Half the World

A RED DAY

“Shields!” bellowed Rulf.

And Brand was hooked by panic and torn from happy dreams of home, scrambling from the comfort of his blankets and up into a chill dawn the color of blood.

“Shields!”

The crew were stumbling from their beds, bouncing off one another, charging about like startled sheep, half-dressed, half-armed, half-awake. A man kicked the embers of the fire as he ran past and sent sparks whirling. Another bellowed as he tried to struggle into his mail shirt, tangled with the sleeves.

“Arm yourselves!”

Thorn was up beside him. The unshaved side of her head was chaos these days, braids and snarls and matted worms bound up with rings of silver clipped from coins, but her weapons were oiled and polished to a ready gleam and her face was set hard. Made Brand feel braver, to see her brave. The gods knew, he needed courage. He needed courage and he needed to piss.

They’d pitched camp on the only hill for miles, a flat-topped knoll in a bend of the river, broken boulders jutting from its flanks, a few stunted trees clinging to the top. Brand hurried to the eastern crest where the crew were gathering, stared down the slope and across the flat ocean of grass that stretched away into the sunrise. As he scraped sleep from his eyes with trembling fingers he saw figures out there, ghostly riders wriggling in the dawn haze.

“Horse People?” he croaked out.

“Uzhaks, I think,” Father Yarvi shaded his pale eyes against Mother Sun, a bloody smudge on the far horizon, “but they live on the shores of the Golden Sea. I don’t know what’s brought them here.”

“A deep desire to kill us?” said Odda as the riders took shape out of the murk, red sun glinting on metal, on the blades of spears and curved swords, on helmets made to look like the heads of beasts.

“How many are there?” muttered Thorn, jaw-muscles working on the shaved side of her head.

“Eighty?” Fror watched them as calmly as a man might watch a neighbor weed his garden. “Ninety?” He opened up a pouch and spat in it, started mixing something inside with a fingertip. “A hundred?”

“Gods,” whispered Brand. He could hear the sound of hooves as the Horse People circled closer, yells and yips and strange warbles echoing across the plain, above the rattle and growl of the crew making ready their own war-gear and calling on their chosen gods for weaponluck. One rider swerved close, long hair streaming, to try an arrow. Brand shrank back but it was just a ranging shot, a taunting shot, dropping into the grass halfway up the slope.

“An old friend once told me the greater the odds the greater the glory,” said Rulf, plucking at his bowstring with calloused fingers and making it angrily hum.

Dosduvoi slipped the oil-cloth from the head of his great ax. “The chances of death also increase.”

“But who wants to meet Death old, beside the fire?” And Odda’s teeth shone with spit as he flashed his mad grin.

“Doesn’t sound such a bad outcome.” Fror pushed his hand into his pouch and pulled it out covered in blue paint, pressed it onto his face with the fingers spread to leave a great palm-print. “But I am ready.”

Brand wasn’t. He gripped his shield that Rin had painted with a dragon, it seemed a hundred years ago and half the world away. He gripped the haft of his ax, palms still sore with the rope burns underneath their bandages. The Horse People were ever-moving, their troop breaking apart and coming back together, flowing across the plain like swift-running water but always working their way closer, a white banner streaming under a horned skull. He caught glimpses of brave faces, beast faces, battle faces, teeth bared and eyes rolling. So many of them.

“Gods,” he whispered. Had he really chosen this? Instead of a nice, safe, boring life at Gaden’s forge?

“Skifr!” called Father Yarvi, low and urgent.

The old woman was sitting behind them, crosslegged beneath one of the trees, frowning into the dead fire as though the solution to their troubles might be hidden among the embers. “No!” she snapped over her shoulder.

“Arrows!” someone screeched and Brand saw them, black splinters sailing high, drifting with the wind. One flickered down near him, the feathered flights twitching. What change in the breeze might have wafted that little thing of wood and metal through his chest, and he’d have died out here under a bloody sky and never seen his sister again, or the docks, or the middens of Thorlby. Even things you always hated seem wonderful when you look back on them from a place like this.

“Get a wall together you lazy dogs!” Rulf roared, and Brand scrambled between Odda and Fror, wood and metal grating as they locked their shields together, rim behind the one on the left and in front of the one on the right. A thousand times he’d done it in the training square, arms and legs moving by themselves. Just as well, since his head felt full of mud. Men with spears and bows crowded behind them, thumping the front rank on their backs and snarling encouragements, those without shields waiting to kill anyone who broke through, to plug the gaps when men fell. When men died. Because men would die here, today, and soon.

“Before breakfast too, the bastards!” snapped Odda.

“If I had it in mind to kill a man I’d want him hungry,” grunted Fror.

Brand’s heart was beating as if it would burst his chest, his knees shaking with the need to run, jaw clenched tight with the need to stand. To stand with his crew, his brothers, his family. He wriggled his shoulders to feel them pressed tight against him. Gods, he needed to piss.

“How did you get the scar?” he hissed.

“Now?” growled Fror.

“I’d like to die knowing something about my shoulder-man.”

“Very well.” The Vansterman flashed a mad grin, good eye white in the midst of that blue handprint. “When you die, I’ll tell you.”

Father Yarvi squatted in the shadow of the shield wall, yelling words in the Horse People’s tongue, giving Father Peace his chance, but no answer came but arrows, clicking on wood, flickering overhead. Someone cried out as a shaft found his leg.

“Mother War rules today,” muttered Yarvi, hefting his curved sword. “Teach them some archery, Rulf.”

“Arrows!” shouted the helmsman and Brand stepped back, angling his shield to make a slot to shoot through, Rulf stepping up beside him with his black bow full-drawn, string whining in fury. Brand felt the wind of the flying shaft on his cheek as he stepped back and locked his rim with Fror’s again.

A shrill howl echoed out as the arrow found its mark and the crew laughed and jeered, stuck out their tongues and showed their brave faces, beast faces, battle faces. Brand didn’t feel much like laughing. He felt like pissing.

The Horse People were known for darting in and out, tricking their enemies and wearing them down with their bows. A well-built shield wall is hard to pierce with arrows alone, though, and that horn bow of Rulf’s was even more fearsome than it looked. With the height of their little hill he had the longer reach and, in spite of the years washed by him, his aim was deadly. One by one he sent arrows whistling down the grassy slope, calm as still water, patient as stone. Twice more the crew cheered as he brought down a horse then knocked a rider from his saddle to tumble through the grass. The others fell back out of his bow’s reach and began to gather.

“They can’t get around us because of the river.” Father Yarvi pressed between them to glance over Odda’s shield. “Or make use of their horses among the boulders, and we have the high ground. My left hand picked a good spot.”

“It’s not my first dance,” said Rulf, sliding out another arrow. “They’ll come on foot, and they’ll break on our wall like Mother Sea on the rocks.”

Rocks feel no pain. Rocks shed no blood. Rocks do not die. Brand went up on his toes to peer over the wall, saw the Uzhaks sliding from their saddles, readying for a charge. So many of them. The South Wind’s crew was outnumbered two to one by his reckoning. Maybe more.

“What do they want?” whispered Brand, scared by the fear in his own voice.

“There is a time for wondering what a man wants,” said Fror, no fear at all in his. “And there is a time for splitting his head. This is that second time.”

“We hold ’em here!” roared Rulf, “and when I cry ‘heave’ we drive these bastards down the slope. Drive ’em, and cut ’em down, and trample ’em, and keep mercy for another day, you hear? Arrow.”

The shields swung apart and Brand caught a glimpse of men running. Rulf sent his shaft flitting down the hill into the nearest one’s ribs, left him crawling, wailing, pleading to his friends as they charged on past.

“Hold now, boys!” called Rulf, tossing aside his bow and lifting a spear. “Hold!”

Around him men growled and spat and muttered prayers to Mother War, breath echoing from the wood in front of them. The odd speckle of rain was falling, a dew on helmets and shield rims, and Brand needed to piss worse than ever.

“Oh, true God!” shouted Dosduvoi, as they heard the quick footsteps of their enemies, howling war cries coming ever closer. “All-powerful! All-knowing God! Smite these heathens!”

“I’ll smite the bastards myself!” screamed Odda.

And Brand gasped at the impact, staggered back a half-step, then forwards, putting all his weight to his shield, boots sliding at the wet grass. Metal clanged and rattled and battered against wood. A storm of metal. Something pinged against the rim of his shield and he ducked away, splinters in his face, a devil’s broken voice shrieking on the other side.

Fror’s misshapen eye bulged as he bellowed words from the Song of Bail. “Hand of iron! Head of iron! Heart of iron!” And he lashed blindly with his sword over the shield wall. “Your death comes, sang the hundred!”

“Your death comes!” roared Dosduvoi. Some time for poetry, but others took up the cry, fire in their throats, fire in their chests, fire in their maddened eyes. “Your death comes!”

Whether it was the Horse People’s death or theirs they didn’t say. It didn’t matter. Mother War had spread her iron wings over the plain and cast every heart into shadow. Fror lashed again and caught Brand above the eye with the pommel of his sword, set his ears ringing.

“Heave!” roared Rulf.

Brand ground his teeth as he pushed, shield grinding against shield. He saw a man fall yelling as a spear darted under a rim and ripped into his leg, kept shoving anyway. He heard a voice on the other side, so clear the words, so close the enemy, just a plank’s thickness from his face. He jerked up, chopping over his shield with his ax, and again, a grunt and a gurgle, the blade caught on something. A spear jabbed past, scraped against his shield rim and a man howled. Fror butted someone, their nose popping against his forehead. Men growled and spluttered, stabbing and pushing, all tangled one with another.

“Die, you bastard, die!”

An elbow caught Brand’s jaw and made him taste blood. Mud flicked in his face, half-blinded him, and he tried to blink it away, and snarled, and cursed, and shoved, and slipped, and spat salt, and shoved again. The slope was with them and they knew their business and slowly but surely the wall began to shift, driving their enemies back, forcing them down the hill the way they’d come.

“Your death comes, sang the hundred!”

Brand saw an oarsman biting at an Uzhak’s neck. He saw Koll stabbing a fallen man with a knife. He saw Dosduvoi fling a figure tumbling with a sweep of his shield. He saw the point of a blade come out of a man’s back. Something bounced from Brand’s face and he gasped. At first he thought it was an arrow, then realized it had been a finger.

“Heave, I said! Heave!”

They pressed in harder, a hell of snarling and straining bodies, crowded too tight to use his ax and he let it fall, snaked his arm down and slid out the dagger Rin forged for him.

“Hand of iron! Heart of iron!”

The feel of its grip in his hand made him think of Rin’s face, firelit in their little hovel. These bastards were between him and her and a rage boiled up in him. He saw a face, rough metal rings in braided hair, and he jerked his shield up into it, snapped a head back, stabbed under the rim, metal squealing, stabbed again, hand sticky-hot. The man fell and Brand trampled over him, stumbling and stomping, dragged up by Odda, spitting through his clenched teeth.

“Your death comes!”

How often had he listened breathless to that song, mouthing the words, dreaming of claiming his own place in the wall, winning his own glory? Was this what he’d dreamed of? There was no skill here, only blind luck. No matching of noble champions, only a contest of madness. No room for tricks or cleverness or even courage, unless courage was to be carried helpless by the surge of battle like a storm washes driftwood. Perhaps it was.

“Kill them!”

The noise of it was horrifying, a clamor of rattling metal and battering wood and men swearing at the tops of their broken voices. Sounds Brand couldn’t understand. Sounds that had no meaning. The Last Door stood wide for them all and each of them faced it as best he could.

“Your death comes!”

The rain was getting heavier, boots ripping the grass and churning the red earth to mud and he was tired and sore and aching but there was no stopping. Gods, he needed to piss. Something smashed against his shield, near tore it from his arm. A red blade darted past his ear and he saw Thorn beside him.

The side of her face was spotted with blood and she was smiling. Smiling like she was home.