Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

“What are you smiling about?” she asked him.

Yarvi’s hands were raw with the work and his head hurt from the blow against the oar and he was riddled with splinters from head to toe, but his smile only got wider. On a longer chain everything looked better, and Sumael was by no means an exception.

“I’m free of the bench,” he said.

“Huh.” She raised her brows. “Don’t get used to it.”

“There!” A screech shrill as a cock dropped on a cook slab. One of the guards was pointing inland, face ghostly pale.

A man stood at the treeline. He was stripped to the waist in spite of the weather, body streaked with white paint, hair a black thicket. He had a bow over his shoulder, a short ax at his hip. He made no sudden move, roared no threat, only looked calmly towards the ship and the slaves busy around it, then turned without hurry and disappeared into the shadows. But the panic he sparked could hardly have been greater had he been a charging army.

“Gods help us,” whispered Ankran, plucking at his thrall-collar as if it sat too tight for him to breathe.

“Work faster,” snarled Shadikshirram, so worried she stopped drinking for a moment.

They doubled their efforts, constantly glancing towards the trees for any more unwelcome visitors. At one point a ship passed out at sea and two of the sailors splashed into the surf, waving their arms and screaming for help. A small figure waved back, but the ship made no sign of stopping.

Rulf wiped the sweat from his forehead on one thick forearm. “I wouldn’t have stopped.”

“Nor I,” said Jaud. “We will have to help ourselves.”

Yarvi could only nod. “I wouldn’t even have waved.”

That was when more Shends slipped noiselessly from the blackness of the forest. Three, then six, then twelve, all armed to the teeth, each arrival greeted with growing horror, by Yarvi as much as anyone. He might have read that the Shends were peaceable enough but these ones did not look as if they had read the same books he had.

“Keep working!” growled Trigg, grabbing one man by the scruff of his neck and forcing him back to the felled trunk he had been stripping. “We should run them off. Give ’em a shock.”

Shadikshirram tossed her latest bottle across the shingle. “For every one you see there’ll be ten hidden. You’d be the one getting the shock, I suspect. But try it, by all means. I’ll watch.”

“What do we do, then?” muttered Ankran.

“I’ll be doing my best not to leave them any wine.” The captain pulled the cork from a new bottle. “If you wanted to save them some trouble I suppose you could skin yourself.” And she chuckled as she took a swig.

Trigg nodded towards Nothing, still on his knees, scrubbing at the deck. “Or we could give him a blade.”

Shadikshirram stopped laughing abruptly. “Never.”

The wise wait for their moment, but never let it pass .

“Captain,” said Yarvi, setting down his plank and stepping humbly forward. “I have a suggestion.”

“You going to sing to them, cripple?” snapped Trigg.

“Talk to them.”

Shadikshirram regarded him through languidly narrowed eyes. “You know their tongue?”

“Enough to keep us safe. Perhaps even to trade with them.”

The overseer jabbed a thick forefinger at the growing crowd of painted warriors. “You think those savages will listen to reason?”

“I know they will.” Yarvi only wished he was as certain as he somehow managed to sound.

“This is madness!” said Ankran.

Shadikshirram’s gaze wandered to the storekeeper. “I keenly await your counter-proposal.” He blinked, mouth half open, hands helplessly twitching, and the captain rolled her eyes. “There are so few heroes left these days. Trigg, you conduct our one-handed ambassador to a parley. Ankran, you toddle along with them.”

“Me?”

“How many cowards called Ankran do I own? You trade for the stores, don’t you? Go trade.”

“But nobody trades with the Shends!”

“Then the deals you make should be the stuff of legend.” Shadikshirram stood. “Everyone needs something. That’s the beauty of the merchant’s profession. Sumael can tell you what we need.” She leaned close to Yarvi, blasting him with wine-heavy breath, and patted his cheek. “Sing to ’em, boy. As sweetly as you did the other night. Sing for your life.”

That was how Yarvi found himself walking slowly towards the trees, his empty hands high and his short length of chain held firm in Trigg’s meaty fist, desperately trying to convince himself great dangers meant great profits. Ahead, more Shends had gathered, silently watching. Behind, Ankran muttered in Haleen. “If the cripple manages to make a trade, the usual arrangement?”

“Why not?” answered Trigg, giving a tug on Yarvi’s chain. He could hardly believe they were thinking about money even now, but perhaps when the Last Door stands open for them men fall back on what they know. He had fallen back on his minister’s wisdom, after all. And a flimsy shield it seemed as the Shends got steadily closer in all their painted savagery.

They did not scream or shake their weapons. They were more than threatening enough without. They simply stepped back to make room as Yarvi came near, herded through the trees by Trigg and into a clearing where more Shends were gathered about a fire. Yarvi swallowed as he realized how many more. They might have outnumbered the whole crew of the South Wind three to one.

A woman sat among them, whittling at a stick with a bright knife. Strung around her neck on a leather thong was an elf-tablet, the green card studded with black jewels, scrawled with incomprehensible markings, riddled with intricate golden lines.

The first thing a minister learns is to recognize power. To read the glances, and the stances, the movements and tones of voice that mark the followers from the leader. Why waste time on underlings, after all? So Yarvi stepped between the men as if they were invisible, looking only into the woman’s frowning face, and the warriors shuffled after and hedged him and Trigg and Ankran in with a thicket of naked steel.

For the briefest moment Yarvi hesitated. For a moment, he enjoyed Trigg and Ankran’s fear more than he suffered with his own. For a moment he had power over them, and found he liked the feeling.

“Speak!” hissed Trigg.

Yarvi wondered if there was a way to get the overseer killed. To use the Shends to get his freedom, perhaps Rulf’s and Jaud’s as well … But the stakes were too high and the odds too long. The wise minister picks the greater good, the lesser evil, and smooths the way for Father Peace in every tongue. So Yarvi dropped down, one knee squelching into the boggy ground, his withered hand on his chest and the other to his forehead in the way Mother Gundring had taught him, to show he spoke the truth.

Even if he lied through his teeth.

“My name is Yorv,” he said, in the language of the Shends, “and I come humbly upon bended knee, stranger no longer, to beg the guest-right for me and my companions.”

The woman slowly narrowed her eyes at Yarvi. Then she looked about at the warriors, carefully sheathed her knife and tossed her stick into the fire. “Damn it.”

“Guest-right?” muttered one of the warriors, pointing towards the stranded ship in disbelief. “These savages?”

“Your pronunciation is dismal.” The woman flung up her hands. “But I am Svidur of the Shends. Stand, Yorv, for you are welcome at our hearth, and safe from harm.”

Another of the warriors angrily flung his ax on the ground and stamped off into the brush.

Svidur watched him go. “We were very much looking forward to killing you and taking your cargo. We must take what we can, for your High King will make war upon us again when the spring comes. The man is made of greed. I swear I have no idea what we have that he wants.”