Half a King

One of his uncle’s warriors sat beside the entrance to the tower, cleaning his axe as calmly as he might have beside the training square at home.

‘Where is Odem?’ Yarvi muttered at him.

The man gave a squint-eyed grin and pointed upwards. ‘Above, my king.’

Yarvi ducked past, breath echoing in the stairway, feet scraping on the stones, swallowing his surging spit.

On the battlefield, his father used to say, there are no rules.

Up, and up in the fizzing darkness, Hurik and Keimdal toiling behind him. He paused at a narrow window to feel the wind on his burning face, saw water crash on rock at the bottom of a sheer drop and pushed down his fear.

Stand like a king, his mother had told him. Speak like a king. Fight like a king.

There was a platform at the top, propped on timbers, a wooden parapet about the edge no taller than Yarvi’s thigh. Low enough to bring the giddy sickness flooding back when he saw how high they had climbed, Father Earth and Mother Sea spread out small around them, the forests of Vansterland stretching off into the haze of distance.

Yarvi’s Uncle Odem stood calmly watching Amwend burn, columns of smoke smudging the slate-grey sky, the tiny warriors bent to the business of destruction, the little ships lined up where surf met shingle to collect the bloody harvest. A dozen of his most seasoned men were around him, and kneeling in their midst a prisoner in a fine yellow robe, bound and gagged, his face swollen with bruises and his long hair clotted with blood.

‘A good day’s work!’ called Odem, smiling at Yarvi over his shoulder. ‘We have taken two hundred slaves, and livestock, and plunder, and burned one of Grom-gil-Gorm’s towns.’

‘What of Gorm himself?’ asked Yarvi, trying to catch his breath after the climb and – since standing and fighting had never been his strengths – at least speak like a king.

Odem sucked sourly at his teeth. ‘The Breaker of Swords will be on his way, eh, Hurik?’

‘Doubtless.’ Hurik stepped from the stairway and straightened to all his considerable height. ‘Battle draws that old bear surely as it draws the flies.’

‘We must round up the men and be back at sea within the hour,’ said Odem.

‘We’re leaving?’ asked Keimdal. ‘Already?’

Yarvi found he was angry. Tired, and sick, and angry at his own weakness and his uncle’s ruthlessness and the world that was this way. ‘Is this our vengeance, Odem?’ He waved his good hand towards the burning town. ‘On women and children and old farmers?’

His uncle’s voice was gentle, as it always was. Gentle as spring rain. ‘Vengeance is taken piece by piece. But you need not worry about that now.’

‘Did I not swear an oath?’ growled Yarvi. For the last two days he had been prickling whenever someone used the words my king. Now he found he prickled even more when they did not.

‘You swore. I heard it, and thought it too heavy an oath for you to carry.’ Odem gestured at the kneeling prisoner, grunting into his gag. ‘But he will free you of its weight.’

‘Who is he?’

‘The headman of Amwend. He is the one who killed you.’

Yarvi blinked. ‘What?’

‘I tried to stop him. But the coward had a hidden blade.’ Odem held up his hand and there was a dagger in it. A long dagger with a pommel of black jet. In spite of the heat of the climb Yarvi felt suddenly very cold, from the soles of his feet to the roots of his hair.

‘It shall be my greatest regret that I moved too late to save my much-loved nephew.’ And carelessly as cutting a joint of meat Odem stabbed the headman between his neck and his shoulder and kicked him onto his face, blood welling across the rooftop.

‘What do you mean?’ Yarvi’s words came shrill and broken and he was suddenly aware how many of his uncle’s men were about him, all armed, all armoured.

As Odem stepped calmly, so calmly towards him he stepped back, stepped back on shaky knees to nowhere but the low parapet and the high drop beyond.

‘I remember the night you were born.’ His uncle’s voice was cold and level as ice on a winter lake. ‘Your father raged at the gods over that thing you have for a hand. You’ve always made me, smile, though. You would have been a fine jester.’ Odem raised his brows, and sighed. ‘But is my daughter really to have a one-handed weakling for a husband? Is Gettland really to have half a king? A crippled puppet dangling on his mother’s string? No, nephew, I … think … not.’

Keimdal snatched Yarvi’s arm and dragged him back, metal scraping as he drew his sword. ‘Get behind me, my—’

Blood spattered in Yarvi’s face and half-blinded him. Keimdal fell to his knees, spitting and gurgling, clutching at his throat, black leaking between his fingers. Yarvi stared sideways and saw Hurik frowning back, a drawn knife in his hand, the blade slick with Keimdal’s blood. He let Yarvi’s mail drop jingling to the floor.

‘We must do what is best for Gettland,’ said Odem. ‘Kill him.’

Yarvi tottered away, his jaw dropping wide, and Hurik caught a fistful of his cloak.

With a ping his father’s heavy golden buckle sprang open. Suddenly released, Yarvi reeled back.

The parapet caught him hard in the knees and, breath whooping, he tumbled over it.

Rock and water and sky spun about him, and down plummeted the King of Gettland, and down, and the water struck him as a hammer strikes iron.

And Mother Sea took him in her cold embrace.

THE ENEMY (#ulink_6961f33f-4718-57ce-abdf-ee1e118f96ec)

Yarvi came to himself in the darkness, smothered by rushing bubbles, and he writhed and thrashed and twisted with the simple need to stay alive.

The gods must yet have had some use for him, for when it seemed his ribs would burst and he must breathe in whether it was sea or sky, his head broke from the water. Spray blinded him, and he coughed and kicked, was sucked under, tossed and tumbled by the current.

A surging wave flung him onto rock, and he clutched at shredding barnacle and green-slick weed, just long enough to find another breath. He fought with the buckle, freed himself of the drowning embrace of his sword-belt, legs burning as he struggled at the merciless sea, kicking free of his leaden boots.

He gathered all his strength and as the swell lifted him he hauled himself up, trembling with effort, onto a narrow ledge of stone washed by the salt spray, speckled with jellies and sharp-shelled limpets.

No doubt he was lucky still to be alive, but Yarvi did not feel lucky.

He was in the inlet on the north side of the holdfast, a narrow space walled in by jagged rocks into which the foaming waves angrily surged, chewing at the stone, slopping and clapping and flinging glittering spray. He scraped the wet hair from his eyes, spat salt, his throat raw, good hand and bad grazed and stinging.

His foolhardy decision to strip off his mail had saved his life, but the padded jacket underneath was bloated with seawater and he pawed at the straps, finally shrugged it free and hunched shivering.

‘D’you see him?’ he heard, the voice coming from so close above that he shrank against the slick rock, biting his tongue.

‘Got to be dead.’ Another voice. ‘Dashed on the rocks. Mother Sea has him for sure.’

‘Odem wants his body.’

‘Odem can fish for it, then.’

A third voice now. ‘Or Hurik can. He let the cripple fall.’

‘And which’ll you be telling first to swim, Odem or Hurik?’

Laughter at that. ‘Gorm’s on his way. We’ve no time to dredge for one-handed corpses.’