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‘All that matters is that we attack. Leave us.’
Yarvi heard the door closing and his mother’s footsteps, soft across the cold floor.
‘Stop crying,’ she said. It was only then that Yarvi realized his eyes were swimming, and he wiped them, and sniffed, and was ashamed. Always he was ashamed
She gripped him by the shoulders. ‘Stand tall, Yarvi.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, trying to puff out his chest the way his brother might have. Always he was sorry.
‘You are a king, now.’ She twisted his crooked cloak-buckle into place, tried to tame his pale blonde hair, close-clipped but always wild, and finally laid cool fingertips against his cheek. ‘You must never be sorry. You must wear your father’s sword, and lead a raid against the Vanstermen.’
Yarvi swallowed. The idea of going on a raid had always filled him with dread. To lead one?
Odem must have seen his horror. ‘I will be your shoulder-man, my king, always beside you, my shield at the ready. However I can help you, I will.’
‘My thanks,’ mumbled Yarvi. All the help he wanted was to be sent to Skekenhouse to take the Minister’s Test, to sit in the shadows rather than be thrust into the light. But that hope was dust now. Like badly-mixed mortar, his hopes were prone to crumble.
‘You must make Grom-gil-Gorm suffer for this,’ said his mother. ‘Then you must marry your cousin.’
He could only stare into her iron-grey eyes. Stare a little upward as she was still taller than he. ‘What?’
The soft touch became an irresistible grip about his jaw. ‘Listen to me, Yarvi, and listen well. You are the king. This may not be what either of us wanted, but this is what we have. You hold all our hopes now, and you hold them at the brink of a precipice. You are not respected. You have few allies. You must bind our family together by marrying Odem’s daughter Isriun, just as your brother was to do. We have spoken of it. It is agreed.’
Uncle Odem was quick to balance ice with warmth. ‘Nothing would please me more than to stand as your marriage-father, my king, and see our families forever joined.’
Isriun’s feelings were not mentioned, Yarvi noticed. No more than his. ‘But …’
His mother’s brow hardened. Her eyes narrowed. He had seen heroes tremble beneath that look, and Yarvi was no hero. ‘I was betrothed to your Uncle Uthil, whose sword-work the warriors still whisper of. Your Uncle Uthil, who should have been king.’ Her voice cracked as though the words were painful. ‘When Mother Sea swallowed him and they raised his empty howe above the shore, I married your father in his place. I put aside my feelings and did my duty. So must you.’
Yarvi’s eyes slid back to his brother’s handsome corpse, wondering that she could plan so calmly with her dead husband and son laid out within arm’s reach. ‘You don’t weep for them?’
A sudden spasm gripped his mother’s face, all her carefully arranged beauty splitting, lips curling from her teeth and her eyes screwing up and the cords in her neck standing stark. For a terrible moment Yarvi did not know if she would beat him or break down in wailing sobs and could not say which scared him more. Then she took a ragged breath, pushed one loose strand of golden hair into its proper place, and was herself again.
‘One of us at least must be a man.’ And with that kingly gift she turned and swept from the room.
Yarvi clenched his fists. Or he clenched one, and squeezed the other thumb against the twisted stub of his one finger.
‘Thanks for the encouragement, Mother.’
Always he was angry. As soon as it was too late to do him any good.
He heard his uncle step close, speaking with the soft voice one might use on a skittish foal. ‘You know your mother loves you.’
‘Do I?’
‘She has to be strong. For you. For the land. For your father.’
Yarvi looked from his father’s body to his uncle’s face. So like, yet so unlike. ‘Thank the gods you’re here,’ he said, the words rough in his throat. At least there was one member of his family who cared for him.
‘I am sorry, Yarvi. I truly am.’ Odem put his hand on Yarvi’s shoulder, a glimmer of tears in his eyes. ‘But Laithlin is right. We must do what is best for Gettland. We must put our feelings aside.’
Yarvi heaved up a sigh. ‘I know.’
His feelings had been put aside ever since he could remember.
A WAY TO WIN (#uc67b686d-1cee-56ec-ac7e-52245bc21f8a)
‘Keimdal, you will spar with the king.’
Yarvi had to smother a fool’s giggle when he heard the master-at-arms apply the word to him. Probably the four score young warriors gathered opposite were all stifling their own laughter. Certainly they would be once they saw their new king fight. No doubt, by then, laughter would be the last thing on Yarvi’s mind.
They were his subjects now, of course. His servants. His men, all sworn to die upon his whim. Yet they felt even more a row of scornful enemies than when he had faced them as a boy.
He still felt like a boy. More like a boy than ever.
‘It will be my honour.’ Keimdal did not look especially honoured as he stepped from his fellows and out into the training square, moving as easily in a coat of mail as a maiden in her shift. He took up a shield and wooden practice sword and made the air whistle with some fearsome swipes. He might have been less than a year older than Yarvi but he looked five: half a head taller, far thicker in the chest and shoulder and already boasting red stubble on his heavy jaw.
‘Are you ready, my king?’ muttered Odem in Yarvi’s ear.
‘Clearly not,’ hissed Yarvi, but there was no escape. The King of Gettland must be a doting son to Mother War, however ill-suited he might be. He had to prove to the older warriors ranged around the square that he could be more than a one-handed embarrassment. He had to find a way to win. There is always a way, his mother used to tell him.
But despite his undoubted gifts of a quick mind, empathy, and a fine singing voice, he could not think of one.
Today the training square had been marked out on the beach, eight strides of sand on a side and a spear driven into the ground at each corner. Every day they found different ground for it – rocks, woods, bogs, Thorlby’s narrow streets, even in the river – for a man of Gettland must be equally ready to fight wherever he stands. Or equally unready, in Yarvi’s case.
But the battles around the Shattered Sea were fought most often on its ragged shore, so on the shore they practised most often, and Yarvi had taken enough mouthfuls of sand in his time to beach a longship. As Mother Sun sank behind the hills the veterans would be sparring up to their knees in the brine. But now the tide was out across flats streaked with mirror-puddles, and the only dampness came from the hard spray on the salt wind, and the sweat leaking from Yarvi at the unfamiliar weight of his mail.
Gods, how he hated his mail. How he hated Hunnan, the master-at-arms who had been for so many years his chief tormentor. How he loathed swords and shields, and detested the training square, and despised the warriors who made it their home. And most of all how he hated his own bad joke of a hand, which meant he could never be one of them.
‘Watch your footing, my king,’ murmured Odem.
‘My footing won’t be my problem,’ snapped Yarvi. ‘I have two feet, at least.’
For three years he had scarcely touched a sword, spending every waking hour in Mother Gundring’s chambers, studying the uses of plants and the tongues of far-off places. Learning the names of the Small Gods and taking such very special care over his penmanship. While he had been learning how to mend wounds these boys – these men, he realized with a sour taste in his mouth – had put all their efforts into learning how to make them.
Odem gave him a reassuring clap on the shoulder which nearly knocked him over. ‘Keep your shield up. Wait for your chance.’
Yarvi snorted. If they waited for his chance they would be here until the tide drowned them all. His shield was lashed tight about his withered forearm with a sorry mass of strapping, and he clung to the handle with his thumb and one stub of finger, arm already burning to the shoulder from the effort of letting the damn thing dangle.
‘Our king has been away from the square for some time,’ called Master Hunnan, and worked his mouth as though the words were bitter. ‘Go gently today.’
‘I’ll try not to hurt him too badly!’ shouted Yarvi.
There was some laughter, but he thought it had an edge of scorn. Jokes are a poor substitute in a fight for strong sinews and a shield-hand. He looked into Keimdal’s eyes, and saw his easy confidence, and tried to tell himself that strong men are many and wise men few. Even in his own skull the thought rang hollow.
Master Hunnan did not smile. No joke was funny, no child lovable, no woman beautiful enough to bend those iron lips. He only gave Yarvi that same long stare he always used to have, as full of quiet contempt for him whether prince or king. ‘Begin!’ he barked.
If quickness was a mercy, it was a merciful bout indeed.
The first blow crashed on Yarvi’s shield, tore the handle from his feeble grip so that the rim caught him in the mouth and sent him stumbling. He managed by some shred of instinct to parry the next so that it glanced from his shoulder and numbed his arm, but he never even saw the third, only felt the sharp pain as his ankle was swept from under him and he crashed down on his back, all his breath wheezing out like the air from a split bellows.
He lay blinking for a moment. They still told tales of his Uncle Uthil’s matchless performances in the square. It seemed his own might live just as long in the memory. Alas, for very different reasons.
Keimdal thrust his wooden sword into the sand and offered his hand. ‘My king.’ Far better disguised than it used to be, but Yarvi thought there was a mocking curl to the corner of his mouth.
‘You’ve got better,’ Yarvi forced through his clenched teeth, twisting his crippled hand free of the useless shield-straps so Keimdal had no choice but to grasp it to pull him to his feet.
‘As have you, my king.’ Yarvi could see Keimdal’s disgust as he touched the twisted thing, and made sure to give him a parting tickle with the stub of his finger. A petty gesture, perhaps, but the weak must thrive on small revenges.
‘I’ve got worse,’ muttered Yarvi as Keimdal walked back to his peers. ‘If you can believe it.’
He caught sight of a girl’s face among the younger students. Thirteen years old, maybe, fierce-eyed, dark hair flicking around her sharp cheeks. Probably Yarvi should have been grateful Hunnan had not picked her to give him his beating. Perhaps that would be next in the procession of humiliations.
The master-at-arms gave a scornful shake of his head as he turned away and the anger surged up in Yarvi, bitter as a winter tide. His brother might have inherited all their father’s strength, but he had got his full share of the rage.
‘Shall we have another bout?’ he snapped across the square.
Keimdal’s brows went up, then he shrugged his broad shoulders and hefted his sword and shield. ‘If you command.’
‘Oh, I do.’
A grumbling passed around the older men and Hunnan frowned even harder. Must they endure more of this demeaning farce? If their king was embarrassed they were embarrassed, and in Yarvi they could see embarrassments enough to crowd the rest of their days.
He felt his uncle gently take his arm. ‘My king,’ he murmured, soft and soothing. Always he was soft and soothing as a breeze on a summer day. ‘Perhaps you should not exert yourself too much—’
‘You’re right, of course,’ said Yarvi. A fool is his anger’s slave, Mother Gundring once told him. The wise man’s anger is his tool. ‘Hurik. You stand for me.’
There was a silence as all eyes turned to the queen’s Chosen Shield, sitting huge and silent on the carved stool that marked him out among Gettland’s most honoured warriors, the great scar down his cheek becoming a white streak where it touched his beard.
‘My king,’ he rumbled as he stood and worked one arm through the tangled strapping of the fallen shield. Yarvi handed him his training sword. It looked like a toy in Hurik’s great, scarred fist. You could hear his footsteps as he took his place opposite Keimdal, suddenly looking very much his sixteen years. Hurik crouched, twisting his boots into the sand, then bared his teeth and made a fighting growl, deep and throbbing, louder and louder until the square seemed to shake with it, and Yarvi saw Keimdal’s eyes wide with doubt and fear, just as he had always dreamed of seeing them.
‘Begin,’ he said.
This bout was over quicker even than the last, but no one could have called it merciful.
To give Keimdal his due, he leapt in bravely enough, but Hurik caught the blow on his sword, wooden blades scraping, then darted in quick as a snake despite his size and kicked Keimdal’s feet away. The lad whooped as he fell, but only until Hurik’s shield rim caught him above the eye with a hollow ping and knocked him half senseless. Hurik frowned as he stepped forward, planted his boot on Keimdal’s sword hand and ground it under his heel. Keimdal groaned, one half of his grimace plastered with sand, the other blood-streaked from the gash on his forehead.
The girls might not have agreed, but Yarvi thought he had never looked better.
He swept the warriors with a glare, then. The kind his mother gave a slave who displeased her. ‘One to me,’ he said, and he stepped over Keimdal’s fallen sword as he strode from the square, choosing a path that forced Master Hunnan to shuffle awkwardly aside.
‘That was ungenerous, my king,’ said Uncle Odem, falling into step at his shoulder. ‘But not unfunny.’
‘I’m glad I made you laugh,’ grunted Yarvi.
‘Much more than that, you made me proud.’
Yarvi glanced sideways and saw his uncle looking back, calm and even. Always he was calm and even as fresh-fallen snow.
‘Glorious victories make fine songs, Yarvi, but inglorious ones are no worse once the bards are done with them. Glorious defeats, meanwhile, are just defeats.’
‘On the battlefield there are no rules,’ said Yarvi, remembering something his father told him once when he was drunk and bored with shouting at his dogs.
‘Exactly.’ Odem put his strong hand on Yarvi’s shoulder, and Yarvi wondered how much happier his life might have been had his uncle been his father. ‘A king must win. The rest is dust.’
BETWEEN GODS AND MEN (#ulink_a5dace44-551f-5f78-bfd6-7d00d79a5b4c)
‘… Mother Sun and Father Moon, shine your gold and silver lights upon this union between Yarvi, son of Laithlin, and Isriun, daughter of Odem …’
The towering statues of the six Tall Gods glowered down with pitiless garnet eyes. Above them, in niches ringing the dome of the ceiling, the amber figures of the small gods gleamed. All judging Yarvi’s worth and no doubt finding him as horribly wanting as he did himself.
He curled up his withered hand and tried to work it further into his sleeve. Everyone in the Godshall knew well enough what he had on the end of his arm. Or what he hadn’t.
Yet still he tried to hide it.
‘Mother Sea and Father Earth, grant them your harvests and your bounty, send them good weatherluck and good weaponluck …’
In the centre of the hall the Black Chair stood upon its dais. It was an elf-relic from the time before the Breaking of God, forged by unknown arts from a single piece of black metal, impossibly delicate and impossibly strong, and countless years had left not a single scratch upon it.
Seat of kings, between gods and men. Far too high for such a wretched thing as Yarvi to sit in. He felt unworthy even to look upon it.
‘Mother War and Father Peace, grant them the strength to face whatever Fate brings …’
He had expected to be a minister. To give up wife and children with hardly a thought. Kissing the aged cheek of Grandmother Wexen when he passed the test was the closest he had hoped to come to romance. Now he was to share his life, such as it was, with a girl he hardly knew.
Isriun’s palm was clammy against his, sacred cloth wrapped about their clasped hands to make a clumsy bundle. They gripped each other, and were tied together, and pressed together by the wishes of their parents, and bound together by the needs of Gettland, and still it felt as if there was an unbridgeable chasm between them.
‘Oh, He Who Sprouts the Seed, grant them healthy issue …’
Yarvi knew what every guest was thinking. Not crippled issue. Not one-handed issue. He stole a glance sideways at this small, slight, yellow-haired girl who should have been his brother’s wife. She looked scared and slightly sick. But who wouldn’t, being forced to marry half a man?
This was everyone’s second best. A day of celebration mourned by all. A tragic compromise.
‘Oh, She Who Guards the Locks, keep safe their household …’
Only Brinyolf the Prayer-Weaver was enjoying himself. He had spun one ponderous blessing for Isriun at her betrothal to Yarvi’s brother and now – to his delight if not hers – got the chance to construct a second. His voice droned on, exhorting Tall Gods and Small Gods to grant fertility in their fields, and obedience in their slaves, and no one would have been surprised by a plea for regularity in their bowels next. Yarvi hunched his shoulders, swamped by one of the heavy furs his father used to wear, dreading the magnitude of Brinyolf’s blessing at the wedding itself.
‘Oh, She of the Ewer, pour prosperity upon this royal couple, upon their parents and their subjects, and upon all of Gettland!’
The prayer-weaver stepped back, smug as a new parent, his chin vanishing into the roll of fat beneath it.
‘I shall be brief,’ said Mother Gundring, with the slightest knowing glance at Yarvi. He spluttered on a stifled laugh, then caught his mother’s eye upon him, cold as the winter sea, and had no need to stifle another.
‘A kingdom stands upon two pillars,’ spoke the old minister. ‘We already have a strong king.’ No one laughed. Admirable self control. ‘Soon, gods willing, we will have a strong queen also.’ Yarvi saw Isriun’s pale throat flutter as she swallowed.
Mother Gundring beckoned forward Yarvi’s mother and his Uncle Odem, the one person who looked happy to be in attendance, to give their blessing by placing their hands upon the bundle. Then with an effort she lifted high her staff, tubes and rods of the same elf-metal as the Black Chair gleaming, and called out, ‘They are promised!’
So it was done. Isriun was not asked for an opinion on the matter, and neither was Yarvi. It seemed there was little interest in the opinions of kings. Certainly not of this one. The audience, a hundred strong or more, served up restrained applause. The men – heads of some of Gettland’s greatest families, sword-hilts and cloak-buckles set with gold – beat approval on broad chests with heavy fists. On the other side of the hall the women – hair glistening with fresh oil and their household keys hung on best jewel-lustred chains – tapped fingers politely in their scented palms.
