Half the World

A warrior who had knelt to root through the dead man’s clothes held out his palm, silver glinting. ‘Coins, my king. Minted in Skekenhouse.’

‘There is altogether too much from Skekenhouse in my hall of late.’ Fynn’s quivering jowls had a pink flush. ‘Grandmother Wexen’s coins, Grandmother Wexen’s eagles, Grandmother Wexen’s demands too. Demands of me, the King of Throvenland!’

‘But think of your people’s welfare, my king,’ coaxed Mother Kyre, still clinging to her smile, but it hardly touched her mouth now, let alone her eyes. ‘Think of Father Peace, Father of Doves, who makes of the fist—’

‘I have suffered many indignities on behalf of Father Peace.’ The flush had spread to King Fynn’s cheeks. ‘Once the High King was the first among brothers. Now he gives a father’s commands. How men should fight. How women should trade. How all should pray. Temples to the One God spring up across Throvenland like mushrooms after the rains, and I have held my tongue!’

‘You were wise to do so,’ said Mother Kyre, ‘and would be wise to—’

‘Now Grandmother Wexen sends assassins to my land?’

‘My king, we have no proof at all—’

Fynn bellowed over his minister, doughy face heating from pink to blazing crimson. ‘To my very house? To poison my guests?’ He stabbed at the corpse with one sausage of a finger. ‘Beneath my own roof and under my protection?’

‘I would counsel caution—’

‘You always do, Mother Kyre, but there is a limit on my forbearance, and the High King has stepped over it!’ With face now fully purple he seized Father Yarvi’s good hand. ‘Tell my beloved niece Queen Laithlin and her honoured husband that they have a friend in me. A friend whatever the costs! I swear it!’

Mother Kyre had no smile ready for this moment, but Father Yarvi certainly did. ‘Your friendship is all they ask for.’ And he lifted King Fynn’s hand high.

The guards cheered this unexpected alliance between Throvenland and Gettland with some surprise, the South Wind’s crew with great relief, and Thorn Bathu should no doubt have applauded loudest of all. Killing a man by accident had made her a villain. Killing another on purpose had made her a hero.

But all she could do was frown at the body as they dragged it out, and feel there was something very odd in all this.

LOST AND FOUND

Brand was proper drunk.

He often had been, lately.

Lifting on the docks was the best work he could find, and a day of that was thirsty work indeed. So he’d started drinking, and found he’d a real gift for it. Seemed he’d inherited something from his father after all.

The raid had been a mighty success. The Islanders were so sure the High King’s favour would protect them they were taken unawares, half their ships captured and half the rest burned. Brand had watched the warriors of Gettland swagger up through the twisting streets of Thorlby when they landed, laden with booty and covered in glory and cheered from every window. He heard Rauk took two slaves, and Sordaf got himself a silver arm-ring. He heard Uthil dragged old King Styr naked from his hall, made him kneel and swear a sun-oath and a moon-oath never to draw a blade against another Gettlander.

All heroes’ news, like something from the songs, but there’s nothing like others’ successes to make your own failures sting the worse.

Brand walked the crooked walk down some alley or other, between some houses or other, and shouted at the stars. Someone shouted back. Maybe the stars, maybe from a window. He didn’t care. He didn’t know where he was going. Didn’t seem to matter any more.

He was lost.

‘I’m worried,’ Rin had said.

‘Try having all your dreams stolen,’ he’d spat at her.

What could she say to that?

He tried to give her the dagger back. ‘I don’t need it and I don’t deserve it.’

‘I made it for you,’ she’d said. ‘I’m proud of you whatever.’ Nothing made her cry but she had tears in her eyes then, and they hurt worse than any beating he’d ever taken and he’d taken plenty.

So he asked Fridlif to fill his cup again. And again. And again. And Fridlif shook her grey head to see a young life wasted and all, but it was hardly the first time. Filling cups was what she did.

At least when he was drunk Brand could pretend other people were to blame. Hunnan, Thorn, Rauk, Father Yarvi, the gods, the stars above, the stones under his feet. Sober, he got to thinking he’d brought this on himself.

He blundered into a wall in the darkness and it spun him about, the anger flared up hot and he roared, ‘I did good!’ He threw a punch at the wall and missed, which was lucky, and fell in the gutter, which wasn’t.

Then he was sick on his hands.

‘Are you Brand?’

‘I was,’ he said, rocking back on his knees and seeing the outline of a man, or maybe two.

‘The same Brand who trained with Thorn Bathu?’

He snorted at that, but his snorting tasted of sick and nearly made him spew again. ‘Sadly.’

‘Then this is for you.’

Cold water slapped him in the face and he spluttered on it, tried to scramble up and slipped over in the gutter. An empty bucket skittered away across the cobbles. Brand scraped the wet hair out of his eyes, saw a strip of lamplight across an old face, creased and lined, scarred and bearded.

‘I should hit you for that, you old bastard,’ he said, but getting up hardly seemed worth the effort.

‘But then I’d hit you back, and a broken face won’t mend your troubles. I know. I’ve tried it.’ The old man put hands on knees and leaned down close. ‘Thorn said you were the best she used to train with. You don’t look like the best of anything to me, boy.’

‘Time hasn’t been kind.’

‘Time never is. A fighter keeps fighting even so. Thought you were a fighter?’

‘I was,’ said Brand.

The old man held out his broad hand. ‘Good. My name’s Rulf, and I’ve got a fight for you.’

They’d made the torchlit storehouse up like a training square, ropes on the old boards marking the edge. There wasn’t as big an audience as Brand was used to, but what there was made him want to be sick again.

On one of the stools, with the key to the kingdom’s treasury gleaming on her chest, sat Laithlin, Golden Queen of Gettland. Beside her was the man who had once been her son and was now her minister, Father Yarvi. Behind them were four silver-collared slaves – two huge Inglings with hard axes at their belts and even harder frowns on their rock-chiselled faces, and two girls like as the halves of a walnut, and each with braids so long they had them looped around and around one arm.

And leaning against the far wall with one boot up on the stonework and that mocking little lop-sided smile on her lips was Brand’s least favourite sparring partner, Thorn Bathu.

And the strange thing was, though he’d spent long drunk hours blaming her for all his woes, Brand was happy to see her face. Happier than he’d been in a long while. Not because he liked her so much, but because the sight of her reminded him of a time when he liked himself. When he could see his future, and liked what he saw. When his hopes stood tall and the world seemed full of dares.

‘Thought you’d never get here.’ She worked her arm into the straps of a shield and picked out a wooden sword.

‘Thought they crushed you with rocks,’ said Brand.

‘It’s still very much a possibility,’ said Father Yarvi.

Rulf gave Brand a shove between the shoulder-blades and sent him tottering into the square. ‘Get to it, then, lad.’

Brand knew he didn’t have the fastest mind, and it was far from its fastest then, but he got the gist. He walked almost a straight line to the practice weapons and picked out a sword and shield, keenly aware of the queen’s cold eyes judging his every movement.

Thorn was already taking her mark. ‘You’re a sorry bloody sight,’ she said.

Brand looked down at his vest, soaked and somewhat sick-stained, and had to nod. ‘Aye.’

That wrinkle to her mouth twisted into a full sneer. ‘Weren’t you always telling me you’d be a rich man after your first raid?’

That stung. ‘I didn’t go.’

‘Hadn’t marked you for a coward.’

That stung more. She’d always known how to sting him. ‘I didn’t get picked,’ he grunted.

Thorn burst out laughing, no doubt showing off in front of the queen. She’d never tired of spouting how much she admired the woman. ‘Here’s me full of envy, expecting you all puffed up like a hero, and what do I find but some drunk beggar-boy?’

Brand felt a cold flush through him then, sweeping the drink away more surely than any ice water. He’d done more than his share of begging, that was true. But it’s the true ones that sting.

Thorn was still chuckling at her cleverness. ‘You always were an idiot. Hunnan stole my place, how did you toss yours away?’

Brand would’ve liked to tell her how he’d lost his place. He would’ve liked to scream it in her face, but he couldn’t get the words out because he’d started growling like an animal, growling louder and louder until the room throbbed with it, and his chest hummed with it, his lips curled back and his jaw clenched so hard it seemed his teeth would shatter, and Thorn was frowning at him over the rim of her shield like he’d gone mad. Maybe he had.

‘Begin!’ shouted Rulf, and he was on her, hacked her sword away, struck back so hard he sent splinters from her shield. She twisted, quick, she’d always been deadly quick, made enough space to swing but he wasn’t hesitating this time.

He shrugged the blow off his shoulder, barely felt it, bellowed as he pressed in blindly, driving her staggering back, shield-rims grinding together, almost lifting her as she tripped over the rope and crashed into the wall. She tried to twist her sword free but he still had it pinned useless over his shoulder, and he caught her shield with his left hand and dragged it down. Too close for weapons, he flung his practice blade away and started punching her, all his anger and his disappointment in it, as if she was Hunnan, and Yarvi, and all those so-called friends of his who’d done so well from doing nothing, stolen his place, stolen his future.

He hit her in the side and heard her groan, hit her again and she folded up, eyes bulging, hit her again and she went down hard, coughing and retching at his feet. He might’ve been about to set to kicking her when Rulf caught him around the neck with one thick forearm and dragged him back.

‘That’s enough, I reckon.’

‘Aye,’ he muttered, going limp. ‘More’n enough.’

He shook the shield off his arm, shocked of a sudden at what he’d done and nowhere near proud of it, knowing full well what it felt like on the other side of a beating like that. Maybe there was more than one thing he’d inherited from his father. He didn’t feel like he was standing in the light right then. Not at all.

Queen Laithlin gave a long sigh, Thorn’s coughing and dribbling in the background, and turned on her stool. ‘I was wondering when you’d arrive.’

And it was only then Brand noticed another watcher, slouched in the shadows of a corner in a cloak of rags every shade of grey. ‘Always when I am sorest needed and least expected.’ A woman’s voice from within the hood and a strange accent on it. ‘Or hungry.’

‘Did you see it?’ asked Yarvi.

‘I had that questionable privilege.’

‘What do you think?’

‘She is wretched. She is all pride and anger. She has too much confidence and too little. She does not know herself.’ The figure pushed back her hood. A black-skinned old woman with a face lean as famine and hair shaved to grey fuzz. She picked her nose with one long forefinger, carefully examined the results, then flicked them away. ‘The girl is stupid as a stump. Worse. Most stumps have the dignity to rot quietly without causing offence.’

‘I’m right here,’ Thorn managed to hiss from her hands and knees.

‘Just where the drunk boy put you.’ The woman flashed a smile at Brand that seemed to have too many teeth. ‘I like him, though, he is pretty and desperate. My favourite combination.’

‘Can anything be done with her?’ asked Yarvi.

‘Something can always be done, given enough effort.’ The woman peeled herself away from the wall. She had the strangest way of walking – wriggling, jerking, strutting – as though she was dancing to music only she could hear. ‘How much effort will you pay for me to waste upon her worthless carcass, is the question. You owe me already, after all.’ A long arm snaked from her cloak with something in the hand.

It was a box perhaps the size of a child’s head – dark, square, perfect, with golden writing etched into the lid. Brand found his eyes drawn to it. It took an effort not to step closer, to look closer. Thorn was staring too. And Rulf. And the queen’s thralls. All fascinated and afraid at once, as if by the sight of a terrible wound. None of them could read, of course, but you did not have to be a minister to know those were elf-letters on the box. Letters written before the Breaking of God.

Father Yarvi swallowed, and with the one finger of his crippled hand eased the box open. Whatever was inside, a pale light shone from it. A light that picked out the hollows of the minister’s face as his mouth fell open, that reflected in Queen Laithlin’s widening eyes, which a moment before Brand had thought nothing could surprise.

‘By the gods,’ she whispered. ‘You have it.’

The woman gave an extravagant bow, the hem of her cloak sending up a wash of straw-dust from the storehouse floor. ‘I deliver what I promise, my most gilded of queens.’

‘Then it still works?’

‘Shall I make it turn?’

‘No,’ said Father Yarvi. ‘Make it turn for the Empress of the South, not before.’

‘There is the question of—’

Without taking her eyes from the box, the queen held out a folded paper. ‘Your debts are all cancelled.’

‘The very question I had in mind.’ The black-skinned woman frowned as she took it between two fingers. ‘I have been called a witch before but here is sorcery indeed, to trap such a weight of gold in a scrap of paper.’

‘We live in changing times,’ murmured Father Yarvi, and he snapped the box shut, putting the light out with it. Only then Brand realized he’d been holding his breath, and slowly let it out. ‘Find us a crew, Rulf, you know the kind.’

‘Hard ones, I’m guessing,’ said the old warrior.

‘Oarsmen and fighters. The outcasts and the desperate. Men who don’t get weak at the thought of blood or the sight of it. The journey is long and the stakes could not be higher. I want men with nothing to lose.’

‘My kind of crew!’ The black-skinned woman slapped her thigh. ‘Sign me up first!’ She slipped between the stools and strutted over towards Brand, and for a moment her cloak of rags came open and he saw the glint of steel. ‘Can I buy you a drink, young man?’

‘I think the boy has drunk enough.’ Queen Laithlin’s grey eyes were on him, and the eyes of her four slaves as well, and Brand swallowed, his sick-tasting mouth suddenly very dry. ‘Though my first husband gave me two sons, for which I will always be grateful, he drank too much. It spoils a bad man. It ruins a good one.’

‘I … have decided to stop, my queen,’ mumbled Brand. He knew then he wasn’t going back. Not to the ale-cup, nor to begging, nor to lifting on the docks.

The black woman puffed out her cheeks in disappointment as she made for the door. ‘Young people these days have no ambition in them.’

Laithlin ignored her. ‘The way you fight reminds me of an old friend.’

‘Thank you—’

‘Don’t. I had to kill him.’ And the Queen of Gettland swept out, her slaves following in her wake.

‘I’ve a crew to gather.’ Rulf took Brand under the arm. ‘And no doubt your gutter’s missing you—’

‘It’ll manage without me.’ Rulf was strong but Brand wouldn’t be moved. He’d remembered how it felt to fight, and how it felt to win, and he was more sure of the good thing to do than he’d ever been in his life. ‘Luck’s with you, old man,’ he said. ‘Now you need to gather one less.’

Rulf snorted. ‘This ain’t no two-day jaunt, boy, nor even a raid to the Islands. We’re headed far up the Divine River and down the Denied, over the tall hauls and beyond. We go to speak to the Prince of Kalyiv. To seek an audience with the Empress of the South in the First of Cities, even! All kinds of dangers on that journey, even if you’re not seeking allies against the most powerful man in the world. We’ll be gone months. If we come back at all.’

Brand swallowed. Dangers, no doubt, but opportunities too. Men won glory on the Divine. Men won fortunes beyond it. ‘You need oarsmen?’ he said. ‘I can pull an oar. You need loads lifted? I can lift a load. You need fighters?’ Brand nodded towards Thorn, who’d managed to stand, wincing as she kneaded at her battered ribs. ‘I can fight. You want men with nothing to lose? Look no further.’

Rulf opened his mouth but Father Yarvi spoke over him. ‘The way may be hard, but we go to smooth the path for Father Peace. We go to find allies.’ The minister gave Brand the slightest nod. ‘We might need one man aboard who spares some thought for doing good. Give him a marker, Rulf.’

The old warrior scratched at his grey beard. ‘Yours’ll be the lowest place, boy. The worst work for the thinnest rewards. Back oar.’ He jerked his head over at Thorn. ‘Opposite that article.’

Thorn gave Brand a long, hard frown and spat, but it only made him smile wider. He saw his future once again, and he liked what he saw. Compared to lifting loads on the docks, he liked it a lot.

‘Looking forward to it.’ He plucked the marker from Rulf’s hand, the minister’s dove carved into the face, and he wrapped his fingers painfully tight about it.

It seemed Mother War had found a crew for him after all. Or Father Peace had.

THE FIRST LESSON

The South Wind rocked on the tide, boasting new oars and a new sail, freshly painted and freshly provisioned, lean and sleek as a racing dog and with minister’s doves gleaming white at high prow and stern. It was, without doubt, a beautiful ship. A ship fit for high deeds and heroes’ songs.

Sadly, her new crew were not quite of that calibre.

‘They seem a …’ Thorn’s mother always found a pretty way to put things, but even she was stumped. ‘Varied group.’

‘Fearsome is the word I’d have reached for,’ grunted Thorn.

She might well have tripped over desperate, disgusting or axebitten on the way. All three seemed apt for the gathering of the damned crawling over the South Wind and the wharf beside it, hefting sacks and barrels, hauling at ropes, shoving, bellowing, laughing, threatening, all under Father Yarvi’s watchful eye.

Fighting men, these, but more like bandits than warriors. Men with many scars and few scruples. Men with beards forked and braided and shaved in strange patches and dyed hair chopped into spikes. Men whose clothes were ragged but whose muscled arms and thick necks and calloused fingers glittered with gold and silver ring-money, proclaiming to the world the high value they put on themselves.

Thorn wondered what mountain of corpses this lot might have heaped up between them, but she wasn’t one to be easily intimidated. Especially when she had no choice. She set down her sea-chest, everything she had inside, her father’s old sword wrapped in an oilcloth on top. She put on her bravest face, stepped up to the biggest man she could see and tapped him on the arm.

‘I’m Thorn Bathu.’

‘I am Dosduvoi.’ She found herself staring sharply up at one of the biggest heads she ever saw, tiny features squeezed into the centre of its doughy expanse, looming so high above her that at first she thought its owner must be standing on a box. ‘What bad luck brings you here, girl?’ he asked, with a faintly tragic quiver to his voice.

She wished she had a different answer, but snapped out, ‘I’m sailing with you.’

His face retreated into an even tinier portion of his head as he frowned. ‘Along the Divine River, to Kalyiv and beyond?’

She thrust her chin up at him in the usual manner. ‘If the boat floats with so much meat aboard.’

‘Reckon we’ll have to balance the benches with some little ones.’ This from a man, small and hard as Dosduvoi was huge and soft. He had the spikiest shag of red hair and the maddest eyes, bright blue, shining wet and sunken in dark sockets. ‘My name is Odda, famed about the Shattered Sea.’

‘Famed for what?’

‘All kinds of things.’ He flashed a yellow wolf-smile and she saw his teeth were filed across the front with killer’s grooves. ‘Can’t wait to sail with you.’

‘Likewise,’ Thorn managed to croak, stepping back despite herself and nearly tripping over someone else. He looked up as she turned and, brave face or no, she shrank back the other way. A huge scar started at the corner of one eye, all dragged out of shape to show the pink lid, angled across his stubbled cheek and through both lips. To make matters worse, she realized from his hair, long and braided back around his face, that they would be sailing with a Vansterman.

He met her ill-concealed horror with a mutilated blankness more terrible than any snarl and said mildly, ‘I am Fror.’

It was either bluster or look weak and Thorn reckoned that no choice at all, so she puffed herself up and snapped out, ‘How did you get the scar?’

‘How did you get the scar?’

Thorn frowned. ‘What scar?’

‘That’s the face the gods gave you?’ And with the faintest of smiles the Vansterman went back to coiling rope.

‘Father Peace protect us,’ squeaked Thorn’s mother as she edged past. ‘Fearsome is a fair word for them.’

‘They’ll be the ones scared of me soon enough,’ said Thorn, wishing, and not for the first time, that saying a thing firmly enough makes it so.

‘That’s a good thing?’ Her mother stared at a shaven-headed man with runes stating his crimes tattooed on his face, laughing jaggedly with a bony fellow whose arms were covered in flaking sores. ‘To be feared by men like these?’

‘Better to be feared than afraid.’ Her father’s words and, as always, her mother was ready for them.

‘Are those life’s only two choices?’

‘They’re a warrior’s two choices.’ Whenever Thorn traded more than ten words with her mother she somehow ended up defending an indefensible position. She knew what came next. Why fight so hard to be a warrior if all you can win is fear? But her mother only shut her mouth, and looked pale and scared, and piled guilt on Thorn’s simmering anger. As ever.

‘You can always go back to the house,’ snapped Thorn.

‘I want to see my only child on her way. Can’t you give me that? Father Yarvi says you might be gone a year.’ Her mother’s voice took on an infuriating quiver. ‘If you come back at all—’

‘Fear not, my doves!’ Thorn jumped as someone flung an arm around her shoulders. The strange woman who had watched Thorn fight Brand a few days before thrust her grey-stubbled skull between her and her mother. ‘For the wise Father Yarvi has placed your daughter’s education in my dextrous hands.’

Thorn hadn’t thought her spirits could drop any lower, but the gods had found a way. ‘Education?’

The woman hugged them tighter, her smell a heady mix of sweat, incense, herbs and piss. ‘It’s where I teach and you learn.’

‘And who …’ Thorn’s mother gave the ragged woman a nervous look, ‘or what … are you?’

‘Lately, a thief.’ When that sharpened nervousness into alarm she added brightly, ‘But also an experienced killer! And navigator, wrestler, stargazer, explorer, historian, poet, blackmailer, brewer … I may have forgotten a few. Not to mention an accomplished amateur prophet!’

The old woman scraped a spatter of fresh bird-droppings from a post, tested its texture with her thumb, smelled it closely, seemed on the point of tasting it, then decided against and wiped the mess on her ragged cloak.