Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

A wise minister weighs the greater good, Mother Gundring always said, and finds the lesser evil. Surely a wise king could only do the same?

He jerked the eyeglass away from the burning steading, scanning the jagged horizon, and caught the glint of sun on steel.

“Warriors.” Coming down the northern road, spilling from a cleft in the hills. Slow as treacle in winter they seemed to crawl from this distance, and Yarvi found he was chewing at his lip, wishing them on.

“The King of Gettland,” he muttered to himself. “Urging an army of Vanstermen to Thorlby.”

“The gods cook strange recipes,” said Sumael.

Yarvi looked up at the domed ceiling, gods painted there as birds in flaking colors. He Who Carries the Message. She Who Stirs the Branches. She Who Spoke the First Word and Will Speak the Last. And painted with red wings at the center, smiling blood, Mother War.

“I’ve rarely prayed to you, I know,” Yarvi whispered at her image. “Father Peace always suited me better. But give me victory this day. Give me back the Black Chair. You’ve tested me and I stand ready. I’m not the fool I was, not the coward, not the child. I am the rightful king of Gettland.”

One of the doves chose that moment to loose a spatter of droppings onto the floor beside him. Mother War’s answer, perhaps?

Yarvi ground his teeth. “If you choose not to make me king … if you choose to send me through the Last Door today … at least let me keep my oath.” He clenched his fists, such as they were, knuckles white. “Give me Odem’s life. Give me revenge. Grant me that much, and I’ll be satisfied.”

Not a nurturing prayer of the kind that ministers are taught. Not a giving or a making prayer. But giving and making are nothing to Mother War. She is the taker, the breaker, the widow-maker. She cares only for blood.

“The king must die,” he hissed.

“The king must die!” screeched the eagle, standing tall and spreading its wings so it filled its cage and seemed to darken the whole chamber. “The king must die!”

“IT’S TIME,” SAID YARVI.

“Good,” said Nothing. His voice, through the tall slot in a helmet that hid most of his face, rang with metal.

“Good,” said the two Inglings together, one of them spinning a great ax about in his fists as though it were a toy.

“Good,” murmured Jaud, but he looked far from happy. Uncomfortable in his borrowed war-gear, and more uncomfortable still at the sight of his brothers-in-arms, squatting in the deep shadows of the elf-tunnel.

Honestly, they inspired scant confidence in Yarvi. It was a company of horribles his mother’s gold had brought to his cause. Every land about the Shattered Sea-and some much further flung-had contributed a couple of its worst sons. There were rogues and cut-throats, sea-raiders and convicts, some with their crimes tattooed on their foreheads. One with an always-weeping eye had a face scrawled blue with them. Men without king or honor. Men without conscience or cause. Not to mention three fearsome Shend women, bristling with blades and muscled like masons, who took great delight in baring teeth filed to wicked points at anyone who glanced their way.

“Not the first folk I’d pick to trust my life to,” murmured Rulf, carefully averting his eyes.

“What can you think about a cause,” muttered Jaud, “when all the decent folk stand on the other side?”

“Many tasks call for decent folk.” Nothing twisted his helmet carefully back and forth. “The murder of a king is not one such.”

“This is no murder,” growled Yarvi. “And Odem no true king.”

“Shhh,” said Sumael, eyes rolling to the ceiling.

Faint sounds were leaking through the rock. Shouting, perhaps, the rattle of arms. The very faintest whiff of alarm.

“They know our friends have arrived.”

Yarvi swallowed a surge of nerves. “To your places.”

Their plans were well rehearsed. Rulf took a dozen men skilled with bows. Each of the Inglings took a dozen more to hiding places from which they could quickly reach the yard. The dozen that remained crept up the winding stair after Yarvi and Nothing. Towards the chain room above the citadel’s one entrance. Towards the Screaming Gate.

“Have care,” whispered Yarvi, pausing at the hidden door, though his throat was almost too tight to force words through. “The men in there aren’t our enemies-”

“They will do for today,” said Nothing. “And Mother War hates care.” He kicked the door wide and ducked through.

“Damn it!” hissed Yarvi, scrambling after.

The chain room was dim, light leaking in from narrow windows, the rumble of thumping boots echoing loud from the passageway below. Two men sat at a table. One turned, smile vanishing as he saw Nothing’s drawn sword.

“Who are-”

Steel flashed through a strip of light and his head came off with a wet click, spinning into a corner. Ridiculous, it seemed, a mummer’s joke at a spring fair, but no children laughed now. Nothing stepped past the slumping body, caught the other man under his arm as he rose and slid the sword through his chest. He gave a ragged gasp, pawed towards the table where an ax lay.

Nothing pushed the table carefully out of reach with one boot, then pulled his sword free and lowered the man gently to sit against the wall, shuddering silently as Death eased open the Last Door for him.

“The chain room is ours.” Nothing peered through an archway at the far end, then dragged the door shut and slid the bolt.

Yarvi knelt beside the dying man. He knew him. Or had done. Ulvdem was his name. No friend of his, but not one of the worst. He had smiled once at a joke Yarvi made, and Yarvi had been glad of it.

“Did you have to kill them?”

“No.” Nothing carefully wiped clean his sword. “We could have let Odem be king.”

The hirelings were spreading out, frowning towards the centerpiece of the room, and their plan, the Screaming Gate. Its bottom was sunken in the floor and its top in the ceiling, a wall of polished copper softly gleaming, engraved with a hundred faces which snarled, screeched, howled in pain or fear or rage, flowing into each other like reflections in a pool.

Sumael stood looking at it with hands on hips. “I think I can guess now why it’s called the Screaming Gate.”

“A hideous thing to hang our hopes on,” said Jaud.

Yarvi brushed the metal with his fingertips, cold and awfully solid. “A hideous thing to have drop on your head, no doubt.” Beside the great slab, about a post carved with the names of fifteen gods, was a confusion of interlocking gears, inscribed wheels, coiled chains, that even with his minister’s eye he could not begin to fathom the workings of. In its center was a single silver pin. “This is the mechanism.”

Jaud reached towards it. “All you do is pull the pin?”

Yarvi slapped his hand away. “At the right moment! The last moment. The more of Odem’s men have gone to face Gorm the better our chances.”

“Your uncle speaks,” called Nothing from one of the narrow windows.

Yarvi eased open the shutters of another and peered down into the yard. That familiar patch of green amongst the towering gray walls, the cedar spreading its branches at one side. Men were gathered there, many hurriedly arming, many already arrayed for battle. Yarvi’s eyes widened as he took in the number. Three hundred at a guess, and he knew there would be far more making ready outside the citadel. Above them, upon the marble steps of the Godshall, in fur and silvered mail and with the King’s Circle on his brow, stood Yarvi’s uncle Odem.

“Who stands outside the walls of Thorlby now?” he was roaring at the gathered warriors. “Grom-gil-Gorm, the Breaker of Swords!”