Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

But suddenly the waters were calm.

He pried one eye open. They all were huddled in the middle of the flopping, foundering raft, clinging to the branches, clinging to each other, shivering and bedraggled, water lapping at their knees as they ever so gently spun.

Sumael stared at Yarvi, hair plastered to her face, gulping for air.

“Shit.”

Yarvi could only nod. Unclenching the fingers of his good hand from their branch was an aching effort.

“We’re alive,” croaked Rulf. “Are we alive?”

“If I’d known,” muttered Ankran, “what this river would be like … I would’ve taken my chances … with the dogs.”

Daring to look past the ring of haggard faces, Yarvi saw the river had widened and slowed. It grew much broader still ahead, smooth water with barely a ripple, trees on wooded slopes reflected in the mirror surface.

And off on their right, flat and inviting, lay a wide beach scattered with rotting driftwood.

“Get paddling,” said Sumael.

One by one they slid from their disintegrating raft, hauled it between them as far onto the beach as they could, dragged off their sodden gear, tottered a few steps and without a word flopped on the shingle among the rest of the flotsam, no strength left even to celebrate their escape, unless lying still and breathing counted.

“Death waits for us all,” said Nothing. “But she takes the lazy first.” By some magic he was standing, frowning upriver for any sign of pursuit. “They will be following.”

Rulf worked himself up onto his elbows. “Why the hell would they?”

“Because this is just a river. That some men call this side Vansterland will mean nothing to the Banyas. It will certainly mean nothing to Shadikshirram. They are as bound together now in their pursuit as we are in our escape. They will build their own rafts and follow, and the river will be too swift for them to land just as it was for us. Until they come here.” Nothing smiled. Yarvi was starting to get nervous when Nothing smiled. “And they will come ashore, tired and wet and foolish, just as we have, and we will fall upon them.”

“Fall upon them?” said Yarvi.

“We six?” asked Ankran.

“Against their twenty?” muttered Jaud.

“With a one-handed boy, a woman and a storekeeper among us?” said Rulf.

“Exactly!” Nothing smiled wider. “You think just as I do!”

Rulf propped himself on his elbows. “There is no one, ever, who’s thought as you do.”

“You are afraid.”

The old raider’s ribs shook with chuckles. “With you on my side? You’re damn right I am.”

“You told me Throvenlanders had fire.”

“You told me Gettlanders had discipline.”

“For pity’s sake, anything but that!” snarled Yarvi as he stood. It was not a hot and mindless anger that came upon him, as his father’s rages had been, or his brother’s. It was his mother’s anger, calculating and patient, cold as winter, and for the time being it left no room for fear.

“If we have to fight,” he said, “we’ll need better ground than this.”

“And where will we find this field of glory, my king?” asked Sumael, with her notched lip curled.

Yarvi blinked into the trees. Where indeed?

“There?” Ankran was pointing up towards a rocky bluff above the river. It was hard to say with the sky bright behind but, squinting towards it, Yarvi thought there might be ruins at the summit.

“WHAT WAS THIS PLACE?” asked Jaud, easing through the archway, and at the sound of his voice birds clattered from perches high in the broken walls and away.

“It’s an elf-ruin,” said Yarvi.

“Gods,” muttered Rulf, making a sign against evil, and badly.

“Don’t worry.” Sumael kicked heedlessly through a heap of rotten leaves. “I doubt there’ll be any elves here now.”

“Not for thousands upon thousands of years.” Yarvi ran his hand over one of the walls. Not made from mortared stone but smooth, and hard, without joint or edge as though it had been moulded more than built. From its crumbling top rods of rusted metal sprouted, unruly as an idiot’s hair. “Not since the Breaking of God.”

There had been a great hall here, with pillars proudly marching down both sides and archways to rooms on the right and left. But the pillars had toppled long ago, and the walls were thickly webbed with dead creeper. Part of the far wall had vanished entirely, claimed by the hungry river far below. The roof had fallen centuries since and above them was only the white sky and a shattered tower wreathed in ivy.

“I like it,” said Nothing, striding across the rubble-strewn ground, thick with dead leaves, rot and bird-droppings.

“You were all for staying on the beach,” said Rulf.

“I was, but this is a stronger place.”

“I’d like it better with a good gate.”

“A gate only postpones the inevitable.” Nothing made a ring with filthy thumb and forefinger and peered with one bright eye through it towards the empty archway. “That invitation will be their undoing. They will be funnelled through, without room to make their numbers count. Here we have a chance of winning!”

“So your last plan was certain death?” said Yarvi.

Nothing grinned. “Death is life’s only certainty.”

“You surely know how to build morale,” muttered Sumael.

“We are outnumbered four to one and most of us are no fighters!” Ankran’s bulging eyes had a desperate look. “I can’t afford to die here! My family are-”

“Have more faith, storekeeper!” Nothing hooked one arm about Ankran’s neck and one about Yarvi’s and dragged them close with shocking strength. “If not in yourself, then in the rest of us. We are your family now!”

It was even less reassuring, if anything, than it had been when Shadikshirram told them as much aboard the South Wind . Ankran stared at Yarvi and all Yarvi could do was stare back.

“And anyway, there is no way out now, and that is good. People fight hardest when they have no way out.” Nothing gave them a parting squeeze then hopped up onto the base of a broken pillar, pointing towards the entrance with his naked sword. “Here I shall stand, and take the brunt of their attack. Their dogs at least cannot have made the river journey. Rulf, you will climb that tower with your bow.”

Rulf peered up at the crumbling tower, then around the others, and finally blew his gray-bearded cheeks out with a heavy sigh. “I daresay it’s sad to think of a poet’s death, but I’m a fighting man, and in that trade you’re bound to go sooner or later.”

Nothing laughed, a strange and jagged sound. “I dare say we’ve both lasted longer than we deserve! Together we braved the snow and the hunger, the steam and the thirst, together we will stand. Here! Now!”

It was hard to believe this man, standing straight and tall with steel in hand, wild hair pushed back and eyes burning bright, could be the pitiful beggar Yarvi had stepped over on his way onto the South Wind . He seemed a king’s champion indeed now, with an air of command none questioned, an air of mad confidence that gave even Yarvi some courage.

“Jaud, take your shield,” said Nothing, “Sumael your hatchet, and guard our left. That is our weaker side. Let none get around me. Keep them where I and my sword may look them in the eyes. Ankran, you and Yarvi will guard our right. That shovel will do as a club: anything can kill if you swing it hard enough. Give Yarvi the knife since he has just one hand to hold it. One hand, perhaps, but the blood of kings in his veins!”

“It’s keeping it there that worries me,” said Yarvi under his breath.

“You and I, then.” Ankran offered out the knife. A makeshift thing without so much as a crosspiece, wooden handle wrapped with leather cord and the blade greened down the back but the edge keen enough.