Once Aboard the Dead Boat

A human deckhand's plain account of the one Korl burial crossing he was permitted to work, carrying an honored dead woman from Rimeholt Landing to the Frostcrown.

I was taken on because their third hand broke two fingers under a cask and the dead could not wait for his bones to knit. That was how Harn, son of nobody they knew, came aboard a Korl burial boat at Rimeholt Landing. They set the woman amidships on a plank bier. She was old, broad even for them, wrapped in grey wool with an axe laid along her right side. I asked whether I should lash the axe. The steersman told me, "Lash the bier. She keeps her own tool." I did not ask twice. No one wailed once we cast off. The keening belonged to the quay. On the water each kin spoke one debt the dead had paid and one debt still owed to her. These were small things: roof work, winter meat, a lie forgiven. The youngest put a heel of bread beneath the wool. They counted her as household still, only bound for a colder room. We sailed south-west around the Frostcrown's lee flank. Twice the mountain wind struck hard enough to lay the rail near the water. Nobody prayed. They shortened cloth, shifted stone ballast, and cursed my slow hands. I found that comforting. At the mountain saddle we grounded on a black shingle no chart of mine marks as a landing. I helped lift the bier, but I was not allowed above the first cairn. The steersman paid me there and made me repeat the grave-right: her axe stays with her deeds; any hand taking it without her kin's leave takes up her debts and enemies too. Then they climbed into the snow. I waited six hours with the empty boat. Four came down. Five had gone up, counting the dead. I asked no question. They gave me the bread from beneath the wool for the return crossing, and I ate it because refusing seemed worse.

This world ships in Valenfeld. Play the game →