Half the World

ITCHING

Brand went down hard, practice sword spinning from his hand, tumbled grunting down the slope and flopped onto his back with a groan, the jeering of the crew echoing in his ears.

Lying there, staring into the darkening sky with his many bruises throbbing and his dignity in shreds, he guessed she must have hooked his ankle. But he’d seen no hint it was coming.

Thorn stuck her own sword point-down in the knobbled turf where they’d set out their training square and offered him her hand. “Is that three in a row now, or four?”

“Five,” he grunted, “as you well know.” He let her haul him up. He’d never been able to afford much pride and sparring with her was taking an awful toll on what little he had. “Gods, you got quick.” He winced as he arched his back, still aching from her boot. “Like a snake but without the mercy.”

Thorn grinned wider at that, and wiped a streak of blood from under her nose, the one mark he’d put on her in five bouts. He hadn’t meant it as a compliment but it was plain she took it as one, and Skifr did too.

“I think young Brand has taken punishment enough for one day,” the old woman called to the crew. “There must be a ring-crusted hero among you with the courage to test themselves against my pupil?”

Wasn’t long ago they’d have roared with laughter at that offer. Men who’d raided every bitter coast of the Shattered Sea. Men who’d lived by the blade and the feud and called the shield wall home. Men who’d spilled blood enough between them to float a longship, fighting some sharp-tongued girl.

No one laughed now.

For weeks they’d watched her training like a devil in all weathers. They’d watched her put down and they’d watched her get up, over and over, until they were sore just with the watching of it. For a month they’d gone to sleep with the clash of her weapons as a lullaby and been woken by her warcries in place of a cock’s crow. Day by day they’d seen her grow faster, and stronger, and more skillful. Terrible skillful, now, with ax and sword together, and she was getting that drunken swagger that Skifr had, so you could never tell where she or her weapons would be the next moment.

“Can’t recommend it,” said Brand as he lowered himself wincing beside the fire, pressing gently at a fresh scab on his scalp.

Thorn spun her wooden ax around her fingers as nimbly as you might a toothpick. “None of you got the guts for it?”

“Gods damn it, then, girl!” Odda sprang up from the fire. “I’ll show you what a real man can do!”

Odda showed her the howl a real man makes when a wooden sword whacks him right in the groin, then he showed her the best effort Brand had ever seen at a real man eating his own shield, then he showed her a real man’s muddy backside as he went sprawling through a bramble-bush and into a puddle.

He propped himself on his elbows, caked head to toe with mud, and blew water out of his nose. “Had enough yet?”

“I have.” Dosduvoi stooped slowly to pick up Odda’s fallen sword and drew himself up to his full height, great chest swelling. The wooden blade looked tiny in his ham of a fist.

Thorn’s jaw jutted as she scowled up at him. “The big trees fall the hardest.” Splinter in the world’s arse she might be, but Brand found himself smiling. However the odds stood against her, she never backed down.

“This tree hits back,” said Dosduvoi as he took up a fighting stance, big boots wide apart.

Odda sat down, kneading at a bruised arm. “It’d be a different story if the blades were sharpened, I can tell you that!”

“Aye,” said Brand, “a short story with you dead at the end.”

Safrit was busy cutting her son’s hair, bright shears click-clicking. “Stop squirming!” she snapped at Koll. “It’ll be over the faster.”

“Hair has to be cut.” Brand set a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Listen to your mother.” He almost added you’re lucky to have one, but swallowed it. Some things are better left unsaid.

Safrit waved the shears towards Brand. “I’ll give that beard of yours a trim while I’m about it.”

“Long as you don’t bring the shears near me,” said Fror, fingering one of the braids beside his scar.

“Warriors!” snorted Safrit. “Vainer than maidens! Most of these faces are best kept from the world, but a good-looking lad like you shouldn’t be hidden in all that undergrowth.”

Brand pushed his fingers through his beard. “Surely has thickened up these past few weeks. Starting to itch a little, if I’m honest.”

A cheer went up as Dosduvoi lifted his sword high and Thorn dived between his wide-set legs, spun, and gave him a resounding kick in the arse, sending the big man staggering.

Rulf scratched at a cluster of raw insect bites on the side of his neck. “We’re all itching a little.”

“No avoiding some passengers on a voyage like this.” Odda had a good rummage down the front of his trousers. “They’re only striving to find the easiest way south, just as we are.”

“They fear a war is brewing with the High King of lice,” said Safrit, “and seek allies among the midges.” And she slapped one against the back of her neck.

Her son scrubbed a shower of sandy clippings from his hair, which still seemed wild as ever. “Are there really allies to be found out here?”

“The Prince of Kalyiv can call on so many riders the dust of their horses blots out the sun,” said Odda.

Fror nodded. “And I hear the Empress of the South has so many ships she can fashion a footbridge across the sea.”

“It’s not about ships or horses,” said Brand, rubbing gently at the callouses on his palms. “It’s about the trade that comes up the Divine. Slaves and furs go one way, silver and silk come the other. And it’s silver wins wars, just as much as steel.” He realized everyone was looking at him and trailed off, embarrassed. “So Gaden used to tell me … at the forge …”

Safrit smiled, toying with the weights strung about her neck. “It’s the quiet ones you have to watch.”

“Still pools are the deepest,” said Yarvi, his pale eyes fixed on Brand. “Wealth is power. It is Queen Laithlin’s wealth that is the root of the High King’s jealousy. He can shut the Shattered Sea to our ships. Cut off Gettland’s trade. With the Prince of Kalyiv and the empress on his side, he can close the Divine to us too. Throttle us without drawing a blade. With the prince and the empress as our allies, the silver still flows.”

“Wealth is power,” muttered Koll to himself, as though testing the words for truth. Then he looked over at Fror. “How did you get the scar?”

“I asked too many questions,” said the Vansterman, smiling at the fire.

Safrit bent over Brand, tugging gently at his beard, shears snipping. It was strange, having someone so close, fixed on him so carefully, gentle fingers on his face. He always told Rin he remembered their mother, but it was only stories told over and over, twisted out of shape by time until he remembered the stories but not the memories themselves. It was Rin who’d always cut his hair, and he touched the knife she’d made for him then and felt a sudden longing for home. For the hovel they’d worked so hard for, and the firelight on his sister’s face, and worry for her rushed in so sharp he winced at the sting of it.

Safrit jerked back. “Did I nick you?”

“No,” croaked Brand. “Missing home is all.”

“Got someone special waiting, eh?”

“Just my family.”

“Handsome lad like you, I can hardly believe it.”

Dosduvoi had finally put a stop to Thorn’s dodging by grabbing a handful of her unruly hair, and now he caught her belt with his other hand, jerked her up like a sheaf of hay and flung her bodily into a ditch.

“Some of us are cursed with bad love-luck,” said Rulf mournfully, as Skifr called a halt to the bout and peered into the ditch after her pupil. “I was gone from my farm too long and my wife married again.”

“Bad love-luck for you, maybe,” muttered Safrit, tossing a tuft of Brand’s beard into the fire, “but good for her.”

“Bad love-luck is swearing an oath not to have any love at all.” Father Yarvi gave a sigh. “The older I get, the less the tender care of Grandmother Wexen seems a good trade for romance.”

“I did have a wife,” said Dosduvoi, lowering himself beside the fire and gingerly seeking out a comfortable position for his bruised buttocks, “but she died.”

“It’s not bad luck if she’s crushed by your bulk,” said Odda.

“That is not funny,” said the giant, though judging from the sniggering many of the crew disagreed.

“No wife for me,” said Odda. “Don’t believe in ’em.”

“I doubt they’re any more convinced by you,” said Safrit. “Though I feel sorry for your hand, forced to be your only lover all this time.”

Odda grinned, filed teeth shining with the firelight. “Don’t be. My hand is a sensitive partner, and always willing.”

“And, unlike the rest of us, not put off by your monstrous breath.” Safrit brushed some loose hairs from Brand’s now close-cropped beard and sat back. “You’re done.”

“Might I borrow the shears?” asked Skifr.

Safrit gave the gray fuzz on her skull a look over. “Doesn’t seem you’ve much to cut.”

“Not for me.” The old woman nodded at Thorn, who’d dragged herself out of the ditch and was limping over, grimacing as she rubbed at her sore head, loose hair torn free and shooting off at all angles. “I think another of our lambs needs shearing. Dosduvoi has proved that mop a weakness.”

“No.” Thorn tossed down her battered wooden weapons and tidied a few strands back behind her ear, a strange gesture from her, who never seemed to care the least for how she looked.

Skifr raised her brows. “I would not have counted vanity among your many shortcomings.”

“I made my mother a promise,” said Thorn, snatching up a flat loaf and stuffing half of it in her mouth with dirty fingers in one go. She might not have outfought three men at once but Brand had no doubt she could have out-eaten them.

“I had no notion you held your mother in such high regard,” said Skifr.

“I don’t. She’s always been a pain in my arse. Always telling me the right way to do things and it’s never the way I want to do them.” Thorn ripped at the loaf with her teeth like a wolf at a carcass, eating and speaking at once, spraying crumbs. “Always fussing over what folk think of me, what they’ll do to me, how I might be hurt, how I might embarrass her. Eat this way, talk this way, smile this way, piss this way.”

All the while she talked Brand was thinking about his sister, left alone with no one to watch over her, and the anger stole up on him. “Gods,” he growled. “Is there a blessing made you couldn’t treat like a curse?”

Thorn frowned, cheeks bulging as she chewed. “What does that mean?”

He barked the words, suddenly disgusted with her. “That you’ve a mother who gives a damn about you, and a home waiting where you’re safe, and you still find a way to complain!”

That caused an uncomfortable silence. Father Yarvi narrowed his eyes, and Koll widened his, and Fror’s brows crept up in surprise. Thorn swallowed slowly, looking as shocked as if she’d been slapped. More shocked. She got slapped all the time.

“I bloody hate people,” she muttered, snatching another loaf from Safrit’s hand.

It was hardly the good thing to say but for once Brand couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Don’t worry.” He dragged his blanket over one shoulder and turned his back on her. “They feel much the same about you.”