"Fuck, that's huge!" Briorn said. Then he looked up again, as though the wall had grown a little more just to spite him. "I mean, fucking huge."
Hrafn smiled from the corner of his mouth. The man really did seem to have found something inside himself on the day of the attack. An excuse to bark louder maybe, one way or another, looks like it was for the best.
And in the end, Hrafn did not find his presence so bad. He talked too much, but he was sincere, seeming like the sort 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 there was in his voice. Annoying Briorn was becoming a decent pastime, and an easy enough one. Irritating the brute took less effort than mounting a horse with only one arm.
"Hmm?" Briorn grunted, turning his head slowly, almost as though daring Hrafn to repeat the offense so he could explode with a clean conscience, not that it was necessary."You're real funny, aren't you, cripple?"
"Briorn!" Sigrid cut in, as always, trying to contain the fire before it spread.
"All right," he said. "All right!" He huffed like a boy caught stealing bread.
That was impressive enough by itself. Hrafn understood that Briorn would not apologize, the man was like his blessing, coarse as stone, stubborn as earth, incapable of yielding without feeling robbed.
Not that Hrafn cared, he was too busy trying to ride at a trot without looking like an idiot.
Riding had become a nuisance without the arm. The saddle weighed differently now, and balance had changed, holding the reins, adjusting his body, everything seemed to demand a new, irritating, constant attention from him. Even so, he was getting used to it. Adapting was easier with the strength of a voroir, even one like him.
The air carried the smell of sweating horse, old grease, damp wool, and salt. Behind them, the forest still ran on for a stretch, dark and dense, ahead, though, the woods were already thinning, giving ground to stone, wind, and the impossible scale of human work. The wall kept drawing nearer, Hrafn had been watching it for some time, though it was nearly impossible to do anything else.
"How high do you think it is?" Sigrid asked, neck lifted, one hand shielding her eyes from the light.
It was a fair question. The thing was so high the eye rejected the number, it seemed too large to fit in human measure. "I'd wager an arm it's some fifty meters," Hrafn answered with humor. Cynicism had always served him well. He was not about to lose it over an arm, especially one that was already lost.
"Hrafn!" Sigrid protested.
But Briorn did not share the same kindness. He let out a shameless laugh, the kind that folded the body over. "You miserable bastard," he swore, dragging his breath back in.
Sigrid grunted in annoyance and raised both hands, as though giving up on the two of them at once. As she had realized that trying to straighten either of them out was work for an entire lifetime.
Thora, on the other hand, had shrunk even more upon the horse, which was strange. Hrafn might have called her an acquaintance, at least. They had spoken enough in Brinegard for him to know she was sharper than that, quicker of tongue as well, almost as foul-mouthed as Briorn sometimes. Now she seemed smaller inside her own clothes, though perhaps she had changed. He himself had changed over time.
The caravan pressed on, the travelers' cloaks beat in the wind. On the wagons, tarred cloth protected barrels and chests, and on some of them one could still see old stains of dried mud and half-washed blood. The wall, which had always seemed near, was beginning to grow larger. And no matter how long they rode, it still seemed a whole world away.
Hrafn had felt like this only a few times in his life, small and minuscule even. His neck hurt from looking upward, and that was only the beginning. His heart tightened as well when he came near the bridge and looked down, because there was something more there. Something he had heard of, but would not have believed without seeing it. The smell of the sea reached him first, far stronger than it had any right to be.
It made sense, to a point, because Sahirid had been founded near the sea, not pressed against the ocean like Brinegard, but close enough to feel it. But the sea air 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, maybe river was too small a word. It was almost a sea cut around Sahirid, the city rose above the level of the water, and around it opened a flooded abyss, deep and dark, fed by some channel Hrafn could not see from there. The waters struck the stone walls, and the dark color said much about the depth.
He could feel the water moving. It disturbed his blessing, brushing the banks, pushing, pulling, breathing against the stone. Hrafn had to make a conscious effort to close his mind even more, to gather himself inward.
"That's big, that's fucking big," Briorn said. Then he shot Hrafn a wary look. "For everyone, I mean," he added quickly, defending himself from venom 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 make one.
But impressions like that had an expiry, and the caravan had to keep moving. The bridge was broad enough to let the carriages pass without the slightest squeeze. When they crossed the gates, Hrafn had for a moment the impression that the inside offered less than the walls had promised.
The outer ring was still made of wood darkened by fire, stone, and roofs packed tight against one another, much like Brinegard. There were workshops open to the street, market stalls, people dodging people, children too quick, and lean dogs nosing through mud.
Then the street bent, and the water appeared again. Not an open harbor, as in Brinegard. here the water entered the city itself, it ran among the houses in narrow, dark canals, tapping softly against stone steps worn by salt, small craft rocked tied to iron rings. In some stretches, the street stopped being a street and became only a strip of stone between wall and canal, narrow enough for two men to brush against each other as they passed.
The smell was worse inside, fish, salt and smoke. Everything clung to the stone as though it never really left, low bridges of short arch stitched one bank to the other. From some windows hung colored cloths and nets, from others, only shadows.
There were people everywhere. Boatmen pushing hulls along with short poles, artisans in dark aprons, arms burned by furnaces, merchants talking with their hands. And among all of them, voroirs, always easy to notice, their posture, by the armor or the way the space seemed to open a little before they passed.
"This is incredible," Sigrid said. To her, it must have seemed like the center of the world. To him, it was more as if someone had taken a few port cities, squeezed everything together until it hurt, raised stone on top, and let the sea in through the cracks, but there was grandeur there. In the scale and movement of all things.
The caravan did not take long to begin coming apart. Groups were pulled in different directions according to function, origin, or some criterion Hrafn did not bother to guess at. No voroir came toward them, they probably had better things to do than care for new arrivals.
The one who came to guide them was a servant, and that reminded Hrafn of something that pulled from him an almost full smile, almost honest, which was rare in him.
It was time to receive a few privileges.