Half the World

RAGE

Brand stood there, staring at the jug of water on the table, and the goblets beside it, thinking they must be there for visitors but not daring to touch them even though he was thirsty as a man lost in the desert.

What if they were meant for better visitors than him?

He twisted his shoulders in a vain effort to peel his clinging shirt from his sticky skin. Gods, the heat, the endless, strangling heat, even as night crept in. He went to the window, closed his eyes and took a long breath, feeling the warm breeze on his face and wishing it was the salt wind of Thorlby.

He wondered what Rin was doing now. Rolled his eyes to the twilit skies and sent a prayer up to Father Peace to keep her well. In his eagerness to be a warrior, and find a crew, and make himself a new family he’d forgotten about the one he had. He was a man you could rely on, all right. To make a damn mess of things. He heaved up a heavy sigh.

And then he heard it, faint. Like someone calling his name. Thought he was dreaming it at first, then it came again, and he was sure. It sounded like Thorn, and the way things were between them she wouldn’t be calling him without a reason.

He shoved the door open, thinking to rouse the guards.

But the guards were gone. Only the empty corridor, shadowy steps up at the far end. He thought he heard fighting, felt a stab of worry. Metal, and cries, and his name screamed out again.

He started running.

Thorn snatched up the silver platter, fruit tumbling, shrieked as she flung it at the Vansterman and he ducked behind his big ax, stumbling away as the plate bounced from his shoulder and spun off into the bushes.

Tethered songbirds flapped and squawked and fluttered in a helpless panic and Thorn wasn’t much better off, penned behind the pillars of the pavilion as if it was a cage. Beside the Vansterman there were two soldiers still standing-one tall and rangy with a hell of a reach, one short and beefy with a neck thick as a tree. The duke loitered at the back, pointing at Thorn with his dagger and shouting in a broken voice. A clever man, maybe, but a man used to everything going his way.

“Got blood on your shoes have I?” she snarled at him. “Y’old bastard?”

She made a grab for one of the torches, ripping it from its sconce, ignoring the sparks that scattered searing up her arm.

Thick Neck darted toward her and she blocked his sword with hers, steel clashing, chopped at him and struck splinters from his shield, stepped away, trying to give herself room to think of something, slipped on fallen fruit in the darkness and lurched against the table. A sword chopped into her leg. The meat of her left thigh, above the knee. She gave a kind of swallowing yelp as the tall soldier pulled it free of her, readying for a thrust.

You will be struck, and when you are the force of it must not stagger you, the pain of it must not slow you, the shock of it must not cause you to doubt. She lashed at the tall soldier with the torch and he brought his shield up just in time, tottering down the steps as red coals spilled from the cage and across his back in a shower of glowing dust.

She ducked on an instinct, Thick Neck’s sword whistling by and clanging against the nearest pillar, splinters of marble spinning, fighting shadows flickering, dodging, stabbing all around them. Thorn swung for him but her leg had no strength in it, her sword bounced from his armored shoulder, only checked him for a moment.

She saw her blood, gleaming black in the torchlight, a trail of spots and spatters leading to the point of the tall man’s sword. She saw the duke’s face twisted with rage. She heard the empress screaming something over the rail. Calling for help, but there was no help coming. Thick Neck had his front foot on the top step, hard eyes fixed on her over his shield rim. Tall was clawing at his back, trying to brush the coals from his smoldering cloak.

She had to fight, while she still had blood to fight with. Had to attack, and it had to be now.

She shoved herself from the table as Thick Neck stabbed at her and sprang down the steps, over a fallen body. Her wounded thigh gave as she came down but she was ready for that, fell forward, rolled under Tall’s hard-swung sword, the wind from the blade catching her hair, came up on her good side, slashing at him as she passed.

She caught Tall behind the knee and he grunted, trying to turn and falling to all fours in front of her. She lifted the sword high, arching back, brought it crashing down on his helmet. The force of it jolted her arm so hard it made her teeth buzz. The blade shattered, shards of steel bouncing away. But it left a mighty dent, one of Tall’s legs kicking wildly as he flopped on his face, mouth open in a silent yawn. Thorn tottered against a statue, broken sword still clutched in her fist.

Good weaponluck, Odda would’ve said, because the Vansterman chose that moment to swing his ax and it missed her by a hair, heavy blade knocking a great chunk of marble loose. Thorn shoved him away with the torch, a few last sparks whirling on the breeze. Her leg was throbbing, pulsing, no strength in it at all.

Thick Neck stepped carefully toward her, shield up. There’s always a way, Father Yarvi used to say, but Thorn couldn’t see it. She was too hurt. The odds were too long. She clutched hard to that broken sword, bared her teeth, showed him her bravest face. She could smell flowers. Flowers and blood.

“Your death comes,” she whispered.

Vialine shrieked as she leapt between the pillars and onto the short man’s back, grabbing him around his bull neck, clutching at the wrist of his sword arm. He tried to throw her off, shield flailing, but that left a gap. Thorn dived at him, her left knee buckled, pain stabbing through her leg but she caught his armor as she fell and dragged herself up, snarled as she drove the broken sword blade up under his jaw. He spoke blood, the empress squealing as they crashed down on top of her.

Thorn rolled just in time, the Vansterman’s heavy ax flashing past, thudding through Thick Neck’s mail and deep into his chest. Thorn half-scrambled, half hopped up as he struggled to drag his ax free, the breath burning in her heaving chest.

“Brand!” she screamed in a broken voice. She heard a step behind her, lurched around and saw a flash of metal. The duke punched her in the cheek, made her head jolt, but it was a feeble sort of blow, barely even staggering her.

She clutched at his gilded breastplate. “That your best?” she hissed, but the words were blood, drooling down her chin. There was something in her mouth. Cold, and hard, across her tongue. That was when she realized he’d stabbed her. He’d stabbed her and the dagger was right through her face, between her jaws, his hand still around the grip.

They stared at each other in the darkness, neither quite believing what had happened. Neither quite believing she was still standing. Then, by the glimmering of torchlight, she saw his eyes go hard.

She felt the blade shift in her mouth as he tried to tear it free and she bit down on it, kneed him in his side with her wounded leg, twisted her head, twisting the bloody grip of the dagger out of his limp hand. She shoved him clumsily away, staggering sideways as the Vansterman swung at her, his ax grazing her shoulder and ripping a shower of leaves from the bushes as she hopped back toward the fountain.

Everyone’s got a plan until they start bleeding and she was bleeding now. Her leg was hot with it, her face sticky with it. No plans any more. She snorted and blew a red mist.

She caught the grip and dragged the dagger out of her face. Came out easy enough. Might have been a tooth came with it, though. Gods, she was dizzy. Her leg had stopped throbbing. Just numb. Numb and wet and her knee trembling. She could hear it flapping inside her blood-soaked trousers.

Drowsy.

She shook her head, trying to shake the dizziness out but it only made things worse, the blurry gardens tipping one way then back the other.

Duke Mikedas had drawn his sword, was dragging the corpse of the thick-necked man away so he could get at the empress.

Thorn waved the knife around but it was so heavy. As if there was an anvil hanging off the point. The torches flashed and flickered and danced.

“Come on,” she croaked, but her tongue was all swollen, couldn’t get the words around it.

The Vansterman smiled as he herded her back toward the fountain.

She tripped, clutched at something, knee buckling, just staying upright.

Kneeling in water. Fish flitting in the darkness.

Vialine screamed again. Her voice was getting hoarse from it.

The Vansterman wafted his ax back and forward and the big blade caught the light and left orange smears across Thorn’s blurred sight.

The empress said don’t kneel but she couldn’t get up.

She could hear her own breath, wheezing, wheezing.

Didn’t sound too good.

Gods, she was tired.

“Brand,” she mumbled.

He came up the steps running.

Caught a glimpse of a darkened garden, a path of white stones between flowering trees, and statues, and dead men scattered in the shadows about a torchlit fountain-

He saw Thorn kneeling in it, clutching at wet stone carved like snakes, a dagger in her other hand. Her face was tattered red and her clothes torn and stuck to her dark and the water pink with blood.

A man stood over her with an ax in his hand. The Vansterman from the market.

Brand made a sound like a boiling kettle. A sound he never made before and never heard a man make.

He tore down that path like a charging bull and as the Vansterman turned, eyes wide, Brand caught him, snatched him off his feet like the north gale snatches up a leaf and rammed him at a full sprint into a statue.

They hit it so hard the world seemed to shake. So hard it rattled Brand’s teeth in his head. So hard the statue broke at the waist and the top fell in dusty chunks across the grass.

Brand might’ve heard the Vansterman’s shattered groan if it wasn’t for the blood pounding in his skull like Mother Sea on a storm day, blinding him, deafening him. He seized the Vansterman’s head with both hands and rammed it into the marble pedestal, two times, three, four, chips of stone flying until his skull was bent and dented and flattened and Brand flung him down ruined onto the path.

Thorn was slumped against the fountain, her face all the wrong colors, skin waxy pale and streaked with blood and her torn cheeks and her mouth and her chin all clotted black.

“Stay back!” someone shrieked. An older man in a gilded breastplate with a sheen of sweat across his face. He had the Empress Vialine about the neck, a jewelled sword to her throat, but it was too long for the task. “I am Duke Mikedas!” he bellowed, as if the name was a shield.

But a name’s just a name. Brand’s lips curled back and he took a step forwards, the growling in his throat hot as dragon’s fire, kicking a corpse out of his way.

The duke whipped the sword from Vialine’s neck and pointed it wobbling towards Brand. “I’m warning you, stay-”

The empress grabbed his hand and bit it, twisting free as he screamed. He raised his sword but Brand was on him, making that sound again, that shrieking, keening, gurgling sound, not thinking of doing good, or of standing in the light, or anything but breaking this man apart with his hands.

The sword grazed his head and bounced off his shoulder. Maybe it cut him and maybe it didn’t and Brand didn’t care. His arms closed tight about the duke like a lock snapping shut. He was a big man, but Brand once held the weight of a ship across his shoulders. He hoisted Duke Mikedas into the air as if he was made of straw.

Four charging steps he took, thudding across the dark lawn, lifting the duke higher and higher.

“You can’t-” he screeched, then Brand flung him into space. Over the stone rail he tumbled. He seemed to hang there for a moment against the dusky sky, astonished, sword still in his hand. His screech turned to a coughing gurgle and he plummeted flailing out of sight.

“God,” croaked Vialine.

There was a crunch far below as her uncle hit the ground. Then a long clatter.

Then silence.