Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

“This boy won’t last,” growled Rulf.

“One stroke at a time,” murmured Jaud gently, his own strokes endlessly strong, smooth, regular, as though he was a man of wood and iron. “Breathe slow. Breathe with the oar. One at a time.”

Yarvi could not have said why, but that was some help.

“Heave.”

And the rowlocks clattered and chains rattled, the ropes squealed and the timbers creaked, the oarslaves groaned or cursed or prayed or kept grim silence, and the South Wind inched on.

“One stroke at a time.” Jaud’s soft voice was a thread through the haze of misery. “One at a time.”

Yarvi could hardly tell which was the worse torture-the whip’s stinging or his skin’s chafing or his muscles’ burning or the hunger or the weather or the cold or the squalor. And yet, the endless scraping of the nameless scrubber’s stone, up the deck and down the deck and up the deck again, his lank hair swaying and his scar-crossed back showing through his rags and his twitching lips curled from his yellowed teeth, reminded Yarvi that it could be worse.

It could always be worse.

“Heave.”

Sometimes the gods would take pity on his wretched state and send a breath of favourable wind. Then Shadikshirram would smile her golden smile and, with the air of a long-suffering mother who could not help spoiling her thankless offspring, would order the oars shipped and the clumsy sails of leather-banded wool unfurled, and would airily disclaim on how mercy was her greatest weakness.

With weeping gratitude Yarvi would slump back against the stilled oar of those behind and watch the sailcloth snap and billow overhead and breathe the close stink of more than a hundred sweating, desperate, suffering men.

“When do we wash?” Yarvi muttered, during one of these blissful lulls.

“When Mother Sea takes it upon herself,” growled Rulf.

That was not rarely. The icy waves that slapped the ship’s side would spot, spray, and regularly soak them to the skin, Mother Sea washing the deck and surging beneath the footrests until everything was crusted stiff with salt.

“Heave.”

Each gang of three was chained together with one lock to their bench, and Trigg and the captain had the only keys. The oarslaves ate their meager rations chained to their bench each evening. They squatted over a battered bucket chained to their bench each morning. They slept chained to their bench, covered by stinking blankets and bald furs, the air heavy with moans and snores and grumbles and the smoke of breath. Once a week they sat chained to their bench while their heads and beards were roughly shaved-a defense against lice which deterred the tiny passengers not at all.

The only time Trigg reluctantly produced his key and opened one of those locks was when the coughing Vansterman was found dead one chill morning, and was dragged from between his blank-faced oarmates and heaved over the side.

The only one who remarked on his passing was Ankran, who plucked at his thin beard and said, “we’ll need a replacement.”

For a moment Yarvi worried the survivors might have to work that fraction harder. Then he hoped there might be a little more food to go around. Then he was sick at himself for the way he had started to think.

But not so sick he wouldn’t have taken the Vansterman’s share had it been offered.

“Heave.”

He could not have said how many nights he passed limp and utterly spent, how many mornings he woke whimpering at the stiffness of the last day’s efforts only to be whipped to more, how many days without a thought but the next stroke. But finally an evening came when he did not sink straight into a dreamless sleep. When his muscles had started to harden, the first raw blisters had burst and the whip had fallen on him less.

The South Wind was moored in an inlet, gently rocking. The rain was falling hard, so the sails had been lowered and strung over the deck to make a great tent, noisy with the hissing of drops on cloth. Those men with the skill had been handed rods and Rulf was one, hunched near the rowlock in the darkness, murmuring softly to the fish.

“For a man with but one hand,” said Jaud, chain clinking as he propped one big bare foot up on their oar, “you rowed well today.”

“Huh.” Rulf spat through the rowlock, and a clipping of Father Moon’s light showed the grin on his broad face. “We may make half an oarsman of you yet.”

And though one of them was born long miles away and the other long years before him, and though Yarvi knew little about them that he could not read in their faces, and though pulling an oar chained in a trading galley was no high deed for the son of King Uthrik of Gettland, Yarvi felt a flush of pride, so sharp it almost brought tears to his eyes, for there is a strange and powerful bond that forms between oarmates.

When you are chained beside a man and share his food and his misfortune, share the blows of the overseer and the buffets of Mother Sea, match your rhythm to his as you heave at the same great beam, huddle together in the icy night or face the careless cold alone-that is when you come to know a man. A week wedged between Rulf and Jaud and Yarvi was forced to wonder whether he had ever had two better friends.

Though perhaps that said more about his past life than his present companions.

The next day the South Wind put in at Thorlby.

Until Sumael, frowning from the forecastle, snapped and steered and bullied the fat galley through the shipping to the bustling wharves, Yarvi had hardly believed he could be living in the same world as the one in which he had been a king. Yet here he was. Home.

The familiar gray houses rose in tiers, crowded upon the steep slopes, older and grander as Yarvi’s eye scanned upwards until, squatting on its tunnel-riddled rock, black against the white sky, he gazed upon the citadel where he had been raised. He could see the six-sided tower where Mother Gundring had her chambers, where he had learned her lessons, answered her riddles, planned his happy future as a minister. He could see the copper dome of the Godshall gleaming, beneath which he had been betrothed to his cousin Isriun, their hands bound together, her lips brushing his. He could see the hillside, in view of the howes of his ancestors, where he had sworn his oath in the hearing of gods and men to take vengeance on the killers of his father.

Was King Odem comfortably enthroned in the Black Chair now, loved and lauded by subjects who finally had a king they could admire? Of course.

Would Mother Gundring be standing minister to him, whispering her pithy wisdom in his ear? More than likely.

Had another apprentice taken Yarvi’s place as her successor, sitting on his stool, feeding his doves, and bringing the steaming tea every evening? How could it be otherwise?

Would Isriun be weeping bitter tears because her crippled betrothed would never return? As easily as she forgot Yarvi’s brother she would forget again.

Perhaps his mother would be the only one to miss him, and that because, in spite of all her cunning, her grip on power would surely crumble without her puppet son perched on his toy chair.

Had they burned a ship and raised an empty howe for him as they had for his drowned Uncle Uthil? Somehow he doubted it.

He realized he had bunched his shrivelled hand into a trembling, knobbled fist.

“What’s troubling you?” asked Jaud.

“This was my home.”

Rulf gave a sigh. “Take it from one who knows, cook’s boy. The past is best buried.”

“I swore an oath,” said Yarvi. “An oath there can be no rowing away from.”

Rulf sighed again. “Take it from one who knows, cook’s boy. Never swear an oath.”

“But once you have sworn,” said Jaud. “What then?”