Half a King

by Joe Abercrombie

  Nor did it to Yarvi. His relief was already turning to dread as he took in the width of the Rangheld, the steep far bank perhaps twice bowshot away, the river high with meltwater from the burning land at their backs. On the black surface patterns of frothing white showed swift currents and ripping eddies and hinted at hidden rocks, deadly as traitor’s knives.

  “Can you build a raft to cross this?” he muttered.

  “My father was the foremost shipwright in the First of Cities,” said Sumael, peering into the woods. “He could pick the best keel from a forest with one look.”

  “Doubt we’ll have time for a carved figurehead,” said Yarvi.

  “Maybe we could mount you on the front,” said Ankran.

  “Six small trunks for the raft, then a larger one cut in half for crossbeams.” Sumael hurried to a nearby fir, running her hand up the bark. “This will do for one. Jaud, you hold it, I’ll chop.”

  “I’ll keep watch for our old mistress and her friends.” Rulf shrugged the bow from his shoulder and turned back the way they came. “How far back do we reckon ’em now?”

  “Two hours if we’re lucky, and we generally aren’t.” Sumael slid out her hatchet. “Yarvi, find the rope, then look for some wood that might make a paddle. Nothing, when we’ve felled the trunks, you trim the branches.”

  Nothing hugged his sword tight. “This is no saw. I will need the blade keen when Shadikshirram comes.”

  “We hope to be long gone by then,” said Yarvi, too much water sloshing in his aching belly as he rooted through the packs.

  Ankran held out his hand. “If you won’t use it give me the sword—”

  Faster than seemed possible the immaculate point was grazing Ankran’s stubbled throat. “Try to take it and I will give it to you point first, storekeeper,” murmured Nothing.

  “Time presses,” hissed Sumael through her gritted teeth, sending splinters flying from the base of her chosen tree with short, quick blows. “Use your sword or snap them off in your arse, but trim the bloody branches. And leave some long so we have something to hold on to.”

  Soon Yarvi’s right hand was cut and dirty from dragging lengths of timber, his left wrist, which he hooked underneath them, riddled with splinters. Nothing’s sword was slathered in sap, Jaud’s fuzzy growth of hair was full of wood dust, Sumael’s right palm was bloody from wielding the hatchet and still she chopped, chopped, chopped.

  They sweated and strained, snapping at each other through bared teeth, not knowing when the Banyas’ dogs would be snapping at them instead, but knowing it could not be long.

  Jaud heaved up the trunks with a grunting effort, veins bulging from his thick neck, and nimble as a dressmaker sewing a hem Sumael weaved the rope in and out while Nothing hauled out the slack. Yarvi stood and watched, startling at every sound and, not for the first or the last time, wishing he had two good hands.

  Considering the tools they had and the time they didn’t, their raft was a noble effort. Considering the surging torrent they would have to navigate, it was a terrifying one—hacked and splintered timbers bound with a hairy tangle of wool rope, their moose-shoulder shovel as one paddle, Jaud’s shield as another, and a vaguely spoon-shaped branch Yarvi had found as a third.

  With arms folded about his sword, Nothing gave voice to Yarvi’s thoughts. “I do not care for the look of this raft and this river together.”

  The fibres in Sumael’s neck stood out starkly as she dragged at the knots one more time. “All it has to do is float.”

  “No doubt it will, but will we still be on it?”

  “That depends how well you hold on.”

  “And what will you say when it breaks up and floats out to sea in pieces?”

  “I imagine I’ll be forever silent by then, but with the satisfaction of knowing as I drown that you were killed first by Shadikshirram, here, on this forsaken bank.” Sumael raised one brow at him. “Or are you coming with us?”

  Nothing frowned at them, then off into the trees, weighing his sword in one hand, then he cursed and threw his weight in between Jaud and Yarvi. The raft began to grind slowly towards the water, their boots sliding in the shingle. Yarvi slipped into the mud in panic as someone came springing from the bushes.

  Ankran, his eyes wild. “They’re coming!”

  “Where’s Rulf?” asked Yarvi.

  “Just behind me! This is it?”

  “No, this is a joke,” hissed Sumael. “I have a war galley of ninety oars hidden behind that tree.”

  “Only asking.”

  “Stop asking and help us launch the bastard!”

  Ankran flung his weight to the raft and with all of them pushing it slithered down the bank into the river. Sumael dragged herself on, her kicking foot catching Yarvi in the jaw and making him bite his tongue. He was up to his waist in water, thought he heard shouting behind him in the trees. Nothing was on now: he seized the wrist of Yarvi’s useless hand and hauled him up, one of the torn branches gouging his chest. Ankran snatched their packs from the beach and started to fling them onto the raft.

  “Gods!” Rulf burst from the trees, cheeks puffing with every huge breath. Yarvi could see shadows in the woods beyond him, could hear wild calls in a language he did not know. Then the barking of dogs.

  “Run, you old fool!” he screeched. Rulf charged down the shingle and sloshed out into the water and between them Yarvi and Ankran hauled him aboard while Jaud and Nothing began to paddle like madmen.

  The only effect was that they began to slowly spin.

  “Keep us straight!” snapped Sumael as the raft picked up speed.

  “I’m trying!” growled Jaud, digging away with his shield and showering them all with water.

  “Try harder! Do you know any decent oarsmen?”

  “Do you have any decent oars?”

  “Shut your mouth and paddle!” snarled Yarvi, water washing across the raft and soaking his knees. Dogs spilled from the forest—huge dogs, the size of sheep they seemed, all snarling teeth and drool, bounding up and down the shingle, barking.

  Then men came. Yarvi could not have said how many in that snatched glance over his shoulder. Ragged shapes among the trees, kneeling on the bank, the curve of a bow.

  “Get down!” roared Jaud, clambering to the back of the raft and huddling behind his shield.

  Yarvi heard the bowstrings, saw the black splinters drifting up. He crouched, fascinated, his eyes fixed on them. They seemed to take an age to fall, each with a gentle whisper. One plopped in the water a couple of strides away. Then there were two quiet clicks as arrows stuck into Jaud’s shield. A fourth lodged shuddering in the raft beside Yarvi’s knee. A hand’s width to one side and it would have been through his thigh. He blinked at it, mouth open.

  There the difference between one side of the Last Door and the other.

  He felt Nothing’s hand at the scruff of his neck, forcing him to the edge of the raft. “Paddle!”

  More men were spilling from the trees. There might have been a score of them. There might have been more.

  “Thanks for the arrows!” Rulf bellowed at the bank.

  One of the archers let fly another but they were moving out into swifter water now and his arrow fell well short. A figure stood with hands on hips, looking after them. A tall figure, with a curved sword, and Yarvi caught a glimpse of gleaming crystal on a dangling belt.

  “Shadikshirram,” murmured Nothing. He had been right. She had been tracking them all along. And though Yarvi did not hear her make a sound, could not even see her face over that distance, he knew then she would not stop.

  Not ever.

  26.

  ONLY A DEVIL

  They might have escaped a fight with Shadikshirram, but soon enough the river was giving them more fight than even Nothing could have hoped for.

  It showered them with cold water, soaked them and all their gear right through, made the raft buck and twist like an unbroken horse. Rocks battered at them, overhanging trees clutched at them, caugh
t Ankran’s hood and might have plucked him from the raft had Yarvi not been clinging to his shoulder.

  The banks grew steeper, higher, narrowed, until they were hurtling down a rocky gorge between broken cliffs, water spurting up through the gaps between the logs, their raft spinning like a leaf in spite of Jaud’s effort to use his arrow-stuck shield as a rudder. The river soaked the ropes and tore at the knots and began to work them loose, the raft flexing with the current, threatening to rip apart all together.

  Yarvi could not hear Sumael’s screamed orders over the thunder of the river, and he gave up all pretense of influencing the outcome, closed his eyes and clung on for his life, good hand and bad hand burning with the clenched effort, one moment cursing the gods for putting him on this raft, the next begging them to get him off it with his life. There was a wrench, a drop, the raft tipped under Yarvi’s knees, and he squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the end.

  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.

  “You and I,” said Yarvi, taking it from him and gripping it tight. He would never have believed when he first looked on the storekeeper in the stinking slave-pits of Vulsgard that he might one day stand as his shoulder-man, but he found in spite of his fear he was proud to do it.

  “With a good bloody ending this journey will make a fine song, I think.” Nothing held his free arm out, fingers spread, towards the archway through which Shadikshirram and her Banyas would no doubt soon be spilling, fixed on murder. “A band of brave companions escorting the rightful king of Gettland to his stolen chair! A last stand amidst the elf-ruins of yore! You cannot expect all the heroes to survive a good song, you know.”

  “He’s a damn devil,” murmured Sumael, jaw muscles clenching and unclenching as she weighed her hatchet in her hand.

  “When you’re in hell,” murmured Yarvi, “only a devil can point the way out.”

  27.

  THE LAST STAND

  Rulf’s voice split the quiet. “They’re coming!” And it felt as if Yarvi’s guts would drop out of his arse.

  “How many?” called Nothing eagerly.

  A pause. “Might be twenty!”

  “Gods,” whispered Ankran, chewing at his lip.

  Until that moment there had been the hope that some might have turned back or drowned in the river but, as with so many of Yarvi’s hopes, it had withered before bearing fruit.