‘But you do and you have.’
He would’ve preferred her to break down in tears, or come at him in a rage, or beg him to think again. He’d worked out a cowardly little plan to twist any of those back on her. But this chilly indifference he had no answer to.
Dribbling out, ‘I’m sorry,’ was the feeble best he could manage. He wondered if his mother would’ve been proud of this, and didn’t much care for the answer.
‘Don’t be. We’ve wasted enough time on each other. And I’ve only myself to blame. Brand warned me this would happen. He always said you were too full of your own hopes to hold anyone else’s.’
Gods, that hit like a punch in the balls. He opened his mouth to blurt it wasn’t fair, but how could he defend himself against a dead man’s judgment? Especially when he was busy proving it true.
‘I always knew best.’ Rin gave a hiss through gritted teeth. ‘Guess Brand gets the last laugh, eh?’
Koll took a shuffling step towards her. Maybe he couldn’t give her what she wanted, couldn’t be what she needed, but he could see her safe at least. He owed her that much. Owed Brand that much.
‘Bright Yilling might be here in a few days,’ he muttered. ‘And thousands of the High King’s warriors with him.’
Rin snorted. ‘You always did like to frame common knowledge as deep-cunning. Used to find that endearing but, I have to say, it’s wearing thin.’
‘You should go back to Thorlby—’
‘For what? My brother’s dead and my home’s a burned-out shell.’
‘It’s not safe here …’
‘If we lose here how safe do you think Thorlby will be? I’d rather stay, do what I can to help. That’s what Brand would’ve done. That’s what he did do.’ Gods, she had courage. So much more than he did. He loved that about her.
He found himself reaching for her shoulder. ‘Rin—’
She slapped his hand away, fist clenched as if she was about to hit him. He knew he deserved it. But she was in no mood to make things easy. She turned away in disgust. ‘Just go. You’ve made your choice, Brother Koll. Get on and live with it.’
What could he say to that? He needn’t have worried she’d cry. He was the one sniffing back tears as he skulked from the forge, feeling as far from the best man he could be as he ever had in his life.
There was a thin rain falling on the elf-built quay of Bail’s Point. A spitting rain that drew a gloomy curtain across the world to match Koll’s mood, that clung like dew to the fur on Rulf’s shoulders where he stood frowning on the steering platform, that stuck the oarsmen’s hair to their hard-set faces as they loaded the stores. He wished Fror was with them, or Dosduvoi, but the crew Koll sailed with down the wide Divine were scattered to the winds. These were mostly men he hardly knew.
‘Why the funeral face, my dove?’ asked Skifr, worming one long finger out of her cloak to pick carefully at her nose. ‘You once asked me if you could see magic, did you not?’
‘I did, and you told me I was young and rash, and that magic has terrible risks and terrible costs, and that I should pray to every god I knew of that I never saw it.’
‘Huh.’ She raised her brows at the result of her rummaging, then flicked it towards Gorm’s ships, and Uthil’s ships, and the captured ships of Bright Yilling rocking on the tide. ‘That was dour of me. Did you pray?’
‘Not hard enough, it seems.’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘You told me you knew enough magic to do much harm, but not enough to do much good.’
‘This is a war. I came to do harm.’
‘That isn’t very reassuring.’
‘No.’
‘Where did you learn magic?’
‘I cannot say.’
‘Cannot or will not?’
‘Cannot and will not.’
Koll sighed. Every answer she gave seemed to leave him knowing less. ‘Can you really take us safely into Strokom?’
‘Take you into Strokom? Yes. Safely?’ She shrugged her shoulders.
‘That isn’t very reassuring either.’
‘No.’
‘Will we find weapons there?’
‘More than Mother War herself could make use of.’
‘And if we use them … do we risk another Breaking of God?’
‘As long as we break Grandmother Wexen, I will be satisfied.’
‘That’s less reassuring than ever.’
Skifr stared out towards the grey sea. ‘If you suppose I came here to reassure you, you are very much mistaken.’
‘Why is nothing ever easy?’ Father Yarvi was frowning at the long ramp of pitted elf-stone that led to the yard of the fortress. A lean figure was coming down it. A tall, shaven-headed figure with elf-bangles stacked up her tattooed arm. ‘Mother Scaer, what a surprise! I thought you wanted no part of this madness?’
The Minister of Vansterland turned her head and spat. ‘I want no one to have any part of this madness, but my king has chosen his path. My place is to make sure he walks it to victory. That is why I am coming with you.’
‘Your company will be a delight.’ Yarvi stepped close to her. ‘As long as you mean to help me. Stand in my way, you will regret it.’
‘We understand one another, then,’ said Mother Scaer, curling her lip.
‘We always have.’
Koll sighed to himself. What better foundation for an alliance than mutual hatred and suspicion?
‘To your oars, then!’ called Rulf. ‘I’m getting no younger!’
Gudrun’s Example
It was a beautiful morning in late summer, Mother Sun making last night’s rain glitter like jewels in the grass.
‘This is our weakest point,’ said Raith.
It took no great warrior to see that. The northeastern corner of the fortress had been sliced away by the Breaking of God as if by a giant knife, and kings of the distant past had built a tower to plug the gap. It was an ill-made and neglected thing, its roof fallen in and birds swarming on the dropping-caked rafters, the man-built stretch of wall beside it bowing outwards, shored up with crumbling bastions.
‘Gudrun’s Tower,’ murmured Skara.
‘How did it get the name?’ asked Mother Owd.
Skara had been greatly annoyed when Mother Kyre taught her the story but, like most of the minister’s lessons, she found she remembered it well enough. ‘Princess Gudrun was the granddaughter of a king of Throvenland.’
‘A poor start,’ grunted Mother Owd. She tended to be grumpy in the mornings. ‘Still, I know a few of those who turned out well.’
‘Not this one. She fell in love with a stable-boy.’
‘That was rash.’
‘I suppose love falls where it falls.’
Mother Owd raised one brow. ‘Generally one can see it toppling from afar, and make an effort to get out of the way.’
‘Well Gudrun didn’t. Throvenland had three kings in those days, and her grandfather promised her to one of the others. She tried to run away, so he hung her lover from that tower and locked her in the top of it until she learned her duty.’
Mother Owd scratched at the loose bun her hair was gathered into. ‘I’m having trouble seeing where the happy ending will come from.’
‘It won’t. Gudrun flung herself from the battlements and died in the ditch.’
‘Let’s hope we don’t all end up following her example,’ said Raith.
‘Killing ourselves for love?’ asked Skara.
‘Dying in the ditch.’
Raith had seemed grim lately, even for him, and though she hardly needed to look further than the approach of ten thousand armed enemies to explain anyone’s bad mood, Skara wondered if her deal with Gorm could be behind it. She was far from all delight at that herself, but there was nothing to be done. She gave a weary sigh. There were bigger things to worry about than anyone’s feelings, even her own.
The sound of hoofbeats drew her eyes and she saw riders spilling from the gate. Two hundred or more horses in a fast-moving column, earth showering as
they thundered past the men still digging the ditch deeper and across the muddied ground where Gorm and Uthil’s camps had been pitched.
Blue Jenner was striding up the gentle rise towards them and Skara called out to him. ‘Whoever doesn’t want to stay for what’s coming?’
‘Thorn Bathu,’ said Jenner, turning to watch the riders pass. ‘But only because Bright Yilling isn’t getting here fast enough for her taste. She’s taking two hundred of Gettland’s bloodiest to hurt him however she can.’
‘That could be quite a lot of hurt,’ murmured Skara, watching the riders stream out of the long shadow of Bail’s Point, through the deserted village and away to the north.
‘We’ve no fodder for the horses in any case, my queen.’ Jenner stopped beside them, hands planted on his hips. ‘There isn’t too much fodder for the men. Bright Yilling burned most of the farms within a hundred miles and picked clean most of the rest. Uthil and Gorm reckon only a thousand men can stay. Those with families to worry over and harvests to bring in will be taking ship north to Thorlby and beyond.’
Skara blinked at that. ‘We’ll be outnumbered ten to one.’
‘The longer the odds the greater the glory,’ muttered Raith. ‘Or so I’ve heard …’
‘It’ll be picked warriors who remain.’ Jenner tried as usual to plot an optimistic course. ‘And plenty to man the walls until Father Yarvi comes back. Four hundred Vanstermen, four hundred Gettlanders, a hundred smiths, cooks, servants. A hundred of ours.’
‘We have that many willing to stay?’
‘There’s five times that many willing to die for you, my queen, and I can pick a hundred who’ll kill a few of the High King’s men doing it.’
‘I’m humbled,’ said Skara, ‘truly. But you shouldn’t be one of them. You’ve already done far more than—’
Blue Jenner snorted. ‘Oh, I’m staying and that deal’s done. I’ve promised my crew a hell of a pay-off when you beat the High King. If I don’t deliver I’ll look quite the fool. You should go, though.’
Her turn to snort. ‘How can I expect others to risk their lives if I won’t?’
‘My queen,’ said Mother Owd, ‘your blood is worth more to Throvenland than—’
‘I am a queen in my own fortress. The only person who can give me orders is the High King, and since I am in open rebellion against him, you are out of luck. I stay, and that is all.’
‘Then I stay too.’ Mother Owd sighed. ‘A healer’s place is among the wounded. A minister’s place is beside her queen.’
Skara felt a rush of gratitude that almost brought tears to her eyes. They were hardly the advisors she would have picked but she would not have traded them for anyone now. ‘The gods may have taken my grandfather.’ Skara put one arm around Mother Owd, and one around Blue Jenner, and hugged them tight. ‘But they sent me two pillars to lean upon.’
Mother Owd frowned down at herself. ‘I am a little squat for a pillar.’
‘You hold me up admirably even so. Now go.’ Skara pushed them off towards the fortress. ‘Pick me the hundred warriors who’ll kick Bright Yilling hardest in his balls.’
‘We’ll pick ’em, my queen,’ said Blue Jenner, grinning back. ‘And find ’em the heaviest boots we can.’
Skara was left standing on the sward with Raith. The birds continued to twitter. The calls of the labourers in the ditch floated towards them. The breeze fumbled across the grass. Skara did not look sideways. But she liked knowing he was there, at her shoulder.
‘You can go,’ she said. ‘If you want to.’
‘I said I’d die for you. I meant it.’
He had some of that old swagger as she looked around, daring and dangerous and making no apologies, and she smiled to see it. ‘No need quite yet. I still need someone to threaten my visitors with.’
‘I can do that too.’ He smiled back. That hard and hungry smile that showed all his teeth. Long enough for it to be no accident. Long enough for that warm nervousness to set her skin tingling.
There was a part of her that would have liked to follow Gudrun’s example. To piss on the proper thing and go rolling in the hay with her stable-boy. At least to know what it felt like.
But there was a much larger part of her that laughed at the notion. She was no romantic. She could not afford to be. She was a queen, and promised to Grom-gil-Gorm, the Breaker of Swords. A nation relied on her. However she had railed at and complained to and rebelled against Mother Kyre, after all, in the end she had always done her duty.
So instead of clutching hold of Raith like a drowning girl to a log and kissing him as if the secret of life was in his mouth, she swallowed, and frowned back at Gudrun’s Tower.
‘It means a lot,’ she said. ‘That you’d fight for me.’
‘Not that much.’ The sun had been covered by cloud for a moment and the jewels in the grass were turned to cold water. ‘Every good killer needs someone to kill for.’
The Thousand
Soryorn was a grand archer and cut a hero’s figure against the bloody sunset, one foot up on the battlements at the top of Gudrun’s tower, back curved as he bent his great bow, the light from the flaming arrow shifting on his hard-set face.
‘Burn it,’ said Gorm.
The eyes of the thousand picked warriors of Throvenland, Vansterland and Gettland followed the streak of fire as the shaft curved through the still evening and thudded into the deck of Bright Yilling’s ship. Blue flame shot from it as the southern oil caught with a gentle whomp. In a moment the whole boat was alight in a blaze Raith could almost feel the heat of, even up here on the wall.
He glanced sideways and saw the warm glow light up Skara’s smile. It had been her idea. A warrior’s ship is his heart and his home, after all.
It had been a bastard of a job hauling it out of the harbour and on rollers up the long ramp to the yard. Raith’s back was aching and his hands raw from his part in it. Queen Skara had given the gilded weathervane to Blue Jenner, King Gorm had torn out the silver fittings to melt down and make cups, King Uthil had taken the red-dyed sail to spare the women of Gettland some weaving. They’d pulled the mast down to fit it through the entrance passage and they’d gouged the fine carvings when it got wedged in the gateway, but they’d got it outside in the end.
Raith hoped Bright Yilling would appreciate the effort they’d made to welcome him to Bail’s Point. But either way the defenders enjoyed the sight of his ship in flames. There was cheering, there was laughter, there were insults spat at Yilling’s scouts, sat calmly on horseback far out of bowshot. The high spirits were shortlived, though.
Grandmother Wexen’s army was beginning to arrive.
They tramped down the road from the north in an orderly column, an iron snake of men with the High King’s great standard at their head, the seven-rayed sun of the One God bobbing here and there above the crowd, and the marks of a hundred heroes and more hanging limp in the evening stillness. On they came, through the ruins of the village, more, and more, stretching away into the haze of distance.
‘When do they stop coming?’ Raith heard Skara whisper, one arm across her chest to nervously twist her armring.
‘I’d been hoping the scouts got their numbers wrong,’ muttered Blue Jenner.
‘Looks like they did,’ grunted Raith. ‘They guessed too few.’
Up on the walls mocking laughs became grim smiles, then even grimmer frowns as that mighty snake of men split, flowed about the fortress like flooding water about an island, and the warriors of the Lowlands, and Inglefold, and Yutmark encircled Bail’s Point from the cliffs in the east to the cliffs in the west.
No need for shows of defiance on their side. Their numbers spoke in thunder.
‘Mother War spreads her wings over Bail’s Point,’ murmured Owd.
A fleet of wagons came now, groaning with forage, and after them an endless crowd of families and thralls, servants and merchants, priests and profiteers, diggers and drovers with a lowing and bleating herd of sheep and cows that p
ut any market Raith had ever seen to shame.
‘A whole city on the move,’ he muttered.
Darkness was closing in and the rearguard were only just arriving in a river of twinkling torches. Wild-looking men, their bone standards lit by flame, their bare chests marked with scars and smeared with war-paint.
‘Shends,’ said Raith.
‘Aren’t they sworn enemies of the High King?’ asked Skara, her voice more shrill than usual.
Mother Owd’s mouth was a hard line. ‘Grandmother Wexen must have prevailed upon them to be our enemies instead.’
‘I hear they eat their captives alive,’ someone muttered.
Blue Jenner gave the man a glare. ‘Best not get captured.’
Raith worked his sweaty palm around the handle of his shield and glanced towards the harbour, where plenty of ships were still gathered behind the safety of the chains to carry the thousand defenders away …
He bit his tongue until he tasted blood and forced his eyes back to the host gathering outside their walls. He’d never felt scared of a fight before. Maybe it was that the odds had always been stacked on his side. Or maybe it was that he’d lost his place, and his family, and any hope of getting them back.
They say it’s men with nothing to lose you should fear. But it’s them who fear most.
‘There,’ said Skara, pointing out at the High King’s ranks.
Someone was walking towards the fortress. Swaggering the way you might to a friend’s hall rather than an enemy’s stronghold. A warrior in bright mail that caught the light of the burning ship and seemed to burn itself. A warrior with long hair breeze-stirred and an oddly soft, young, handsome face, who carried no shield and propped his left hand loose on his sword’s hilt.
‘Bright Yilling,’ growled Jenner, baring all the teeth he still had.
Yilling stopped well within bowshot, grinning up towards the crowded battlements, and called out high and clear. ‘I don’t suppose King Uthil’s up there?’
It was some comfort to hear Uthil’s voice just as harsh and careless whether he faced one enemy or ten thousand. ‘Are you this man they call Bright Yilling?’