Half a King

by Joe Abercrombie

  “The greater their numbers, the greater our glory!” shouted Nothing. The blacker their plight the happier he grew. At that moment there seemed a lot to be said for inglorious survival, but the choice was made now, if there had ever been a choice.

  No more running, no more tricks.

  Yarvi might have mouthed a dozen prayers over the last few moments, to every god, tall or small, that might be the slightest help. But now he closed his eyes and sent up one more. Perhaps he had been touched by Father Peace, but this one he sent to Mother War alone. To guard his friends, his oarmates, his family. For each in their own way had proved themselves worth saving.

  That, and to bring his enemies a red day. For Mother War likes a prayer with blood in it, that’s no secret.

  “Fight or die,” murmured Ankran, and he offered out his hand and Yarvi gave his own, useless though it was. They looked into each other’s faces, he and this man that he had hated, plotted against, seen beaten, then struggled through the wastes beside and come to understand.

  “If I don’t get glory but … the other thing,” said Ankran, “would you find a way to help my family?”

  Yarvi nodded. “I swear it.” What difference if he failed to keep a second oath, after all? He could only be damned once. “If I get the other thing …” Asking Ankran to kill his uncle seemed too high an expectation. He shrugged. “Weep me a river?”

  Ankran grinned. A shaky grin with the front teeth missing, but he managed it still, and it seemed at that moment high heroism to marvel at. “Mother Sea will rise with my tears.”

  The long silence stretched out, split into aching moments by the pounding of Yarvi’s heart.

  “What if we both die?” he whispered.

  Nothing’s grating voice came before the answer. “Ebdel Aric Shadikshirram! Welcome to my parlor!”

  “Like you, it’s a little past its best.” Her voice.

  Yarvi pressed himself to a crack in the wall, eye straining towards the archway.

  “We all are less than we used to be,” called Nothing. “You were an admiral once. Then a captain. And now—”

  “Now I am nothing, just like you.” Yarvi saw her, in the shadows of the archway, eyes gleaming as she peered in. Trying to make out what was inside, and who. “An empty jug. A broken vessel with all the hopes leaked out.” He knew she couldn’t see him, but even so he shrank away behind the crumbling elf-stone.

  “I sympathize,” called Nothing. “It hurts, to lose everything. Who knows better than I?”

  “And what do you think the sympathy of nothing for nothing is worth?”

  Nothing laughed. “Nothing.”

  “Who’s with you in there? That lying little bitch who used to cap my mastheads? That sneaking maggot with the turnip for a hand?”

  “I have a higher opinion of them than you, but, no. They went on ahead. I am alone.”

  Shadikshirram barked a laugh at that, and as she leaned forward into the archway Yarvi saw the glimmer of drawn steel. “No, you’re not. But you soon will be.” He peered up towards the tower, saw the curve of Rulf’s bow, the string full drawn. But Shadikshirram was too canny to offer him a shot. “I am too merciful! That has always been my fault. I should have killed you years ago.”

  “You can try today. Twice we have met before in battle, but this time I—”

  “Tell it to my dogs.” And Shadikshirram gave a shrill whistle.

  Men spilled through the archway. Or things that looked like men. The Banyas. Wild and ragged shadows, glimpses of white faces gaping, studs of amber and bone and bared teeth shining, weapons of polished rock and walrus tooth and whale jaw. They screeched and gibbered, whooped and wailed, mad sounds, like beasts, like devils, as if that archway was a gate to hell and what lay beyond was vomiting into the world.

  The foremost dropped gurgling with one of Rulf’s arrows in his chest but the others plunged into the ruin and Yarvi stumbled from the crack as though slapped. The urge to run was almost more than he could stand, but he felt Ankran’s hand on his shoulder then, and stood, shaking like a leaf, every breath a wheezing whimper.

  But he stood.

  The screaming started. Crashes, the sounds of steel, of rage, of pain, almost worse for not being able to see who made them, or why. He heard the shrieking of the Banyas, but more horrible still was Nothing’s voice. A bubbling moan, a whispering sigh, a jagged growl. The rattle of final breath.

  Or could it be laughter?

  “Do we help?” whispered Yarvi, though he doubted he could move his rooted feet.

  “He said wait.” Ankran’s crooked face was chalk-white. “Should we wait?”

  Yarvi turned to look at him, and over his shoulder saw a figure drop from the wall.

  He was more boy than man, hardly older than Yarvi. One of the sailors from the South Wind. Yarvi had seen him laughing on the rigging, but had never known his name. It seemed a little late for introductions now.

  “There,” he croaked, and Ankran turned just as another man dropped down. Another of the sailors, bigger, bearded, and he held a mace in his hand, its heavy head spiked with steel. Yarvi felt his eyes drawn to the awful weight of that weapon, wondering what it might do to his skull, swung in anger. The man smiled as though guessing his thoughts, then leaped at Ankran, the two of them going down and rolling in a snarling tangle.

  Yarvi knew he had a debt to pay, knew he should plunge to help his friend, his shoulder-man, but instead he turned to face the lad, as if they were couples pairing off at a harvest dance, somehow sensing who was their proper partner.

  Like dancers they circled, knives held out before them, prodding at the air as if testing for the right bit of it. They circled, circled, the snarling and snapping of Ankran and the bearded man ignored, their struggle for life and death dismissed in the pressing need to survive the next few moments. Beyond the dirt and the bared teeth, he looked scared, this lad. Almost as scared as Yarvi felt. They circled, circled, eyes flickering between the glinting knife and—

  The lad darted forward, stabbing, and Yarvi stumbled back, caught his heel on a root and only just kept his balance. The boy came at him again but Yarvi slipped away, cut at nothing and made the lad totter against the wall.

  Could it really be one of them had to kill the other? To end everything he was, everything he might ever be?

  So it seemed. But it was hard to see the glory in it.

  The boy lunged again and Yarvi saw the knife flash through a shaft of daylight. By some dim instinct of the training square he caught it on his own, gasping, blades scraping. The lad crashed into him with a shoulder and Yarvi fell against the wall.

  They spat and snarled in each other’s faces, close enough that Yarvi could see the black pores on the lad’s nose, the red veins in the whites of his bulging eyes, close enough that Yarvi could have stuck his tongue out and licked him.

  They strained, grunting, trembling, and Yarvi knew he was the weaker. He tried to push his finger into the lad’s face but his crooked wrist was caught, twisted away. The blades scraped again and Yarvi felt a burning cut on the back of his hand, felt the point of the knife brush his stomach, cold through his clothes.

  “No,” he whispered. “Please.”

  Then something scratched Yarvi’s cheek and the pressure was gone. The lad tottered back, lifting a trembling hand to his throat, and Yarvi saw an arrow there, its dripping head toward him, a line of blood running down the lad’s neck into his collar. His face was going pink, cheeks quivering as he dropped to his knees.

  Through a notch in the crumbling elf-wall behind him Yarvi saw Rulf squatting on top of the tower, nocking another arrow to his bow. The lad’s face was turning purple and he gulped and clucked—cursing Yarvi, or begging him for help, or asking the gods for mercy, but all he could say was blood.

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Yarvi.

  “You will be.”

  Shadikshirram stood a few strides away in a fallen archway.

  “I thought you were a clever boy,” s
he said. “But you turn out something of a disappointment.”

  Her finery was crusted with mud, and her hair fell across her face in a filthy tangle, the pins lost, one fever-bright eye showing in its sunken socket. But the long, curved, blade of her sword was deadly clean.

  “Only the latest in a lengthy string of them.” She kicked the dying lad onto his back and stepped over his jerking legs. Strutted, strolled, without fuss or hurry. Just as she had used to walk on the deck of the South Wind. “But I suppose I have brought it on myself.”

  Yarvi edged back, crouching, breathing hard, eyes darting between the ruined walls for some way out, but there was none.

  He would have to fight her.

  “I have too soft a heart for this hard world of ours.” She glanced sideways, towards the notch Rulf’s arrow had come through, then ducked smoothly under it. “That has always been my one weakness.”

  Yarvi scrambled back through the rubble, the grip of the knife sweaty in his palm. He could hear screams, the sounds of fighting. The others, more than busy with their own final bloody steps through the Last Door. He snatched a glance over his shoulder, saw the place where the broken elf-walls ended at the brink, sapling trees spreading their branches into empty air above the river.

  “I cannot tell you how it pleases me to have the chance to say goodbye.” Shadikshirram smiled. “Goodbye.”

  No doubt she was far better armed than him. And taller, stronger, more skillful, more experienced. Not to mention her considerable advantage in number of hands. And in spite of her protestations he did not think she would be too weighed down by softness of heart.

  There is always a way, his mother used to say, but where would he find a way to beat Shadikshirram? He, who in a hundred shameful showings in the training square had never won a match?

  She raised her brows, as though she had been working at the same sum and happened upon the same answer. “Perhaps you should just jump.”

  She took another step, slowly herding him backwards, the point of her sword glinting as it passed through a chink of sunlight. He was running out of ground, could sense the space opening behind him, could feel the high breeze on the back of his neck, could hear the angry river chewing at the rocks far below.

  “Jump, cripple.”

  He edged back again and heard stones clattering into the void, the verge dissolving at his heels.

  “Jump!” screamed Shadikshirram, spit flecking from her teeth.

  And Yarvi caught movement at the corner of his eye. Ankran’s pale face sliding around the crumbling wall, creeping up with his tongue pressed into the gap in his bared teeth and his club raised. Yarvi couldn’t stop his eyes flickering across.

  Shadikshirram’s forehead creased.

  She spun quick as a cat, twisted away from the moose-bone shovel so that it whistled past her shoulder and without much effort, without much sound, slid her sword straight through Ankran’s chest.

  He gave a shuddering breath, eyes bulging.

  Shadikshirram cursed, pulling back her sword-arm.

  Mercy is weakness. Yarvi’s father used to say. Mercy is failure.

  In an instant he was on her. He drove his claw of a hand under her armpit, pinned her sword, his knobbly palm pushing up into her throat, and with his right fist he hit her, punched her, dug at her.

  They drooled and spat and snorted, whimpering, squealing, lurching, her hair in his mouth. She twisted and growled and he clung to her, punching, punching. She tore free and her elbow caught him in the nose with a sick crunch, snapped his head up and the ground hit him in the back.

  Calls far away. The echo of steel.

  A distant battle. Something important.

  Had to stand. Could not let his mother down.

  Had to be a man. His uncle would be waiting.

  He tried to shake the dizziness away, the sky flashed as he rolled over.

  His arm flopped out into space, black river far below, white water on rocks.

  Like the sea beneath the tower of Amwend. The sea he had plunged into.

  Breath whooped in as he came back to himself. He scrabbled from the crumbling brink, head spinning, face throbbing, heels clumsy, mouth salty with blood.

  He saw Ankran, twisted on his back, arms wide. Yarvi gave a whimper, scrambling towards him, reaching out. But his trembling fingertips stopped short of Ankran’s blood-soaked shirt. The Last Door had opened for him. He was past help.

  Shadikshirram lay on the rubble beside his body, trying to sit up and looking greatly surprised that she could not. The fingers of her left hand were tangled with the grip of her sword. Her right was clasped against her side. She peeled it away and her palm was full of blood. Yarvi blinked down at his own right hand. The knife was still in it, the blade slick, his fingers, his wrist, his arm red to the elbow.

  “No,” she snarled. She tried to lift the sword but the weight of it was too much.

  “Not like this. Not here.” Her bloody lips twisted as she looked up at him. “Not you.”

  “Here,” said Yarvi. “Me. What was it you said? You may need two hands to fight someone. But only one to stab them in the back.”

  And he realized then that he had not lost all those times in the training square because he lacked the skill, or the strength, or even a hand. He had lacked the will. And somewhere on the South Wind, somewhere in the trackless ice, somewhere in this ancient ruin, he had found it.

  “But I commanded the ships of the empress,” Shadikshirram croaked, her whole right side dark with blood. “I was a favoured lover … of Duke Mikedas. The world was at my feet.”

  “That was long ago.”

  “You’re right. You’re a clever boy. I am too soft.” Her head dropped back and she stared at the sky. “That’s … my one …”

  The hall of the elf-ruin was scattered with bodies.

  The Banyas had been devils from a distance. Close up they were wretched. Small and scrawny as children, bundles of rags, decked with whalebone holy signs that had been no shield against Nothing’s pitiless steel.

  One that still breathed reached towards Yarvi, his other hand clutching at an arrow lodged in his ribs. His eyes held no hate, only doubt, and fear, and pain. Just as Ankran’s had done when Shadikshirram killed him.

  Only people, then, who Death ushered through the Last Door like any others.

  He tried to make a word as Nothing walked up to him. The same word, over and over, shaking his head.

  Nothing put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh.” And he stabbed the Banya through the heart.

  “Victory!” roared Rulf as he leapt the last distance to the ground. “I never saw swordwork like it!”

  “Nor I such archery!” said Nothing, folding Rulf in a crushing embrace. The closest of friends now, united in slaughter.

  Sumael stood in an archway, gripping one shoulder, blood streaking her arm to the fingertips. “Where’s Ankran?” she asked.

  Yarvi shook his head. He didn’t dare speak in case he was sick. Or started crying. Or maybe both at once. With the pain and the fading fury. With relief that he was alive. With sorrow that his friend was not. Sorrow that weighed heavier with every moment.

  Jaud sunk down onto a fallen lump of elf-stone, and let the scarred shield drop from his arm, and Sumael put one bloody hand on his shaking shoulder.

  “I freely acknowledge now that Gettlanders are the best!” frothed Rulf.

  “Just as I begin to doubt it!” Nothing frowned over. “I was expecting Shadikshirram.”

  Yarvi looked down at her curved sword in his hand, as if for evidence. “I killed her.”

  Perhaps he should have fallen to his knees and given thanks to the gods for their unlikely victory, but the red harvest sword-hacked and arrow-stuck about that ruin did not look like a thing to give thanks for.

  So he sat down beside the others, and picked the crusted blood from under his broken nose.

  He was the King of Gettland, after all, was he not?

  He had knelt enough.
/>   28.

  BURNING THE DEAD

  The dead burned.

  The flames that wreathed them made strange shadows flow across the walls of the elf-ruin. They sent a roiling of smoke into the pinking sky, the proper thing to thank Mother War for their victory. So Nothing said, and few were on such friendly terms with her as he. If Yarvi squinted hard enough he fancied he could still see the bones in the fire, of the nine dead Banyas and the three dead sailors, of Ankran and Shadikshirram.

  “I will miss him,” said Yarvi, struggling to hold back his tears.

  “We all will,” said Jaud, wiping his on the heel of his hand.

  Nothing let his spill freely down his scarred cheeks as he nodded at the flames. “I will miss her.”

  Rulf snorted. “I bloody won’t.”

  “Then you are more a fool than I first took you for. The gods give no finer gift than a good enemy. Like a good whetstone on the blade,” and Nothing frowned down at his sword, clean of blood though his fingernails were still crusted with it, and gave the steel another shrieking lick with his stone. “A good enemy keeps you ever sharp.”

  “I’m happier blunt,” grunted Jaud.

  “Pick your enemies more carefully than your friends,” Nothing was muttering at the flames. “They will be with you longer.”

  “Don’t worry.” Rulf clapped Nothing on the shoulder. “If life has taught me one thing it’s that your next enemy is never far away.”

  “You can always make enemies of your friends,” said Sumael, pulling Shadikshirram’s coat tight about her shoulders. “Making friends of your enemies is harder labor.”

  Yarvi knew that to be true enough. “Do you think this is what Ankran would have wanted?” he muttered.

  “To be dead?” said Jaud. “I doubt it.”

  “To be burned,” said Yarvi.

  Jaud glanced over at Nothing, and shrugged. “Once the men of violence get a notion it is hard to put them off. Especially when they still have the smell of blood in their noses.”

  “And why make the attempt?” Sumael scratched again at the dirty bandages Yarvi had bound around her cut arm. “These are the dead. Their complaints are easily brushed aside.”