Half a King

by Joe Abercrombie

  “You fought well, Yarvi,” called Nothing. “Like a king indeed.”

  “Does a king let his friends die for him?” Yarvi glanced guiltily across at Shadikshirram’s sword, and remembered the feeling, punching, punching, the red knife in his red hand, and shivered under his stolen cloak. “Does a king stab women in the back?”

  The tears were still wet on Nothing’s wasted face. “A good one sacrifices everything to win, and stabs who he must however he can. The great warrior is the one who still breathes when the crows feast. The great king is the one who watches the carcasses of his enemies burn. Let Father Peace spill tears over the methods. Mother War smiles upon results.”

  “That’s what my uncle would have said.”

  “A wise man, then, and a worthy enemy. Perhaps you will stab him in the back and we can watch him burn together.”

  Yarvi rubbed gently at the swollen bridge of his nose. The thought of more corpses on fire gave him scant comfort, no matter who they belonged to. Over and over the moment went through his mind, his eyes flicking to Ankran, giving him away, Shadikshirram spinning, the blade darting out. Over and over he sorted through the things he might have done differently, the things that might have left his friend alive, but he knew it was all wasted effort.

  There was no going back.

  Sumael turned, frowning into the night. “Did anyone hear—”

  “Hold!” echoed a voice from the darkness, harsh as a whip cracks. Yarvi twisted about, heart leaping, and saw a tall warrior step through the archway. Huge, he seemed, in the light of the corpse-fire, bright helm and mail, strong sword and shield all gleaming.

  “Give up your weapons!” came another call and a second man slipped from the shadows, a drawn bow levelled, long braids hanging about his face. A Vansterman, then. Others came after, and more, and within a breath or two a dozen warriors had formed a crescent about them.

  Yarvi had not thought his spirits could drop further. Now he discovered the scale of his error.

  Rulf’s eyes drifted to his bow, well out of reach, and he slumped back on one elbow. “Where do Vanstermen come on your list of the most worthy?”

  Nothing nodded at them appraisingly. “In these numbers, high enough.”

  What strength the gods had given Yarvi he had more than used up that day. He poked Shadikshirram’s sword away with his toe. Jaud raised his empty hands. Sumael held up her hatchet between finger and thumb and tossed it into the shadows.

  “What about you, old man?” asked the first of the Vanstermen.

  “I am considering my position.” Nothing gave his sword another grating stroke with the stone. It might as well have been applied directly to Yarvi’s nerves.

  “If steel is the answer they have a great deal of it,” he muttered.

  “Put it down.” The second Vansterman full drew his bow. “Or we’ll burn your corpse with the rest.”

  Nothing stabbed his sword point down into the earth, and sighed. “He makes a persuasive case.”

  Three of the Vanstermen started forward to gather the weapons and search them for more while their captain watched. “What brings you five to Vansterland?”

  “We are travellers …” said Yarvi, as he watched one of the warriors shake out the sorry contents of his pack. “On our way to Vulsgard.”

  The archer raised his brows at the pyre. “Travellers burning corpses?”

  “What is the world coming to when an honest man cannot burn corpses without suspicion?” asked Nothing.

  “We were waylaid by bandits,” ventured Yarvi, thinking as fast as he was able.

  “You should keep your country safe to travel,” said Rulf.

  “Oh, we thank you for making us safer.” The captain peered at Yarvi’s neck, then twitched Jaud’s collar back to show the scars. “Slaves.”

  “Freed men,” said Sumael. “I was their mistress. I am a merchant.” And she reached into her coat to carefully produce a crumpled piece of parchment. “My name is Ebdel Aric Shadikshirram.”

  The man frowned at the High King’s licence, but recently removed from its rightful owner’s corpse. “You are ragged for a merchant.”

  “I didn’t say I was a good one.”

  “And young,” said the captain.

  “I didn’t say I was an old one.”

  “Where is your ship?”

  “At sea.”

  “Why are you not aboard?”

  “I thought it wise to leave before it touched the bottom.”

  “A poor merchant indeed,” muttered one of the men.

  “With a cargo of lies,” said another.

  The captain shrugged. “The king can decide what to believe. Bind them.”

  “King?” asked Yarvi, as he offered his wrists.

  The man gave the thinnest of smiles. “Grom-gil-Gorm has come north to hunt.”

  So it seemed that Rulf was right. The next enemy was closer than any of them had thought.

  29.

  FLOATING TWIGS

  Yarvi was no stranger to hard men. His father had been one. His brother another. Dozens more had taken their turn in the training square each day in Thorlby. There had been hundreds gathered on the sand to see King Uthrik howed. To sail with young King Yarvi on his ill-fated raid to Amwend. Faces that smiled only in battle and hands worn to the shape of their weapons.

  But he had never seen such a gathering as Grom-gil-Gorm had brought with him to hunt.

  “I never saw so many Vanstermen in one place,” muttered Rulf. “And I spent a year in Vulsgard.”

  “An army,” grunted Nothing.

  “And an ugly one,” said Jaud.

  They bristled with weapons and puffed with menace, glared daggers and spoke swords. They wore their scars as proudly as a princess might her jewels while, by way of music, a woman’s voice shrill as a whetstone keened out a love song to Mother War, of spilled blood and notched steel and lives lost too soon.

  Into the midst of this bear pit, roped and hobbled helpless, between fires over which fresh carcasses dripped red gravy, Yarvi and his friends were herded stumbling at spearpoint.

  “If you have a plan,” hissed Sumael from the corner of her mouth, “now would be the time.”

  “I have a plan,” said Nothing.

  “Does it involve a sword?” asked Jaud.

  A pause. “All my plans do.”

  “Do you have a sword?”

  Another. “No.”

  “How will your plan work without one?” muttered Sumael.

  A third. “Death waits for us all.”

  Where this company of killers was tightest knotted Yarvi saw the outline of a great chair, and upon it a great figure with a great cup in his great fist, but instead of the fear that might once have gripped him Yarvi felt the ticklings of opportunity. Not a plan, scarcely even an idea but, as Mother Gundring used to tell him, drowning men must clutch at whatever twigs they find floating.

  “There are better things one can do with enemies than kill them,” he whispered.

  Nothing snorted. “And what would that be?”

  “Make allies of them.” And Yarvi took a deep breath and roared out, “Grom-gil-Gorm!” His voice smoked shrill and cracked and as far from kingly as could be imagined, but loud enough to be heard all about the camp, and that was what mattered. A hundred firelit faces turned towards him. “King of Vansterland! Bloodiest son of Mother War! Breaker of Swords and maker of orphans, we meet again! I—”

  A well-judged blow in the stomach drove his breath out in a mournful sigh. “Stop your tongue before I rip it out, boy!” snarled the captain, shoving Yarvi coughing onto his knees.

  But his words had their effect.

  First a heavy silence settled, then an even heavier tread approached, and finally the sing-song voice of Grom-gil-Gorm himself. “You bring guests!”

  “Though they look like beggars.” And though he had not heard it since they put the collar on him, Yarvi knew the icy tone of Mother Scaer from his dreams.

  “We
found them in the elf-ruin above the river, my king,” said the captain.

  “They do not have the look of elves,” said Gorm’s minister.

  “They were burning corpses.”

  “A noble enterprise if they are the right ones,” said Gorm. “You speak as though I know you, boy. Would you have me play a guessing game?”

  Struggling for breath to speak, Yarvi raised his head, once again taking in the boots, the belt, the thrice-looped chain, and finally far above the craggy head of the King of Vansterland, most bitter enemy to his father, his country, his people.

  “Last time we met … you offered me your knife.” And Yarvi fixed Gorm with his eye. On his knees, ragged and bloodied, beaten and bound, but fixed him still. “You told me to seek you out if I changed my mind. Would you give it to me now?”

  The King of Vansterland frowned, fingering that chain of dead men’s pommels about his trunk of a neck, and with the other hand pushed his many blades carefully into his belt. “That might not be prudent.”

  “I thought Mother War breathed on you in your crib, and it had been foreseen no man could kill you?”

  “The gods help those who help themselves.” Mother Scaer grabbed Yarvi’s jaw with bruising fingers and twisted his face into the light. “It is the cook’s boy caught at Amwend.”

  “That it is,” murmured Gorm. “But he is changed. He has a stern eye upon him now.”

  Mother Scaer narrowed her own eyes. “And you have lost the collar I gave you.”

  “It chafed. I wasn’t born to be a slave.”

  “And yet you kneel again before me,” said Gorm. “What were you born to be?”

  His men spilled lickspittle laughs, but Yarvi had been laughed at all his life and it had lost its sting.

  “The King of Gettland,” he said, and this time his voice was cold and hard as the Black Chair itself.

  “Oh, gods,” he heard Sumael breathe. “We’re dead.”

  Gorm gave a huge smile. “Odem! You are younger than I remember.”

  “I am Odem’s nephew. Uthrik’s son.”

  The captain cuffed Yarvi across the back of the head and knocked him on his broken nose. Which was particularly galling, since with hands bound he could do nothing to break his fall. “Uthrik’s son died with him!”

  “He had another son, fool!” Yarvi wriggled back onto his knees, mouth salty with blood. A taste he was tiring of.

  Fingers were twisted in Yarvi’s hair and he was dragged up. “Shall I hire him for a jester or hang him for a spy?”

  “That is not your place to decide.” Mother Scaer merely raised one finger, elf-bangles on her long arm rattling, but the captain let go as if he had been slapped. “Uthrik did have a second son. Prince Yarvi. He was training for the Ministry.”

  “But never took the test,” said Yarvi. “I took the Black Chair instead.”

  “So that the Golden Queen might keep her grip on power.”

  “Laithlin. My mother.”

  Mother Scaer considered him for a long moment, and Yarvi raised his chin and stared back in as close to a kingly manner as his bleeding nose, bound hands and stinking rags would allow. Perhaps it was enough, at least to plant the seed of doubt.

  “Free his hands.”

  Yarvi felt his ropes cut and, with a suitable sense of theatre, slowly held his left hand to the light. The muttering about the campfires at the sight of the twisted thing seemed for once most gratifying.

  “Was this what you were looking for?” he asked.

  Mother Scaer took it in hers, and turned it over, and kneaded at it with strong fingers. “If you were student to Mother Gundring, whose student was she?”

  Yarvi did not hesitate. “She was taught by Mother Wexen, then minister to King Fynn of Throvenland, now Grandmother of the Ministry and first servant of the High King himself.”

  “How many doves does she keep?”

  “Three dozen, and one more with a black patch upon its brow that will carry news to Skekenhouse when Death opens the Last Door for her.”

  “Of what wood is the door to the King of Gettland’s bedchamber?”

  Yarvi smiled. “There is no door, for the king is one with the land and its people, and can have no secrets from them.”

  The look of disbelief on Mother Scaer’s gaunt face was the source of much rare satisfaction for Yarvi.

  Grom-gil-Gorm raised one crag of brow. “He spoke pure answers?”

  “He did,” murmured his minister.

  “Then … this crippled pup is truly Yarvi, son of Uthrik and Laithlin, the rightful king of Gettland?”

  “So it would appear.”

  “It’s true?” croaked Rulf.

  “It’s true,” breathed Sumael.

  Gorm was busy laughing. “Then this has been my best hunting trip in many long years! Send a bird, Mother Scaer, and find out what King Odem will pay us for the return of his wayward nephew.” The King of Vansterland began to turn away.

  Yarvi stopped him with a snort. “The great and terrible Grom-gil-Gorm! In Gettland they call you a madman, drunk on blood. In Throvenland they call you a savage king of a savage land. In Skekenhouse, in the elf-built halls of the High King … why, there you hardly warrant mention.”

  Yarvi heard Rulf give a worried grunt, the captain growling with suppressed fury, but Gorm only stroked thoughtfully at his beard. “If you aim to flatter me you miss the mark. Your point?”

  “Would you prove them right, and make so small a profit from the golden chance the gods have sent you?”

  The King of Vansterland raised a brow at his minister. “My ears are open to greater gains.”

  Sell them what they want, Yarvi’s mother always said, not what you have. “Every spring you gather your warriors and raid across the border into Gettland.”

  “It has been known.”

  “And this spring?”

  Gorm pursed his lips. “A small jaunt perhaps. Mother War demands vengeance for your uncle’s outrages at Amwend.”

  Yarvi thought it best not to point out that he had been king at the start of those outrages if not their end. “All I ask is that you push a little further this year. All the way to the walls of Thorlby itself.”

  Mother Scaer hissed her disgust. “Only that?”

  But Gorm’s curiosity was tickled. “What would I gain for granting such a favor?”

  Proud men like Yarvi’s dead father, and his murdered brother, and his drowned Uncle Uthil, would no doubt have spat their last breath in Grom-gil-Gorm’s face rather than sought his help. But Yarvi had no pride. It had been shamed out of him by his father. Tricked out of him by Odem. Beaten out of him on the South Wind. Frozen out of him in the wasteland.

  He had been kneeling all his life, to kneel a little longer was no hardship.

  “Help me take back my throne, Grom-gil-Gorm, and I shall kneel in Odem’s blood before you as King of Gettland, your vassal and subject.”

  Nothing leaned close, hissing angrily through clenched teeth, “Too high a price!”

  Yarvi ignored him. “Uthil, Uthrik and Odem. The brothers that have been your great enemies shall all three be gone through the Last Door and around the Shattered Sea you shall stand second in power only to the High King himself. Perhaps … in time … higher yet.”

  The more powerful a man is, Mother Gundring always used to say, the more he craves power.

  Gorm’s voice was slightly hoarse. “That would be a fine thing.”

  “A fine thing indeed,” agreed Mother Scaer, her eyes narrower than ever as she glared at Yarvi. “If it could be managed.”

  “Only give me and my companions passage to Thorlby and I will make the attempt.”

  “They are strange retainers you have gathered,” said Mother Scaer, eyeing them without enthusiasm.

  “Strange circumstances demand them.”

  “Who is this crooked creature?” asked Gorm. The others were wisely looking to the ground, but Nothing stared back unbowed, bright eyes burning.

  “I
am a proud Gettlander.”

  “Ah, one of those.” Gorm smiled. “Up here we prefer our Gettlanders shamed and bloody.”

  “Pay him no mind, my king. He is Nothing.” And Yarvi brought Gorm’s eyes back to his with the honeyed tone his mother used to use, for men of violence thrive on rage but know not what to do with reason and good sense. “If I fail, you’ll still have the plunder taken on your march south.”

  Nothing growled his disgust, and small wonder. The towns of Gettland burning, the land ravaged, the people driven off or made slaves. Yarvi’s land and Yarvi’s people, but he was too deep in the mire now to return. The only way out was through, and to drown in the attempt or rise filthy but breathing on the other side. To take back the Black Chair he needed an army, and Mother War now placed their swords in his withered hand. Or their boots on his scarred neck, at least.

  “You have all to gain,” he coaxed, softly, softly, “nothing to lose.”

  “There is the High King’s favor,” said Mother Scaer. “He has commanded that there be no war until his temple is finished—”

  “There was a time Grandmother Wexen’s eagles brought requests.” Gorm’s sing-song voice held a note of anger now. “Then they brought demands. Now she sends commands. Where does it end, Mother Scaer?”

  His minister spoke softly. “The High King has the Lowlanders and most of the Inglings praying to his One God now, ready to fight and die at his order—”

  “And does the High King rule Vansterland too?” scoffed Yarvi. “Or does Grom-gil-Gorm?”

  Mother Scaer’s lip wrinkled. “Don’t play too close to the fire, boy. We all answer to someone.”

  But Gorm was far away, already spreading flame and murder across the steadings of Gettland, no doubt. “Thorlby has strong walls,” he murmured, “and many strong warriors to man them. Too many. If I could take that city my skalds would already be singing of my victory.”

  “Never,” whispered Nothing, but no one listened. The deal was done.

  “That is the best thing of all,” crooned Yarvi. “You need only wait outside. I will give you Thorlby.”

  30.

  CROWS