Half a War Read online

  ‘Grom-gil-Gorm will come,’ she said, but her voice had faded almost to a whisper.

  ‘I hope it will be so.’ Yilling reached out with both hands and ever so gently eased Mother Kyre’s hair back over her shoulders. ‘But he will come too late for you.’ He drew a sword, a great diamond in a golden claw for a pommel, mirror-steel flashing so bright in the darkness it left a white smear across Skara’s sight.

  ‘Death waits for us all.’ King Fynn took a long breath through his nose, and proudly drew himself up. A glimpse of the man he used to be. He looked about the hall and, through the columns, caught Skara’s eye, and it seemed to her he gave the slightest smile. Then he dropped to his knees. ‘Today you kill a king.’

  Yilling shrugged. ‘Kings and peasants. We all look the same to Death.’

  He stabbed Skara’s grandfather where his neck met his shoulder, blade darting in to the hilt and back out, quick and deadly as lightning falls. King Fynn made only a dry squeak he died so fast, and toppled face forward into the firepit. Skara stood frozen, her breath held fast, her mind held fast.

  Mother Kyre stared down at her master’s corpse. ‘Grandmother Wexen gave me her promise,’ she stammered out.

  Pit pat, pit pat, the blood dripped from the point of Yilling’s sword. ‘Promises only bind the weak.’

  He spun, neat as a dancer, steel flickering in the shadows. There was a black gout and Mother Kyre’s head clonked across the floor, her body dropping as though it had no bones in it at all.

  Skara gave a shuddering gasp. It had to be a nightmare. A fever-trick. She wanted to lie down. Her eyelids fluttered, her body sagged, but Blue Jenner’s hand was around her arm, painfully tight.

  ‘You’re a slave,’ he hissed, giving her a stiff shake. ‘You say nothing. You understand nothing.’

  She tried to still her whimpering breath as light footsteps tapped across the floor towards them. Far away, someone had started screaming, and would not stop.

  ‘Well, well,’ came Bright Yilling’s soft voice. ‘This pair does not belong.’

  ‘No, lord. My name is Blue Jenner.’ Skara could not comprehend how he could sound so friendly, firm and reasonable. If she had opened her mouth all that would have come out were slobbering sobs. ‘I’m a trader carrying the High King’s licence, lately returned up the Divine River. We were heading for Skekenhouse, blown off course in a gale.’

  ‘You must have been fast friends with King Fynn, to be a guest in his hall.’

  ‘A wise trader is friendly with everyone, lord.’

  ‘You are sweating, Blue Jenner.’

  ‘Honestly, you terrify me.’

  ‘A wise trader indeed.’ Skara felt a gentle touch under her chin and her head was tipped back. She looked into the face of the man who had just murdered the two people who had raised her from a child, his bland smile still spotted with their blood, close enough that she could count the dusting of freckles across his nose.

  Yilling pushed his plump lips out and made a high, clean whistle. ‘And a trader in fine goods too.’ He brushed one hand through her hair, wound a strand of it around his long fingers, pushed it out of her face so that his thumb tip brushed her cheek.

  You must live. You must lead. She smothered her fear. Smothered her hate. Forced her face dead. A thrall’s face, showing nothing.

  ‘Would you trade this to me, trader?’ asked Yilling. ‘For your life, maybe?’

  ‘Happily, lord,’ said Blue Jenner. Skara had known Mother Kyre was a fool to trust this rogue. She took a breath to curse him and his gnarled fingers dug tighter into her arm. ‘But I cannot.’

  ‘In my experience, and I have much and very bloody …’ Bright Yilling raised his red sword and let it rest against his cheek as a girl might her favourite doll, the diamond pommel on fire with sparks of red and orange and yellow. ‘One sharp blade severs a whole rope of cannots.’

  The lump on Jenner’s grizzled throat bobbed as he swallowed. ‘She isn’t mine to sell. She’s a gift. From Prince Varoslaf of Kalyiv to the High King.’

  ‘Ack.’ Yilling slowly let his sword fall, leaving a long red smear down his face. ‘I hear Varoslaf is a man a wise man fears.’

  ‘He has precious little sense of humour, it’s true.’

  ‘As a man’s power swells, his good humour shrivels.’ Yilling frowned towards the trail of bloody footprints he had left between the columns. Between the corpses. ‘The High King is much the same. It would not be prudent to snaffle a gift between those two.’

  ‘My very thought all the way from Kalyiv,’ said Jenner.

  Bright Yilling snapped his fingers as loudly as a whipcrack, eyes suddenly bright with boyish enthusiasm. ‘Here is my thought! We will toss a coin. Heads, you can take this pretty thing on to Skekenhouse and let her wash the High King’s feet. Tails, I kill you and make better use of her.’ He slapped Jenner on the shoulder. ‘What do you say, my new friend?’

  ‘I say Grandmother Wexen may take this ill,’ said Jenner.

  ‘She takes everything ill.’ Yilling smiled wide, the smooth skin about his eyes crinkling with friendly creases. ‘But I bend to the will of one woman only. Not Grandmother Wexen, nor Mother Sea, nor Mother Sun, nor even Mother War.’ He flicked a coin high in the hallowed spaces of the Forest, gold flashing. ‘Only Death.’

  He snatched it from the shadows. ‘King or peasant, high or low, strong or weak, wise or foolish. Death waits for us all.’ And he opened his hand, the coin glinting in his palm.

  ‘Huh.’ Blue Jenner peered down at it, eyebrows high. ‘Guess she can wait a little longer for me.’

  They hurried away through the wreckage of Yaletoft, flaming straw fluttering on the hot wind, the night boiling over with screaming and pleading and weeping. Skara kept her eyes on the ground like a good slave should, no one now to tell her not to slouch, her fear thawing slowly into guilt.

  They sprang aboard Jenner’s ship and pushed off, the crew muttering prayers of thanks to Father Peace that they had been spared from the carnage, oars creaking out a steady rhythm as they slid between the boats of the raiders and out to sea. Skara slumped among the cargo, the guilt pooling slowly into sorrow as she watched the flames take King Fynn’s beautiful hall and her past life with it, the great carved gable showing black against the fire, then falling in a fountain of whirling sparks.

  The burning of all she had known dwindled away, Yaletoft a speckling of flame in the dark distance, sailcloth snapping as Jenner ordered the ship turned north, towards Gettland. Skara stood and looked behind them, into the past, the tears drying on her face as her sorrow froze into a cold, hard, iron weight of fury.

  ‘I’ll see Throvenland free,’ she whispered, clenching her fists. ‘And my grandfather’s hall rebuilt, and Bright Yilling’s carcass left for the crows.’

  ‘For now, let’s stick to seeing you alive, princess.’ Jenner took the thrall collar from her neck, then wrapped his cloak around her shivering shoulders.

  She looked up at him, rubbing gently at the marks the silver wire had left. ‘I misjudged you, Blue Jenner.’

  ‘Your judgment’s shrewd. I’ve done far worse than you thought I might.’

  ‘Why risk your life for mine, then?’

  He seemed to think a moment, scratching at his jaw. Then he shrugged. ‘Because there’s no changing yesterday. Only tomorrow.’ He pressed something into her hand. Bail’s armring, the ruby gleaming bloody in the moonlight. ‘Reckon this is yours.’

  No Peace

  ‘When will they be here?’

  Father Yarvi sat slumped against a tree with his legs crossed and an ancient-looking book propped on his knees. He might almost have seemed asleep had his eyes not been flickering over the writing beneath heavy lids. ‘I am a minister, Koll,’ he murmured, ‘not a seer.’

  Koll frowned up at the offerings about the glade. Headless birds and drained jars of ale and bundles of bones swinging on twine. A dog, a cow, four sheep, all dangling head-down from rune-carved branches, flies busy at
their slit throats.

  There was a man too. A thrall, by the chafe marks on his neck, a ring of runes written clumsily on his back, his knuckles brushing the bloody ground. A fine sacrifice to He Who Sprouts the Seed from some rich woman eager for a child.

  Koll didn’t much care for holy places. They made him feel he was being watched. He liked to think he was an honest fellow, but everyone has their secrets. Everyone has their doubts.

  ‘What’s the book?’ he asked.

  ‘A treatise on elf-relics written two hundred years ago by Sister Slodd of Reerskoft.’

  ‘More forbidden knowledge, eh?’

  ‘From a time when the Ministry was fixed on gathering wisdom, rather than suppressing it.’

  ‘Only what is known can be controlled,’ muttered Koll.

  ‘And all knowledge, like all power, can be dangerous in the wrong hands. It is the use it is put to that counts.’ And Father Yarvi licked the tip of the one twisted finger on his withered left hand and used it to turn the page.

  Koll frowned off into the still forest. ‘Did we have to come so early?’

  ‘The battle is usually won by the side that gets there first.’

  ‘I thought we came to talk peace?’

  ‘Talk of peace is the minister’s battlefield.’

  Koll gave a sigh that made his lips flap. He perched himself on a stump at the edge of the clearing, a cautious distance from any of the offerings, slipped out his knife and the chunk of ash-wood he’d already roughly shaped. She Who Strikes the Anvil, hammer high. A gift for Rin, when he got back to Thorlby. If he got back, rather than ending up dangling from a tree in this glade himself. He flapped his lips again.

  ‘The gods have given you many gifts,’ murmured Father Yarvi, without looking up from his book. ‘Deft hands and sharp wits. A lovely shock of sandy hair. A slightly over-ready sense of humour. But do you wish to be a great minister, and stand at the shoulder of kings?’

  Koll swallowed. ‘You know I do, Father Yarvi. More than anything.’

  ‘Then you have many things to learn, and the first is patience. Focus your moth of a mind and one day you could change the world, just as your mother wanted you to.’

  Koll jerked at the thong around his neck, felt the weights strung on it click together under his shirt. The weights his mother Safrit used to wear as a storekeeper, trusted to measure fairly. Be brave, Koll. Be the best man you can be.

  ‘Gods, I still miss her,’ he muttered.

  ‘So do I. Now still yourself, and attend to what I do.’

  Koll let the weights drop. ‘My eyes are rooted to you, Father Yarvi.’

  ‘Close them.’ The minister snapped his book shut and stood, brushing the dead leaves from the back of his coat. ‘And listen.’

  Footsteps, coming towards them through the forest. Koll slipped the carving away but kept the knife out, point up his sleeve. Well-chosen words will solve most problems but, in Koll’s experience, well-sharpened steel was a fine thing for tackling the others.

  A woman stepped from the trees, dressed in minister’s black. Her fire-red hair was shaved at the sides, runes tattooed into the skin around her ears, the rest combed with fat into a spiky fin. Her face was hard, made harder yet by the muscles bunching as she chewed on dreamer’s bark, lips blotchy at the edges with the purple stain of it.

  ‘You are early, Mother Adwyn.’

  ‘Not as early as you, Father Yarvi.’

  ‘Mother Gundring always told me it was poor manners to come second to a meeting.’

  ‘I hope you will forgive my rudeness, then.’

  ‘That depends on the words you bring from Grandmother Wexen.’

  Mother Adwyn raised her chin. ‘Your master, King Uthil, and his ally, Grom-gil-Gorm, have broken their oaths to the High King. They have slapped aside his hand of friendship and drawn their swords against him.’

  ‘His hand of friendship weighed heavily upon us,’ said Yarvi. ‘Two years since we shook it off we find we all breathe easier. Two years, and the High King has taken no towns, has won no battles—’

  ‘And what battles have Uthil and Gorm fought? Unless you count the ones they fight daily against each other?’ Adwyn spat juice out of the corner of her mouth and Koll fiddled uneasily at a loose thread on his sleeve. She struck close to the mark with that. ‘You have enjoyed good luck, Father Yarvi, for the High King’s eye has been on this rebellion in the Lowlands. A rebellion I hear you had a hand in raising.’

  Yarvi blinked, all innocence. ‘Can I make men rise up hundreds of miles away? Am I a magician?’

  ‘Some say you are, but magic, or luck, or deep-cunning will change nothing now. The rebellion is crushed. Bright Yilling duelled Hokon’s three sons and one by one he cut them down. His sword-work is without equal.’

  Father Yarvi peered at the one fingernail on his withered hand, as if to check it looked well. ‘King Uthil might disagree. He would have beaten these brothers all at once.’

  Mother Adwyn ignored his bluster. ‘Bright Yilling is a new kind of man, with new ways. He put the oath-breakers to the sword and his Companions burned their halls with their families inside.’

  ‘Burned families.’ Koll swallowed. ‘There’s progress.’

  ‘Perhaps you have not heard what Bright Yilling did next?’

  ‘I hear he’s quite a dancer,’ said Koll. ‘Did he dance?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Across the straits to Yaletoft where he paid the faithless King Fynn a visit.’

  Silence then, and a breeze rustled the leaves, made the offerings creak and sent a twitchy shiver up Koll’s neck. Mother Adwyn’s chewing made a gentle squelch, squelch as she smiled.

  ‘Ah. So your jester can spin no laughs from that. Yaletoft lies in ruins, and King Fynn’s hall in ashes, and his warriors are scattered to the winds.’

  Yarvi gave the slightest frown. ‘What of the king himself?’

  ‘On the other side of the Last Door, with his minister. Their deaths were written the moment you tricked them into your little alliance of the doomed.’

  ‘On the battlefield,’ murmured Father Yarvi, ‘there are no rules. New ways indeed.’

  ‘Bright Yilling is already spreading fire across Throvenland, preparing the way for the High King’s army. An army more numerous than the grains of sand on the beach. The greatest army that has marched since the elves made war on God. Before midsummer they will be at the gates of Thorlby.’

  ‘The future is a land wrapped in fog, Mother Adwyn. It may yet surprise us all.’

  ‘One does not have to be a prophet to see what comes.’ She drew out a scroll and dragged it open, the paper scrawled with densely-written runes. ‘Grandmother Wexen will name you and Queen Laithlin sorcerers and traitors. The Ministry will declare this paper money of hers elf-magic, and any who use it outcast and outlaw.’

  Koll started as he heard a twig snap somewhere in the brush.

  ‘You shall be cut from the world, and so shall Uthil and Gorm and any who stand with them.’

  And now the men appeared. Men of Yutmark from their square cloak buckles and their long shields. Koll counted six, and heard two more at least behind him, and forced himself not to turn.

  ‘Drawn swords?’ asked Father Yarvi. ‘On the sacred ground of Father Peace?’

  ‘We pray to the One God,’ growled their captain, a warrior with a gold-chased helmet. ‘To us, this is just dirt.’

  Koll looked across the sharp faces and the sharp blades pointed at him, palm slippery around the grip of his hidden knife.

  ‘Here is a pretty fix,’ he squeaked.

  Mother Adwyn let the scroll fall. ‘But even now, even after your plotting and your treachery, Grandmother Wexen would offer peace.’ Dappled shade slid across her face as she raised her eyes towards heaven. ‘The One God is truly a forgiving god.’

  Father Yarvi snorted. Koll could hardly believe how fearless he seemed. ‘I daresay her forgiveness has a price, though?’

  ‘The statues of the Tall Gods shall
all be broken and the One God worshipped throughout the Shattered Sea,’ said Adwyn. ‘Every Vansterman and Gettlander shall pay a yearly tithe to the Ministry. King Uthil and King Gorm will lay their swords at the feet of the High King in Skekenhouse, beg forgiveness and swear new oaths.’

  ‘The old ones did not stick.’

  ‘That is why you, Mother Scaer, and the young Prince Druin will remain as hostages.’

  ‘Hmmmmmm.’ Father Yarvi lifted his withered finger to tap at his chin. ‘It’s a lovely offer, but summer in Skekenhouse can be a little sticky.’

  An arrow flickered past Koll’s face, so close he felt the wind of it on his cheek. It took the leader of the warriors silently in the shoulder, just above the rim of his shield.

  More shafts flitted from the woods. A man screamed. Another clutched at an arrow in his face. Koll sprang at Father Yarvi and dragged him down behind the thick bole of a sacred tree. He glimpsed a warrior charging towards them, sword high. Then Dosduvoi stepped out, huge as a house, and with a swing of his great axe snatched the man from his feet and sent him tumbling away in a shower of dead leaves.

  Shadows writhed, stabbing, hacking, knocking at the offerings and setting them swinging. A few bloody moments and Mother Adwyn’s men had joined King Fynn on the other side of the Last Door. Their captain was on his knees, wheezing, six arrows lodged in his mail. He tried to stand using his sword as a crutch, but the red strength was leaking from him.

  Fror slipped into the clearing. One hand gripped his heavy axe. With the other he gently undid the buckle on the captain’s gold-trimmed helmet. It was a fine one, and would fetch a fine price.

  ‘You will be sorry for this,’ breathed the captain, blood on his lips and his grey hair stuck to his sweating forehead.

  Fror slowly nodded. ‘I am sorry already.’ And he struck the captain on the crown and knocked him over with his arms spread wide.

  ‘You can let me up now,’ said Father Yarvi, patting Koll on the side. He realized he’d covered the minister with his body as a mother might her baby in a storm.

  ‘You couldn’t tell me the plan?’ he asked, scrambling up.