Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

“You’re mad!” spat Odem, blood on his lips.

But Uthil only smiled the wider. “How could it be otherwise? They promise a hundredth victory will set you free, but I was tricked and sold again.” Odem circled him, stalking in a hunter’s crouch, shield up, sweat across his forehead from the weight of his silvered mail. Uthil stood tall, sword swinging loose and easy in his hand, scarcely even breathing hard. “I was a war-slave, then an oar-slave, then … nothing. A dozen bitter years I spent upon my knees. It is a good place to think.”

“Think on this!” Odem spat blood as he came again, feinted a thrust and made it into a hissing, angling cut. But Uthil steered it wide to crash into the stone of the floor, striking sparks and filling the Godshall with ear-splitting echoes.

Odem gasped, stumbled, shuddering with the impact, and Uthil stepped away and with a terrible precision slashed him across the arm, just above his shield’s garnet-studded rim.

Odem gave a howl, the gaudy thing sliding from his limp left hand and the blood already tapping on it from his dangling fingertips. He looked up at Uthil, eyes wide. “I was the best among the three of us! I should have been king! Uthrik was nothing but violence, you nothing but vanity!”

“So true.” Uthil frowned as he wiped both sides of his sword carefully on his sleeve. “How the gods have punished me for it. The lessons they have taught me, Odem. And now they have sent me to teach one to you. They do not make the best man king, but the first-born.” He nodded towards Yarvi. “And our nephew was right about one thing. They will not suffer a usurper to sit in the Black Chair for long.” He bared his teeth and hissed out the words. “It is mine .”

He sprang forward and Odem met him snarling. Blades clashed, once, twice, faster than Yarvi could follow. The third blow Uthil slid beneath, slashing his brother’s leg as he danced away and making him roar again. Odem winced, knee buckling, only staying upright by using his sword as a crutch.

“The Last Door opens for you,” said Uthil.

Odem found his balance, chest heaving, and Yarvi saw the silvered mail on his leg turned red, fast-flowing blood working its way out from his boot down the cracks between the stones.

“I know it.” Odem lifted his chin, and Yarvi saw a tear leak from the corner of his eye and streak his face. “It has stood open at my shoulder all these years.” And with a sound between a snort and a sob, he tossed his sword down to clatter into the shadows. “Ever since that day in the storm.”

The blood surged in Yarvi’s ears as Uthil lifted his sword high, blade catching the light and its edge glittering cold.

“Just answer me one question …” breathed Odem, eyes fixed above him on his death.

For a moment Uthil hesitated. The sword wavered, drifted down. One brow twitched up, questioning. “Speak, brother.”

And Yarvi saw Odem’s hand shifting, subtly shifting around his back, fingers curling towards the hilt of a dagger at his belt. A long dagger with a pommel of black jet. The same one he had showed to Yarvi on the roof of Amwend’s tower.

We must do what is best for Gettland.

Yarvi sprang down the steps in one bound.

He might not have been the sharpest pupil in the training square, but he knew how to stab a man. He caught Odem under the arm and the curved blade of Shadikshirram’s sword slid through his mail and out of his chest with hardly a sound.

“Whatever your question,” Yarvi hissed into his ear, “steel is my answer!” And he stepped back, ripping the blade free.

Odem gave a bubbling gasp. He took one drunken step and dropped onto his knees. He slowly turned his head, and for a moment, over his shoulder, his disbelieving eye met Yarvi’s. Then he toppled sideways. He lay still on the sacred stones, at the foot of the dais, in the sight of the gods, in the center of that circle of men, and Yarvi and Uthil were left staring at one another over his body.

“It seems there is a question between us, nephew,” said his one surviving uncle, that one brow still raised. “Shall steel be our answer?”

Yarvi’s eyes flickered up to the Black Chair, standing silent above them.

Hard it might be, but harder than the benches of the South Wind ? Cold it might be, but colder than the snows of the utmost north? He did not fear it any more. But did he truly want it? He remembered his father sitting in it, tall and grim, his scarred hand never far from his sword. A doting son to Mother War, just as a king of Gettland should be. Just as Uthil was.

The statues of the Tall Gods gazed down, as though awaiting a decision, and Yarvi looked from one stony face to another, and took a long breath. Mother Gundring always said he had been touched by Father Peace, and he knew she was right.

He had never really wanted the Black Chair. Why fight for it? Why die for it? So Gettland could have half a king?

He made of his fist an open hand, and let Shadikshirram’s sword drop rattling to the bloody stones.

“I have my vengeance,” he said. “The Black Chair is yours.” And he slowly sank to his knees before Uthil, and bowed his head. “My king.”

Grom-gil-Gorm, King of Vansterland, bloodiest son of Mother War, Breaker of Swords and maker of orphans, strode into the Godshall with his minister and ten of his most battle-tested warriors at his back, huge left hand slack upon the pommel of his huge sword.

He had a new white fur about his heavy shoulders, Yarvi noticed, and a new jewel on one great forefinger, and the triple-looped chain about his neck had lengthened by a few pommels. Mementos of his bloody jaunt through Gettland, at Yarvi’s invitation, stolen from the innocent along with their lives, no doubt.

But the hugest thing of all, as he stepped between the scarred doors and into the house of his enemy, was his smile. The smile of a conqueror, who sees all his plans ripen, all his adversaries brought low, all the dice come up his number. The smile of a man greatly favoured by the gods.

Then he saw Yarvi standing on the steps of the dais between his mother and Mother Gundring, and his smile buckled. And then he saw who sat in the Black Chair, and it crumpled entire. He came to an uncertain halt in the center of that wide floor, on about the spot where Odem’s blood still stained the cracks in the stones, surrounded on all sides by the glowering great of Gettland.

Then he scratched at one side of his head, and said, “this is not the king we expected.”

“Many here might say so,” said Yarvi. “But it is the rightful one, even so. King Uthil, my eldest uncle, has returned.”

“Uthil.” Mother Scaer gave a hiss through her teeth. “The proud Gettlander. I thought I knew that face.”

“You might have mentioned it.” Gorm frowned around at the gathered warriors and wives, keys and cloak-buckles all aglitter in the shadows, and heaved up a weighty sigh. “I’ve an unhappy sense you will not be kneeling before me as my vassal.”

“I have spent long enough on my knees.” Uthil stood, his sword still cradled in his arms. That same plain sword he had taken up from the listing deck of the South Wind and polished until the blade glittered like moonlight on the chill sea. “If anyone kneels it should be you. You stand on my land, in my hall, before my chair.”

Gorm lifted the toes of his boots and peered down at them. “So it would seem. But I have always been stiff in the joints. I must decline.”

“A shame. Perhaps I can unstiffen you with my sword when I visit you in Vulsgard in the summer.”

Gorm’s face hardened. “Oh, I can guarantee any Gettlander who crosses the border a warm welcome.”