Half a War

Victory

The land was a black mystery when the ships began to plough ashore, the sky a dark blue cloth slashed with cloud and stabbed with stars. Out on the dark water, the scattered remnants of Grandmother Wexen’s fleet were still burning.

The crews began to jump down, to flounder laughing through the surf, eyes shining with triumph in the light of a hundred bonfires set upon the beach.

Skara watched them, desperate to know who was living, who was wounded, who was dead, burning to run into the sea herself to find out sooner.

‘There!’ said Sister Owd, pointing, and Skara saw the prow-beast of the Black Dog, her crew trotting up the shingle. She felt a heady rush of relief when she saw Blue Jenner’s smiling face, then the warrior beside him pulled off a gilded helmet and Raith grinned up towards her. Whether Mother Kyre would have considered it proper or not, Skara took off down the beach to meet them.

‘Victory, my queen!’ called Jenner, and Skara caught him, hugged him, seized his ears and pulled his head down so she could kiss him on his wispy pate.

‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down!’

Jenner was blushing red as he nodded sideways. ‘Thank this one. He killed a captain, man against man. Never saw braver fighting.’

Raith’s eyes were bright and wild and before Skara knew it she was hugging him too, her nose full of the sour-sweat smell of him, somehow anything but unpleasant. He jerked her into the air with easy strength, spun her about lightly as if she was made of straw, both of them laughing, drunk on victory.

‘We’ve got prizes for you,’ he said, upending a canvas bag, and a clinking mass of ring-money spilled onto the sand.

Sister Owd squatted to root through the gold and silver, round face dimpling as she grinned. ‘This will do Throvenland’s treasury no harm, my queen.’

Skara put her hand on her minister’s shoulder. ‘Now Throvenland has a treasury.’ With this she could start to feed her people, maybe even begin to rebuild what Bright Yilling had burned, and be a queen rather than a girl with a title made of smoke. She raised one brow at Raith.

‘I must confess I had no high hopes of you when you first sat beside me.’

‘I’d no high hopes of myself,’ he said.

Jenner grabbed him, scrubbing at his white hair. ‘Who could blame you? He’s an unhopeful-looking bastard!’

‘You’re one to talk, old man,’ said Raith, slapping Blue Jenner’s hand away.

‘You both have proved yourselves great fighters.’ Skara picked out two golden armrings and handed one to Jenner, thinking how proud her grandfather would have been to see her giving gifts to her warriors. ‘And loyal friends.’ She took Raith’s thick wrist and slipped the other around it then, hidden in the darkness between them, let her fingers trail onto the back of his hand. He turned it over so she touched his palm, her thumb brushing across it one way, then the other.

She looked up and his eyes were fixed on hers. As if there was nothing else to look at in the world. Mother Kyre would certainly not have considered that proper. No one would. Perhaps that was why it gave Skara such a breathless thrill to do it.

‘Steel was our answer!’ came a roar and she jerked her hand free, turned to see King Uthil striding up the beach, Father Yarvi smiling at his shoulder. All about men held their swords, their axes, their spears high in salute, blades notched from the day’s work catching the light of the bonfires and burning the colours of flame, so it seemed the Iron King and his companions stalked through a sea of fire.

‘Mother War stood with us!’ Grom-gil-Gorm loomed from the darkness in the dunes, a fresh wound added to his faceful of scars, his beard tangled with clotted blood. Rakki strode beside him with the king’s great shield, scored with new marks of its own, Soryorn on the other side with an armful of captured swords. Mother Scaer stalked after him, thin lips ever-moving as she crooned a prayer of thanks to the Mother of Crows.

The two great kings, the two famed warriors, the two old enemies met, and eyed each other over a guttering fire. All across the crowded beach the laughter and the cheering faded, and She Who Sings the Wind sang a keening tune and tore bright sparks swirling down the shingle and out to sea.

Then the Breaker of Swords puffed out his great chest, that chain made from the pommels of his fallen enemies flashing, and spoke in a voice of thunder.

‘I looked out to sea and I saw a ship speeding, fleet as a grey gull over the water, scattering the ships of the High King like starlings. Iron on the mast, in the hands of her warriors. Iron the eye of her merciless captain. Iron the slaughter she spread on the water. Corpses to sate even Mother Sea’s hunger.’

An iron whisper went through the warriors. Pride at their strength and the strength of their leaders. Pride at the songs they would pass to their sons, more precious to them than gold. Uthil let his mad eyes widen, let the sword slide through the crook of his arm until it rested on its point. His voice came as harsh as the grinding of a whetstone.

‘I looked back to land and I saw a host gather. Black was the banner the wind snapped above them. Black was the fury that fell on their foemen. Into the sea were the High King’s men driven. Thunder of steel as helms split and shields riven. Red was the tide that washed over their ruin. Corpses to sate even Mother War’s hunger.’

The two kings clasped hands over the fire and a mighty cheer went up, a din of metal as men smashed their notched weapons against their gouged shields, and thumped fists on the mailed shoulders of their comrades, and Skara clapped her hands and laughed along with them.

Blue Jenner raised his brows. ‘Acceptable verses, at short notice.’

‘No doubt the skalds can sharpen them later!’ Skara knew what it was to win a great victory, and it was a feeling to sing of. The High King was driven from the land of her forefathers, and her heart felt light for the first time since she fled the burning Forest …

Then she remembered that bland smile, speckled with her grandfather’s blood and shivered. ‘Was Bright Yilling among the dead?’ she called.

Grom-gil-Gorm turned his dark eyes upon her. ‘I saw no sign of that Death-worshipping dog, nor his Companions. It was a rabble we butchered on the beach, weak-armed and weak-led.’

‘Father Yarvi.’ A boy slipped past Skara, catching the minister by his coat. ‘A dove’s come.’

For some reason she felt a weight of cold worry in her stomach as Father Yarvi tucked his elf-metal staff into the crook of his arm and turned the scrap of paper towards the firelight. ‘Come from where?’

‘Down the coast, beyond Yaletoft.’

‘I had men watching the water …’ He trailed off as his eyes scanned the scrawled letters.

‘You have news?’ asked King Uthil.

Yarvi swallowed, a sudden gust fluttering the paper in his fingers. ‘The High King’s army has crossed the straits to the west,’ he muttered. ‘Ten thousand of his warriors stand on the soil of Throvenland and are already marching.’

‘What?’ asked Raith, mouth still smiling but his forehead wrinkled with confusion.

Not far away men were still dancing clumsily to the music of a pipe, laughing, drinking, celebrating, but around the two kings the faces had turned suddenly grim.

‘Are you sure?’ Skara’s voice had the pleading note of a pardoned prisoner who finds they are to die for some other crime.

‘I am sure.’ And Yarvi crumpled the paper in his hand and flung it in the fire.

Mother Scaer gave a bark of joyless laughter. ‘This was all a ruse! A flourish of Grandmother Wexen’s fingers to draw our eyes while she struck the true blow with her other hand.’

‘A trick,’ breathed Blue Jenner.

‘She sacrificed all those men?’ said Skara. ‘As a trick?’

‘For the greater good, my queen,’ whispered Sister Owd. Further down the beach a few fires spluttered out as a cold wave surged up the shingle.

‘She tossed away her leakiest ships. Her weakest fighters. Men she need no longer arm, or feed, or worry over.’ King Uthil gave an approving nod. ‘One must admire her ruthlessness.’

‘I thought Mother War had smiled on us.’ Gorm frowned towards the night sky. ‘It seems her favour fell elsewhere.’

As the news spread the music stuttered to a halt and the celebrations with it. Mother Scaer was scowling towards Yarvi. ‘You thought to outwit Grandmother Wexen, but she has outwitted you and all of us with you. Arrogant fool!’

‘I heard none of your wisdom!’ Father Yarvi snarled back, shadows black in the angry hollows of his face.

‘Stop!’ pleaded Skara, stepping between them. ‘We must be united, now more than ever!’

But a babble of voices had broken out. A clamour like the one she had heard outside her door the night the High King’s warriors came to Yaletoft.

‘Ten thousand men? That could be three times what we fought here!’

‘Twice as many as we have!’

‘There could be more flooding across the straits!’

‘Plainly the High King has found more ships.’

‘We must strike them now,’ snapped Uthil.

‘We must fall back,’ growled Gorm. ‘Draw them onto our ground.’

‘Stop,’ croaked Skara, but she could not seem to take a proper breath. Her heart was surging in her ears. Something clattered from the black sky and she gasped. Raith caught her by the arm and dragged her behind him, whipping free his dagger.

A bird, swooping from the night and onto Mother Scaer’s shoulder. A crow, folding its wings and staring unblinking with yellow eyes.

‘Bright Yilling has come!’ it shrieked. And suddenly Skara was back in the darkness, the mad light of fires outside the windows, the white hand reaching out to touch her face. She felt her guts churn and her knees tremble, had to clutch at Raith’s arm to stop herself from falling.

In silence Mother Scaer unpeeled the scrap of paper from her crow’s leg. In silence she read the markings, her stony face growing stonier yet. In silence Skara felt the fear settling ever deeper on her like drifting snow, like a great stone crushing out her breath, acid tickling the back of her throat.

She remembered what her grandfather used to tell her. Victory is a fine feeling. But always a fleeting one.

Her voice was tiny in the night. ‘What is it?’

‘More dark news,’ said Mother Scaer. ‘I know where Bright Yilling has been.’