Joe Abercrombie - Half a War

Koll blinked. ‘You’re sure you’re not a sage?’

‘Just be honest with her. She deserves that.’

‘I know she does,’ muttered Koll, looking guiltily down at the planks of the wharf.

‘You’ll do the right thing. If not, well …’ Brand drew him close. ‘I can hit you then.’

Koll sighed. ‘It’s good to have something to look forward to.’

‘I’ll see you when you get back.’ Brand saw him off with a slap on the shoulder. ‘Till then, stand in the light, Koll.’

‘You too, Brand.’

As he hopped aboard the queen’s ship Koll thought to himself, and not for the first time, that he was nowhere near as clever as he’d supposed. Something to remember, next time he got to thinking how clever he was.

He grinned at that. So much like something his mother would’ve said he almost thought it in her voice, and he gripped those old weights about his neck and looked up at the masthead, thinking of her screaming at him as he teetered there. He’d always hated his mother’s fussing. Now he’d have given everything he had to be fussed over again.

He turned to watch Queen Laithlin fussing over her son, the heir to the throne seeming tiny surrounded by slaves and servants, two hulking Ingling bodyguards with silver thrall-collars looming over him.

She adjusted his tiny cloak-buckle, and smoothed his blonde hair, and kissed him on the head, then turned towards the ship, one of her slaves kneeling on the wharf to make a step of his back for her.

‘All will be well here, my queen,’ called Brinyolf the Prayer-Weaver, one hand on Druin’s shoulder and the other raised in an elaborate blessing. ‘And may She Who Finds the Course steer you safely home!’

‘Bye bye!’ called the prince, and while his mother was raising her arm to wave he slipped from under Brinyolf’s hand and scurried off giggling towards the city, his attendants hurrying to catch him.

Laithlin dropped her hand and gripped tight to the rail. ‘I wish I could take him, but I trust Varoslaf only a little less than a snake. I have lost one son to the sword and another to the Ministry. I cannot lose a third.’

‘Prince Druin could not be safer, my queen,’ said Koll, doing his best to say what Father Yarvi would have. ‘Thorlby is far from the fighting and still well-guarded, her walls never conquered and the citadel impregnable.’

‘Bail’s Point was impregnable. You climbed in.’

Koll dared a grin. ‘How fortunate that men of my talents are rare, my queen.’

Laithlin snorted. ‘You have a minister’s humility, already.’

Thorn was the last aboard. ‘Be safe,’ Brand called to her as she stomped past him down the wharf.

‘Aye,’ she grunted, swinging one leg over the rail. She froze as Queen Laithlin’s shadow fell across her, stuck with one foot off the ship and one foot on.

‘Young love is a treasure truly wasted on the young,’ mused the queen, frowning up towards the city with her hands clasped behind her. ‘It is my place to know the value of things, so take it from me you will have nothing in your life more precious. Soon enough the green leaves turn brown.’ She peered down sternly at her Chosen Shield. ‘I think you can do better than that.’

Thorn winced. ‘You think I can, my queen, or you’re ordering me to?’

‘To a Chosen Shield, a queen’s every whim is a decree.’

Thorn took a deep breath, swung her leg onto the wharf, and stomped back to Brand.

‘Since my queen commands it,’ she muttered, using her fingers like a comb to push the stray hair out of his face. She caught him behind the head and dragged him close, kissed him long and greedily, squeezing him so hard she lifted his toes off the wharf while the oarsmen sent up a cheer, and laughed, and thumped their oars.

‘I hadn’t marked you for a romantic, my queen,’ murmured Koll.

‘It seems I have surprised us both,’ said Laithlin.

Thorn broke away, wiping her mouth, the elf-bangle at her wrist glowing golden. ‘I love you,’ Koll heard her grunt over the noise of the crew. ‘And I’m sorry. For the way I am.’

Brand grinned back, brushing the star-shaped scar on her cheek with his fingertips. ‘I love the way you are. Be safe.’

‘Aye.’ Thorn thumped him on the shoulder with her fist, then stalked back down the wharf and vaulted over the ship’s rail. ‘Better?’ she asked.

‘I am warmed all over,’ murmured Laithlin, with just the hint of a smile. She took one last glance towards the citadel, then nodded to the helmsman. ‘Cast off.’

They filed into the hall, maybe three dozen, lean as beggars, dirty as thieves. A couple had swords. Others wood-axes, hunting bows, butcher’s knives. One girl with half a hedge in her matted hair clutched a spear made from a hoeing pole and an old scythe-blade.

Raith puffed out his cheeks, making the cut on his face burn. ‘Here come the heroes.’

‘Some fighters have a sword put into their hand in the training square.’ Blue Jenner leaned close to mutter in his ear. ‘Bred to it all their lives, like you. Some have an axe fall into their hand when Mother War spreads her wings.’ He watched the ragged company kneel awkwardly in a half circle before the dais. ‘Takes courage to fight when you didn’t choose it, weren’t trained for it, weren’t ready for it.’

‘Wasn’t no sword put in my hand, old man,’ said Raith. ‘I had to rip it from a hundred others by the sharp end. And it ain’t lack of courage bothers me, it’s lack of skill.’

‘Good thing you’ve a thousand picked warriors waiting. You can send them in next.’

Raith scowled sideways, but had naught to say. Rakki was the talker.

‘It ain’t the courageous or the skilful Mother War rewards.’ Jenner nodded towards the beggars. ‘It’s those who make the best of what they’ve got.’

Skara had a fine art at that. She smiled on her ragged recruits as gratefully as if it was the Prince of Kalyiv, the Empress of the South and a dozen dukes of Catalia pledging their aid.

‘Thank you for coming, my friends.’ She sat forward earnestly in Bail’s Chair. Small though she was, she had a way of filling it. ‘My countrymen.’

They couldn’t have looked more grateful if it was Ashenleer herself they were kneeling to. Their leader, an old warrior with a face scarred as a butcher’s block, cleared his throat. ‘Princess Skara-’

‘Queen Skara,’ corrected Sister Owd, with a prissy little pout. Plainly she was getting to like being out from Mother Scaer’s shadow. Raith rolled his eyes, but he hardly blamed her. Mother Scaer’s shadow could be dreadful chilly.

‘I’m sorry, my queen-’ mumbled the warrior.

But Skara hardly cast a shadow at all. ‘I am the one who should be sorry. That you have had to fight alone. I am the one who should be grateful. That you have come to fight for me.’

‘I fought for your father,’ said the man in a broken voice. ‘Fought for your grandfather. I’ll fight to the death for you.’ And the others all nodded along, heads bobbing.

It’s one thing to offer to die, quite another to fling yourself on the sharpened steel, specially if the only metal you’re used to wielding is a milking bucket. Not long ago Raith would’ve been sniggering with his brother over their fool’s loyalty. But Rakki was elsewhere, and Raith was finding it hard to laugh.

He’d always been sure of the best thing to do before, and it mostly had an axe on the end. That was the way things got done in Vansterland. But Skara had her own way of doing things, and he found he liked watching her do it. He liked watching her a lot.

‘Where have you come from?’ she was asking.

‘Most of us from Ockenby, my queen, or the farms outside.’