Half a War

‘Well?’ She held up her fist in the sight of the Tall Gods, blood streaking her arm and pattering from her elbow. ‘Will you proud warriors draw your swords and shed your blood with mine? Will you give yourselves to Mother War and trust to your weaponluck? Or will you skulk here in the shadows, pricking each other with words?’

Grom-gil-Gorm’s chair toppled over as he rose to his full great height. He gave a grimace, and his jaw muscles bulged, and Skara shrank back, waiting for his fury to crush her. Then she realized he was chewing his tongue. He spat red across the table.

‘The men of Vansterland will sail in five days,’ growled the Breaker of Swords, blood running into his beard.

King Uthil stood, the drawn sword he always carried sliding through the crook of his arm until its point rested before him. He took it under the crosspiece, knuckles whitening as he squeezed. A streak of blood gathered in the fuller, and worked its way down to the point, and spread out in a dark slick around the steel.

‘The men of Gettland sail in four,’ he said.

Warriors on both sides of the room thumped at the tables, and rattled their weapons, and sent up a cheer at seeing blood finally spilled, even if it was far from enough to win a battle, and most of it belonging to a girl of seventeen.

Skara sat back, suddenly dizzy, and felt the knife plucked from her hand. Sister Owd slit the stitching in her sleeve and ripped away a strip of cloth, then took Skara’s wrist and deftly began to bandage her palm.

‘This will serve until I can stitch it.’ She looked up from under her brows. ‘Please never do that again, princess.’

‘Don’t worry— ah!’ Gods, it was starting to hurt. ‘I think I’ve learned that lesson.’

‘It is a little soon to celebrate our victory!’ called out Father Yarvi, stilling the noise. ‘We have first to decide who will do the climbing.’

‘When it comes to feats of strength and skill my standard-bearer Soryorn is unmatched.’ Gorm put his hand through the garnet-studded collar of the tall Shend thrall beside him. ‘He ran the oars and back three times on our voyage from Vansterland, and in stormy seas too.’

‘You will find no one as swift and subtle as my apprentice Koll,’ said Father Yarvi. ‘As any man who has seen him swarm up the cliffs for eggs will gladly testify.’ The Gettlanders all nodded along. All except the apprentice himself, who looked almost as queasy as Skara felt at the notion.

‘A friendly contest, perhaps?’ offered Queen Laithlin. ‘To see who is the better?’

Skara saw the cunning in that. A fine distraction, to keep these restless rams from butting each other before they met their enemy.

Sister Owd set Skara’s bandaged hand gently down on the table. ‘As an equal partner in the alliance,’ she called, ‘by ancient law and long precedent, Throvenland should also be represented in such a contest.’ This time she refused to meet Mother Scaer’s chilling eye, and sat back well pleased with her contribution.

Skara was less delighted. She had no strong or subtle men, only Blue Jenner.

He raised his bushy brows as she glanced over at him, and muttered, ‘I find stairs a challenge.’

‘I’ll climb for you,’ said Raith. Skara had not seen him smile until then, and it seemed to light a flame in that cold face, his eyes glinting bold and mischievous and making him seem more striking than ever. ‘Got to be better’n talking, hasn’t it?’

Chances

‘We haven’t had a chance to talk,’ said Blue Jenner.

‘I’m not much of a talker,’ grunted Raith.

‘Fighter, eh?’

Raith didn’t answer. If he had to he’d answer with his fists.

‘It’s up to me to make sure the princess stays safe.’

Raith nodded towards the door. ‘That’s why I’m out here.’

‘Aye.’ Jenner narrowed his eyes. ‘But is she safe from you?’

‘What if she’s not?’ Raith stepped up to the old raider, teeth bared, right in his face so he was just about butting him. Had to show he was the bloodiest bastard going. Let them see weakness it’ll be the end of you. ‘How would you stop me, old man?’

Blue Jenner didn’t back off, just raised his lined hands. ‘I’d say “whoa, there, lad, old fool like me fight a young hero like you? I don’t think so!” And I’d back right down soft as you like.’

‘Damn right,’ growled Raith.

‘Then I’d nip to my crew and get six big fellows. Middle oars, you know, used to pulling but light on their feet. And when it got dark two of ’em would wrap you up real nice and warm in your blanket.’ And he gave the blanket over Raith’s shoulder a little brush with the back of his hand. ‘Then the other four would bring out some stout timbers and beat that pretty package till it had nothing hard in it. Then I’d deliver the slop left over back to Grom-gil-Gorm, probably still in the blanket ’cause we wouldn’t want to get mess all over Princess Skara’s floor, and tell the Breaker of Swords that, sadly, the boy he lent us was a shade too prickly and it didn’t work out.’ Jenner smiled, his weathered face creasing up like old boots. ‘But I’d rather not add to my regrets. The gods know I got a queue of the bastards. I’d sooner just give you the chance to prove you’re trustworthy.’

It was a good answer, Raith had to admit. Clever, but with iron in it. Made him look a clumsy thug, and he didn’t like to look that way. Subtle thug was better. He shifted back, gave Jenner a little more room and a lot more respect. ‘And what if I’m not trustworthy?’

‘Give men the chance to be better, I find most of ’em want to take it.’

Raith hadn’t found that at all. ‘You sure, old man?’

‘Guess we can find out together, boy. You want another blanket? Could get cold out here.’

‘I’ve dealt with colder.’ Raith would’ve loved another blanket but he had to seem like nothing could hurt him. So he drew the one he had tight around his shoulders and sat down, listened to the old man’s footsteps scrape away. He missed Gorm’s sword. He missed his brother. But the cold draught and the cold stones and the cold silence were much the same.

He wondered if the dreams would be too.

How to Win

‘When I ring the bell, you climb.’

‘Yes, my queen,’ croaked Koll. There were few people in the world he was as much in awe of as Queen Laithlin and most of them were here, now, watching. It felt like half the people of the Shattered Sea were rammed into the yard of the citadel in the shade of the great cedar, or crammed at the windows, or peering down from the roofs and the battlements.

King Uthil stood on the steps of the Godshall, Father Yarvi leaning on his staff at his right hand, Rulf beside him, scratching at the short grey hair above his ears, giving Koll what was no doubt meant to be a reassuring grin. Opposite, on a platform carefully built to just the same height, stood Grom-gil-Gorm, zigzag lines of gold forged into his mail glittering in the morning sun, his white-haired shield-bearer kneeling by him, Mother Scaer with her blue eyes fiercely narrowed.

Rin had found a way in, just as she always did, on a roof high up on Koll’s left. She waved like a mad woman as he looked up, flailing her open palm around for luck. Gods, Koll wished he was over there with her. Or better yet in her forge. Or better yet in her bed. He pushed the idea away. Brand was standing right beside her, after all, and might not stay oblivious forever.

Queen Laithlin raised one long white arm to point towards the top of the cedar, gold glinting on the highest branch. ‘The winner is the one who brings Princess Skara back her armring.’

Koll shivered from his toes to the roots of his hair, trying to shake free of the tingling nerves. He glanced up at the mast that stood rooted in the yard beside Thorn, carved from foot to head by his own hands on the long journey to the First of Cities and back.

Gods, he was proud of that mast. The carving he’d done on it, and his part in the story it told. There’d been brave deeds in plenty on that voyage, and he had to be brave now. He was sure he could win. What he wasn’t sure of was whether he wanted to. For a man reckoned clever, he got wedged in a lot of stupid corners.

He gave one of those sighs that made his lips flap. ‘The gods have a silly sense of humour.’

‘They surely do.’ Gorm’s ex-cup-filler, Raith, frowned about at the crowd. ‘When I got on the boat in Vulsgard I never thought I’d end up climbing trees.’ He leaned close, as if he’d a secret to share, and Koll couldn’t help leaning in with him. ‘Nor playing nursemaid to some skinny girl.’

Princess Skara stood between a wide-eyed Sister Owd and an unkempt Blue Jenner, seeming as perfect and brittle as the pottery statues Koll had stared at in the First of Cities, long ago, trying to work out how they were made.

‘Life is too easy for very pretty people,’ he said. ‘They get all manner of advantages.’

‘I assure you it’s as hard for us beauties as anyone,’ said Raith.

Koll looked round at him. ‘You’re a good deal less of a bastard than I took you for.’

‘Oh, you don’t know me that well yet. Taking this damned seriously, ain’t he?’

Grom-gil-Gorm’s Shend standard-bearer had stripped to the waist, a pattern of scars burned into his broad back to look like a spreading tree. He was putting on quite the performance, lean muscles flexing as he stretched, twisted, touched his toes.

Raith just stood there, scratching at a nick out of his ear. ‘Thought we were climbing, not dancing.’

‘So did I.’ Koll grinned. ‘Might be we were misinformed.’

‘My name’s Raith.’ And Raith held out a friendly hand.

The minister’s boy smiled back. ‘Koll.’ And he took it. Just like Raith had known he would, ’cause weak men are always eager for the friendship of strong ones. His smile faded quick enough when he found he couldn’t tug his hand free again. ‘What’re you—’

Queen Laithlin rang the bell.

Raith jerked the lad close and butted him in the face.

He could climb but Raith had no doubts these other two were better at it. If he wanted to win, and he always did, best make the contest about something else. At butting folk in the face he was a master, as Koll now discovered.

Raith punched him in the ribs three times, doubled him up gurgling with blood pattering from his smashed mouth, then caught his shirt and flung him upside down across a table where some of the Gettlanders were sitting.

He heard the chaos behind him, the crowd bellowing curses, but by that time the blood was roaring in his ears and his mind was on the tree. Soryorn was already dragging his great long body into the branches and if he got a good start Raith knew he’d never catch him.

He took a pounding run, sprang onto the lowest branch and swung himself up, jumped to a higher, twigs thrashing from his weight. At the next spring, full stretch, he caught Soryorn by the ankle and dragged him down, a broken stick scratching him all the way up his scar-marked back.

Soryorn kicked out and caught Raith in the mouth, but he’d never been put off by the taste of his own blood. He growled as he hauled himself on, no thought for the scraping branches, no thought for the aching through his left hand, caught Soryorn’s ankle again, then his belt, and finally his garnet studded thrall-collar.

‘What’re you doing?’ snarled the standard-bearer, trying to elbow him away.

‘Winning,’ hissed Raith, hauling himself up level.

‘Gorm wants me to win!’

‘I serve Skara, remember?’

Raith punched Soryorn right between the legs and his eyes bulged. Raith punched him in the mouth and snapped his head back. Raith bit his clutching hand hard and with a wheezing cry Soryorn lost his grip and went tumbling down through the branches, his head bouncing off one, another folding him in half, a third spinning him over and over till he crashed to the ground.

Which was a shame, but someone had to win, and someone had to fall.

Raith shinned up further to where the branches grew sparse. He could see over the walls of the citadel from here. Mother Sea glittering, the forest of masts on the dozens of ships crowded into Thorlby’s harbour, the salt breeze kissing his sweating forehead.

He twitched the armring from the topmost branch. He’d have put it on his wrist but it was sized for Skara’s twig of an arm and there was no way it’d fit. So he stuffed it into the pouch at his belt and started slithering down.

The wind blew up and made the whole tree sway, branches creaking, needles brushing Raith all over as he clung on tight. He caught a flash of white out of the corner of his eye, but all he could see when he peered down was Soryorn, trying and failing to drag himself up into the lowest branches. No sign of the minister’s boy. More’n likely crept off to cry over his broken face. Might be a fine climber but he’d no guts at all, and to climb into Bail’s Point alone, a man would need guts.

Raith swung free and dropped to the ground.

‘You little bastard!’ snarled Soryorn, clinging to a low branch. He must have hurt his leg when he fell, he was holding it up gingerly, toes trailing.

Raith laughed as he passed. Then he sprang in and drove a shoulder into Soryorn’s ribs, ramming him so hard into the tree his breath was all driven out in a flopping wheeze.

‘You big bastard,’ he tossed out as he left Soryorn groaning in the dirt. The standard-bearer had always been a good friend to Raith.

So he really should’ve known better than to leave his side open like that.

‘Princess Skara.’

She gave Raith what she hoped was a disapproving look. ‘I would hardly call that a fair contest.’

He shrugged, looking her straight in the eye. ‘You think Bright Yilling loses much sleep over what’s fair?’

Skara felt herself blush. He had the manners of a stump, treated her with not the slightest deference. Mother Kyre would have been outraged. Maybe that was why Skara found it so hard to be. She was not used to bluntness and there was something refreshing in it. Something appealing in it, even. ‘So I should send a dog to catch a dog?’ she asked.

Raith gave a harsh little chuckle at that. ‘Send a killer to kill a killer, anyway.’ He reached for his pouch, and his smile vanished.

That was when Koll came strolling around the side of the cedar, stopping a moment to help Soryorn up. His lip was split and his nose was swollen and bloody, but he was smiling.

‘Lost something, friend?’ he asked as Raith patted at his clothes. With a flourish of his spindly fingers he produced, apparently from nowhere, the armring Bail the Builder once wore into battle. He bowed in an entirely proper manner. ‘I think this is yours, princess.’

Raith gaped. ‘You thieving—’

Koll showed his bloody teeth as he smiled wider. ‘You think Bright Yilling loses much sleep over thieving?’

Raith made a grab for the armring but Koll was too quick, flipped it glittering into the air. ‘You lost the game.’ He snatched the armring right out of Raith’s clutching fingers, tossed it nimbly from left hand to right and left Raith grabbing at nothing. ‘Don’t lose your sense of humour too!’

Skara saw Raith clenching his fists as Koll flicked the armring up one more time.

‘Enough!’ She stepped between the two of them before any more harm could be done and plucked the armring from the air. ‘Gettland is the winner!’ she called, as she slipped it back over her wrist and up her arm.

The Gettlanders burst into cheering. The Vanstermen were a good deal quieter as they watched Soryorn hop away, leaning hard on Mother Scaer’s shoulder. As for Skara’s own little entourage, Raith looked as if he had swallowed an axe and Blue Jenner was in tears, but only because he was laughing so hard.

Thorn Bathu cupped her hands to shout over the noise. ‘I guess all that time spent up the mast wasn’t wasted after all!’

‘A man can learn more up a mast than in any minister’s chamber!’ called Koll, basking in the applause and blowing kisses to his friends.

Skara leaned close to him. ‘You realize you’ve won the chance to climb alone into an impregnable fortress full of enemies?’

His smile wilted as she took his wrist and raised his limp hand in triumph.

First Man In

The walls of Bail’s Point were frozen in another flash of lightning, the battlements black teeth against a brilliant sky. Gods, they looked a long way up.

‘Is it too late to say I don’t like this plan?’ shrieked Koll over the howling of the wind, the hissing of the rain, the hammering of Mother Sea against their little boat.

‘You can say it whenever you like,’ Rulf bellowed back at him, his bald pate running with wet. ‘Long as you climb up there afterward!’

The wind swept up and lashed spray into the faces of the struggling crew. Thunder crackled loud enough to make the world tremble, but Koll could hardly have been trembling more as they jerked and wobbled closer to the rocks.

‘These skies don’t strike me as a fine omen!’ he called.

‘Nor these seas neither!’ shouted Dosduvoi, wrestling with his oar as if it was a horse that needed breaking. ‘Bad luck all round!’

‘We all have luck, good and bad!’ Thorn weighed the grapple in her hand. ‘It’s how you meet it that matters.’

‘She’s right,’ said Fror, his misshapen eye white in his tar-blacked face. ‘He Who Speaks the Thunder is on our side. His rain will keep their heads indoors. His grumbling will muffle the sounds of our coming.’

‘Provided his lightning doesn’t fry you to a cinder.’ Thorn slapped Koll on the back and nearly knocked him out of the boat.

The base of the wall was made from ancient elf-stone but buckled and broken, rusted bars showing in the cracks, coated in limpet, weed and barnacle. Rulf leaned low, teeth bared as he dragged hard on the steering oar, hauling them side on.

‘Easy! Easy!’ Another wave caught them, brought Koll’s stomach into his mouth and carried them hard against stone, wood grating and squealing. He clung to the rail, sure the boat would break her back and Mother Sea come surging in, ever hungry for warm bodies to drag into her cold embrace, but the seasoned timbers held and he muttered thanks to the tree that had given them.

Thorn tossed the grapple and it caught first time among those ancient rods. She braced her legs on the strakes beside Koll, teeth gritted as she hauled the boat close.

Koll saw the two buttresses Princess Skara had spoken of. Man-built from rough-hewn blocks, mortar crumbled from years of Mother Sea’s chewing. Between them was a shadowy cleft, stone shining slick and wet.

‘Just imagine it’s another mast!’ roared Rulf.

‘Masts often have angry seas at the bottom,’ said Thorn, tar-blacked sinews flexing in her shoulders as she wrestled with the rope.

‘But rarely angry enemies at the top,’ muttered Koll, staring up towards the battlements.

‘You sure you don’t want tar?’ asked Fror, offering out the jar. ‘They see you climbing up—’

‘I’m no warrior. They catch me I’ve a better chance talking than fighting.’

‘You ready?’ snapped Rulf.

‘No!’

‘Best go unready, then, the waves’ll smash this boat to kindling soon enough!’

Koll clambered up onto the rail, one hand gripping the prow, the other jerking some slack into the rope he had tied across his chest and coiled up between the sea-chests. Wet it was some weight, and it’d only get heavier the higher he climbed. The boat yawed, grinding against the foot of the buttress. Angry water clapped between rock and wood and fountained up, would’ve soaked Koll through if rain and sea hadn’t soaked him through already.

‘Hold her steady!’ shouted Rulf.

‘I would!’ called Dosduvoi, ‘but Mother Sea objects!’

The wise wait for their moment, as Father Yarvi was always telling him, but never let it pass. Another wave lifted the boat and Koll muttered one more prayer to Father Peace that he might live to see Rin again, then sprang.

He’d been sure he’d plunge scrabbling and wailing straight through the Last Door, but the chimney between the two buttresses was deeper than a man was tall and just the right width. He stuck there so easily it was almost a disappointment.

‘Ha!’ he shouted over his shoulder, delighted at his unexpected survival.

‘Don’t laugh!’ snarled Thorn, still struggling with the grapple. ‘Climb!’

The crumbling mortar offered foot and hand holds in plenty and to begin with he made quick progress, humming away to himself as he went, imagining the song the skalds would sing of Koll the Clever, who swarmed up the impenetrable walls of Bail’s Point as swiftly as a gull in flight. The applause he’d won in the yard of Thorlby’s citadel had only given him a taste for more. To be loved, and admired, and celebrated seemed to him no bad thing. No bad thing at all.

The gods love to laugh at a happy man, however. Like a good mast the buttresses tapered towards their tops. The chimney between them grew shallower, wind and rain lashing into it and giving Koll such an icy buffeting he couldn’t hear himself hum any longer. Worse still it grew wider, so he was reaching further for handholds until there was no choice but to give up one buttress and climb in the angle between the other and the wall itself, the stone ice-cold and moss-slick so he had to keep stopping to scrape the wet hair from his face, wipe his battered hands and blow life back into his numb fingers.

The last few strides of sheer man-built stone took longer than all the rest combined. There was a deadly length of rain-heavy rope dragging at his shoulder now, weightier than a warrior’s armour, whipping and snapping about the chimney as the wind took it. It was as hard a test as he’d faced in his life, muscles twitching, trembling, aching past the point of endurance. Even his teeth were hurting, but to turn back would’ve been more dangerous than to go on.

Koll picked his holds as carefully as a ship-builder his keel, knowing one mistake would see him smashed to fish-food on the rocks below, squinting in the moonlight and the storm-flashes, scraping mossy dirt from between the stones, crumbly here as old cheese. He tried not to think about the yawning drop below, or the angry men who might be waiting above, or the—

A stone burst apart in his numb fingers and he lost his grip, whimpering as he swung away, every stretched-out sinew in his arm on fire, clawing and scrabbling at old ivy until finally he found a firm purchase.

He pressed himself to the wall, watched the gravel tumble away, bouncing down around his rope, down to the jagged elf-boulders and the boat tossed on the angry brine.

He felt his mother’s weights pressing into his breastbone, thought of her frowning up at him on the mast, finger wagging. Get down from there before you break your head.

‘Can’t stay wrapped in a blanket all my life, can I?’ he whispered over the pounding of his heart.

It was with legendary relief he peered over the battlements and saw the rain-lashed walkway, wider than a road, deserted. He groaned as he dragged himself over, hauling the rope after him, rolled on to his back and lay, panting, trying to work the blood back into throbbing fingers.

‘That was an adventure,’ he whispered, slithering up onto hands and knees and staring out over Bail’s Point. ‘Gods …’

From up here it wasn’t hard to believe that it was the strongest fortress in the world, the very key to the Shattered Sea.

There were seven vast towers with vast walls between, six elf-built, the perfect stone gleaming wet, one squat and ugly, built by men to plug a breach left by the Breaking of God. Five towers rose from Father Earth on Koll’s left, but on his right two were thrust out beyond the cliffs into Mother Sea, chains strung between them feathering the waves, enclosing the harbour.

‘Gods,’ he whispered again.

It was crammed with ships, just as Princess Skara had said it would be. Fifty at least, some small, some very great. Bright Yilling’s fleet, safe as babes within the mighty elf-stone arms of the fortress, bare masts scarcely shifting despite Mother Sea’s fury beyond.