Joe Abercrombie - Half a War

‘Judgment is coming!’ Skara remembered her grandfather toppling into the firepit. The blood pit-pattering from the point of Yilling’s sword. Her heart was beating so hard it almost strangled her voice. ‘But not from the One God. And not to us!’

The smiles of the Companions were fading, their hands straying towards their weapons. Bright Yilling tidied a strand of hair behind one ear. ‘She looks well but she talks too much.’ And he peered up towards the walls of the fortress, where the strange wailing was growing too loud to ignore.

Mother Adwyn was glaring at Yarvi. ‘You and Queen Laithlin stand accused of using elf-magic, and must answer for your crimes!’

‘Must I?’ Father Yarvi barked out a laugh. ‘Let me show you what elf-magic looks like.’

He jerked his staff up so it rested on his withered hand, the end pointed towards Bright Yilling’s chest.

The High King’s champion had an expression between puzzled and bored. He lifted his hand towards Yarvi, as though to brush aside this minister’s blather.

‘Greet your mistress!’ screamed Skara.

There was a sharp pop. Something flew from the top of Yarvi’s staff. Yilling’s fingers vanished and his face was spattered with blood.

He took a drunken step back, frowning down. He pawed at his chest with his ruined hand. Skara saw a little hole in his bright mail there. It was already turning dark with blood.

‘Uh,’ he grunted, brows high with surprise, and toppled backwards.

Someone said, ‘Gods.’

A sword hissed as it was drawn.

A shield-rim caught the sun and flashed in Skara’s eyes.

She was knocked sideways as Mother Scaer elbowed past her, shrugging her coat off one shoulder.

She heard wing beats as somewhere in the grass a bird took to the skies.

Vorenhold lifted his spear, bridge of his nose creasing with rage. ‘You treacherous-’

Mother Scaer stepped between Gorm and Soryorn as they raised their shields, the sinews in her tattooed arm flexing as she lifted the great elf-relic to her shoulder.

‘No!’ screamed Mother Adwyn.

Raith was throwing up his arm to block that gilded spear when the shield of the man who held it was ripped apart, the iron rim flopping. He was flung back as if by a giant’s hammer, his fine green-dyed cloak on fire and his broken spear tumbling away end over end.

Then came the thunder.

A noise like the Breaking of God, a rattling boom fast as a woodpecker strikes. Mother Scaer’s elf-weapon jerked in her grip like a thing alive, her whole body shaking with its mad fury, her scream turned to a jagged warble, shards of metal showering from its top and fire spitting from its mouth.

Before Raith’s smarting eyes Bright Yilling’s Companions, storied warriors every one, were in the space of a snatched breath all smashed like beetles on an anvil, mown down like corn before the scythe, blood and splinters and mail-rings showering and their bent and shattered weapons spinning and their ruined limbs flying one from another like straw in a mad gale.

Even as his jaw was dropping Raith heard more cracks behind them, fire stabbing from the walls of the fortress. He flinched at a flash in the High King’s lines, a monstrous blooming of fire, broken stakes and earth and armour and men and the parts of men thrown high into the air. The ground shook, Father Earth himself trembling at the power of the elves released.

His axe seemed a pointless little thing now and Raith let it fall, caught Skara’s arm and dragged her down behind his shield, Blue Jenner locking with him on one side and Rulf on the other to form a feeble little wall, huddling in terror while the ministers sent Death across the ruined fields before Bail’s Point.

There was a great thud as the weapon jolted in Skifr’s hands again, a trail of fog curving down through the air towards the High King’s lines. It touched the earth among some penned-up horses. Koll gasped as fire shot up in clawing fingers, clapped his hands over his ears at the shuddering boom.

Horses were flung into the air like the toys of a bad-tempered child, others reared on fire, or charged off, dragging burning wagons. Koll gave a kind of moan of horror and dismay. He hadn’t known what the elf-engines would do, but he hadn’t dared guess it might be this.

The gods knew he was no lover of fighting, but he could understand why bards sung of battles. The matching of warrior against warrior. Of skill against skill and courage against courage. There was no skill or courage here. Nothing noble in this blind destruction.

But Skifr wasn’t interested in nobility, only vengeance. She slapped the side of her weapon and the drum dropped out, tumbling down the outside of the wall to bounce in the ditch. She held out her hand.

‘More.’

Everywhere elf-relics clattered, stuttered, stabbed, battering Koll’s hearing so he could hardly think.

‘I …’ he stammered, ‘I …’

‘Pfft.’ Skifr dug her hand into his bag and pulled out another drum. ‘You told me once you wanted to see magic!’ She locked it into the smoking slot where the first had been.

‘I changed my mind.’ Wasn’t that what he did best, after all? But over the noise of screaming weapons, screaming men, screaming beasts, no one could have heard him, let alone taken the slightest notice.

He blinked out over the parapet, nose almost on the stone, trying to make sense of the chaos. Over to the north there seemed to be fighting. Steel glinting through drifting smoke. Signs of bone and hide bobbing over a seething throng.

Koll’s eyes widened even further. ‘The Shends have turned on the High King!’

‘Just as Father Yarvi told them to,’ said Skifr.

Koll stared at her. ‘He never told me.’

‘If you have not learned that Father Yarvi is a man who says as little as possible, there is no help for you.’

To the east the High King’s men were struggling to form a shield-wall. Koll saw a warrior running forward, holding up his sword. Great bravery, but it was a wall of cobwebs. There was a barking clatter from the little knot of shields around the South Wind’ s prow-beast and the would-be hero fell, shields knocked from the line beyond him like coins flicked over.

‘That won’t do,’ said Skifr, pressing the elf-weapon to her cheek. Koll wanted to weep as he pushed his fingers into his ears. Another thud. Another trail of fog. One more earth-shaking boom, a vast hole ripped from the line. How many men gone in an instant? Burned away as though they had never been or flung ruined like sparks whirling from Rin’s forge?

They crumbled, of course. How could men fight the power that broke God? Swords and bows were useless. Mail and shields were useless. Courage and fame were useless. The High King’s invincible army streamed down the road and across the fields in a mad confusion, not caring where they ran as long as it was away from Bail’s Point, trampling through their camps and flinging away their gear, driven by the screaming Shends and the merciless elf-weapons, turned from men with one purpose to animals with none in their panic.

Squinting into the dawn haze, Koll saw moremovement beyond them — horses spilling from the trees near the abandoned village.

‘Riders,’ he said, pointing.

Skifr lowered the elf-weapon and snapped out a laugh. ‘Hah! Unless my eye for portents deceives me, that is my finest pupil at work. Thorn never was one to miss out on a fight.’

‘It’s not a fight,’ murmured Koll. ‘It’s a slaughter.’

‘Thorn never was one to miss out on a slaughter either.’

Skifr stood tall, burns creasing on her neck as she stretched up to look about her. Everywhere, Grandmother Wexen’s mighty host was being scattered like chaff on the wind, Thorn’s horsemen moving among them, steel flashing as they cut them down, harrying them through the blackened ruins of the village and off to the north.