Read Online Gods and Warriors by Michelle Paver - Free Book Online Page A

breath—and pressed the burning brand to her cheek.
    With a cry, she threw it away. Hylas couldn’t repress a start. She caught the movement and saw him. Her eyes widened. She cried out. The guard woke up, spotted Hylas, and shouted the alarm. Men burst from the tents.
    Warriors appeared at the edge of the woods.
Crows.
To his horror, Hylas realized that there must be a camp in there: a whole dark, silent camp of Crows that he’d never suspected.
    The first warrior reached the shore and spotted him. He saw the notch in Hylas’ earlobe. He shouted, “It’s one of
them
!”
    Hylas blundered past the girl and flung himself into the Sea.
    He went under and came up spluttering. Shouts behind him, and sounds of running feet. His food sack and water skin were dragging him down. He shrugged them off. Arrows whistled past him. He dived underwater and swam blindly for the boat.
    His hand struck wood. Somehow he scrambled in and untied it, found the oars and started rowing clumsily into the bay. He was used to handling light reed crafts, but this was much heavier; it bucked in the swell like a startled donkey.
    Over his shoulder he glimpsed men pushing another boat into the shallows—where had that come from? Already they were leaping in and hauling on the oars, and at the front an archer was crouching to take aim. Hylas ducked. The arrow hit the side of the boat and stuck there, quivering.
    He rowed till his muscles burned.
Fool,
he berated himself. The Keftians weren’t afraid of the Crows—
because they were in league with them.
    As he struggled past the dark bulk of a headland, the swell strengthened and he felt it pulling at the boat. Then he was heading into a white wall of fog, and behind him the shouts of the Crows were abruptly muffled. The Sea was
helping
him.
    Hope lent him strength, and he rowed deeper into the fog.
    He paused to listen.
    No voices. No splash of oars. Just the slap and suck of waves against the sides of the boat, and his own sawing breath.
    “
Thank
you,” he murmured to whatever spirits might be listening.
    He rowed till he could row no more. With the last ofhis strength, he drew in the oars and curled up in the bottom of the boat. Fog beaded his tunic and lay clammily on his skin, and the Sea rocked him gently on her salty, sighing breast…
    He knows he’s asleep, and he’s furious with the mad Keftian girl for sneaking into his dream. She’s standing on the shore, waving a burning stick and sneering at him.
    “Where’s my sister!” he shouts at her.
    “She’s gone!” she taunts him in Keftian, which somehow he understands. “You went the wrong way, you’ll never find her now!”
    Her arm becomes longer and longer and she jabs the stick at the boat, burning a hole in it. The Sea rushes in. The mad girl howls with laughter. “The Fin People got Issi—and now they’ll get you too!”
    Hylas jolted awake.
    The fog had cleared and the sky was beginning to grow light. The Sea was still gently rocking him.
    Blearily, he sat up. To the east, the Sun was waking: Dawn was bleeding across the sky. To the west…
    To the west, the land was gone.
    In panic, he turned north—south—east—west.
    The land was gone.
    Around him there was nothing but Sea.

9

    T he Sea sounded different at night. Pirra felt as if it was mocking her failure to escape her fate. She’d thought that if she spoiled her face, she would avoid being wed. She was wrong.
    Her cheek was a blaze of agony. She kept reliving the moment she’d done it. The smell of burned flesh. The wild boy staring from the dark. And all for nothing.
    “Take these,” said Userref. He knelt at the entrance to her tent, holding out strips of fine linen and a small alabaster bowl of green sludge. His cloak was beaded with fog, his scalp and chin shadowed with stubble. His handsome face was stiff with disapproval. Like all Egyptians, he believed beauty was a gift from the gods. To him, what she’d done was blasphemy.
    “What’s in the