Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

Yarvi frowned up towards the citadel, his jaw clenched painfully tight. Perhaps the gods had sent him this ordeal as a punishment. For being too trusting, too vain, too weak. But they had left him alive. They had given him a chance to fulfill his oath. To spill the blood of his treacherous uncle. To reclaim the Black Chair.

But the gods would not wait forever. With every dawn the memory of his father would fade, with every noon his mother’s power would wane, with every dusk his uncle’s grip on Gettland would grow firmer. With every sunset Yarvi’s chances dwindled into darkness.

He would take no vengeance and reclaim no kingdom lashed to an oar and chained to a bench, that much was clear.

He had to get free.

Stroke by backbreaking stroke, Thorlby, and home, and Yarvi’s old life slipped into the past. Southwards dragged the South Wind , though the wind rarely seemed to blow her oarslaves much help. Southwards down the ragged coast of Gettland, with its islands and inlets, its walled villages and fishing boats bobbing on the tide, its fenced farmsteads on sheep-dotted hillsides.

And on went Yarvi’s pitiless, sinew-shredding, tooth-grinding war against the oar. He could not have said he was winning. No one won. But perhaps his defeats were not quite so one-sided.

Sumael brought them tight to the coast as they passed the mouth of the Helm River, and the ship began to hum with muttered prayers. The oarsmen cast fearful glances out to sea towards a spiral of blackened cloud that tore the sky. They could not see the splintered elf-towers on the broken islands beneath it, but everyone knew they lurked behind the horizon.

“Strokom,” muttered Yarvi, straining to see and fearing to see at once. In ages past men had brought relics from that cursed elf-ruin, but in their triumph they had sickened and died, and the Ministry had forbidden any man to go there.

“Father Peace protect us,” grunted Rulf, making a shambles of holy symbols over his heart, and the slaves needed no whip to double their efforts and leave that shadow far in their wake.

The irony was not lost on Yarvi that this was the very route he would have taken to his Minister’s Test. On that voyage Prince Yarvi, swaddled in a rich blanket with his books, would have spared no thought for the suffering of the oarslaves. Now, chained to the benches, he made the South Wind his study. The ship, and the people on it, and how he might use them to get free of it.

For people are the minister’s best tools, Mother Gundring always said.

Ebdel Aric Shadikshirram, self-renowned merchant, lover and naval captain, spent most of her time drunk and most of the rest passed out drunk. Sometimes her snoring could be heard through the door of her cabin in the aftcastle, eerily keeping time to the movement of the rowers. Sometimes she would stand upon the forecastle in melancholy mood, one hand on her slouched hip and the other clutching a half-empty bottle, frowning into the wind as though daring it to blow harder. Sometimes she would prowl the gangway slapping backs and telling jokes as though she and her slaves were old friends together. When she passed the nameless deck scrubber she would never miss a chance to kick, throttle or upend the night-bucket over him; then she would swig from her wine, and roar out, “on to profits!” and the oarsmen would cheer, and a man who cheered especially loudly might get a taste of the captain’s wine himself, and a man who stayed silent might get a taste of Trigg’s whip instead.

Trigg was the overseer, the chain-master, the grip, second-in-command and with a full share in the enterprise. He ordered the guards, perhaps two dozen of them, and watched over the slaves, and made sure they kept whatever pace the captain asked for. He was a brutal man, but there was a kind of awful justice in him. He had no favorites and made no exceptions. Everyone was whipped alike.

Ankran was the storekeeper and there was no justice in him at all. He slept below decks with the stores, and was the only slave to be regularly let off the ship. It was his task to buy food and clothes and share them out and he worked a thousand tiny swindles every day-buying meat that was halfway spoiled, and trimming every man’s rations, and making them mend clothes that were worn to rags-and splitting the profits with Trigg.

Whenever he passed by Rulf would spit with particular disgust. “What does that crooked bastard want with the money?”

“Some men simply like money,” said Jaud mildly.

“Even slaves?”

“Slaves have the same appetites as other men. It’s the chance to indulge them they lack.”

“True enough,” said Rulf, looking wistfully up at Sumael.

The navigator spent most of her time on the roof of one of the castles, checking charts and instruments, or frowning up at sun or stars while she worked quick sums on her fingers, or pointing out some rock or ripple, some cloud or current, and snapping out warnings. While the South Wind was at sea she went where she pleased, but when they came into dock the captain’s first act was always to lock her by her long, fine chain to an iron ring on the aftcastle. A slave with her skills was probably worth more than their whole cargo.

Sometimes she threaded among the rowers, clambering heedlessly over men, oars and benches to pick at some fixing or other, or to lean over the ship’s side to check depths with a knotted plumbline. The only time Yarvi ever saw her smile was when she was perched on one of the mastheads with the wind tearing at her short hair, as happy there as Yarvi might have been at Mother Gundring’s firepit, scanning the coast through a tube of bright brass.

It was Throvenland that ground by now, gray cliffs besieged by the hungry waves, gray beaches where the sea sucked at the shingle, gray towns where gray-mailed spearmen frowned from the wharves at passing ships.

“My home was near here,” said Rulf, as they unshipped the oars on one gray morning, a thin drizzle beading everything with dew. “Two days’ hard ride inland. I had a good farm with a good stone chimney, and a good wife who bore me two good sons.”

“How did you end up here?” asked Yarvi, fiddling pointlessly at the strapping on his raw left wrist.

“I was a fighting man. An archer, sailor, swordsman and raider in the summer months.” Rulf scratched at his heavy jaw, already gray stubbled, for his beard seemed to spring out an hour after it was shaved. “I served a dozen seasons with a captain called Halstam, an easy-going fellow. I became his helmsman and, along with Hopki Strangletoes and Blue Jenner and some other handy men we enjoyed some successes in the raiding business, enough that I could sit with my feet to the fire and drink good ale all winter.”

“Ale never agreed with me, but it sounds a happy life,” said Jaud, gazing into the far distance. Towards a happy past of his own, perhaps.

“The gods love to laugh at a happy man.” Rulf noisily gathered some spit and sent it spinning over the side of the ship. “One winter, somewhat the worse for drink, Halstam fell from his horse and died, and the ship passed to his oldest son, Young Halstam, who was a different kind of man, all pride and froth and scant wisdom.”

“Sometimes father and son aren’t much alike,” muttered Yarvi.

“Against my better judgment I consented to be his helmsman, and not a week from port, ignoring my advice, he tried to take a too-well-guarded merchant ship. Hopki and Jenner and most of the rest went through the Last Door that day. I was one among a handful taken prisoner and sold on. That was two summers ago, and I’ve been pulling an oar for Trigg ever since.”

“A bitter ending,” said Yarvi.