Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

Sumael led the way at a furious pace and they all walked her course with as little question as they had rowed it. Through a broken land of black rock and white snow they floundered, where stunted trees had all been swept into tortured shapes by the wind, bowing mournfully toward the sea.

“How many steps to Vansterland?” called Rulf.

Sumael checked her instruments, lips moving with silent sums, peered up at the smudge of Mother Sun in the iron sky, and headed on without answering.

Few in the citadel of Thorlby would have reckoned it a treasure, but Nothing’s roll of mildewed sailcloth became their most valued possession. With the care of pirates dividing a stolen hoard they tore it up between them and wound it under their clothes, around their frozen heads and hands, stuffed their boots with it. Half, Jaud carried with him so they could huddle beneath it when night came. No doubt it would scarcely be warmer than the utter darkness outside, but they knew they would be grateful for that little.

That little would be the difference between life and death.

They took turns breaking new ground, Jaud forging ahead without complaint, Rulf venting curses on the snow as though it was an old enemy, Ankran struggling on with arms hugged around himself, Nothing with head up and sword clutched tight, as though he fancied he was made from steel himself and no weather could chill or warm him, even when in spite of Yarvi’s prayers snow began to settle across the shoulders of his stolen jacket.

“Bloody wonderful,” muttered Rulf at the sky.

“It works for us,” said Ankran. “Covers our tracks, keeps us hidden. With luck our old mistress will think we froze out here.”

“Without luck we will,” muttered Yarvi.

“No one cares either way,” said Rulf. “No one’s mad enough to follow us here.”

“Ha!” barked Nothing. “Shadikshirram is too mad to do anything else.” And he tossed the end of his heavy chain over his shoulder like a scarf and cut that conversation down as dead as he had the South Wind’s guards.

Yarvi frowned back the way they had come, their tracks snaking off into the gray distance. He wondered when Shadikshirram would find the wreck of her ship. Then he wondered what she would do when she did. Then he swallowed, and floundered after the others just as fast as he could.

At midday, Mother Sun no higher than Jaud’s shoulder at her feeble zenith, their long shadows struggling after them across the white, they paused to huddle in a hollow.

“Food,” said Sumael, giving voice to every thought among them.

No one was keen to volunteer. They all knew food was worth more than gold out here. It was Ankran who surprised them all by first reaching into his furs and bringing out a packet of salted fish.

He shrugged. “I hate fish.”

“The man who used to starve us now feeds us,” said Rulf. “Who says there’s no justice?” He came up with a few biscuits well past their best, if they had ever had one. Sumael followed that with two dried loaves.

Yarvi could only spread his empty palms and try to smile. “I’m humbled … by your generosity …?”

Ankran rubbed gently at his crooked nose. “It warms me just a little to see you humbled. How about you two?”

Jaud shrugged. “I had little time to prepare.”

Nothing held up his sword. “I brought the knife.”

They all considered their meager larder, scarcely enough for one decent meal for the six of them.

“I suppose I’d better be mother,” said Sumael.

Yarvi sat, slavering like his father’s dogs waiting for scraps, while she rationed out six fearsomely equal and awfully tiny shares of bread. Rulf swallowed his in two bites, then watched as Ankran chewed every crumb a hundred times with eyes closed in ecstasy.

“Is that all we eat?”

Sumael wrapped up the precious bundle again, jaw tight, and pushed it into her shirt without speaking.

“I miss Trigg,” said Rulf, mournfully.

Sumael would have made a fine minister. She had been thinking clearly enough on her way off the ship to grab two of Shadikshirram’s abandoned wine bottles, and now they packed them with snow and took turns to carry them inside their clothes. Yarvi soon learned only to sip the results, since unwrapping to piss in that cold was an act of heroism that earned grunted congratulations from the others, all the more heartfelt since everyone knew sooner or later they would have to present their own nethers to the searing wind.

For all it felt like a month of torture the day was short, and as evening came the heavens blazed with stars, glittering swirls and burning trails, bright as the eyes of the gods. Sumael pointed out strange constellations, for every one of which she had a name-the Bald Weaver, the Crooked Way, Stranger-Come-Knocking, the Eater of Dreams-and as she spoke them steaming into the dark she smiled, a happiness in her voice that he had never heard from her before, and made him smile too.

“How many steps to Vansterland, now?” he asked.

“Some.” She looked back to the horizon, happiness swiftly snuffed out, and upped the pace.

He toiled on after her. “I haven’t thanked you.”

“You can do it when we don’t end up a pair of frozen corpses.”

“Since I might not get that chance … thank you. You could’ve let Trigg kill me.”

“If I’d taken a moment to think about it, I would have.”

He could hardly complain at that. He wondered what he would have done if she had been the one Trigg throttled, and did not like the answer. “I’m glad you didn’t think, then.”

There was a long pause, with just the crunching of their boots in the snow. Then he saw her frown over her shoulder at him, and away. “So am I.”

THE SECOND DAY THEY JOKED to keep their spirits up.

“You’re being stingy with the stores again, Ankran! Pass back the roast pig!” And they laughed.

“I’ll race you to Vulsgard! Last one through the gate gets sold to pay for ale!” And they chuckled.

“I hope Shadikshirram brings some wine when she comes for us.” Not so much as a smile.

When they slithered from their wretched tent at dawn on the third day, if you could call that watery gloom a dawn, they were all grumbling.

“I do not care for this old blunderer in front,” croaked Nothing, after tripping over Rulf’s heels for a third time.

“I’m not sure I like this madman’s sword at my back,” snapped Rulf over his shoulder.

“You could have it through your back instead.”

“How many years between you and still you act like children?” Yarvi pushed his way into step between them. “We need to help each other or the winter will kill us all.”

Faintly, just ahead, he heard Sumael say, “More than likely it will kill us all anyway.”

He did not disagree.

By the fourth day, the freezing fog lying over the white land like a shroud, they were silent. Just a grunt now as one or another stumbled, just a grunt as one or another helped them up and on to nowhere. Six silent figures in the great emptiness, in the great, cold void, each struggling under their own burden of chill misery, under their own chafing thrall-collar and ever heavier chain, each with their own pain, and hunger, and fear.

At first Yarvi thought about the men drowned on the ship. How many dead? The planks cracking and the sea pouring in. So that he could save himself? The slaves straining at their chains for one more gasp before Mother Sea dragged them down, down, down.

But his mother had always said, never worry about what has been done. Only about what will be.

There was no changing it, and guilt over the past and worry about the future began both to fade, leaving only taunting memories of food. The four dozen pigs roasted for the visit of the High King, so much for such a little, gray-haired man and his hard-eyed minister. The feast when Yarvi’s brother passed his warrior’s test that Yarvi had done no more than pick at, knowing he could never pass himself. The beach before his ill-fated raid, men cooking the meal that might be their last, meat turning above a hundred fires, heat like a hand on your face, a ring of hungry grins lit by flame, fat sizzling and the crackling blackened-