Yilling gave an extravagant shrug. ‘Someone has to be.’
‘The one who killed fifty men in the battle at Fornholt?’ called Gorm, from the roof of Gudrun’s tower.
‘Couldn’t say. I was killing, not counting.’
‘The one who cut the prow-beast from Prince Conmer’s ship with a single blow?’ asked Uthil.
‘It’s all in the wrist,’ said Yilling.
‘The one who murdered King Fynn and his defenceless minister?’ barked Skara.
Yilling kept smiling. ‘Aye, that one. And you should have seen what I did to my dinner just now.’ He happily patted his belly. ‘There was a slaughter!’
‘You are smaller than I expected,’ said Gorm.
‘And you are larger than I dared hope.’ Yilling wound a strand of his long hair around one finger. ‘Big men make a fine loud crash when I knock them down. I am dismayed to find the Iron King and the Breaker of Swords penned up like hogs in a sty. I felt sure you would be keen to test your sword-work against mine, steel to steel.’
‘Patience, patience.’ Gorm leaned on the battlements, his hands dangling. ‘Perhaps when we are better acquainted I can kill you.’
Uthil gave a stiff nod. ‘A good enmity, like a good friendship, takes time to mature. One does not start at the end of a story.’
Yilling smirked the wider. ‘Then I will bide my time and earnestly hope to kill you both in due course. It would be a shame to deny the skalds as fine a song as that would make.’
Gorm sighed. ‘The skalds will find something to sing about, either way.’
‘Where is Thorn Bathu?’ asked Yilling, glancing about as though she might be hiding in the ditch. ‘I’ve killed some women but never one of her fame.’
‘No doubt she will introduce herself presently,’ said Uthil.
‘No doubt. It is the fate of every strong warrior to one day cross the path of a stronger. That is our great blessing and our great curse.’
Uthil nodded again. ‘Death waits for us all.’
‘She does!’ Yilling spread his arms wide, fingers working. ‘Long have I yearned to embrace my mistress, but I have yet to find a warrior skilful enough to introduce us.’ He turned to the blazing ship. ‘You burned my boat?’
‘A gracious host gives guests a place at the fire,’ called Gorm, and a gale of mocking laughter ran along the battlements. Raith forced up a jagged chuckle of his own, even though it took a hero’s effort.
Yilling only shrugged, though. ‘Bit of a waste. It was a fine ship.’
‘We have more ships than we know what to do with since we captured all of yours,’ growled Gorm.
‘And you have so few men to put in them, after all,’ said Yilling, dampening the laughter again. He sighed at the flames. ‘I carved the prow-beast myself. Still, what’s burned is burned, say I, and cannot be unburned.’
Skara clutched at the battlements. ‘You’ve burned half of Throvenland to no purpose!’
‘Ah! You must be the young Skara, queen of the few unburned bits.’ Yilling pushed out his plump lips and squinted up. ‘Make me your villain if you please, my queen, blame me for all your woes, but I have broken no oaths, and have a noble purpose in my burning. To make you kneel before the High King. That … and fire is pretty.’
‘It takes a moment to burn what takes a lifetime to build!’
‘That’s what makes it pretty. You’ll be kneeling to the High King soon enough, either way.’
‘Never,’ she snarled.
Yilling wagged a finger. ‘Everyone says that till the tendons in their legs are cut. Then, believe me, they go down quick enough.’
‘Just words, my queen,’ said Blue Jenner, easing Skara back from the parapet. But if words were weapons, Raith felt Yilling had the best of that bout.
‘Are you just going to stand and blather?’ Gorm stretched his arms wide and gave a showy yawn. ‘Or have a go at our walls? Even little men make a fine loud crash when I knock them down from this height, and I fancy some exercise.’
‘Ooh, that’s a worthy question!’ Yilling peered up at the bruising sky, and then back towards his men, busy surrounding Bail’s Point in an ever-thickening ring of sharpened steel. ‘I find myself in two minds … let’s toss for it and let Death decide, eh, Queen Skara?’
Skara’s pale face twitched, and she gripped tight to Jenner’s arm.
‘Heads we come for you, tails we stay!’ And Yilling flicked a coin high into the air, flickering orange with the light of his burning ship, and let it fall in the grass, hands on hips as he peered down.
‘Well?’ called Gorm. ‘Heads or tails?’
Yilling gave a burst of high laughter. ‘I’m not sure, it rolled away! So it goes sometimes, eh, Breaker of Swords?’
‘Aye,’ grunted Gorm, somewhat annoyed. ‘So it goes.’
‘Let’s leave it till tomorrow. I’ve a feeling you’ll still be here!’
The High King’s champion turned, the smile still on his soft, smooth face, and sauntered back towards his lines. At twice bowshot from the walls they’d started hammering stakes into ground.
A circle of thorns, facing in.
The Forbidden City
No fevered imagining, no night-time foreboding, no madman’s nightmare could have come close to the reality of Strokom.
The South Wind crawled across a vast circle of still water. A secret sea miles across, ringed by islands, some mere splinters of rock, some stretching out of sight, all sprouting with buildings. With torn cubes and broken towers and twisted fingers of crumbling elf-stone and still-shining elf-glass. More jutted half-drowned from the dark waters. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of empty windows glowered down and Koll tried to reckon up how many elves might have lived and died in this colossal wreck, but could not find the numbers to begin.
‘Quite a sight,’ murmured Father Yarvi in the greatest understatement ever uttered.
All was silent. No birds circled overhead. No fish flickered in their wake. Only the creaking of the rowlocks and the muttered prayers of the crew. Long-tested oarsmen missed their strokes and tangled their oars with each other for gazing about in awestruck horror, and Koll didn’t doubt he was the most awestruck and horrified of the whole crowd.
The gods knew, he’d never laid claim to being a brave man. But it seemed cowardice could land you in more trouble than courage.
‘She Who Sings the Wind is angry,’ murmured Mother Scaer as she peered up at the tortured sky, a giant spiral of bruised purples and wounded reds and midnight blacks where no star would ever show. A weight of cloud to crush the world.
‘Here the wind is just the wind.’ Skifr took off the tangle of holy signs, talismans, blessed medallions and lucky teeth she always wore and tossed them aside. ‘Here there are no gods.’
Koll far preferred the notion of angry gods to the notion of none at all. ‘What do you mean?’
Skifr stood tall by the prow and spread her arms, her ragged cloak flapping as if she was some huge, unnatural bird, some madman’s prow-beast pointing the way to doom.
‘This is Strokom!’ she shrieked. ‘Greatest ruin of the elves! You can cease your prayers, for here even the gods fear to tread!’
‘I’m not sure you’re helping,’ growled Father Yarvi.
The crew gazed up at her, some hunching as though they could vanish into their own shoulders. Tough and desperate warriors, every one, but there was no battle, no hardship, no loss that could prepare a man for this.
‘We shouldn’t be here,’ grunted one old oarsman with a squinting eye.
‘This place is cursed,’ said another. ‘Folk who tread here sicken and die.’
Father Yarvi stepped in front of Skifr, as calm as a man at his own firepit. ‘One stroke at a time, my friends! I understand your fears but they are empty! The money-boxes Queen Laithlin will give you when you return, on the other hand, will be brimming full. The elves are thousands of years gone, and we have the Walker in the Ruins to show us the safe path. There is no dang
er. Trust me. Have I ever steered you wrong?’ The warnings withered to grumbles, but even the promise of riches couldn’t coax out a single smile.
‘There!’ called Skifr, pointing towards a set of slanted steps rising from the water, big enough to have been made for the feet of giants. ‘Put us ashore.’
Rulf called for slow strokes, and leant upon the steering oar, and brought them smoothly in, gravel grating against the keel. ‘How can the waters be so calm?’ Koll heard him mutter.
‘Because all things here are dead,’ said Skifr. ‘Even the waters.’ And she sprang across to the steps.
As Father Yarvi put one hand on the rail, Mother Scaer caught his withered wrist. ‘It is not too late to give up on this madness. One foot on this cursed ground and we break the most sacred law of the Ministry.’
Yarvi twisted free. ‘Any law that cannot bend in a storm is destined to be broken.’ And he leapt down.
Koll took a deep breath and held it as he vaulted over the side. He was much relieved not to be instantly struck down when his boots hit the stone. It seemed, in fact, just ground like any other. Ahead, in the shadowy valleys between the mountainous buildings nothing moved, except maybe some loose panel or dangling cable shifting in the ceaseless wind.
‘No moss,’ he said, squatting at the water’s edge. ‘No weed, no barnacle.’
‘Nothing grows in these seas but dreams,’ said Skifr. She fished something from inside her cloak of rags. A strange little bottle, and when she tipped it out five things lay on her pink palm. They looked like grubby beans, one half white, the other red, and peering closely Koll could see a faded inscription written upon each in tiny letters. Elf-letters, it hardly needed to be said, and Koll was about to make a holy sign over his chest when he remembered the gods were elsewhere, and settled for pressing gently at the weights under his shirt. That was some small comfort.
‘Each of us must eat a bean,’ said Skifr, and tossing her head back flicked one into her mouth and swallowed it.
Mother Scaer frowned down at them with even more than her usual scorn. ‘What if I do not?’
Skifr shrugged. ‘I have never been foolish enough to refuse my teachers’ solemn instruction always to eat one when I pass through elf-ruins.’
‘This could be poison.’
Skifr leaned close. ‘If I wanted to kill you I would simply cut your throat and give your corpse to Mother Sea. Believe me when I say I have often considered it. Perhaps there is poison all around us, and this is the cure?’
Father Yarvi snatched his from Skifr’s palm and swallowed it. ‘Stop moaning and eat the bean,’ he said, frowning off inland. ‘We have chosen our path and it winds long ahead of us. Keep the men calm while we are gone, Rulf.’
The old helmsman finished tying off the prow-rope to a great boulder and swallowed his bean. ‘Calm might be too much to ask.’
‘Then just keep them here,’ said Skifr, thrusting her palm and the thing upon it towards Koll. ‘We will hope to be back within five days.’
‘Five days out there?’ asked Koll, the bean frozen halfway to his mouth.
‘If we are lucky. These ruins go on for miles and the ways are not easy to find.’
‘How do you know them?’ asked Scaer.
Skifr let her head drop on one side. ‘How does anyone know anything? By listening to those who went before. By following in their footsteps. Then, in time, by walking your own path.’
Scaer’s lip wrinkled. ‘Is there more to you than smoke and riddles, witch?’
‘Perhaps, when the time is right, I will show you more. There is nothing to fear. Nothing but Death, anyway.’ She leaned close to Mother Scaer, and whispered. ‘And is she not always at your shoulder?’
The bean was uncomfortable sliding down Koll’s throat, but it tasted of nothing and left him feeling no different. Plainly it was no cure for soreness, guilt, and a crushing sense of doom.
‘What about the rest of the crew?’ he whispered, frowning back towards the ship.
Skifr shrugged. ‘I have only five beans,’ and she turned towards the ruins with the ministers of Gettland and Vansterland at her heels.
Gods, Koll wished now he’d stayed with Rin. All the things he loved about her came up in a needy surge. He felt then he’d rather have faced ten of the High King’s armies by her side than walked into the cursed silence of Strokom.
But, as Brand always used to say, you’ll buy nothing with wishes.
Koll shouldered his pack, and followed the others.
Wounds
Men lay on the floor, spitting and writhing. They begged for help and muttered for their mothers. They swore through gritted teeth, and snarled, and screamed, and bled.
Gods, a man held a lot of blood. Skara could hardly believe how much.
A prayer-weaver stood in the corner, droning out entreaties to He Who Knits the Wound and wafting about the sweet-smelling smoke from a cup of smouldering bark. Even so there was a suffocating stink, of sweat and piss and all the secrets that a body holds and Skara had to press one hand over her mouth, over her nose, over her eyes almost, staring between her fingers.
Mother Owd was not a tall woman but she seemed a towering presence now, less like a peach than the deep-rooted tree that bore them. Her forehead was furrowed, stray hairs stuck with sweat to her clenched jaw, sleeves rolled up to show strong muscles working in her red-stained forearms. The man she was tending to arched his back as she probed at the wound in his thigh, then started to thrash and squeal.
‘Someone hold him!’ she growled. Rin brushed past Skara, caught the man’s wrist and pressed him roughly down while Sister Owd plucked a bone needle from her loose bun, stuck it in her teeth so she could thread it, and began to sew, the man snorting and bellowing and spraying spit.
Skara remembered Mother Kyre naming the organs, describing their purpose and their patron god. A princess should know how people work, she had said. But you can know a man is full of guts and still find the sight of them a most profound shock.
‘They came with ladders,’ Blue Jenner was saying. ‘And bravely enough. Not a task I’d fancy. Reckon Bright Yilling promised good ring-money to any man could scale the walls.’
‘Not many did,’ said Raith.
Skara watched flies flit about a heap of bloody bandages. ‘Enough to cause this.’
‘This?’ She hardly knew how Jenner could chuckle now. ‘You should see what we did to them! If this is the worst we suffer before Father Yarvi gets back I’ll count us lucky indeed.’ Skara must have looked horrified, because he faltered as he caught her eye. ‘Well … not these boys, maybe …’
‘He was testing us.’ Raith’s face was pale and his cheek scraped with grazes. Skara did not want to know how he got them. ‘Feeling out where we’re weak.’
‘Well it’s a test we passed,’ said Jenner. ‘This time, anyway. We’d best get back to the walls, my queen. Bright Yilling ain’t a fellow to give up at the first stumble.’
By then they were hauling another man up onto Sister Owd’s table while the minister rubbed her hands clean in a bowl of thrice-blessed water already pink with blood. He was a big Gettlander not much older than Skara, the only sign of a wound a dark patch on his mail.
Owd had a rattling set of little knives strung on a cord around her neck, and she used one now to slit the thongs that held his armour, then Rin dragged it and the padding underneath up to show a little slit in his belly. Mother Owd bent over it, pressed at it, watched blood leak out. He squirmed and his mouth opened but he made only a breathy gasp, his soft face shuddering. Sister Owd sniffed at the wound, muttered a curse, and stood.
‘There’s nothing I can do. Someone sing him a prayer.’
Skara stared. That easily, a man condemned to death. But those are the choices a healer must make. Who can be saved. Who is already meat. Mother Owd had moved on and Skara forced herself up beside the dying man on trembling legs, her stomach in her mouth. Forced herself to take his hand.
‘What is your
name?’ she asked him.
His whisper was hardly more than a breath. ‘Sordaf.’
She tried to sing a prayer to Father Peace to guide him to an easy rest. A prayer she remembered Mother Kyre singing when she was small, after her father died, but her throat would hardly make the words. She had heard of men dying well in battle. She could no longer imagine what that meant.
The wounded man’s bulging eyes were fixed on her. Or fixed beyond her. On his family, maybe. On things left undone and unsaid. On the darkness beyond the Last Door.
‘What can I do?’ she whispered, clutching at his hand as hard as he clutched at hers.
He tried to make words but they came out only squelches, blood speckling his lips.
‘Someone get some water!’ she shrieked.
‘No need, my queen.’ Rin gently prised Skara’s gripping fingers from his. ‘He’s gone.’ And Skara realized his hand was slack.
She stood.
She felt dizzy. Hot and prickly all over.
Someone was screaming. Hoarse, strange, bubbling screams, and in between she heard the burbling of the prayer-weaver, burbling, burbling, begging for help, begging for mercy.
She tottered to the doorway, nearly fell, burst into the yard, was sick, nearly fell in her sick, clawed her dress out of the way as she was sick again, wiped the long string of bile from her mouth and leaned against the wall, shaking.
‘Are you all right, my queen?’ Mother Owd stood wiping her hands on a cloth.
‘I’ve always had a weak stomach—’ Skara coughed, retched again, but all that came up was bitter spit.
‘We all have to keep our fears somewhere. Especially if we cannot afford to let them show. I think you hide yours in your stomach, my queen.’ Owd put a gentle hand on Skara’s shoulder. ‘As good a place as any.’
Skara looked towards the doorway, the moans of the wounded coming faint from beyond. ‘Did I make this happen?’ she whispered.
‘A queen must make hard choices. But also bear the results with dignity. The faster you run from the past, the faster it catches you. All you can do is turn to face it. Embrace it. Try and meet the future wiser for it.’ And the minister unscrewed the cap from a flask and offered it to Skara. ‘Your warriors look to you for an example. You don’t have to fight to show them courage.’