Half a King

by Joe Abercrombie

  Then Mother Gundring squinted towards Yarvi, and her eyes went wide. “Wait!” she screamed, beating her elf-staff upon the ground and sending crashing echoes bouncing about the dome above. “Wait!”

  For a moment the men held, staring, snarling, hands tickling their weapons, and Yarvi leapt into the narrow gap of opportunity the old minister had opened for him.

  “Men of Gettland!” he shouted. “You know me! I am Yarvi, son of Uthrik!” And he pointed at Odem with the one stubby finger of his left hand. “This treacherous thing tried to steal the Black Chair, but the gods will not suffer a usurper to sit upon it for long!” He dug his thumb into his chest. “The rightful king of Gettland has returned!”

  “The woman’s puppet?” spat Odem at him. “The half-king? The king of cripples?”

  Before Yarvi could shriek his reply he felt a strong hand on his shoulder, steering him aside. Nothing stepped past, unbuckling the strap on his helmet. “No,” he said. “The rightful king.” And he pulled it off and tossed it spinning across the floor of the Godshall with a steely clatter.

  He had chopped his wild shag of hair to a short gray fuzz, shaved clean his thicket of a beard. The face revealed was all sharp angles and ruthless lines, bones broken and set harder, work- and weather-worn, beating- and battle-scarred. The beggar of twigs and string was gone, and in his place a warrior of oak and iron stood, but his eyes, deep set in hollow sockets, were the same.

  Still burning with a fire at the brink of madness. Hotter than ever.

  And suddenly Yarvi was no longer sure who this man was that he had traveled beside, fought beside, slept beside. No longer sure what he had brought with him into the citadel of Gettland, right to the Black Chair itself.

  He blinked around him, suddenly full of doubt. The young warriors of Gettland still growled their defiance. But on the older men the sight of Nothing’s face worked a strange transformation.

  Jaws dropped, blades wavered, eyes widened, even brimmed with tears, breathed oaths drifted from quivering lips. Odem had turned paler even than when he saw Yarvi. The face of a man who looks upon the end of creation.

  “What sorcery is this?” whispered Rulf, but Yarvi could not say.

  The elf-metal staff slipped from Mother Gundring’s limp fingers and clattered to the floor, the echoes fading into heavy silence.

  “Uthil,” she whispered.

  “Yes.” And Nothing turned his mad smile on Odem. “Well met, brother.”

  And now the name was spoken Yarvi saw how like the two men were, and felt a chill to the tips of his fingers.

  His Uncle Uthil, whose matchless skill the warriors toasted before every training, whose drowned body had never been washed from the bitter sea, whose howe above the wind-blasted beach stood empty.

  His Uncle Uthil had been standing at his side for months.

  His Uncle Uthil stood before him now.

  “Here is the reckoning,” said Nothing. Said Uthil. And he stepped forward, sword in hand.

  “Blood cannot be shed in the Godshall!” shouted Mother Gundring.

  Uthil only smiled. “The gods love nothing better than blood, my minister. What better place to shed it?”

  “Kill him!” shrieked Odem, no calm in his voice now, but no one rushed to obey. No one so much as spoke a word. “I am your king!”

  But power can be a brittle thing. Slowly, carefully, as though they thought with one mind, the warriors backed away from him to form a crescent.

  “The Black Chair is a lonely seat indeed,” said Uthil, glancing up at it, empty on its dais.

  The muscles in Odem’s jaw worked as he gazed at the circle of grim faces ranged about him, at those of his guards and those of the hirelings, at Mother Gundring’s and at Yarvi’s, and finally at Uthil’s, so like his own, but passed through twenty years of horrors. He snorted, and spat on the holy stones at his brother’s feet.

  “So be it, then.” And Odem snatched his shield from its bearer, gilded and with winking jewels set in its rim, and barged the man away.

  Rulf offered out his shield but Nothing shook his head. “Wood has its place, but here steel is the answer.” And he raised his blade, the same simple one he had carried through the wastes, plain steel polished to a frosty shine.

  “You have been so long away, brother.” Odem lifted his sword, one forged for Yarvi’s father, pommel of ivory and hilt of gold, runes of blessing worked into the mirror-bright blade. “Let us embrace.”

  He darted forward, so scorpion-quick that Yarvi gave a gasp and stumbled back a pace himself, twitching this way and that as he followed his uncles’ movements. Odem thrust, and thrust again, hissed as he slashed high and low with blows to cleave a man in two. But fast and deadly as he was, his brother was faster. Like smoke on a mad wind Uthil drifted, twisted, reeled, while the bright steel carved the air but gave him not a kiss.

  “Do you remember when we last saw each other?” Uthil asked as he danced away. “In that storm, at the prow of our father’s ship? Laughing into the gale with my brothers at my back?”

  “You never cared for anything but your laughter!” Odem rushed in again, chopping left and right and making the watchful guards lurch back. But Uthil wheeled to safety, not even raising his sword.

  “Is that why you and Uthrik together threw me into the bitter sea? Or was it so that he could steal my birthright? And you in turn could steal it from him?”

  “The Black Chair is mine!” Odem’s sword was a shining arc over his head. But Uthil caught it on his own with a ringing crash. He caught Odem’s shield as well and for a moment Yarvi’s two uncles were locked together, blades grating. Then Uthil dipped his shoulder and jerked the shield upwards, the rim cracking into Odem’s jaw. He twisted his other shoulder and flung Odem away, heels kicking at the stones, falling in a tangle against the men behind him.

  They pushed him off and Odem shrank behind his shield, but Uthil only stood his ground in the center of the circle. “Even though my empty howe stands above the beach, I did not drown. I was plucked from the sea by slavers, and made to fight in a pit. And in those years in the darkness, for the amusement of blood-drunk animals, I killed ninety-nine men.” Uthil pressed a finger to his ear, and for a moment looked like Nothing once again. “I hear them whisper, sometimes. Can you hear them whisper, Odem?”

  “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 O
dem 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.”

  38.

  THE BLAME

  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.”

  “Why wait for summer, then?” Uthil took the steps one by one, until he stood on the lowest, so that he looked straight into Gorm’s face on about a level footing. “Fight me now.”

  A twitch began at the corner of Gorm’s eye and set his cheek to flutter. Yarvi saw his scarred knuckles white on the grip of his sword, the eyes of his warriors darting about the room, the gathered men of Gettland hardening their frowns. “You should know that Mother War breathed upon me in my crib,” growled the King of Vansterland. “It has been foreseen no man can kill me—”

  “Then fight me, dog!” roared Uthil, the echoes crashing about the hall and every person holding their breath as if it would be their last. Yarvi wondered if they might see a second king die in the Godshall within a day, and he would not have cared to bet on which of these two it would be.

  Then Mother Scaer rested her thin hand gently on Gorm’s fist. “The gods guard those who guard themselves,” she whispered.

  The King of Vansterland took a long breath. His shoulders relaxed, and he peeled his fingers from his sword and gently combed them through his beard. “This new king is very rude,” he said.

  “He is,” said Mother Scaer. “Did you not teach him diplomacy, Mother Gundring?”

  The old minister gazed sternly at them from her place beside the Black Chair. “I did. And who deserves it.”

  “I believe she means we don’t,” said Gorm.

  “I take that to be the case,” answered Mother Scaer. “And find her rude also.”

  “Is this how you keep a bargain, Prince Yarvi?”

  This hall full of worthies had once lined up to kiss Yarvi’s hand. Now they looked as if they would happily queue to cut his throat. He shrugged. “I am prince no longer, and I have kept what I could. No one foresaw this turn of events.”

  “There’s events for you,” said Mother Scaer. “They never flow quite down the channel you dig for them.”

  “You will not fight me, then?” asked Uthil.

  “Why so very bloodthirsty?” Gorm pushed out his bottom lip. “You are new in the job, but you will learn a king is more than just a killer. Let us give Father Peace his sea
son, abide by the wishes of the High King in Skekenhouse and make of the fist an open hand. In summer, perhaps, on ground that suits me better, you can put Mother War’s breath to the test.” He turned away, and followed by his minister and his warriors, strode for the door. “I thank you for your winning hospitality, Gettlanders! You will hear from me!” He paused for a moment on the threshold, a great black outline against the daylight. “And on that day, I shall speak in thunder.”

  The doors of the Godshall were swung shut upon them.

  “The time may come when we wish we had killed him here today,” murmured Yarvi’s mother.

  “Each man has his time,” said Uthil, lowering himself back into the Black Chair, sword still cradled in his arms. He had a way of sitting in it, slouched and easy, that Yarvi never could have managed. “And we have other matters to attend to.” The king’s eyes drifted across to Yarvi’s, bright as the day they met upon the South Wind. “My nephew. Once prince, once king, now—”

  “Nothing,” said Yarvi, lifting his chin.

  Uthil gave the faintest sad smile at that. A glimpse of the man Yarvi had slogged through the ice with, shared his last crust with, faced death beside. A glimpse, then the king’s face was sword-sharp and ax-hard once again.

  “You made a pact with Grom-gil-Gorm,” he said, and angry mutterings broke out about the hall. A wise king always has someone to blame, Mother Gundring used to say. “You invited our most bitter enemy to spread fire and murder across Gettland.” Yarvi could hardly deny it, even if denials could have been heard above the mounting anger in the Godshall. “Good people died. What price does the law demand for that, Mother Gundring?”

  The minister looked from her new king to her old apprentice, and Yarvi felt his mother’s hand grip tight at his arm, for they both knew the answer. “Death, my king,” croaked Mother Gundring, seeming to slump against her staff. “Or exile, at the least.”

  “Death!” screeched a woman’s voice from somewhere in the darkness, and the harsh echoes faded into a quiet stony as a tomb’s.