Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Aren’t you full of surprises?” And she tossed him her mostly-empty bottle and walked away, humming so tunelessly he could only just tell it was the Lay of Froki.

If he had been served that wine at his father’s table he would have spat it in the slave’s face, but now it seemed the best he ever tasted, full of sun and fruit and freedom. It was a wrench to share the splash he had, but the sight of Rulf’s huge smile after he took his swallow was well worth the price.

As they made ready to sleep, Yarvi found the other slaves were looking at him differently. Or perhaps it was that they were looking at him at all. Even Sumael gave him a thoughtful frown from her place outside the captain’s cabin, as though he were a sum she could not quite make add.

“Why are they watching me?” he murmured to Jaud.

“It is rare they get a good thing. You gave them one.”

Yarvi smiled as he pulled the stinking furs to his chin. He would not be cutting the guards down with an eating knife, but perhaps the gods had given him better weapons. Time might be slipping through his fingers. He lacked a full set, after all. But he had to be patient. Patient as the winter.

Once, after his father had hit him in a rage, Yarvi’s mother had found him crying. The fool strikes, she had said. The wise man smiles, and watches, and learns.

Then strikes.

As a boy, Yarvi had been given a little ship of cork. His brother had taken it from him and thrown it in the sea, and Yarvi had lain on the rocky edge above and watched it tossed and whirled and played with by the waves until it was gone.

Now Mother Sea made the South Wind a toy ship.

Yarvi’s stomach was in his sick-sour mouth as they crested one surging mountain of water, was sucked into his arse as they plunged into the foam-white valley beyond, pitching and yawing, deeper and deeper until they were surrounded by the towering sea on every side and he was sure they would be snatched into the unknowable depths, drowned to a man.

Rulf had stopped saying he’d been in worse. Not that Yarvi could have heard him. It could hardly be told what was the thunder of the sky and what the roaring of the waves and the groaning of the battered hull, the tortured ropes, the tortured men.

Jaud had stopped saying he thought the sky was brightening. It could hardly be told any longer where lashing sea ended and lashing rain began, the whole a stinging fury through which Yarvi could scarcely see the nearest mast, until the storm gloom was lit by a flash which froze the ship and its cowering crew in an instant of stark black and white.

Jaud’s face was grim set, all hard planes and bunched muscle as he wrestled with their oar. Rulf’s eyes bulged as he lent his own strength to the struggle. Sumael clung to the ring she was chained to when they were in dock, shrieking something no one could hear over the shrieking wind.

Shadikshirram was less inclined to listen than ever. She stood on the aftcastle’s roof, one arm hooked around the mast as though it were a drinking companion, shaking her drawn sword at the sky, laughing and, when the gale dropped enough for Yarvi to hear her, daring the storm to blow harder.

Orders would have been useless now anyway. The oars were maddened animals, Yarvi dragged by the strapping about his wrist as his mother had used to drag him when he was a child. His mouth was salty with the sea, salty with his blood where the oar had struck him.

Never in his life had he been so scared and helpless. Not when he hid from his father in the secret places of the citadel. Not when he looked into Hurik’s blood-spotted face and Odem said, Kill him . Not when he cowered at the feet of Grom-gil-Gorm. Mighty though they were, such terrors paled against the towering rage of Mother Sea.

The next flash showed the rumor of a coast, battering waves chewing at a ragged shore, black trees and black rock from which white spray flew.

“Gods help us,” whispered Yarvi, squeezing shut his eyes, and the ship shuddered and flung him back, cracked his head against the oar behind. Men slid and tangled, tumbled from their benches to the furthest extent of their chains, clutching at anything that might spare them from being strangled by their own thrall-collars. Yarvi felt Rulf’s strong arm about his shoulder, holding him fast to the bench, and it was some strange comfort to know he would be touching another person as he died.

He prayed as he never had before, to every god that he could think of, tall or small. He prayed not for the Black Chair, or for vengeance on his treacherous uncle, or for the better kiss Isriun had promised him, or even for freedom from his collar.

He prayed only for his life.

There was a grating crash that made the timbers tremble and the ship lurched. Oars shattered like twigs. A great wave washed the deck and dragged at Yarvi’s clothes, and he knew that he would surely die the way his Uncle Uthil had, swallowed by the pitiless sea …

DAWN CAME MUDDY AND MERCILESS.

The South Wind was beached, listed to one side, helpless as a great whale on the cold shingle. Yarvi hunched soaked through and shivering, bruised but alive at his sharply-angled bench.

The storm had snarled away eastwards in the darkness, but in the pale blue-gray of morning the wind still blew chill and the rain still fell steadily on the miserable oarslaves, most of them grunting at their grazes, some whimpering at wounds much worse. One bench had been torn from its bolts and vanished out to sea, no doubt bearing its three unlucky oarsmen through the Last Door.

“We were lucky,” said Sumael.

Shadikshirram clapped her on the back and nearly knocked her over. “I told you I have outstanding weatherluck!” She at least seemed in the best of moods after her one-sided battle with the storm.

Yarvi watched them circle the ship, Sumael’s tongue tip wedged into the notch in her lip as she peered at gouges, stroked at splintered timbers with sure hands. “The keel and the masts are sound, at least. We lost twelve oars shattered and three benches broken.”

“Not to mention three oarslaves gone,” grunted Trigg, mightily upset at the expense. “Two dead in their chains and six more who can’t row now and may never again.”

“The hole in the hull is the real worry,” said Ankran. “There’s daylight in the hold. It’ll have to be patched and caulked before we can even think of floating her.”

“Wherever will we find some timber?” Shadikshirram swept a long arm at the ancient forest that hemmed in the beach on every side.

“It belongs to the Shends.” Trigg eyed the shadowy woods with a great deal less enthusiasm. “They find us here we’ll all end up skinned.”

“Then you’d best get started, Trigg. You look bad enough with your skin on. If my luck holds we can handle the repairs and be away before the Shends sharpen their knives. You!” And Shadikshirram stepped over to where Nothing was kneeling on the shingle and rolled him over with a kick in the ribs. “Why aren’t you scrubbing, bastard?”

Nothing crawled after his heavy chain onto the sloping deck and, like a man sweeping his hearth after his house has burned down, painfully set about his usual labor.

Ankran and Sumael exchanged a doubtful glance then set to work themselves, while Shadikshirram went to fetch her tools. Wine, that was, which she started steadily drinking, draped over a nearby rock.

Trigg opened some of the locks-a rarity indeed-and oarsmen who had not left their benches in weeks were put on longer chains and given tools by Ankran. Jaud and Rulf were set to splitting trunks with wedge and mallet, and when the planks were made Yarvi dragged each one to the rent in the ship’s side, where Sumael stood, jaw set with concentration as she neatly trimmed them with a hatchet.