Half a War Read online

  ‘Am I a prisoner?’ Skara meant it as a challenge, but it came out a mouse’s squeak.

  Thorn’s expression was hard to read. ‘You’re a princess, princess.’

  ‘In my experience there’s not much difference between the two.’

  ‘I’m guessing you’ve never been a prisoner.’

  Contempt, and who could blame her? Skara’s throat felt so closed up she could hardly speak. ‘You must be thinking what a soft, weak, pampered fool I am.’

  Thorn took a sharp breath. ‘Actually I was thinking … of how it felt when I saw my father dead.’ Her face might have had no softness in it, but her voice did. ‘I was thinking what I might have felt to see him killed. To see him killed in front of me, and nothing I could do but watch.’

  Skara opened her mouth, but no words came. It was not contempt but pity, and it choked her worse than scorn.

  ‘I know how it feels to wear a brave face,’ said Thorn. ‘Few better.’

  Skara felt as if her head was going to burst.

  ‘I was thinking … standing where you’re standing … I’d be crying a sea.’

  And Skara heaved up a great, stupid sob. Her eyes screwed shut, and burned, and leaked. Her ribs shuddered. Her breath whooped and gurgled. She stood with her hands dangling, her whole face hurting she was crying so violently. Some tiny part of her fussed that this was far from proper behaviour, but the rest of her could not stop.

  She heard quick footsteps and was gathered up like a child, held tight, held firm, the way her grandfather had held her when they watched her father burn on the pyre. She clung to Thorn, blubbering into her shirt, howling half-words not even she understood.

  Thorn did not move, made no sound, only held Skara for a long time. Until her shuddering stopped. Until her sobs calmed to whimpers, and her whimpers to jagged breaths. Then, ever so gently, Thorn eased her away, pulled out a scrap of white cloth and, even though her own shirt was soaked with slobber, dabbed a tiny speck on the front of Skara’s dress, and offered it to her. ‘It’s for cleaning my weapons but I reckon your face is a good deal more valuable. Maybe more dangerous too.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Skara.

  ‘No need.’ Thorn flicked at the golden key around her neck. ‘I cry harder than that every morning when I wake up and remember who I married.’

  And Skara laughed and sobbed at once and blew a great snotty bubble out of her nose. For the first time since that night she felt something like herself again. Perhaps she had escaped from Yaletoft after all. As she wiped her face there was a hesitant knock at the door.

  ‘It’s Blue Jenner.’

  When he shuffled hunched into the room there was something reassuring in his shabbiness. At a ship’s helm or in a queen’s chambers he was the same man. Skara felt stronger at the sight of him. That was the man she needed.

  ‘You remember me?’ asked Thorn.

  ‘You’re a hard woman to forget.’ Jenner glanced down at the key around her neck. ‘Congratulations on your marriage.’

  She snorted. ‘Long as you don’t congratulate my husband. He’s still in mourning over it.’

  ‘You sent for me, princess?’

  ‘I did.’ Skara sniffed back her tears and set her shoulders. ‘What are your plans?’

  ‘Can’t say I’ve ever been much of a planner. Queen Laithlin’s offered me a fair price to fight for Gettland but, well, war’s young man’s work. Maybe I’ll take the Black Dog back down the Divine …’ He glanced up at Skara, and winced. ‘I promised Mother Kyre I’d see you to your cousin—’

  ‘And you kept your promise, in spite of the dangers. I shouldn’t ask you for more.’

  He winced harder. ‘You’re going to, then?’

  ‘I was hoping you might stay with me.’

  ‘Princess … I’m an old raider twenty years past my best and my best was none too pretty.’

  ‘Doubtless. When I first saw you I thought you were as worn as an old prow-beast.’

  Jenner scratched at the side of his grizzled jaw. ‘A fair judgment.’

  ‘A fool’s judgment.’ Skara’s voice cracked, but she cleared her throat, and took a breath, and carried on. ‘I see that now. The worn prow-beast is the one that’s braved the worst weather and brought the ship home safe even so. I don’t need pretty, I need loyal.’

  Jenner winced harder still. ‘All my life I’ve been free, princess. Looked to no one but the next horizon, bowed to no one but the wind—’

  ‘Has the horizon thanked you? Has the wind rewarded you?’

  ‘Not hugely, I’ll confess.’

  ‘I will.’ She caught his calloused hand in both of hers. ‘To be free a man needs a purpose.’

  He stared down at his hand in hers, then over at Thorn.

  She shrugged. ‘A warrior with nothing but themselves to fight for is no more than a thug.’

  ‘I’ve seen you tested and I know I can trust you.’ Skara brought the old raider’s gaze back to hers and held it. ‘Stay with me. Please.’

  ‘Oh, gods.’ The leathery skin around Jenner’s eyes creased as he smiled. ‘How do I say no to that?’

  ‘You don’t. Say you’ll help me.’

  ‘I’m your man, princess. I swear it. A sun-oath and a moon-oath.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Help you do what, though?’

  Skara took a ragged breath. ‘I said I would see Throvenland free, and my grandfather’s hall rebuilt, and Bright Yilling’s carcass left for the crows, remember?’

  Blue Jenner raised his craggy brows very high. ‘Bright Yilling has all the High King’s strength behind him. Fifty thousand swords, they say.’

  ‘Only half a war is fought with swords.’ She pressed her fingertip into the side of her head, so hard it hurt. ‘The other half is fought here.’

  ‘So … you’ve a plan?’

  ‘I’ll think of something.’ She let go of Blue Jenner’s hand and looked over at Thorn. ‘You sailed with Father Yarvi to the First of Cities.’

  Thorn frowned at Skara down a nose twisted from many breakings, trying to work out what moved beneath the question. ‘Aye, I sailed with Father Yarvi.’

  ‘You fought a duel against Grom-gil-Gorm.’

  ‘That too.’

  ‘You’re Queen Laithlin’s Chosen Shield.’

  ‘You know I am.’

  ‘And standing at her shoulder you must see a great deal of King Uthil too.’

  ‘More than most.’

  Skara wiped the last wetness from her lashes. She could not afford to cry. She had to be brave, and clever, and strong, however weak and terrified she felt. She had to fight for Throvenland now there was no one else, and words had to be her weapons.

  ‘Tell me about them,’ she said.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  Knowledge is power, Mother Kyre used to say when Skara complained about her endless lessons. ‘I want to know everything.’

  For Both of Us

  Raith woke with a mad jolt to find someone pawing at him.

  He grabbed that bastard around the throat and slammed him against the wall, snarling as he whipped his knife out.

  ‘Gods, Raith! It’s me! It’s me!’

  Wasn’t until then Raith saw, in the flickering light of the torch just down the corridor, that he’d got his brother pinned and was about to cut his throat.

  His heart was hammering. Took him a moment to work out he was in the citadel in Thorlby. In the corridor outside Gorm’s door, tangled with his blanket. Just where he was meant to be.

  ‘Don’t wake me like that,’ he snapped, forcing the fingers of his left hand open. They always ached worst just after he woke.

  ‘Wake you?’ whispered Rakki. ‘You would’ve woken the whole of Thorlby the way you were shouting out. You dreaming again?’

  ‘No,’ grunted Raith, sitting back against the wall and scrubbing at the sides of his head with his nails. ‘Maybe.’ Dreams full of fire. The smoke pouring up and the stink of destruction. Mad light in the eyes of the wa
rriors, the eyes of the dogs. Mad light on that woman’s face. Her voice, as she shrieked for her children.

  Rakki offered him a flask and Raith snatched it from him, rinsed out his mouth, cut and sore inside and out from Gorm’s slaps, but that was nothing new. He sloshed water into his hand, rubbed it over his face. He was cold with sweat all over.

  ‘I don’t like this, Raith. I’m worried for you.’

  ‘You, worried for me?’ Gorm’s sword must’ve been knocked clear in the scuffle, and Raith took it up, hugged it to his chest. If the king saw he’d let it lie in the cold he’d get another slap, and maybe worse. ‘That’s a new one.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. I’ve been worried for you a long time.’ Rakki glanced nervously towards the door of the king’s chamber, let his voice drop soft and eager as he leaned forward. ‘We could just go. We could find a ship to take us down the Divine and the Denied, like you always talk of. Like you used to talk of, anyway.’

  Raith nodded towards the door. ‘You think he’d let us just go? You think Mother Scaer would wave us off smiling?’ He snorted. ‘I thought you were supposed to be the clever one. It’s a pretty dream, but there’s no going back. You forgotten what things were like before? Being hungry, and cold, and afraid all the time?’

  ‘You’re not afraid all the time?’ Rakki’s voice was so small it brought Raith’s anger boiling up and chased the terror of his dreams away. Anger was the answer to most problems, when it came to it.

  ‘No I’m not!’ he snarled, shaking Gorm’s sword and making his brother flinch. ‘I’m a warrior, and I’m going to win a name for myself in this war, and enough ring-money we’ll never be hungry again. This is my right place. Fought for it, haven’t I?’

  ‘Aye, you’ve fought for it.’

  ‘We serve a king!’ Raith tried to feel the same pride he used to. ‘The greatest warrior in the Shattered Sea. Unbeaten in duel or battle. You like to pray. Give thanks to Mother War that we stand with the winners!’

  Rakki stared at him across the hallway, his back against Gorm’s war-scarred shield, his eyes wide and glistening with the torchlight. Strange, how his face could be so like Raith’s but his expression so different. Sometimes seemed they were two prow-beasts carved alike, forever stuck to the same ship but always looking opposite ways.

  ‘There’s going to be killing,’ he muttered. ‘More than ever.’

  ‘Reckon so,’ said Raith, and he lay down, turning his back on his brother, hugging Gorm’s sword against him and drawing the blanket over his shoulder. ‘It’s a war, ain’t it?’

  ‘I just don’t like killing.’

  Raith tried to sound like it was nothing, and couldn’t quite get there. ‘I can kill for both of us.’

  A silence. ‘That’s what scares me.’

  Clever Hands

  Koll tapped out the last rune and smiled as he blew a puff of wood-dust away. The scabbard was finished, and he was good and proud of the outcome.

  He’d always loved working with wood, which kept no secrets and told no lies and having been carved never came uncarved. Not like minister’s work, all smoke and guesses. Words were trickier tools than chisels, and people changeable as Mother Sea.

  His back prickled as Rin reached around his shoulder, tracing one of the lines of runes with a fingertip. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Five names of Mother War.’

  ‘Gods, it’s fine work.’ Her hand slid down the dark wood, lingering on the carved figures, and animals, and trees, all flowing one into another. ‘You’ve got clever hands, Koll. None cleverer.’

  She slipped the chape she’d made onto the scabbard’s point, bright steel hammered to look like a serpent’s head, fitting his work as perfectly as a key fits a lock. ‘Look at the beautiful things we can make together.’ Her iron-blackened fingers slid into the gaps between his wood-browned ones. ‘Meant to be, isn’t it? My sword. Your sheath.’ He felt her other hand sliding across his thigh and gave a little shiver. ‘And the other way around …’

  ‘Rin—’

  ‘All right, more dagger than sword.’ He could hear the laughter in her voice, could feel it tickling his neck. He loved it when she laughed.

  ‘Rin, I can’t. Brand’s like a brother to me—’

  ‘Don’t lie with Brand. Problem solved.’

  ‘I’m Father Yarvi’s apprentice.’

  ‘Don’t lie with Father Yarvi.’ He felt her lips brush his neck and send a sweaty shudder down his back.

  ‘He saved my mother’s life. Saved my life. He set us free.’

  Her lips were at his ear now, her whisper so loud it made him hunch his shoulders, the weights rattling on their thong around his neck. ‘How did he set you free if you can’t make your own choices?’

  ‘I owe him, Rin.’ He could feel her chest pressing against his back with each breath. Her fingers had curled round to grip his hand tight. She was as strong as he was. Stronger, probably. He had to shut his eyes to think straight. ‘When this war’s done I’ll take the Minister’s Test, and swear the Minister’s Oath, and I’ll be Brother Koll, and have no family, no wife— ah.’

  Her hand slid down between his legs. ‘Till then what’s stopping you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He twisted around, pushing his free hand into her short-chopped hair and dragging her close. They laughed and kissed at once, hungrily, sloppily, stumbling against a bench and knocking a clutch of tools clattering across the floor.

  It always ended up this way when he came here. That was why he kept coming.

  Slick as a salmon she twisted free of him, darted to the clamp and snatched up her whetstone, peering down at the blade she was working on as if she’d done nothing else all morning.

  Koll blinked. ‘What are—’

  The door clattered open and Brand walked in, Koll marooned in the middle of the floor with a great tent in his trousers.

  ‘Hey, Koll,’ said Brand. ‘What’re you doing here?’

  ‘Came to finish the scabbard,’ he croaked, face burning as he turned quickly back to his table and brushed some shavings onto the floor.

  ‘Let’s see it.’ Brand put an arm around Koll’s shoulder. Gods, it was a big arm, heavy with muscle, rope scar coiling up the wrist. Koll remembered seeing Brand take the weight of a ship across his shoulders, a ship that had been on the point of crushing Koll dead, as it happened. Then he wondered what it’d be like getting punched by that arm if Brand found out everything his sister and Koll were up to. He swallowed with more than a little difficulty.

  But Brand only pushed the stray hair out of his face and grinned. ‘Beautiful work. You’re blessed, Koll. Same gods as blessed my sister.’

  ‘She’s … a deeply spiritual girl.’ Koll shifted awkwardly to get his trousers settled while Rin stuck her lips out in a mad pout behind her brother’s back.

  Gods, Brand was oblivious. Strong and loyal and good humoured as a cart-horse, but for obliviousness he set new standards. Probably you couldn’t be married to Thorn Bathu without learning to let a lot of things drift past.

  ‘How’s Thorn?’ asked Koll, aiming at a distraction.

  Brand paused as if that was a puzzle that took considerable thought. ‘Thorn is Thorn. But I knew that when I married her.’ He gave Koll that helpless grin of his. ‘Wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  ‘Can’t be the easiest person to live with.’

  ‘I’ll let you know if it happens. She’s half her time with the queen and half the rest training harder than ever, so I tend to get her asleep or ready to argue.’ He scratched wearily at the back of his head. ‘Still, I knew that when I married her too.’

  ‘Can’t be the easiest person not to live with.’

  ‘Huh.’ Brand stared off into space like a veteran still struggling to make sense of the horrors he’d seen. ‘She surely can cook a fight from the most peaceful ingredients. But nothing worth doing is easy. I love her in spite of it. I love her because of it. I love her.’ And his face broke out in that grin again. ‘Every
day’s a new adventure, that’s for sure.’

  There was a harsh knocking at the door and Brand shook himself and went to answer. Rin mimed blowing a kiss and Koll mimed clutching it to his heart and Rin mimed puking all over her work-bench. He loved it when she did that.

  ‘Good to see you, Brand.’ Koll looked up, surprised to see his master in Rin’s forge.

  ‘Likewise, Father Yarvi.’

  You get a special kind of kinship when you take a long journey with a man, and though Brand and Yarvi could hardly have been less alike they hugged each other, and the minister slapped the smith’s broad back affectionately with his withered hand.

  ‘How are things in the blade business?’ he called to Rin.

  ‘Men always need good blades, Father Yarvi,’ she said. ‘And the word business?’

  ‘Men always need good words too.’ The minister traded his smile for the usual sternness when he looked at Koll. ‘I had a feeling you’d be here. It’s past midday.’

  ‘Already?’ Koll pulled his apron off, got caught in the straps, tore free and tossed it down, slapping the wood dust from his hands.

  ‘Usually the apprentice comes to the master.’ The tip of the minister’s elf-metal staff rang against the floor as he walked over. ‘You are my apprentice, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course, Father Yarvi,’ said Koll, shifting guiltily away from Rin.

  Yarvi narrowed his eyes as he glanced from one of them to the other, plainly missing nothing. Few men were less oblivious than he. ‘Tell me you fed the doves.’

  ‘And cleaned out their cages, and sorted the new herbs, and read twenty more pages of Mother Gundring’s history of Gettland, and learned fifty words in the tongue of Kalyiv.’ Koll’s endless questions had always driven his mother mad, but studying for the Ministry he had so many answers he felt his head was going to burst.

  ‘The food of fear is ignorance, Koll. The death of fear is knowledge. What about the movements of the stars? Did you copy the charts I gave you?’