Velar Tidemark's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Two nights of practice had not tamed the rod. Velar Tidemark stood at the edge of the twilight lake and worked the heavy line by hand. The frostpine rod fought him. Every cast pulled his arms wrong. The braided line cut his fingers. He had lost the scale-lure to a snag twice. He kept hearing Veska's warning: the last fisher who held this rod lost it in the water, and his whole rig with it. Tonight the frost tide brightened. The great fish would rise. If Velar could not master the pull, he would lose the rod the same way. Odin swelled overhead, its indigo light thick on the water. Deep down, a glow spread. Stars seemed to swim under the surface. The leviathan rose. Its armored scales shimmered like a living sky, longer than Velar's boat. He crushed a glowfly against the lure and cast. The scale-lure struck the water. The beast turned. Then it took the lure, and the rod nearly left his hands. The pull yanked Velar forward. His feet skidded on the wet stones. The line screamed off the rod. He braced, and the fish dragged him a full step toward the deep. He could not hold it alone. He knew it now, cold and plain. One more pull and the rod would be gone. "Let it run," a voice said behind him. "Don't fight the whole weight." Veska Silmara came out of the trees at a run, spear discarded, hands already reaching. Behind her came a smaller figure with a blowgun slung across her back and a fur coat too big for her frame. Sivara Frostwhisper, the poison hunter from the Frostbark forest. She had tracked game to this shore and found a fisher losing a fight. She grabbed the rod below Velar's grip without asking. "You pull when I say," Sivara said. Clipped. Final. "Not before." Three sets of hands closed on the frostpine. Veska set her feet against a rock. Sivara read the line like she read a wounded buck. "Now," she said, and they hauled. "Off. Let it tire." They gave slack. The fish thrashed, then slowed. They gained a arm's length. Then another. The great scales dragged into the shallows. The leviathan beached itself half out of the water, gills heaving, its glow guttering. Velar drove Veska's spear through its eye. The light went out of it. They stood breathing hard over the huge body. Velar had not lost the rod. He had landed the beast. But he had not done it alone, and all three of them knew it. Veska knelt at the fish's flank and pressed the gray-mottled scales. "The sickness is in it too," she said. She traced a long curved rib beneath the hide. "Someone needs a rib from this. For a weapon." She looked up. "The river fisher is coming to read the catch."