Half a King

Yarvi ducked past, breath echoing in the stairway, feet scraping on the stones, swallowing his surging spit.

On the battlefield, his father used to say, there are no rules.

Up, and up in the fizzing darkness, Hurik and Keimdal toiling behind him. He paused at a narrow window to feel the wind on his burning face, saw water crash on rock at the bottom of a sheer drop and pushed down his fear.

Stand like a king, his mother had told him. Speak like a king. Fight like a king.

There was a platform at the top, propped on timbers, a wooden parapet about the edge no taller than Yarvi’s thigh. Low enough to bring the giddy sickness flooding back when he saw how high they had climbed, Father Earth and Mother Sea spread out small around them, the forests of Vansterland stretching off into the haze of distance.

Yarvi’s Uncle Odem stood calmly watching Amwend burn, columns of smoke smudging the slate-grey sky, the tiny warriors bent to the business of destruction, the little ships lined up where surf met shingle to collect the bloody harvest. A dozen of his most seasoned men were around him, and kneeling in their midst a prisoner in a fine yellow robe, bound and gagged, his face swollen with bruises and his long hair clotted with blood.

‘A good day’s work!’ called Odem, smiling at Yarvi over his shoulder. ‘We have taken two hundred slaves, and livestock, and plunder, and burned one of Grom-gil-Gorm’s towns.’

‘What of Gorm himself?’ asked Yarvi, trying to catch his breath after the climb and – since standing and fighting had never been his strengths – at least speak like a king.

Odem sucked sourly at his teeth. ‘The Breaker of Swords will be on his way, eh, Hurik?’

‘Doubtless.’ Hurik stepped from the stairway and straightened to all his considerable height. ‘Battle draws that old bear surely as it draws the flies.’

‘We must round up the men and be back at sea within the hour,’ said Odem.

‘We’re leaving?’ asked Keimdal. ‘Already?’

Yarvi found he was angry. Tired, and sick, and angry at his own weakness and his uncle’s ruthlessness and the world that was this way. ‘Is this our vengeance, Odem?’ He waved his good hand towards the burning town. ‘On women and children and old farmers?’

His uncle’s voice was gentle, as it always was. Gentle as spring rain. ‘Vengeance is taken piece by piece. But you need not worry about that now.’

‘Did I not swear an oath?’ growled Yarvi. For the last two days he had been prickling whenever someone used the words my king. Now he found he prickled even more when they did not.

‘You swore. I heard it, and thought it too heavy an oath for you to carry.’ Odem gestured at the kneeling prisoner, grunting into his gag. ‘But he will free you of its weight.’

‘Who is he?’

‘The headman of Amwend. He is the one who killed you.’

Yarvi blinked. ‘What?’

‘I tried to stop him. But the coward had a hidden blade.’ Odem held up his hand and there was a dagger in it. A long dagger with a pommel of black jet. In spite of the heat of the climb Yarvi felt suddenly very cold, from the soles of his feet to the roots of his hair.

‘It shall be my greatest regret that I moved too late to save my much-loved nephew.’ And carelessly as cutting a joint of meat Odem stabbed the headman between his neck and his shoulder and kicked him onto his face, blood welling across the rooftop.

‘What do you mean?’ Yarvi’s words came shrill and broken and he was suddenly aware how many of his uncle’s men were about him, all armed, all armoured.

As Odem stepped calmly, so calmly towards him he stepped back, stepped back on shaky knees to nowhere but the low parapet and the high drop beyond.

‘I remember the night you were born.’ His uncle’s voice was cold and level as ice on a winter lake. ‘Your father raged at the gods over that thing you have for a hand. You’ve always made me, smile, though. You would have been a fine jester.’ Odem raised his brows, and sighed. ‘But is my daughter really to have a one-handed weakling for a husband? Is Gettland really to have half a king? A crippled puppet dangling on his mother’s string? No, nephew, I … think … not.’

Keimdal snatched Yarvi’s arm and dragged him back, metal scraping as he drew his sword. ‘Get behind me, my—’

Blood spattered in Yarvi’s face and half-blinded him. Keimdal fell to his knees, spitting and gurgling, clutching at his throat, black leaking between his fingers. Yarvi stared sideways and saw Hurik frowning back, a drawn knife in his hand, the blade slick with Keimdal’s blood. He let Yarvi’s mail drop jingling to the floor.

‘We must do what is best for Gettland,’ said Odem. ‘Kill him.’

Yarvi tottered away, his jaw dropping wide, and Hurik caught a fistful of his cloak.

With a ping his father’s heavy golden buckle sprang open. Suddenly released, Yarvi reeled back.

The parapet caught him hard in the knees and, breath whooping, he tumbled over it.

Rock and water and sky spun about him, and down plummeted the King of Gettland, and down, and the water struck him as a hammer strikes iron.

And Mother Sea took him in her cold embrace.

THE ENEMY

Yarvi came to himself in the darkness, smothered by rushing bubbles, and he writhed and thrashed and twisted with the simple need to stay alive.

The gods must yet have had some use for him, for when it seemed his ribs would burst and he must breathe in whether it was sea or sky, his head broke from the water. Spray blinded him, and he coughed and kicked, was sucked under, tossed and tumbled by the current.

A surging wave flung him onto rock, and he clutched at shredding barnacle and green-slick weed, just long enough to find another breath. He fought with the buckle, freed himself of the drowning embrace of his sword-belt, legs burning as he struggled at the merciless sea, kicking free of his leaden boots.

He gathered all his strength and as the swell lifted him he hauled himself up, trembling with effort, onto a narrow ledge of stone washed by the salt spray, speckled with jellies and sharp-shelled limpets.

No doubt he was lucky still to be alive, but Yarvi did not feel lucky.

He was in the inlet on the north side of the holdfast, a narrow space walled in by jagged rocks into which the foaming waves angrily surged, chewing at the stone, slopping and clapping and flinging glittering spray. He scraped the wet hair from his eyes, spat salt, his throat raw, good hand and bad grazed and stinging.

His foolhardy decision to strip off his mail had saved his life, but the padded jacket underneath was bloated with seawater and he pawed at the straps, finally shrugged it free and hunched shivering.

‘D’you see him?’ he heard, the voice coming from so close above that he shrank against the slick rock, biting his tongue.

‘Got to be dead.’ Another voice. ‘Dashed on the rocks. Mother Sea has him for sure.’

‘Odem wants his body.’

‘Odem can fish for it, then.’

A third voice now. ‘Or Hurik can. He let the cripple fall.’

‘And which’ll you be telling first to swim, Odem or Hurik?’

Laughter at that. ‘Gorm’s on his way. We’ve no time to dredge for one-handed corpses.’

‘Back to the ships, and tell King Odem his nephew adorns the deep …’ And the voices faded towards the beach.

King Odem. His own uncle, who he had loved like a father, always there with a soothing word and an understanding smile and a steering hand on Yarvi’s shoulder. His own blood! Yarvi was clinging with his good hand but the bad one he bunched into a trembling fist, his father’s anger stealing up on him so strong he could hardly breathe for it. But his mother had always said, never worry about what has been done, only about what will be.

His mother.

He gave a needy sob at the thought of her. The Golden Queen always knew what should be done. But how to reach her? The ships of Gettland were already leaving. The Vanstermen would soon arrive. All Yarvi could do was wait for dark. Find some way back over the border and south to Thorlby.

There is always a way.

If he had to walk a hundred miles through the forest without boots he would do it. He would be revenged on his bastard uncle, and on that traitor Hurik, and he would take back the Black Chair. He swore it, over and over, as Mother Sun hid her face behind the rocks and the shadows lengthened.

He had not reckoned on that most ruthless of revengers, though, the tide. Soon the icy waves washed the shelf on which he clung. Over his bare feet rose the cold water, over his ankles, over his knees, and before long the sea was surging into that narrow space even more fiercely than before. He would have liked to weigh his choices, but for that you need more than one.

So he climbed. Shivering and weary, aching and cold, weeping and cursing the name of Odem with every slippery foot or handhold. It was an awful risk, but better than throwing himself on the mercy of Mother Sea for, as every sailor knows, she has none.

With a last effort he hauled himself over the brink and lay for a moment in the scrub, catching his breath. He groaned as he rolled over, began to stand.

Something cracked him on the side of the head, tore a cry from him and filled his skull with light. The land reeled and struck him on the side. He crawled up groggy, drooling blood.

‘A Gettland dog, judging by his hair.’ And he squealed as he was dragged up by it.

‘A pup, at least.’ A boot caught Yarvi’s arse and dumped him on his face. He scrambled a pace or two and was kicked down again. Two men were herding him. Two mailed men with spears. Vanstermen, no doubt, though apart from the long braids about their hard faces they looked little different to the warriors who had frowned at him in the training square.

To the unarmed, armed men all look the same.

‘Up,’ said one, rolling him over with another kick.

‘Then stop kicking me down,’ he gasped.

They gave him a spear butt on the other side of his face for that, and he resolved to make no more jokes. One of them hauled him up by the collar of his torn shirt and half-dragged him, half-marched him on.

There were warriors everywhere, some on horseback. Peasants too, perhaps townsfolk who had fled at the sight of ships, returned to the ruins of their homes, soot-smeared and tear-streaked, to dig through the wreckage. Bodies were laid out for burning: their shrouds flapped and tugged in the sea wind.

But Yarvi needed all his pity for himself.

‘Kneel, dog.’ He was sent sprawling once more and this time saw no pressing need to rise, moaning with each breath and his battered mouth one great throb.

‘What do you bring me?’ came a clear voice, high and wandering, as if it sang a song.

‘A Gettlander. He climbed from the sea beside the holdfast, my king.’

‘The Mother of Waters washes up strange bounty. Look upon me, sea creature.’

Yarvi slowly, fearfully, painfully raised his head and saw two great boots capped with scuffed steel. Then baggy trousers, striped red and white. Then a heavy belt with a golden buckle, the hilts of a great sword and four knives. Then mail of steel with zigzag lines of gold forged in. Then a white fur about great shoulders, the wolf’s head still on, garnets set into its empty eyes. Upon it, a chain of jumbled lumps of gold and silver, precious stones winking: pommels twisted from the swords of fallen enemies, so many that the chain was looped three times about a trunk of a neck and still hung low. Finally, so high above Yarvi that the man stood a giant, a craggy face, lop-sided as a wind-blown tree, long hair and beard hanging wild and streaked with silver-grey, but about the twisted mouth and eyes a smile. The smile of a man who studies beetles, wondering which to squash.

‘Who are you, person?’ asked the giant.

‘A cook’s boy.’ The words were clumsy in Yarvi’s bloodied mouth, and he tried to work his crippled hand into his damp shirt sleeve so it could not betray him. ‘I fell into the sea.’ A good liar weaves as much truth into the cloth as they can, Mother Gundring once told him.

‘Shall we play a guessing game?’ the giant asked, winding a strand of his long hair around and around one finger. ‘Of what my name might be?’

Yarvi swallowed. He did not need to guess. ‘You are Grom-gil-Gorm, Breaker of Swords and Maker of Orphans, King of the Vanstermen.’

‘You win!’ Gorm clapped his massive hands. ‘Though what you win remains to be seen. I am King of the Vanstermen. Lately including these ill-doomed wretches that your countrymen of Gettland have so freely robbed, butchered, and stolen as slaves, against the wishes of the High King in Skekenhouse, who has asked that swords stay sheathed. He loves to spoil our fun, but there it is.’ Gorm’s eyes wandered over the scene of ruin. ‘Does this strike you as just, cook’s boy?’

‘No,’ croaked Yarvi, and he did not have to lie.

A woman stepped up beside the king. Her hair was shaved to black-and-grey stubble, her long, white arms covered from shoulder to finger with blue designs. Some Yarvi recognized from his studies: charts for the reckoning of the future in the stars, circles within circles in which the relationships of the small gods were plotted, runes that told of times and distances and amounts permitted and forbidden. About one forearm five elf-bangles were stacked, relics of great age and value, gold and steel and bright glass flashing, talismans worked with symbols whose meanings were drowned in the depths of time.

And Yarvi knew this must be Mother Scaer, Gorm’s minister. She who sent the dove to Mother Gundring, luring Yarvi’s father to his death with promises of peace.

‘What King of Gettland ordered such slaughter?’ she asked, her voice every bit as harsh as a dove’s.

‘Odem.’ And Yarvi realized with some pain it was the truth.

Her lip wrinkled as if at a sour taste. ‘So the fox killed his brother the wolf.’

‘Treacherous beasties.’ Gorm sighed, turning a pommel absently around and around on his chain. ‘It was sure to come. As surely as Mother Sun follows Father Moon across the sky.’

‘You killed King Uthrik,’ Yarvi found he’d spat from his bloody mouth.

‘Do they say so?’ Gorm raised his great arms, the weapons at his belt shifting. ‘Then why do I not boast of it? Why are my skalds not setting the story to song? Would my triumph not make a merry tune?’ He laughed, and let his arms drop. ‘My hands are bloody to the shoulder, cook’s boy, for of all things blood pleases me the most. But, sad to say, not all men that die are killed by me.’

One of the daggers had eased forward in his belt, its horn handle pointing toward Yarvi. He could have snatched it. Had he been his father, or his brother, or brave Keimdal who died trying to protect his king, he might have lunged for that blade, sunk it into Grom-gil-Gorm’s belly and fulfilled his solemn oath for vengeance.

‘Do you want this bauble?’ Gorm drew the knife now, and held it out to Yarvi by the bright blade. ‘Then take it. But you should know that Mother War breathed upon me in my crib. It has been foreseen that no man can kill me.’

How huge he seemed, against the white sky, hair blowing, and mail shining, and the warm smile on his battle-weathered face. Had Yarvi sworn vengeance against this giant? He, half-man, with his one thin, white hand? He would have laughed at the arrogance of it were he not shivering with cold and fear.

‘He should be pegged on the beach and his guts unwound for the crows,’ said Gorm’s minister, her blue eyes fixed on Yarvi.

‘So you always say, Mother Scaer.’ Gorm slid the knife back into his belt. ‘But the crows never thank me. This is just a little boy. It is hardly as if this outrage was his idea.’ Truer than he knew. ‘Unlike the noble King Odem, I do not need to swell myself with the killing of weak things.’

‘What of justice?’ The minister frowned over at the shrouded bodies, muscles working on the sides of her shaven head. ‘The low folk are hungry for vengeance.’

Gorm pushed out his lips and made a farting sound. ‘It is the lot of low folk to be hungry. Have you learned nothing from the Golden Queen of Gettland, wise and beautiful Laithlin? Why kill what you can sell? Collar him and put him with the others.’

Yarvi squawked as one of the men dragged him up while another snapped a collar of rough iron around his neck.

‘If you change your mind about the knife,’ Gorm called after him, smiling all the while, ‘you can seek me out. Fare you well, ex-cook’s boy!’

‘Wait!’ hissed Yarvi, realizing what was to come, mind racing for some trick to put it off. ‘Wait!’

‘For what?’ asked Mother Scaer. ‘Stop his bleating.’

A kick in the stomach left him breathless. They forced him limp upon an old stump, and while one held him gasping the other brought the pin, yellow-hot from the forge, and worked it through the clasp of his collar with pincers. The first struck it with a hammer to squash it fast but he bungled the task, caught the pin a glancing blow and scattered molten iron across Yarvi’s neck.

He had never known pain like it, and he shrieked like a boiling kettle and sobbed and blubbered and writhed on the block, and one of them took him by his shirt and flung him in a fetid pool so the iron hissed cold.

‘One less cook’s boy.’ Mother Scaer’s face was pale as milk and smooth as marble and her eyes were blue as the winter sky and had no pity in them. ‘One more slave.’

II

CHEAPEST OFFERINGS

Yarvi squatted in the stinking darkness, fingering the raw burns on his neck and the fresh scabs on his rough-shaved scalp, sweating by day and shivering by night, listening to the groans and whimpers and unanswered prayers in a dozen languages. From the broken throats of the human refuse around him. From his own loudest of all.

Upstairs the best wares were kept clean and well fed, lined up on the street in polished thrall-collars where they might draw in the business. In the back of the shop the less strong or skilled or beautiful were chained to rails and beaten until they smiled for a buyer. Down here in the darkness and the filth were kept the old, sick, simple and crippled, left to squabble over scraps like pigs.

Here in the sprawling slave-market of Vulsgard, capital of Vansterland, everyone had their price, and money was not wasted on those who would fetch no money. A simple sum of costs and profits, shorn of sentiment. Here you could learn what you were truly worth, and Yarvi learned what he had long suspected.

He was close to worthless.

At first his mind spilled over with plans and stratagems and fantasies for his revenge. He was plagued by a million things he could have done differently. But not by one he could do now. If he screamed out that he was the rightful King of Gettland, who would believe it? He had scarcely believed it himself. And if he found a way to make them believe? Their business was to sell people. They would ransom him, of course. Would King Odem smile to have his missing nephew back under his tender care? No doubt. A smile calm and even as fresh-fallen snow.

So Yarvi squatted in that unbearable squalor, and found it was amazing what a man could get used to.

By the second day he scarcely noticed the stink.

By the third he huddled up gratefully to the warmth of his gods-forsaken companions in the chill of the night.

By the fourth he was rooting through the filth as eagerly as any of them when they were tossed the slops at feeding time.

By the fifth he could hardly remember the faces of those he knew best. His mother and Mother Gundring became confused, his treacherous uncle and his dead father melted together, Hurik no longer could be told from Keimdal, Isriun faded to ghost.

Strange, how quickly a king could become an animal. Or half a king half an animal. Perhaps even those we raise highest never get that far above the mud.

It was not long after sunrise on his seventh day in that man-made hell, the calls of the merchant in dead men’s armour next door just starting to challenge the squawking of the sea-birds, that Yarvi heard the voice outside.

‘We’re looking for men as can pull an oar,’ it said, deep and steady. The voice of a man used to straight talk and blunt dealing.

‘Nine pairs of hands.’ A softer, subtler voice followed the first. ‘The trembles has left some gaps on our benches.’

‘Of course, my friends!’ The voice of the shop’s owner – Yarvi’s owner, now – slick and sticky as warm honey. ‘Behold Namev the Shend, a champion of his people taken in battle! See how tall he stands? Observe those shoulders. He could pull your ship alone. You will find no higher quality—’

A hog snort from the first customer. ‘If we was after quality we’d be at the other end of the street.’

‘You don’t grease an axle with the best oil,’ came the second voice.

Footsteps from above, and dust sifting down, and shadows shifting in the chinks of light between the boards over Yarvi’s head. The slaves around him stiffened, quieting their breathing so they could listen. The shop-owner’s voice filtered muffled to their ears, a little less honey on it now.

‘Here are six healthy Inglings. They speak little of the Tongue but understand the whip well enough. Fine choices for hard labour and at an excellent price—’

‘You don’t grease an axle with good dripping either,’ said the second voice.

‘Show us to the pitch and pig fat, flesh-dealer,’ growled the first.

The damp hinges grated as the door at the top of the steps was opened, the slaves all cringing on instinct into a feeble huddle at the light, Yarvi along with them. He might have been new to slavery, but at cringing he had long experience. With many curses and blows of his stick the flesh-dealer dragged them into a wobbling, wheezing line, chains rattling out a miserable music.

‘Keep that hand out of sight,’ he hissed, and Yarvi twisted it up into the rags of his sleeve. All his ambition then was to be bought, and owned, and taken from this stinking hell into the sight of Mother Sun.

The two customers picked their way down the steps. The first was balding and burly, with a whip coiled at his studded belt and a way of glaring from under knotted brows that proclaimed him a bad man to fool with. The second was much younger, long, lean and handsome with a sparse growth of beard and a bitter twist to his thin lips. Yarvi caught the gleam of a collar at his throat. A slave himself, then, though judging by his clothes a favoured one.

The flesh-dealer bowed, and gestured with his stick towards the line. ‘My cheapest offerings.’ He did not bother to add a flourish. Fine words in that place would have been absurd.

‘These are some wretched leavings,’ said the slave, nose wrinkled against the stench.

His thick-set companion was not deterred. He drew the slave into a huddle with one muscled arm, speaking softly to him in Haleen. ‘We want rowers, not kings.’ It was a language used in Sagenmark and among the islands, but Yarvi had trained as a minister, and knew most tongues spoken around the Shattered Sea.

‘The captain’s no fool, Trigg,’ the handsome slave was saying, fussing nervously with his collar. ‘What if she realizes we’ve duped her?’

‘We’ll say this was the best on offer.’ Trigg’s flat eyes scanned the dismal gathering. ‘Then you’ll give her a new bottle and she’ll forget all about it. Or don’t you need the silver, Ankran?’

‘You know I do.’ Ankran shrugged off Trigg’s arm, mouth further twisted with distaste. Scarcely bothering to look them over, he dragged slaves from the line. ‘This … this … this …’ His hand hovered near Yarvi, began to drift on—

‘I can row, sir.’ It was as big a lie as Yarvi had told in all his life. ‘I was a fisher’s apprentice.’

In the end Ankran picked out nine. Among them were a blind Throvenlander who had been sold by his father instead of their cow, an old Islander with a crooked back, and a lame Vansterman who could barely restrain his coughing for long enough to be paid for.