Joe Abercrombie - Half a War

Skifr jerked her head back and sent spit spinning high into the air, arcing neatly down and spattering on rusted metal. ‘King Uthil says steel is the answer. I say his sight is short. Dust is the last answer to every question, now and always.’

Koll gave a sigh. ‘You’re a tower of laughs, aren’t you?’

Skifr’s jagged laughter split the silence, bouncing back from the dead faces of the buildings and making Koll jump. A strange sound here. It made him absurdly worried she’d somehow cause offence, though there’d been no one to offend for a hundred hundred years.

The old woman clapped him on the shoulder as she walked after Father Yarvi and Mother Scaer. ‘That all depends on what you find funny, boy.’

As the light faded they crept between buildings so high the street was made a shaded canyon between them. Spires that pierced the heavens even in their ruin, endless planes of elf-glass still winking pink and orange and purple with the darkly reflected sunset, twisted beams of metal sprouting from their shattered tops like thorns from a thistle.

That brought Thorn to Koll’s thoughts and he muttered a prayer for her, even if the gods weren’t here to listen. When Brand died, it seemed as if something had died in her. Maybe no one comes through a war quite as alive as they were.

The road was gouged and slumping, choked with things of crumpled metal, their blistered paint flaking. There were masts as tall as ten men, festooned with skeins of wires that hung between the buildings like the cobwebs of colossal spiders. There were elf-letters everywhere, signs daubed on the roads, twisted about poles, banners proudly unfurled over every broken window and doorway.

Koll stared up at one set blazoned wide across a building, the last man-high letter fallen down to swing sadly from its corner.

‘All this writing,’ he murmured, neck stiff from staring up at it.

‘The elves did not limit the word to the few,’ said Skifr. ‘They let knowledge spread to all, like fire. Eagerly they fanned the flames.’

‘And were all burned by them,’ murmured Mother Scaer. ‘Burned to ashes.’

Koll blinked up at the great sign. ‘Do you understand it?’

‘I might know the characters,’ said Skifr. ‘I might even know the words. But the world they spoke of is utterly gone. Who could plumb their meaning now?’

They passed by a shattered window, shards of glass still clinging to its edge, and Koll saw a woman grinning at him from inside.

He was so shocked he couldn’t even scream, just stumbled back into Skifr’s arms, pointing wildly at that ghostly figure. But the old woman only chuckled.

‘She cannot hurt you now, boy.’

And Koll saw it was a painting of amazing detail, stained and faded. A woman, holding up her wrist to show a golden elf-bangle, smiling wildly as though it gave her impossible joy to wear such a thing. A woman, long and thin and strangely dressed, but a woman still.

‘The elves,’ he muttered. ‘Were they … like us?’

‘Terribly like and terribly unlike,’ said Skifr, Yarvi and Scaer coming to stand beside her, all gazing at that faded face from beyond the long fog of the past. ‘They were far wiser, more numerous, more powerful than us. But, just like us, the more powerful they became, the more powerful they wished to become. Like men, the elves had holes in them that could never be filled. All of this …’ And Skifr spread her arms wide to the mighty ruins, her cloak of rags billowing in the restless breeze. ‘All of this could not satisfy them. They were just as envious, ruthless and ambitious as us. Just as greedy.’ She raised one long arm, one long hand, one long finger to point at the woman’s radiant smile. ‘It is their greed that destroyed them. Do you hear me, Father Yarvi?’

‘I do,’ he said, shouldering his pack and, as always, pressing onwards, ‘and could live with fewer elf-lessons and more elf-weapons.’

Mother Scaer frowned after him, fingering her own collection of ancient bangles. ‘I say he could use the opposite.’

‘What happens after?’ called Koll.

There was a pause before Father Yarvi looked back. ‘We use the elf-weapons against Bright Yilling. We carry them across the straits to Skekenhouse. We find Grandmother Wexen and the High King.’ His voice took on a deadly edge. ‘And I keep my sun-oath and my moon-oath to be revenged upon the killers of my father.’

Koll swallowed. ‘I meant after that.’

Master frowned at apprentice. ‘We can ford that river when we reach it.’ And he turned and carried on.

Quite as if he hadn’t spared it a thought until now. But Koll knew Father Yarvi was not a man to leave the field of the future unsown with plans.

Gods, was Skifr right? Were they the same as the elves? Their little feet in mighty footprints, but on the same path? He thought of Thorlby made an empty ruin, a giant tomb, the people of Gettland burned away to leave only silence and dust, perhaps some fragment of his carved mast left, a ghostly echo for those who came long after to puzzle over.

Koll took one last glance back at that gloriously happy face thousands of years dead, and saw something glint among the shattered glass. A golden bangle, just like the one in the painting, and Koll darted out a hand and slipped it into his pocket.

He doubted the elf-woman would miss it.

‘It will be dangerous,’ said Skara, grimly.

An apt moment for Raith to puff himself up with some hero’s bluster. There’d been a time he was an ever-gushing fountain of it, after all. That’s what I’m counting on, or danger’s my breakfast, or for our enemies, maybe! But all he could manage was a strangled, ‘Aye. But we have to stop that mine before it gets under the walls …’

No need to say more. They all knew what was at stake.

Everything.

Raith glanced about at the volunteers, their faces, their shield-rims, their weapons all smeared with ashes to keep them hidden in the night. Two dozen of the fastest Gettlanders, two dozen of the fiercest Vanstermen, and him.

The Breaker of Swords had drawn lots with King Uthil for the honour of leading them, and won. Now he stood smiling as they waited for their moment, savouring each breath as if the night smelled of flowers. The man showed no fear, not ever, Raith had to give him that. But where it used to feel like bravery, now it looked like madness.

‘No one will think less of you if you stay,’ said Skara.

‘I’ll think less of me.’ If that was even possible. Raith met his brother’s eye for an instant before Rakki looked away, ash-dark face fixed hard. Desperate to prove he could be the tough one, even if they both knew he couldn’t. ‘Got to watch my brother’s back.’

‘Even if he doesn’t want your help?’

‘Specially then.’

Rakki had one of the big clay jars over his shoulder that held Father Yarvi’s southern fire, Soryorn another. Raith thought of how that stuff had burst blazing over the High King’s ships, burning men toppling into the sea, then he thought of smearing it on timbers deep under the ground and setting a torch to it, and his courage took another hard knock. He wondered how many more it’d stand. Time was nothing scared him. Or had he always been pretending?

Gods, he wished they could go. ‘It’s the waiting hurts worst,’ he muttered.

‘Worse than being stabbed, or burned, or buried in that mine?’

Raith swallowed. ‘No. Not worse than those.’

‘You need not fear for me, my queen.’ Gorm had strode over with his thumbs wedged into his great belt, keen to make it all about him. There’s kings for you. Their towering opinions of themselves are generally both their making and their downfall. ‘Mother War breathed on me in my crib,’ he said, a tiresome refrain if ever there was one. ‘It has been foreseen no man can kill me.’