Half a War

Raith just stood there, scratching at a nick out of his ear. ‘Thought we were climbing, not dancing.’

‘So did I.’ Koll grinned. ‘Might be we were misinformed.’

‘My name’s Raith.’ And Raith held out a friendly hand.

The minister’s boy smiled back. ‘Koll.’ And he took it. Just like Raith had known he would, ’cause weak men are always eager for the friendship of strong ones. His smile faded quick enough when he found he couldn’t tug his hand free again. ‘What’re you—’

Queen Laithlin rang the bell.

Raith jerked the lad close and butted him in the face.

He could climb but Raith had no doubts these other two were better at it. If he wanted to win, and he always did, best make the contest about something else. At butting folk in the face he was a master, as Koll now discovered.

Raith punched him in the ribs three times, doubled him up gurgling with blood pattering from his smashed mouth, then caught his shirt and flung him upside down across a table where some of the Gettlanders were sitting.

He heard the chaos behind him, the crowd bellowing curses, but by that time the blood was roaring in his ears and his mind was on the tree. Soryorn was already dragging his great long body into the branches and if he got a good start Raith knew he’d never catch him.

He took a pounding run, sprang onto the lowest branch and swung himself up, jumped to a higher, twigs thrashing from his weight. At the next spring, full stretch, he caught Soryorn by the ankle and dragged him down, a broken stick scratching him all the way up his scar-marked back.

Soryorn kicked out and caught Raith in the mouth, but he’d never been put off by the taste of his own blood. He growled as he hauled himself on, no thought for the scraping branches, no thought for the aching through his left hand, caught Soryorn’s ankle again, then his belt, and finally his garnet studded thrall-collar.

‘What’re you doing?’ snarled the standard-bearer, trying to elbow him away.

‘Winning,’ hissed Raith, hauling himself up level.

‘Gorm wants me to win!’

‘I serve Skara, remember?’

Raith punched Soryorn right between the legs and his eyes bulged. Raith punched him in the mouth and snapped his head back. Raith bit his clutching hand hard and with a wheezing cry Soryorn lost his grip and went tumbling down through the branches, his head bouncing off one, another folding him in half, a third spinning him over and over till he crashed to the ground.

Which was a shame, but someone had to win, and someone had to fall.

Raith shinned up further to where the branches grew sparse. He could see over the walls of the citadel from here. Mother Sea glittering, the forest of masts on the dozens of ships crowded into Thorlby’s harbour, the salt breeze kissing his sweating forehead.

He twitched the armring from the topmost branch. He’d have put it on his wrist but it was sized for Skara’s twig of an arm and there was no way it’d fit. So he stuffed it into the pouch at his belt and started slithering down.

The wind blew up and made the whole tree sway, branches creaking, needles brushing Raith all over as he clung on tight. He caught a flash of white out of the corner of his eye, but all he could see when he peered down was Soryorn, trying and failing to drag himself up into the lowest branches. No sign of the minister’s boy. More’n likely crept off to cry over his broken face. Might be a fine climber but he’d no guts at all, and to climb into Bail’s Point alone, a man would need guts.

Raith swung free and dropped to the ground.

‘You little bastard!’ snarled Soryorn, clinging to a low branch. He must have hurt his leg when he fell, he was holding it up gingerly, toes trailing.

Raith laughed as he passed. Then he sprang in and drove a shoulder into Soryorn’s ribs, ramming him so hard into the tree his breath was all driven out in a flopping wheeze.

‘You big bastard,’ he tossed out as he left Soryorn groaning in the dirt. The standard-bearer had always been a good friend to Raith.

So he really should’ve known better than to leave his side open like that.

‘Princess Skara.’

She gave Raith what she hoped was a disapproving look. ‘I would hardly call that a fair contest.’

He shrugged, looking her straight in the eye. ‘You think Bright Yilling loses much sleep over what’s fair?’

Skara felt herself blush. He had the manners of a stump, treated her with not the slightest deference. Mother Kyre would have been outraged. Maybe that was why Skara found it so hard to be. She was not used to bluntness and there was something refreshing in it. Something appealing in it, even. ‘So I should send a dog to catch a dog?’ she asked.

Raith gave a harsh little chuckle at that. ‘Send a killer to kill a killer, anyway.’ He reached for his pouch, and his smile vanished.

That was when Koll came strolling around the side of the cedar, stopping a moment to help Soryorn up. His lip was split and his nose was swollen and bloody, but he was smiling.

‘Lost something, friend?’ he asked as Raith patted at his clothes. With a flourish of his spindly fingers he produced, apparently from nowhere, the armring Bail the Builder once wore into battle. He bowed in an entirely proper manner. ‘I think this is yours, princess.’

Raith gaped. ‘You thieving—’

Koll showed his bloody teeth as he smiled wider. ‘You think Bright Yilling loses much sleep over thieving?’

Raith made a grab for the armring but Koll was too quick, flipped it glittering into the air. ‘You lost the game.’ He snatched the armring right out of Raith’s clutching fingers, tossed it nimbly from left hand to right and left Raith grabbing at nothing. ‘Don’t lose your sense of humour too!’

Skara saw Raith clenching his fists as Koll flicked the armring up one more time.

‘Enough!’ She stepped between the two of them before any more harm could be done and plucked the armring from the air. ‘Gettland is the winner!’ she called, as she slipped it back over her wrist and up her arm.

The Gettlanders burst into cheering. The Vanstermen were a good deal quieter as they watched Soryorn hop away, leaning hard on Mother Scaer’s shoulder. As for Skara’s own little entourage, Raith looked as if he had swallowed an axe and Blue Jenner was in tears, but only because he was laughing so hard.

Thorn Bathu cupped her hands to shout over the noise. ‘I guess all that time spent up the mast wasn’t wasted after all!’

‘A man can learn more up a mast than in any minister’s chamber!’ called Koll, basking in the applause and blowing kisses to his friends.

Skara leaned close to him. ‘You realize you’ve won the chance to climb alone into an impregnable fortress full of enemies?’

His smile wilted as she took his wrist and raised his limp hand in triumph.

First Man In (#ulink_1de1ba02-7a27-5256-984f-f114a5e1ef5e)

The walls of Bail’s Point were frozen in another flash of lightning, the battlements black teeth against a brilliant sky. Gods, they looked a long way up.

‘Is it too late to say I don’t like this plan?’ shrieked Koll over the howling of the wind, the hissing of the rain, the hammering of Mother Sea against their little boat.

‘You can say it whenever you like,’ Rulf bellowed back at him, his bald pate running with wet. ‘Long as you climb up there afterward!’

The wind swept up and lashed spray into the faces of the struggling crew. Thunder crackled loud enough to make the world tremble, but Koll could hardly have been trembling more as they jerked and wobbled closer to the rocks.

‘These skies don’t strike me as a fine omen!’ he called.

‘Nor these seas neither!’ shouted Dosduvoi, wrestling with his oar as if it was a horse that needed breaking. ‘Bad luck all round!’

‘We all have luck, good and bad!’ Thorn weighed the grapple in her hand. ‘It’s how you meet it that matters.’