Joe Abercrombie: Half a War

‘What?’

Mother Kyre pulled her up by her arm. ‘You must go now .’

Skara was about to argue. As she always argued. Then she saw the minister’s expression and it made her obey without a word spoken. She had never seen Mother Kyre afraid before.

It did not sound like laughter any more, outside. Crying. Wild voices. ‘What’s happening?’ she managed to croak.

‘I made a terrible mistake.’ Mother Kyre’s eyes darted to the door and back. ‘I trusted Grandmother Wexen.’ She twisted the gold ring from Skara’s arm. The one Bail the Builder once wore into battle, its ruby glistening dark as new-spilled blood in the candlelight. ‘This is for you.’ She held it out to Blue Jenner. ‘If you swear to see her safe to Thorlby.’

The raider’s eyes flickered guiltily up as he took it. ‘I swear it. A sun-oath and a moon-oath.’

Mother Kyre clutched painfully hard at both of Skara’s hands. ‘Whatever happens, you must live. That is your duty now. You must live and you must lead. You must fight for Throvenland. You must stand for her people if … if there is no one else.’

Skara’s throat was so tight with fear she could hardly speak. ‘Fight? But-’

‘I have taught you how. I have tried to. Words are weapons.’ The minister wiped tears from Skara’s face that she had not even realized she had cried. ‘Your grandfather was right, you are brave and you are clever. But now you must be strong. You are a child no longer. Always remember, the blood of Bail flows in your veins. Now go.’

Skara padded barefoot through the darkness at Blue Jenner’s heels, shivering in her shift, Mother Kyre’s lessons so deep-rooted that even fearing for her life she worried over whether she was properly dressed. Flames beyond the narrow windows cast stabbing shadows across the straw-scattered floor. She heard panicked shouts. A dog barking, suddenly cut off. A heavy thudding as of a tree being felled.

As of axes at the door.

They stole into the guest-room, where warriors had slept shoulder to shoulder a few months before. Now there was only Blue Jenner’s threadbare blanket.

‘What’s happening?’ she whispered, hardly recognizing her own voice it came so thin and cracked.

‘Bright Yilling has come with his Companions,’ said Jenner, ‘to settle Grandmother Wexen’s debts. Yaletoft is already burning. I’m sorry, princess.’

Skara flinched as he slid something around her neck. A collar of twisted silver wire, a fine chain clinking faintly. The kind the Ingling girl who used to bind her hair had worn.

‘Am I a slave?’ she whispered, as Jenner buckled the other end about his wrist.

‘You must seem to be.’

Skara shrank back at a crash outside, the clash of metal, and Jenner pressed her against the wall. He blew his candle out and dropped them into darkness. She saw him draw a knife, Father Moon glinting on its edge.

Howls now, beyond the door, high and horrible, the bellows of beasts not the voices of men. Skara squeezed her eyes shut, tears stinging the lids, and prayed. Mumbling, stuttering, meaningless prayers. Prayers to every god and none.

It is easy to be brave when the Last Door seems tiny for its distance, a far-off thing for other folk to worry about. Now she felt Death’s chill breath on her neck and it froze the courage in her. How freely she had talked of cowardice the night before. Now she understood what it was.

A last long shriek, then silence almost worse than the noise had been. She felt herself drawn forward, Jenner’s breath stale on her cheek.

‘We have to go.’

‘I’m scared,’ she breathed.

‘So am I. But if we face ’em boldly we might talk our way free. If they find us hiding …’

You can only conquer your fears by facing them , her grandfather used to say. Hide from them, and they conquer you. Jenner eased the door creaking open and Skara forced herself through after him, her knees trembling so badly they were nearly knocking together.

Her bare foot slid in something wet. A dead man sat beside the door, the straw all about him black with blood.

Borid, his name. A warrior who had served her father. He had carried Skara on his shoulders when she was little, so she could reach the peaches in the orchard under the walls of Bail’s Point.

Her stinging eyes crept towards the sound of voices. Over broken weapons and cloven shields. Over more corpses, hunched, sprawled, spreadeagled among the carved columns after which her grandfather’s hall was called the Forest.

Figures were gathered in the light of the guttering firepit. Storied warriors, mail and weapons and ring-money gleaming with the colours of fire, their great shadows stretching out across the floor towards her.

Mother Kyre stood among them, and Skara’s grandfather too, ill-fitting mail hastily dragged on, grey hair still wild from his bed. Smiling blandly upon his two prisoners was a slender warrior with a soft, handsome face, as careless as a child’s, a space about him where even these other killers dared not tread.

Bright Yilling, who worshipped no god but Death.

His voice echoed jauntily in the vastness of the hall. ‘I was hoping to pay my respects to Princess Skara.’

‘She has gone to her cousin Laithlin,’ said Mother Kyre. The same voice that had calmly lectured, corrected, chastised Skara every day of her life, but with an unfamiliar warble of terror in it now. ‘Where you will never reach her.’

‘Oh, we will reach her there,’ said one of Yilling’s warriors, a huge man with a neck like a bull’s.

‘Soon enough, Mother Kyre, soon enough,’ said another with a tall spear and a horn at his belt.

‘King Uthil will come,’ she said. ‘He will burn your ships and drive you back into the sea.’

‘How will he burn my ships when they are safe behind the great chains at Bail’s Point?’ asked Yilling. ‘The chains you gave me the key to.’

‘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.’