"Fuck, that's huge!" Briorn said. Then he looked up again, as if the wall might have grown a little more just to spite him. "I mean, huge as hell."
Hrafn smiled from one corner of his mouth. The man really did seem to have found something inside himself on the day of the attack. Maybe an excuse to bark louder.
One way or another, perhaps it was for the better.
And in the end Hrafn did not find his presence all that bad. He talked too much, cursed too much, laughed too loudly, but he was sincere. He seemed the type of man who could not lie even if he tried. Hrafn liked people like that. They reminded him of his father.
"I imagine it is for you," he said, with all the lazy provocation in his voice.
Annoying Briorn was becoming a decent pastime.
And an easy one. Irritating the brute took less effort than mounting a horse with one arm.
"Hm?" Briorn grunted, turning his head slowly, almost as if daring Hrafn to repeat the insult so he could explode with a clean conscience.
Not that it was necessary.
"You're funny as hell, aren't you, cripple?"
"Briorn!" Sigrid cut in, as always, trying to contain the fire before it spread.
"Fine," he said. "Fine!" He huffed like a boy caught stealing bread.
That alone was impressive enough. Hrafn understood that Briorn would not apologize. The man was like his blessing: as rough as stone, as stubborn as the earth, incapable of yielding without feeling cheated.
Not that Hrafn cared.
He was too busy trying to trot without looking like an idiot.
Riding had been a nuisance without the arm. The saddle weighed differently now. His balance had changed. Holding the reins, adjusting his body, taking the horse's jolts-everything seemed to demand a new, irritating, constant attention. Even so, he was growing used to it. Adapting was easier with a voroir's strength, even a voroir like him.
The air carried the smell of sweaty horse, old grease, damp wool, and salt. Behind them, the forest still followed for a stretch, dark and dense. Ahead, however, the trees had already begun to thin, giving ground to stone, wind, and the impossible scale of human work.
The wall kept drawing nearer. Or seemed to. Hrafn had been staring at it for some time, though it was almost impossible to do otherwise.
"How tall do you think it is?" Sigrid asked, her neck craned upward, one hand shielding her eyes from the light.
It was a fair question. The thing was so high the eye refused the number. It looked too large to fit any human measure.
"I'd bet an arm it's about fifty meters," Hrafn answered dryly.
Cynicism had always served him well. He was not about to lose it over an arm. Least of all one already lost.
"Hrafn!" Sigrid complained.
And of course she reproved him. She was too kind.
Briorn shared none of that kindness, though. He let out a shameless bark of laughter, one that bent his whole body. "You miserable bastard," he swore, hauling breath back into himself.
Sigrid grunted in annoyance and raised both hands, as if giving up on the two of them at once. Perhaps she had realized that trying to set them straight was work for a lifetime.
Perhaps that's for the best.
The thought amused Hrafn.
Thora, on the other hand, shrank even further in the saddle. Which was strange. He could call her an acquaintance, at least.
They had spoken enough in Brinegard for him to know she was more spirited than that, quicker of tongue too. Nearly as foul-mouthed as Briorn, at times.
Now she seemed smaller inside her own clothes.
But perhaps she had changed.
He himself had changed with time.
The caravan moved on. The travelers' cloaks beat in the wind. On the wagons, waxed cloth protected barrels and chests, and on some of them there were still old stains of dried mud and poorly washed blood.
The wall, which had always seemed near, was beginning to loom larger. And no matter how far they rode, there still seemed to be a whole world left before they would reach it.
Hrafn had felt this way only a few times in his life: small. Tiny, even. His neck hurt from looking up, and that was only the beginning.
His heart tightened too when he came near the bridge and looked down.
There was something else there.
Something he had heard of, but would not have believed without seeing.
The smell of the sea struck him first. Far too strong. Much stronger than it should have been.
It made sense, to a point; Sahirid had been founded near the sea-not pressed against the ocean like Brinegard, but close enough to feel it. Even so, the brine there was something else. It was thick, alive, as present as in the docks where he had worked.
As for the reason.
A circular river surrounded the city. No-river was too small a word. It was almost a sea dug around Sahirid. The city rose above the level of the water, and around it yawned a flooded abyss, deep and dark, fed by some channel Hrafn could not make out from there.
The waters struck the stone walls, and their dark color said much about the depth.
There was movement in it, too alive.
He could feel it.
The moving water bothered his blessing; brushing the banks, pushing, pulling, breathing against the stone.
Hrafn had to make a conscious effort to shut his mind tighter, to draw inward. He did not manage much.
He barely sustained the closed state in which he had been walking ever since the attack; tightening it further was like trying to clench a hand already broken.
"Right. Now that's fucking incredible," Briorn said. Then he cast Hrafn a suspicious look. "For all people, I mean," he finished in haste, defending himself against a barb that had not even come yet.
"On that, I have to agree," Hrafn answered.
There was no joke in his voice. Faced with that, it would have been hard to jest.
But awe had a limit, and the caravan had to keep moving.
The bridge was wide enough to let the wagons pass without the slightest squeeze. When they crossed through the gates, Hrafn had, for a moment, the impression that the interior delivered less than the walls had promised.
The outer ring was still made of fire-darkened wood, cheap stone, and rooftops pressed up against one another, just like Brinegard.
There were workshops open to the street, market stalls, wagons, people dodging people, servants bent under loads, children too quick, and mangy dogs sniffing at mud.
City stuff.
Then the street turned, and the water appeared again.
Not an open quay, as in Brinegard. Here the water entered the city itself. It ran between houses in narrow, dark canals, lapping slowly at stone steps worn by salt. Doors opened almost over it. Small boats bobbed tied to iron rings. In some stretches the street ceased to be a street at all and became only a strip of stone between wall and canal, narrow enough that two men would brush against one another passing by.
The smell was worse farther in.
Fish, silt, tar, wet rope, salt, and smoke. All of it clinging to the stones as if it never truly left.
Low bridges of short arches stitched one bank to the other. From some windows hung colored cloths and nets. From others, only shadows.
Above their heads, the eaves nearly touched in some places, cutting the light and making the city seem deeper than high.
It did not have the open chaos of Brinegard's docks.
It had something else.
There were people everywhere. Boatmen pushing hulls with short poles. Craftsmen in dark aprons with arms burned by the furnace. Merchants speaking with their hands. Women crossing stone walkways with their skirts lifted. And, among them all, voroirs.
Always easy to notice.
By the posture. By the armor. By the way space seemed to open a little before they passed through it.
"This is incredible," Sigrid said.
Her eyes shone.
Hrafn understood. To her, this must have looked like the center of the world. To him, it was more as though someone had taken several port towns, squeezed them until it hurt, piled stone over them, and let the sea seep in through the cracks.
Even so, there was grandeur there. In the scale and movement of all things.
The caravan did not take long to begin breaking apart. Groups were pulled off in different directions according to function, origin, or some other criterion Hrafn could not be bothered to guess at. No voroir came to them. They probably had better things to do than look after the newly arrived.
The one who came to guide them was a servant.
And that reminded Hrafn of something.
Something that drew from him an almost full, almost honest smile-a rare thing in him.
It was time to receive a few privileges.