Joe Abercrombie - Half a War

‘What can I do?’ she whispered, clutching at his hand as hard as he clutched at hers.

He tried to make words but they came out only squelches, blood speckling his lips.

‘Someone get some water!’ she shrieked.

‘No need, my queen.’ Rin gently prised Skara’s gripping fingers from his. ‘He’s gone.’ And Skara realized his hand was slack.

She stood.

She felt dizzy. Hot and prickly all over.

Someone was screaming. Hoarse, strange, bubbling screams, and in between she heard the burbling of the prayer-weaver, burbling, burbling, begging for help, begging for mercy.

She tottered to the doorway, nearly fell, burst into the yard, was sick, nearly fell in her sick, clawed her dress out of the way as she was sick again, wiped the long string of bile from her mouth and leaned against the wall, shaking.

‘Are you all right, my queen?’ Mother Owd stood wiping her hands on a cloth.

‘I’ve always had a weak stomach-’ Skara coughed, retched again, but all that came up was bitter spit.

‘We all have to keep our fears somewhere. Especially if we cannot afford to let them show. I think you hide yours in your stomach, my queen.’ Owd put a gentle hand on Skara’s shoulder. ‘As good a place as any.’

Skara looked towards the doorway, the moans of the wounded coming faint from beyond. ‘Did I make this happen?’ she whispered.

‘A queen must make hard choices. But also bear the results with dignity. The faster you run from the past, the faster it catches you. All you can do is turn to face it. Embrace it. Try and meet the future wiser for it.’ And the minister unscrewed the cap from a flask and offered it to Skara. ‘Your warriors look to you for an example. You don’t have to fight to show them courage.’

‘I don’t feel like a queen,’ muttered Skara. She took a sip and winced as she felt the spirits burn all the way down her sore throat. ‘I feel like a coward.’

‘Then act as if you’re brave. No one ever feels ready. No one ever feels grown up. Do the things a great queen would do. Then you are one, however you feel.’

Skara stood tall, and pushed her shoulders back. ‘You are a wise woman and a great minister, Mother Owd.’

‘I am neither one.’ The minister leaned close, rolling her sleeves up a little further. ‘But I have become quite good at pretending to be both. Do you need to be sick again?’

Skara shook her head, took another burning sip from the flask and handed it back, watched Owd take a lengthy swig of her own. ‘I hear I have the blood of Bail in my veins-’

‘Forget the blood of Bail.’ Owd gripped Skara’s arm. ‘Your own is good enough for anyone.’

Skara took a shuddering breath. Then she followed her minister back into the darkness.

Raith stood on the man-built stretch of wall near Gudrun’s Tower, staring across the scarred, trampled, arrow-prickled turf towards the stakes that marked the High King’s lines.

He’d hardly slept. Dozed outside Skara’s door. Dreamed again of that woman and her children, and started up in a chill sweat with his hand on his dagger. Nothing but silence.

Five days since the siege began and every day they’d come at the walls. Come with ladders, and wicker screens to guard them from the shower of arrows, the hail of stones. Come bravely, with their fiercest faces and their fiercest prayers, and bravely been beaten back. They hadn’t killed many of the thousand defenders but they’d made their mark even so. Every warrior in Bail’s Point was pink-eyed from sleeplessness, grey-faced from fear. Facing Death for a wild moment is one thing. Her cold breath on your neck day in and day out is more than men were made to bear.

Great humps of fresh-turned earth had been thrown up just out of bowshot. Barrows for the High King’s dead. They were still digging now. Raith could hear the scraping of distant shovels, some priest’s song warbled in the southerner’s tongue to the southerner’s One God. He lifted his chin, winced as he scratched at his neck with the backs of his fingernails. A warrior should rejoice in the corpses of his enemies, but Raith had no rejoicing left in him.

‘Beard bothering you?’ Blue Jenner strolled up yawning, smoothing down his few wild strands of hair and leaving them wilder than before.

‘Itchy. Strange, how little things still find a way to niggle at you, even in the midst of all this.’

‘Life’s a queue of small irritations with the Last Door at the end. You could just shave.’

Raith kept scratching. ‘Always pictured myself dying with a beard. Like most things long anticipated, turns out rather a disappointment.’

‘A beard’s just a beard,’ said Jenner, scratching at his own. ‘Keeps your face warm in a snowstorm and catches food from time to time, but I knew a man grew his long and got it caught in his horse’s bridle. Dragged through a hedge and broke his neck.’

‘Killed by his own beard? That’s embarrassing.’

‘The dead feel no shame.’

‘The dead feel no anything,’ said Raith. ‘No coming back through the Last Door, is there?’

‘Maybe not. But we always leave a bit of ourselves on this side.’

‘Eh?’ muttered Raith, not caring much for that notion.

‘Our ghosts stick in the memories of those that knew us. Those that loved us, hated us.’

Raith thought of that woman’s face, lit by flames, tears glistening, still so clear after all this time, and he worked his fingers and felt the old ache there. ‘Those that killed us.’

‘Aye.’ Blue Jenner’s eyes were fixed far off. On his own tally of dead folk, maybe. ‘Them most of all. You all right?’

‘Broke my hand once. Never quite healed.’

‘Nothing ever quite heals.’ Blue Jenner sniffed, hawked noisily, worked his mouth, and sent spittle spinning over the walls. ‘Seems Thorn Bathu introduced herself in the night.’

‘Aye,’ said Raith. There was a charred scar through one side of Bright Yilling’s camp, and by the faint smell of burning straw it seemed she’d done for a good deal of his fodder. ‘Reckon it was an even more painful experience than my first meeting with her.’

‘A good friend to have, that girl, and a bad, bad enemy.’ Jenner chuckled. ‘Liked her since I first ran into her out on the Denied.’

‘You’ve been down the Denied?’ asked Raith.

‘Three times.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘It’s very much like a big river.’

Raith was looking past Blue Jenner towards the crumbling doorway in the side of Gudrun’s Tower. Rakki had just stepped out of it, his white hair ruffled by the breeze as he frowned towards Yilling’s great gravedigging.

Jenner raised one grey brow. ‘Anything I can do?’

‘Some things you have to do alone.’ And Raith patted the old raider on the shoulder as he walked past.

‘Brother.’

Rakki didn’t look at him, but a muscle at his temple twitched. ‘Am I?’

‘If you’re not you look surprisingly like me.’

Rakki didn’t smile. ‘You should go.’

‘Why?’ But even as he said it Raith felt the great presence, and turned reluctantly to find the Breaker of Swords stooping through the doorway and into the dawn, Soryorn at his shoulder.

‘Look who comes strolling,’ sang Gorm.

Soryorn carefully adjusted his garnet-studded thrall-collar. ‘It is Raith.’ He’d always been a man of few words and those the obvious.

Gorm stood with eyes closed, listening to the distant songs of the One God priests. ‘Can there be more soothing music of a morning than an enemy’s prayers for his dead?’

‘A harp?’ said Raith. ‘I like a harp.’

Gorm opened his eyes. ‘Do you truly think jokes will mend what you have broken?’