Half the World

BATTLE-JOY

Thorn was a killer. That, no one could deny.

The muddied and bloodied and boot-trampled stretch of grass behind the shifting shield wall was her ground, and to anyone who trod there she was Death.

With a hammering louder than the hail on the South Wind’s hull the shield wall edged down the hillside, shoving, hacking, trampling over men and dragging them between their shields, swallowing them up like a hungry serpent. One tried to get up and she stabbed him in the back with her father’s sword, his bloodied face all fear and pain and panic as he fell.

It should have been harder than with a practice blade, but it was so much easier. The steel so light, so sharp, her arm so strong, so quick. Her weapons had minds of their own. Ruthless minds, fixed on murder.

She was a killer. Skifr had said so and here was the proof, written in blood on the skins of her enemies. She wished her father had been there to see it. Maybe his ghost was, cheering her on at her shoulder. She wished Hunnan had been there, so she could shove his face in the blood she’d spilled. So she could dare him to deny her a place. So she could kill him too.

The Horse People didn’t understand this way of fighting and they swarmed at the wall in a mess, in ones and twos, their own courage their undoing. Thorn saw one clumsily angling a spear over the shields, aiming to stab at Brand. She darted forward, hooked him around the back with her ax, its pointed beard sinking deep into his shoulder, dragged him between the shields and into her arms.

They tottered in a hug, snapping at each other, his long hair in her mouth, digging with knees and elbows, then Father Yarvi slashed him across the back of his legs and she screamed as she tore her ax free, hacked it into the side of his skull, ripping off his helmet and sending it bouncing up the ruined hillside.

She’d heard her father speak of the battle-joy. The red joy Mother War sends her most favored children. She’d listened to his tales wide-eyed and dry-mouthed beside the fire. Her mother had told him those were no stories for a daughter’s ear but he’d leaned close and spoken on in a throaty whisper, so close she felt his warm breath on her cheek. She’d heard him speak of the battle-joy, and now she felt it.

The world burned, blazed, danced, her ripping breath a furnace in her throat as she rushed to the end of the wall, which was flexing now, twisting, threatening to break apart. Two Uzhaks had clambered up between the boulders on the hill’s flank and got around Dosduvoi. She hacked one in the side, folded him double. The spear of the other seemed to move as slowly as if it came through honey and she laughed as she slipped around it, chopped his legs away with her ax, sent him reeling.

An arrow flickered past her and Dosduvoi snatched her behind his shield, two shafts already lodged near its rim. The wall was buckling in the center, faces twisted as men strained to hold it together. There was a crash, a crewman fell, drooling teeth, and the wall split apart. A huge Uzhak stood in the gap, wearing a mask made from a walrus jaw with the tusks on either side of his leering face, snorting like a bull as he swung a great toothed club in both fists, sending men staggering, tearing the breach wider.

Thorn had no fear in her. Only the battle-joy, fiercer than ever.

She raced at the giant, blood surging like Mother Sea. His maddened eyes rolled toward her and she dropped, slid on her side between his great boots, turned, slashed as his club thudded into the ground behind her, caught him across the back of his leg, blood frozen in black spots as he lurched onto his knees. Fror stepped forward and hacked him down with thudding blows, one, two, three, the blue hand on his face red-speckled.

Thorn saw the Horse People scattering, bounding away down the slope towards the open plain and their waiting horses and she held her weapons high and screamed, burning to the tips of her fingers. Her father’s ghost urged her on and she sprang after her fleeing enemies like a hound after hares.

“Stop her!” roared Rulf, and someone dragged her back, cursing and struggling, the hair she still had tangled across her face. It was Brand, his beard scratching her cheek and his left arm under hers so that his shield was across her. Beyond the running Uzhaks she saw others stalking forward through the grass, bows drawn and faces eager. Lots of them, and close behind the ebbing battle-joy a wave of fear washed in on her.

“Close up the wall!” roared Rulf, spit flecking from his teeth. The men edged back, shuffled together, stopping up the gaps, shields wobbling and rattling and the daylight flickering between them. Thorn heard arrows click against lime-wood, saw one spin from the rim of Brand’s shield and over his shoulder. Odda was down, a shaft in his side, spewing curses as he dragged himself up the hill.

“Back! Back! Steady, now!”

She caught Odda under his arms and started to haul him away, while he grunted and kicked and blew bloody bubbles. She fell with him on top of her, nearly cut herself with her own ax, struggled up and dragged him on, then Koll was there to help and between them they pulled him back to the crest of the hill, the shield wall edging after them. Back to where they’d stood a few mad moments ago, the river at their backs and the plain stretching away before them.

Thorn stood there dumb, numb, not sure how many of the crew were dead. Three? Four? Everyone had scratches and some were hurt bad. Didn’t know if she was hurt. Didn’t know whose blood was on her. From the look of that arrow she held no high hopes for Odda. She held no high hopes for anything. Through the gaps in the battered shields she could see the trampled slope scattered with bodies, some still moving, groaning, pawing at their wounds.

“Push it through or pull it out?” snapped Safrit, kneeling beside Odda, gripping his bloody hand tight.

Father Yarvi only stared down, and rubbed at his lean jaw, fingertips leaving red streaks across his cheek.

The fury was gone as though it had never been, the fire in her guttered to ashes. Thorn’s father never told her that the battle-joy is borrowed strength and must be repaid double. She gripped the pouch with his fingerbones in it but there was no comfort there. She saw the leaking wounds and the men moaning and the slaughter they’d done. The slaughter she’d done.

She was a killer, that there was no denying.

She hunched over as if she’d been punched in the guts and coughed thin puke into the grass, straightened shivering, and staring, with the world too bright and her knees all a-wobble and her eyes swimming.

She was a killer. And she wanted her mother.

She saw Brand staring at her over his shoulder, his face all grazed down one side and his neck streaked with blood into the collar of his shirt and the tattered bandages flapping about the red dagger in his hand.

“You all right?” he croaked at her.

“Don’t know,” she said, and was sick again, and if she’d eaten anything she might never have stopped.

“We have to get to the South Wind,” someone said in a voice squeaky with panic.

Father Yarvi shook his head. “They’d rain down arrows on us from the bank.”

“We need a miracle,” breathed Dosduvoi, eyes turned toward the pink sky.

“Skifr!” shouted Yarvi, and the old woman winced as though a fly was bothering her, muttering and hunching her shoulders. “Skifr, we need you!”

“They’re coming again!” someone called from the ragged wall.

“How many?” asked Yarvi.

“More than last time!” shouted Rulf, nocking an arrow to his black bow.

“How many more?”

“A lot more!”

Thorn tried to swallow but for once could find no spit. She felt so weak she could hardly lift her father’s sword. Koll was bringing water to the shield wall and they were drinking, and snarling, and wincing at their wounds.

Fror swilled water around his mouth and spat. “Time to sell our lives dearly, then. Your death comes!”

“Your death comes,” a couple of men muttered, but it was more lament than challenge.

Thorn could hear the Horse People coming, could hear their warcries and their quick footsteps on the hillside. She heard the growling of the crew as they made ready to meet the charge and, weak though she was, she clenched her teeth and hefted her red-speckled ax and sword. She walked toward the wall. Back to that trampled stretch of mud behind it, though the thought gave her anything but joy.

“Skifr!” screamed Father Yarvi.

With a shriek of anger the old woman sprang up, throwing off her coat. “Be damned, then!” And she began to chant, soft and low at first but growing louder. She strode past, singing words Thorn did not understand, had never heard the like of. But she guessed the language and it was no tongue of men.

These were elf-words, and this was elf-magic. The magic that had shattered God and broken the world, and as if at a chill wind every hair on Thorn’s body bristled.

Skifr chanted on, higher and faster and wilder, and from the straps about her body she drew two studded and slotted pieces of dark metal, sliding one into the other with a snap like a closing lock.

“What is she doing?” said Dosduvoi but Father Yarvi held him back with his withered hand.

“What she must.”

Skifr held the elf-relic at arm’s length. “Stand aside!”

The wavering shield wall split in two and Thorn stared through the gap. There were the Horse People, a crawling mass of them, weaving between the bodies of their fallen, springing swift and merciless with death in their eyes.

There was a clap like thunder close at hand, a flash of light and the nearest of the Uzhaks was flung tumbling down the hillside as though flicked by a giant finger. Another crack and a disbelieving murmur went up from the crew, another man sent spinning like a child’s toy, his shoulder on fire.

Skifr’s wailing went higher and higher, splinters of shining metal tumbling from the elf-relic in her hand and falling to smoke in the grass at her feet. Men whimpered, and gaped, and clutched at talismans, more fearful of this sorcery than they were of the Uzhaks. Six strokes of thunder rolled across the plain and six men were left ruined and burning and the rest of the Horse People ran squealing in terror.

“Great God,” whispered Dosduvoi, making a holy sign over his heart.

There was a silence then. The first in some time. Only the whisper of the wind in the grass and the rough clicking of Odda’s breath. There was a smell like burning meat. One of the fallen splinters had caught fire in the grass. Skifr stepped forward grimly and ground the flame out under her boot.

“What have you done?” whispered Dosduvoi.

“I have spoken the name of God,” said Skifr. “Written in fire and caught in elf-runes before the Breaking of the World. I have torn Death from her place beside the Last Door and sent her to do my bidding. But there is always a price to be paid.”

She walked over to where Odda was slumped pale against one of the stunted trees, Safrit bent over him trying to tease out the arrow.

“The name of God has seven letters,” she said, and she pointed that deadly piece of metal at him. “I am sorry.”

“No!” said Safrit, trying to put herself between them, but Odda pushed her gently away.

“Who wants to die old?” And he showed his mad grin, the filed lines in his teeth turned red with blood. “Death waits for us all.”

There was another deafening crack, and Odda arched his back, trembling, then fell still, smoke rising from a blackened hole in his mail.

Skifr stood looking down. “I said I would show you magic.”