge of the net and worked his fingers along the edge, lips tightening in rage as he felt the rocks tied onto it to add weight. He pulled it off, and watched it spiral into the dark below him, then flailed about until his head broke the ocean’s surface.
The outrigger was already a hundred feet away, the islanders heading back to their beach with all possible speed. Marius spluttered as his head cleared the water and stared after them.
“Bastards!”
The effort of shouting unbalanced him. He slipped beneath the surface, then fought his way above once more.
“Come back, you traitorous…”
He gagged as he took in another mouthful. The islanders ploughed on, not one of them looking back at the spot where Marius floated. Marius watched them getting smaller. Make a decision, he thought. Well, the King had certainly done that. Now, all that was left to Marius was movement. Any movement was better than none. He fixed his eyes upon the slowly diminishing stern of the outrigger, and started to swim after it.
In thirty-eight years of life, Marius had seen cities at every edge of the continent, from the Borgho slums in the east to the great perfumed quarters of Tal in the west, from avenues carved into the cliff faces of the Northern Mountain Kings to the vast mobile tent markets of the caravanserai that endlessly circled the Southern Dry. He had served in more armies than there were countries; watched rebellions begin and be quashed; gulled coins; seduced princesses, whores, mothers and virgins; argued politics with students and talked philosophy with all three emperors; been imprisoned and escaped more times than he could remember; looted battlefields; hunted witches; swindled, lied, cheated, conned, duped, plotted, regretted, defrauded, deceived and always,
He had never once learned to swim.
The next few minutes were full of movement. Unfortunately for Marius, most of it was downwards. He thrashed his arms with the best of intent, but no matter how he shovelled water behind him, slowly, inevitably, his head slipped below the waves. Still, being dead had its advantages. Removed from the need to breathe, the water around him was no impediment to his industry: he beat on, movements slowed by the weight of the water, and did manage to achieve some form of progress. For every foot of forward momentum he achieved he slipped seven lower, until he glanced down and was embarrassed to see the white sand of the ocean bottom only a foot or so below his dangling feet. Marius ceased his efforts and settled gently onto the sand.
For a moment or two he stood, stupidly staring at the ocean floor. Then he doubled over and placed his hands on his knees. His body shook, and only the tiny fish that darted this way and that around the ocean floor were witness to his fit of hysterical laughter. Eventually the laughter slowed. Marius straightened, and drew his hands across his eyes, which prompted another bout of laughter as he realised the futility of trying to wipe away tears whilst half a fathom below the sea. When he had at last regained his composure, he set his shoulders, and offered silent thanks that he had not turned around during his landing. He lifted his foot and took a slow step forward, testing his balance against the underwater tides and the increase in pressure. When he had completed it safely he paused, made sure of himself, and took another step. Then he was off, taking sluggish, heavy steps, ignoring the alien life that swirled around him before flitting off on its own particular path. Sooner or later, at some point ahead, the land would begin to rise. He would emerge, like an Old God from the surf, and stride up a beach. And then he would find out where he was, and make plans, and see an end to the events that had taken his life so far out of his control.
Somewhere ahead of him, the King of Scorby lay in state, viewed by thousands of loyal subjects a day, guarded by the finest palace guards, counting down the days to his immolation and ascension to Heaven. Marius pursed his lips, and began to hum an extremely dirty marching song he had learned in service to the King’s father. After walking the length of an ocean, armed with nothing more than two wedding rings and a dirty song, stealing him and delivering him to the armies of the dead would be a doddle.
The dead do not tack. They do not lie becalmed, waiting for a stray wind to propel them. They have no need to turn into a storm, or pull into sheltered bays to effect running repairs. A dead man, finding himself under fifty feet of water, with nothing to do but trudge along in a straight line, mile after mile, stopping neither for sleep nor weather conditions, with only the task of following one foot after another and avoiding coral outcrops and the attentions of any stray predator that might wish to investigate his passage, can make thirty miles a day without conscious effort. Marius did his best to take interest in his surroundings, but so far below the surface the world is a dark and gloomy one, and even with his dead vision he could see only a few feet in any direction. Tiny fish darted here and there, colourless and pale. Small, scuttling things ran across the sand at his feet, stirring up puffs of sediment that added to the general gloom. Once, something massive and slow slid overhead, announcing itself with a long wave of disturbed water. Everything around Marius stopped as it passed, and even he paused, aware of the sudden emptiness the giant, unseen shape caused. Only once it had passed by did life slowly return to the space around him, and he continue his plodding journey.
With nothing to capture his attention, Marius quickly fell into that form of fugue known to all long-distance travellers. Time lost its meaning, and any sense of motion disappeared within the rhythm of his walk. Marius needed to maintain his concentration – if he forgot his task, and strayed from the straight line he was following, he could spend the rest of his days wandering the sea-beds in circles. With no external stimulation, he turned inwards. He tried singing, but there are only so many bottles of beer that can fall before the entire liquor industry goes on strike, and you find yourself fantasizing about a pint of Old Grumpy’s Falling Down Water and a cuddle with that plump serving girl who works down the
It lay on its side, stern pointing towards the sky, the gaping hole where its back had broken tilted down so that, at a casual glance, it looked to have rammed its prow deep into the sandy bottom. Marius leaned against a nearby rock and viewed the keel from what felt like a safe distance, although why he should feel safe when surrounded by open water rather than the ship’s wooden hull was something he couldn’t explain. Even from distance, it was massive. It was hard to gauge this far under water, with the silty bottom swirling about him in the dark, but what he could see seemed to be well over twenty feet wide, and the stern must have been sixty or seventy feet from the break. Growths covered the hulk, so that it might well have been mistaken for a natural outcropping from above. From this angle, below and to one side, Marius could clearly see the planks along the ship’s side, overlapping too regularly and smoothly to be anything other than man-made. The incline upon which the ship rested was a steep one, and Marius was faced with a quandary of sorts – to slip down beneath the vast mass and work his way inside via the open break, to risk his wellbeing against who knew what kind of creature that may have taken up residence, in the hope of some sort of loot to carry with him; or clamber up the slope and crest the obstacle at its uppermost point, which would result in less chance of booty but fewer opportunities of being eaten, theoretically, and he would at least learn the identity of the boat. In the end, his own nakedness decided him: what was the point of carving out booty when he had precious little ability to carry it, and unless he found his way to land, what would there be to spend it on? Marius was not yet resigned to spending his remaining lifespan under the waves, a resolution which required him to bypass this monstrous obstacle and continue on his path. He turned to