Marius panicked as the water closed over him, the thrashing of his arms only serving to wrap the net tighter about his head. After a few moments the panic passed. He stilled his body, spread his arms and legs in an effort to retain some buoyancy. Slowly, he reached under the edge of the net and worked his fingers along the edge, lips tightening in rage as he felt the rocks tied onto it to add weight. He pulled it off, and watched it spiral into the dark below him, then flailed about until his head broke the ocean’s surface.
The outrigger was already a hundred feet away, the islanders heading back to their beach with all possible speed. Marius spluttered as his head cleared the water and stared after them.
“Bastards!”
The effort of shouting unbalanced him. He slipped beneath the surface, then fought his way above once more.
“Come back, you traitorous…”
He gagged as he took in another mouthful. The islanders ploughed on, not one of them looking back at the spot where Marius floated. Marius watched them getting smaller. Make a decision, he thought. Well, the King had certainly done that. Now, all that was left to Marius was movement. Any movement was better than none. He fixed his eyes upon the slowly diminishing stern of the outrigger, and started to swim after it.
In thirty-eight years of life, Marius had seen cities at every edge of the continent, from the Borgho slums in the east to the great perfumed quarters of Tal in the west, from avenues carved into the cliff faces of the Northern Mountain Kings to the vast mobile tent markets of the caravanserai that endlessly circled the Southern Dry. He had served in more armies than there were countries; watched rebellions begin and be quashed; gulled coins; seduced princesses, whores, mothers and virgins; argued politics with students and talked philosophy with all three emperors; been imprisoned and escaped more times than he could remember; looted battlefields; hunted witches; swindled, lied, cheated, conned, duped, plotted, regretted, defrauded, deceived and always, always, stayed one step ahead.
He had never once learned to swim.
The next few minutes were full of movement. Unfortunately for Marius, most of it was downwards. He thrashed his arms with the best of intent, but no matter how he shovelled water behind him, slowly, inevitably, his head slipped below the waves. Still, being dead had its advantages. Removed from the need to breathe, the water around him was no impediment to his industry: he beat on, movements slowed by the weight of the water, and did manage to achieve some form of progress. For every foot of forward momentum he achieved he slipped seven lower, until he glanced down and was embarrassed to see the white sand of the ocean bottom only a foot or so below his dangling feet. Marius ceased his efforts and settled gently onto the sand.
For a moment or two he stood, stupidly staring at the ocean floor. Then he doubled over and placed his hands on his knees. His body shook, and only the tiny fish that darted this way and that around the ocean floor were witness to his fit of hysterical laughter. Eventually the laughter slowed. Marius straightened, and drew his hands across his eyes, which prompted another bout of laughter as he realised the futility of trying to wipe away tears whilst half a fathom below the sea. When he had at last regained his composure, he set his shoulders, and offered silent thanks that he had not turned around during his landing. He lifted his foot and took a slow step forward, testing his balance against the underwater tides and the increase in pressure. When he had completed it safely he paused, made sure of himself, and took another step. Then he was off, taking sluggish, heavy steps, ignoring the alien life that swirled around him before flitting off on its own particular path. Sooner or later, at some point ahead, the land would begin to rise. He would emerge, like an Old God from the surf, and stride up a beach. And then he would find out where he was, and make plans, and see an end to the events that had taken his life so far out of his control.
Somewhere ahead of him, the King of Scorby lay in state, viewed by thousands of loyal subjects a day, guarded by the finest palace guards, counting down the days to his immolation and ascension to Heaven. Marius pursed his lips, and began to hum an extremely dirty marching song he had learned in service to the King’s father. After walking the length of an ocean, armed with nothing more than two wedding rings and a dirty song, stealing him and delivering him to the armies of the dead would be a doddle.
The dead do not tack. They do not lie becalmed, waiting for a stray wind to propel them. They have no need to turn into a storm, or pull into sheltered bays to effect running repairs. A dead man, finding himself under fifty feet of water, with nothing to do but trudge along in a straight line, mile after mile, stopping neither for sleep nor weather conditions, with only the task of following one foot after another and avoiding coral outcrops and the attentions of any stray predator that might wish to investigate his passage, can make thirty miles a day without conscious effort. Marius did his best to take interest in his surroundings, but so far below the surface the world is a dark and gloomy one, and even with his dead vision he could see only a few feet in any direction. Tiny fish darted here and there, colourless and pale. Small, scuttling things ran across the sand at his feet, stirring up puffs of sediment that added to the general gloom. Once, something massive and slow slid overhead, announcing itself with a long wave of disturbed water. Everything around Marius stopped as it passed, and even he paused, aware of the sudden emptiness the giant, unseen shape caused. Only once it had passed by did life slowly return to the space around him, and he continue his plodding journey.
With nothing to capture his attention, Marius quickly fell into that form of fugue known to all long-distance travellers. Time lost its meaning, and any sense of motion disappeared within the rhythm of his walk. Marius needed to maintain his concentration – if he forgot his task, and strayed from the straight line he was following, he could spend the rest of his days wandering the sea-beds in circles. With no external stimulation, he turned inwards. He tried singing, but there are only so many bottles of beer that can fall before the entire liquor industry goes on strike, and you find yourself fantasizing about a pint of Old Grumpy’s Falling Down Water and a cuddle with that plump serving girl who works down the Whale and Insect. He tried to begin a game of Spotto, but there was no variation of colour in the pale, washed out creatures he passed, and nobody’s arm to punch if he saw a red one. In the end, he settled for talking his way through imaginary meetings, setting in motion all the plans he had held over the years, while he plodded through the lightless, soundless world of the water. He crested a small rise as he was being shown around the perfect little country cottage, slid down the other side as he shook hands on the arrangement to buy and hit the bottom just as he was laughing about how he’d negotiated the seller down beyond his wildest expectations. He skirted an open cave where something large and unseen flickered dully about the entrance just as he was taking over his father’s holdings using a fake company front, and he sold off the assets and used the money to establish his own businesses between the cave and a large rock a dozen feet away. A cloud of krill-like creatures witnessed him handing his father a broom and pointing out the size of the warehouse to be cleaned. He was standing at the edge of a forest pool, the priest wrapping the withy around his hand and his bride’s as he skirted a massive outcropping of rocks. He looked down at his bride’s hand. He recognized it, and looked up at the woman next to him, opened his mouth to speak her name… and saw the ship.