Half a War

Skara padded barefoot through the darkness at Blue Jenner’s heels, shivering in her shift, Mother Kyre’s lessons so deep-rooted that even fearing for her life she worried over whether she was properly dressed. Flames beyond the narrow windows cast stabbing shadows across the straw-scattered floor. She heard panicked shouts. A dog barking, suddenly cut off. A heavy thudding as of a tree being felled.

As of axes at the door.

They stole into the guest-room, where warriors had slept shoulder to shoulder a few months before. Now there was only Blue Jenner’s threadbare blanket.

‘What’s happening?’ she whispered, hardly recognizing her own voice it came so thin and cracked.

‘Bright Yilling has come with his Companions,’ said Jenner, ‘to settle Grandmother Wexen’s debts. Yaletoft is already burning. I’m sorry, princess.’

Skara flinched as he slid something around her neck. A collar of twisted silver wire, a fine chain clinking faintly. The kind the Ingling girl who used to bind her hair had worn.

‘Am I a slave?’ she whispered, as Jenner buckled the other end about his wrist.

‘You must seem to be.’

Skara shrank back at a crash outside, the clash of metal, and Jenner pressed her against the wall. He blew his candle out and dropped them into darkness. She saw him draw a knife, Father Moon glinting on its edge.

Howls now, beyond the door, high and horrible, the bellows of beasts not the voices of men. Skara squeezed her eyes shut, tears stinging the lids, and prayed. Mumbling, stuttering, meaningless prayers. Prayers to every god and none.

It is easy to be brave when the Last Door seems tiny for its distance, a far-off thing for other folk to worry about. Now she felt Death’s chill breath on her neck and it froze the courage in her. How freely she had talked of cowardice the night before. Now she understood what it was.

A last long shriek, then silence almost worse than the noise had been. She felt herself drawn forward, Jenner’s breath stale on her cheek.

‘We have to go.’

‘I’m scared,’ she breathed.

‘So am I. But if we face ’em boldly we might talk our way free. If they find us hiding …’

You can only conquer your fears by facing them, her grandfather used to say. Hide from them, and they conquer you. Jenner eased the door creaking open and Skara forced herself through after him, her knees trembling so badly they were nearly knocking together.

Her bare foot slid in something wet. A dead man sat beside the door, the straw all about him black with blood.

Borid, his name. A warrior who had served her father. He had carried Skara on his shoulders when she was little, so she could reach the peaches in the orchard under the walls of Bail’s Point.

Her stinging eyes crept towards the sound of voices. Over broken weapons and cloven shields. Over more corpses, hunched, sprawled, spreadeagled among the carved columns after which her grandfather’s hall was called the Forest.

Figures were gathered in the light of the guttering firepit. Storied warriors, mail and weapons and ring-money gleaming with the colours of fire, their great shadows stretching out across the floor towards her.

Mother Kyre stood among them, and Skara’s grandfather too, ill-fitting mail hastily dragged on, grey hair still wild from his bed. Smiling blandly upon his two prisoners was a slender warrior with a soft, handsome face, as careless as a child’s, a space about him where even these other killers dared not tread.

Bright Yilling, who worshipped no god but Death.

His voice echoed jauntily in the vastness of the hall. ‘I was hoping to pay my respects to Princess Skara.’

‘She has gone to her cousin Laithlin,’ said Mother Kyre. The same voice that had calmly lectured, corrected, chastised Skara every day of her life, but with an unfamiliar warble of terror in it now. ‘Where you will never reach her.’

‘Oh, we will reach her there,’ said one of Yilling’s warriors, a huge man with a neck like a bull’s.

‘Soon enough, Mother Kyre, soon enough,’ said another with a tall spear and a horn at his belt.

‘King Uthil will come,’ she said. ‘He will burn your ships and drive you back into the sea.’

‘How will he burn my ships when they are safe behind the great chains at Bail’s Point?’ asked Yilling. ‘The chains you gave me the key to.’

‘Grom-gil-Gorm will come,’ she said, but her voice had faded almost to a whisper.

‘I hope it will be so.’ Yilling reached out with both hands and ever so gently eased Mother Kyre’s hair back over her shoulders. ‘But he will come too late for you.’ He drew a sword, a great diamond in a golden claw for a pommel, mirror-steel flashing so bright in the darkness it left a white smear across Skara’s sight.

‘Death waits for us all.’ King Fynn took a long breath through his nose, and proudly drew himself up. A glimpse of the man he used to be. He looked about the hall and, through the columns, caught Skara’s eye, and it seemed to her he gave the slightest smile. Then he dropped to his knees. ‘Today you kill a king.’

Yilling shrugged. ‘Kings and peasants. We all look the same to Death.’

He stabbed Skara’s grandfather where his neck met his shoulder, blade darting in to the hilt and back out, quick and deadly as lightning falls. King Fynn made only a dry squeak he died so fast, and toppled face forward into the firepit. Skara stood frozen, her breath held fast, her mind held fast.

Mother Kyre stared down at her master’s corpse. ‘Grandmother Wexen gave me her promise,’ she stammered out.

Pit pat, pit pat, the blood dripped from the point of Yilling’s sword. ‘Promises only bind the weak.’

He spun, neat as a dancer, steel flickering in the shadows. There was a black gout and Mother Kyre’s head clonked across the floor, her body dropping as though it had no bones in it at all.

Skara gave a shuddering gasp. It had to be a nightmare. A fever-trick. She wanted to lie down. Her eyelids fluttered, her body sagged, but Blue Jenner’s hand was around her arm, painfully tight.

‘You’re a slave,’ he hissed, giving her a stiff shake. ‘You say nothing. You understand nothing.’

She tried to still her whimpering breath as light footsteps tapped across the floor towards them. Far away, someone had started screaming, and would not stop.

‘Well, well,’ came Bright Yilling’s soft voice. ‘This pair does not belong.’

‘No, lord. My name is Blue Jenner.’ Skara could not comprehend how he could sound so friendly, firm and reasonable. If she had opened her mouth all that would have come out were slobbering sobs. ‘I’m a trader carrying the High King’s licence, lately returned up the Divine River. We were heading for Skekenhouse, blown off course in a gale.’

‘You must have been fast friends with King Fynn, to be a guest in his hall.’

‘A wise trader is friendly with everyone, lord.’

‘You are sweating, Blue Jenner.’

‘Honestly, you terrify me.’

‘A wise trader indeed.’ Skara felt a gentle touch under her chin and her head was tipped back. She looked into the face of the man who had just murdered the two people who had raised her from a child, his bland smile still spotted with their blood, close enough that she could count the dusting of freckles across his nose.

Yilling pushed his plump lips out and made a high, clean whistle. ‘And a trader in fine goods too.’ He brushed one hand through her hair, wound a strand of it around his long fingers, pushed it out of her face so that his thumb tip brushed her cheek.

You must live. You must lead. She smothered her fear. Smothered her hate. Forced her face dead. A thrall’s face, showing nothing.

‘Would you trade this to me, trader?’ asked Yilling. ‘For your life, maybe?’

‘Happily, lord,’ said Blue Jenner. Skara had known Mother Kyre was a fool to trust this rogue. She took a breath to curse him and his gnarled fingers dug tighter into her arm. ‘But I cannot.’