Joe Abercrombie - Half the World

“Skifr!” screamed Father Yarvi.

With a shriek of anger the old woman sprang up, throwing off her coat. “Be damned, then!” And she began to chant, soft and low at first but growing louder. She strode past, singing words Thorn did not understand, had never heard the like of. But she guessed the language and it was no tongue of men.

These were elf-words, and this was elf-magic. The magic that had shattered God and broken the world, and as if at a chill wind every hair on Thorn’s body bristled.

Skifr chanted on, higher and faster and wilder, and from the straps about her body she drew two studded and slotted pieces of dark metal, sliding one into the other with a snap like a closing lock.

“What is she doing?” said Dosduvoi but Father Yarvi held him back with his withered hand.

“What she must.”

Skifr held the elf-relic at arm’s length. “Stand aside!”

The wavering shield wall split in two and Thorn stared through the gap. There were the Horse People, a crawling mass of them, weaving between the bodies of their fallen, springing swift and merciless with death in their eyes.

There was a clap like thunder close at hand, a flash of light and the nearest of the Uzhaks was flung tumbling down the hillside as though flicked by a giant finger. Another crack and a disbelieving murmur went up from the crew, another man sent spinning like a child’s toy, his shoulder on fire.

Skifr’s wailing went higher and higher, splinters of shining metal tumbling from the elf-relic in her hand and falling to smoke in the grass at her feet. Men whimpered, and gaped, and clutched at talismans, more fearful of this sorcery than they were of the Uzhaks. Six strokes of thunder rolled across the plain and six men were left ruined and burning and the rest of the Horse People ran squealing in terror.

“Great God,” whispered Dosduvoi, making a holy sign over his heart.

There was a silence then. The first in some time. Only the whisper of the wind in the grass and the rough clicking of Odda’s breath. There was a smell like burning meat. One of the fallen splinters had caught fire in the grass. Skifr stepped forward grimly and ground the flame out under her boot.

“What have you done?” whispered Dosduvoi.

“I have spoken the name of God,” said Skifr. “Written in fire and caught in elf-runes before the Breaking of the World. I have torn Death from her place beside the Last Door and sent her to do my bidding. But there is always a price to be paid.”

She walked over to where Odda was slumped pale against one of the stunted trees, Safrit bent over him trying to tease out the arrow.

“The name of God has seven letters,” she said, and she pointed that deadly piece of metal at him. “I am sorry.”

“No!” said Safrit, trying to put herself between them, but Odda pushed her gently away.

“Who wants to die old?” And he showed his mad grin, the filed lines in his teeth turned red with blood. “Death waits for us all.”

There was another deafening crack, and Odda arched his back, trembling, then fell still, smoke rising from a blackened hole in his mail.

Skifr stood looking down. “I said I would show you magic.”

“They’re running.” The wind whipped Thorn’s hair about her bloody face as she stared after the Uzhaks, the riders, and the horses without their riders, dwindling specks now far out across the ocean of grass.

“Can’t say I blame ’em,” muttered Brand, watching Skifr wrap her coat tight about herself and slump again crosslegged, gripping at the holy signs around her neck, glowering at the embers of the fire.

“We fought well,” said Rulf, though his voice sounded hollow.

“Hands of iron.” Fror nodded as he wiped the paint from his face with a wetted rag. “We won a victory to sing of.”

“We won, anyway.” Father Yarvi picked up one of the bits of metal Skifr had left in the grass and turned it this way and that so it twinkled in the sun. A hollow thing, still with a little smoke curling out. How could that reach across the plain and kill a man?

Safrit was frowning toward Skifr as she wiped her bloody hands clean. “We won using some black arts.”

“We won.” Father Yarvi shrugged. “Of the two endings to a fight that is the better. Let Father Peace shed tears over the methods. Mother War smiles upon results.”

“What about Odda?” Brand muttered. The little man had seemed invincible, but he was gone through the Last Door. No more jokes.

“He would not have survived the arrow,” said Yarvi. “It was him or all of us.”

“A ruthless arithmetic,” said Safrit, her mouth set in a hard line.

The minister did not look at her. “Such are the sums a leader must solve.”

“What if this sorcery brings a curse on us?” asked Dosduvoi. “What if we risk a second Breaking of God? What if we-”

“We won.” Father Yarvi’s voice was as cold and sharp as drawn steel, and he curled the fingers of his good hand about that little piece of elf-metal and made a white-knuckled fist of it. “Thank whatever god you believe in for your life, if you know how. Then help with the bodies.”

Dosduvoi shut his mouth and walked away, shaking his great head.

Brand pried open his sore fingers and let his shield drop, Rin’s painted dragon all hacked and gouged, the rim bright with new scratches, the bandages on his palm blood-spotted. Gods, he was bruised and grazed and aching all over. He hardly had the strength to stand, let alone to quibble over the good thing to have done. The more he saw, the less sure he was of what the good thing might be. There was a burning at his neck, wet when he touched it. A scratch there, from friend or enemy he couldn’t say. The wounds hurt just as much whoever dealt them.

“Lay them out with dignity,” Father Yarvi was saying, “and fell these trees for pyres.”

“Those bastards too?” Koll pointed to the Horse People scattered torn and bloody down the slope, several of the crew picking over their bodies for anything worth the taking.

“Them too.”

“Why give them a proper burning?”

Rulf caught the lad by the arm. “Because if we beat beggars here, we’re no better than beggars. If we beat great men, we’re greater still.”

“Are you hurt?” asked Safrit.

Brand stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign tongue. “What?

“Sit down.”

That wasn’t hard to do. He was so weak at the knees he was near falling already. He stared across the windswept hilltop as the crew put aside their weapons and started dragging the corpses into lines, others setting about the stunted trees with axes to make a great pyre. Safrit leaned over him, probing at the cut on his neck with strong fingers.

“It’s not deep. There’s plenty worse off.”

“I killed a man,” he muttered, to no one in particular. Maybe it sounded like a boast, but it surely wasn’t meant to be. “A man with his own hopes, and his own worries, and his own family.”

Rulf squatted beside him, scratching at his gray beard. “Killing a man is nowhere near so light a matter as the bards would have you believe.” He put a fatherly hand on Brand’s shoulder. “You did well today.”

“Did I?” muttered Brand, rubbing his bandaged hands together. “Keep wondering who he was, and what brought him here, and why we had to fight. Keep seeing his face.”

“Chances are you’ll be seeing it till you step through the Last Door yourself. That’s the price of the shield wall, Brand.” And Rulf held out a sword to him. A good sword, with silver on the hilt and a scabbard stained from long use. “Odda’s. But he’d have wanted you to take it. A proper warrior should have a proper blade.”