Read Online The Great Rift by Edward W. Robertson - Free Book Online Page B

week on a venture that was already weeks behind. He and Blays had enough on their person to buy decent lodging and board for a couple weeks apiece, but that was hardly enough to rent a boat and its crew for a journey of 200 miles or more with a passenger manifesto of some thirty armed warriors. The clan, meanwhile, had essentially nothing (with the exception of an armory of immaculately forged swords, which were priceless in the very real sense they refused to sell them). In the end, Dante had to resort to requesting credit from Banning, who agreed readily, going so far as to refuse all offers of repayment, be they sooner (wealth recouped from the pirates) or later (the weeks it would require to get word to Cally and hard funds).
    By the time all this was arranged, the crew of the Boomer was already drunk, and Captain Varlen, a stout man whose barrel-shaped body looked like it could serve as a ship of its own if properly hollowed, showed unusual concern in insisting they not shove off until the crew slept off their rum, wine, and beer. Dante boiled with the specific annoyance of a delayed journey. To occupy his mind, he practiced with the nether inside the yurt, forming images of Blays falling off a variety of cliffs, treetops, and towers.
    Mourn woke him shortly after dawn and they tramped down the pier to the Boomer , a nondescript grain barge with a flat bottom and a single deck, below which spilled wheat was lodged into every corner and cranny. The clan, evidently confused by the concept of boats, set about erecting their tents belowdecks while Captain Varlen shouted the vessel into open water. A solid sheet of gray clouds tarped the sky. A low wind rippled the sails, chilling Dante at the side railing where he watched them depart from Cling. On the receding docks, men lugged bales and barrels from and into waiting ships. The steep hill rose behind town, pocked with doors, slashed from top to bottom with the zigs and zags of its seamless, perfect road. Varlen nudged the barge to the middle of the river, clearing them from the port town's miasma of river muck and feces. Cling disappeared behind a bend.
    Dante had always wanted to take an extended trip via water, but he was soon glad he hadn't. In a word, it was boring. In another word, it was repetitive, a slow-scrolling vista of shoreline trees, short hills, and sudden cliffs with rocky piles collected at their bottom. Shacks dotted the banks every mile or three. Every few hours, the current pushed the Boomer past a norren village. Their high, conical roofs, designed to keep the snow off, jabbed from the shores like pins in a knitter's cushion. For two days, this was all Dante saw, and though he wasn't one to bore easily, the trip was doing its best.
    His condition wasn't helped in the slightest by the clan warriors, who continued to treat him and Blays like off-duty farm dogs—fed occasionally, otherwise ignored—despite the fact that if not for them, the clan would still be sitting on a muddy bank waiting for their one-eyed god to stop chasing female mortals long enough to clue them in about where to go next. (When he'd brought that very point up, Orlen had brushed it off; Josun Joh had sent them to the right place, he said, but left it up to them to find what they'd come for.) The exception was Mourn, who now spoke to them regularly, readily answered questions, and generally showed all signs of having abandoned his task of minding the two humans. Possibly because they were trapped on a boat, where the only opportunities to sneak off into trouble involved getting very wet. Still, Dante thought Mourn's shift in priorities was genuine.
    "Somebody do something already," Blays said from his seat on an out of the way portion of the deck. "I'm so bored I'm about to start counting my own fingers."
    "You have ten," Mourn said.
    "Don't be so sure. I've been drumming this deck so hard I might have worn some of them down to the nub."
    "You could try watching for pirates," Dante