“I don’t know how much we can do,” says Nesrhev. “But we’ll try.”
“Do only that,” says Sigrud. “I want it focused on me. On me, do you hear?” Nesrhev nods. “Good.” Sigrud looks up and down the length of the bridge, as if not quite convinced it will hold. Then he heaves up the armful of weaponry and starts down the bridge toward the shore.
Mulaghesh hands out a lantern, which he takes. “Good luck, soldier,” she says. Sigrud nods absently, as if being greeted by familiar passersby on a contemplative walk.
He stops next to Shara, removes the gold bracelet from his left hand, and hands it to her.
“I’ll keep it safe,” she says.
“I know. If I do die tonight … ,” he says. He hesitates, staring out at the icy expanse of the Solda. “My family … Will you … ?”
“I will always make sure your family is taken care of,” says Shara. “You know that.”
“But will you tell them … about me? About who I was?”
“Only if it’s safe to do so.”
He nods, says “Thank you,” and starts off down the bridge.
Shara says, “Listen, Sigrud—if it comes to that, it is likely Urav will not kill you.”
He looks back. “Eh?”
“It’s likely the people it’s taken tonight aren’t even dead. They may be worse than dead, actually—according to the Kolkashtava, in Urav’s belly, you are alive, but you are punished, filled with pain, shame, regret. … Under its gaze, no one holds hope.”
“How does it gaze at you,” asks Sigrud, “in its own belly?”
“It’s miraculous by nature. Inside of Urav, I think, is a special kind of hell. And the only thing that saves anyone is the blessing of Kolkan—”
“Which you can give me?”
“—which no one has received since he vanished, nearly three hundred years ago.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I am saying that, if it looks like Urav will devour you”—she looks down at where he has strapped his knife—“then it might be wise to take matters into your own hands.”
He nods slowly. Then, again, he says, “Thank you,” and adds, “It would probably be wise for you to get off the bridge, by the way.”
“Why?”
“One never knows,” says Sigrud, “how a good fight will go.”
*
Sigrud’s boots make hollow thumps as he walks across the ice. He can tell right away that the ice is slightly less than two feet thick. A good ice, he thinks, for sleighs and horses.
He walks on over the frozen river. The wind bites and snaps at his ears. His arms and legs are bejeweled from millions of ice flecks trapped in the fat on his body: soon he is a glimmering ice-man, trudging across a vast gray-blue field.
He recalls an occasion like this: riding over the ice, the sleigh scraping behind him; the thud of the horse’s hooves; glancing behind and seeing Hild and his daughters buried in a pile of furs in the sled, giggling and laughing. …
I do not wish to think of these things.
Sigrud blinks and focuses on the ropes dangling from the bridge ahead. The lights of Bulikov seem very far away now, as if this massive metropolis is but a small, seaside town on a very distant shore.
How many times did he see such a sight in his sailing days? Dozens? Hundreds? He remembers the enormous cliffs of the Dreyling lands and the glimmer of lights among the tiny huts spread among their feet. Waking to the reel and cry of cliff birds circling the peaks.
I do not wish to think of these things, he says to himself again. But the memories arise painfully, like a thorn working its way free from flesh.
The chuckle of water. The sunless days. The bonfires on the rime-crusted beaches.
He remembers the last time he sailed. A young man he was, returning home, eager to see his family. But when they docked on Dreyling shores, he and the crew found the villages in absolute upheaval:
The king. They have killed the king, and all his sons. They are burning the houses. They are burning the city. What are we to do?
How shocked he was to hear this. … He did not understand then, could not understand how, all this could happen. And no matter how many times he asked—All his sons? All? Are you sure?—the answer was the same: The Harkvald dynasty is no more. All the kings are dead, gone, and we are lost.
The ice crackles underneath Sigrud’s feet. The world is a coward, he thinks. It does not change before your face; it waits until your back is turned, and pounces. …
Sigrud walks on over the Solda. The fat on his limbs is calcified now; he is milky white, crackling, a chandler’s golem. He keeps walking to where the towing rope dangles from the center of the bridge. While he was on it, the Solda Bridge seemed quite narrow, less than forty feet wide. Underneath, it’s a massive black bone arcing across the sky.
He tells himself it will hold. If he does this right, it will hold.