Joe Abercrombie - Half a War

Bright Yilling twisted with inhuman speed, sword whipping in a low cut. But Uthil was equal to it. Steel scraped as he parried, stepped effortlessly around the blade, slashed back. As quickly as they’d come together they broke apart, Yilling grinning with his arms spread wide, Uthil frowning, sword dangling by his side.

‘Whoever wins,’ croaked Raith, eyes rooted to the duel, ‘the war goes on.’

‘Aye,’ said Jenner, twitching with the movements of the fighters. ‘None of us have any other choice.’

Another exchange, steel darting faster than Raith could follow, thrust, thrust, slash and parry, and both men spun away into space, picking their way between the bodies, the rubble, the scattered rubbish.

‘All this just for the fame of it?’

‘Fame’s worth more to some men than anything.’

Slow silence, and the slow walking, slow prowling, slow circling around each other. Yilling crouched low, flowing like Mother Sea into different stances, different shapes, chuckling at every exchange like it was a fine new joke. Uthil stood stiff upright, solid as Father Earth, frowning as if he circled a funeral. They watched each other, feeling out the moment, riddling out the opponent, the silence stretching until it seemed it had to snap. Then with no warning the clash and ring and scrape of steel, Death lurking at both men’s shoulders, clinging to the edges of both men’s blades, the steel question asked and the steel answer given then the quick breaking apart and the slow prowling, slow circling, slow silence.

‘It is a great shame that one of us must lose.’ Yilling dodged a high cut, eyes slightly crossed as he watched Uthil’s point flicker past his nose. ‘There is much I could learn from you.’

‘I fear we have time for only one lesson. Death waits for us all.’ Yilling sprang forward as the king was still speaking but Uthil was ready, steering the thrust away, twisting his wrist so his sword raked down the sleeve of Yilling’s mail and across the back of his hand.

Yilling jerked back, blood pattering on the already-bloody stones of the yard. With a carefree chuckle he tossed his sword across to his right hand.

Someone screamed, ‘Bleed, you bastard!’ from the tower above and suddenly everyone was shouting, hooting, roaring their insults and their defiance. They smelled victory. They smelled blood.

Uthil came on, metal twinkling as his sword caught the sun. Deadly thrusts no mail could have stopped. Yilling dodged, twisted, steel screeching as he pushed Uthil’s blade just wide on one side, turned so it whipped past him on the other, tottering back, off-balance.

Uthil sprang forward for the finishing blow and his foot twisted on a stone. The slightest stumble before his sword came hissing down. The slightest stumble, but long enough for Yilling to drop onto his knees, jerking away so the king’s blade left a cut down his smooth cheek and clanged into the stones just beside him.

Yilling’s own sword was left straight through Uthil’s body, most of the blade sticking bloody from his back.

The cheering stuttered out to leave a dumbstruck silence.

‘A stone,’ grunted Uthil, frowning at the sword-hilt pressed against his chest. ‘Poor weaponluck.’ And all of a sudden he fell, Bright Yilling jumping to catch him as he whipped his sword free.

‘No,’ muttered Jenner, slapping at the parapet with his palm.

All along the wooden crescent there were curses, hisses, groans of dismay as Bright Yilling lowered Uthil to the dusty ground, settling his arm so that the Iron King of Gettland clutched his sword to his chest, steel his answer in death as it had been in life.

‘A good death,’ murmured Blue Jenner.

Raith tossed his shield clattering down on the walkway. ‘A death, anyway.’

Mother Sun broke through the clouds as Bright Yilling wiped his sword, making the diamond pommel flash, the blood on his face glisten. He looked like Death’s chosen indeed, smiling among a harvest of corpses with Uthil’s body at his feet.

‘I will come back for the rest of you!’ he called as he turned towards the breach.

So that was the end to the day’s murder.

Skara liked sharing her bed.

Considering the fuss that had always been made of it, she wasn’t sure how much she enjoyed the coupling. It seemed to her messy, strange and uncomfortable. Faintly ridiculous, even. She might have laughed the first time had he not been taking it so seriously. Some sticky fumbling. Some awkward grunting. Some clumsy peeling and unpeeling of skin with no grace or romance in it. In her dreams they had both known just what to do. In reality she hardly knew what she wanted, let alone what he did.

But she liked his body beside hers afterward. She liked the strength, and the roughness, and the warmth of him. She liked the way her chest fitted against his broad back, the way her legs twined with his, the way his ribs swelled against hers when he breathed. She liked the way he twitched and shuddered in his sleep, like the dogs used to by the firepit in her grandfather’s hall. She liked the sour-sweat stink of him, even, which had no business being pleasant but for some reason she could never breathe in deeply enough.

She liked not being alone.

She touched his shoulder. Felt the rough skin of a scar under her fingertip. Followed it down to where it met another, then another, then another.

‘So many scars,’ she whispered.

‘In Vansterland we call ’em warrior’s rewards,’ she heard him say. Not asleep, then. She would have been surprised if anyone in Bail’s Point was. Why sleep through your last night alive, after all?

‘They feel like whip marks.’

He was silent, and she wondered if she should have said nothing. She had no notion what the rules were between them any more, but she was learning that baring your body to someone didn’t make baring your heart any easier. Harder than ever, maybe.

Raith’s shoulders shifted as he shrugged. ‘Before I was Gorm’s servant, I was bad. After, I wasn’t always bad enough.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. Sorry that he’d been whipped. Sorry that she hardly knew what to say about it. They were so different, in every way. It made no sense that they could fit together. But when she slid her arm over his side and he slipped his fingers through hers they fitted together well enough. Maybe any living hand fits when Death is offering you hers.

‘What are we doing?’ he asked.

‘Holding hands.’

‘Tonight we are. What about tomorrow?’

‘I didn’t think you were much worried about tomorrow. It’s one of the things I like about you.’

‘Tomorrow used to seem a long way off. It got close of a sudden.’

The truth was she had no idea what they were doing, now or tomorrow. She had spent a lot of thought on what it might be like to have him. None at all on what she might do once she got him. It was like that puzzle box an emissary from Catalia had brought as a gift for her grandfather. Four days it had taken her to get it open and, once she had, there was another box inside.

In spite of Raith’s warmth she gave a shiver, whispered the words into his battered ear. ‘Do you think Bright Yilling will come tonight?’

‘He’s in no rush. Reckon he’ll wait for dawn.’

She thought of the blood tapping from the point of Yilling’s sword in the darkness and pressed herself tighter to Raith’s back.

‘King Uthil’s dead,’ she muttered. He had seemed a man forged from iron, indestructible. But she had seen him laid out pale and cold before Bail’s Chair.

‘Death waits for us all,’ said Raith. ‘All it takes is a stray pebble and no skill, no name, no fame can shield you from her.’

Skara glanced towards the door, torchlight around its edge. Out there, she had to be strong. Had to show no fear and no doubt. But no one can stay strong all the time. ‘We’re doomed,’ she whispered.