“It's good tobacco,” he said. “The stuff we grow tastes like camel's droppings.”
He passed it along to the next hunched figure.
THANK YOU.
Borvorius produced a flask from somewhere.
“Will you go to hell if you have a drop of spirit?” he said.
“So it seems,” said Simony, absently. Then he noticed the flask. “Oh, you mean alcohol? Probably. But who cares? I won't be able to get near the fire for priests. Thanks.”
“Pass it round.”
THANK YOU.
The Turtle rocked to a thunderbolt.
“G'n y'himbe bo?”
They all looked at the pieces of raw fish, and Fasta Benj's hopeful expression.
“I could rake some of the coals out of the firebox from here,” said Urn, after a while.
Someone tapped Simony on the shoulder, creating a strange tingling sensation.
THANK YOU. I HAVE TO GO.
As he took it he was aware of the rush of air, a sudden breath in the universe. He looked around in time to see a wave lift a ship out of the water and smash it against the dunes.
A distant scream colored the wind.
The soldiers stared.
“There were people under there,” said Argavisti.
Simony dropped the flask.
“Come on,” he said.
And no one, as they hauled on timbers in the teeth of the gale, as Urn applied everything he knew about levers, as they used their helmets as shovels to dig under the wreckage, asked who it was they were digging for, or what kind of uniform they'd been wearing.
Fog rolled in on the wind, hot and flashing with electricity, and still the sea pounded down.
Simony hauled on a spar, and then found the weight lessen as someone grasped the other end. He looked up into Brutha's eyes.
“Don't say anything,” said Brutha.
“Gods are doing this to us?”
“Don't say anything!”
“I've got to know!”
“It's better than us doing this to us, isn't it?”
“There's still people who never got off the ships!”
“No one ever said it was going to be nice!”