Half the World (Shattered Sea #2)(50)

Brand had dreamed of having his own sword, now looking at it made him feel sick. “I’m no warrior.”

“Yes y’are.”

“A warrior doesn’t fear.”

“A fool doesn’t fear. A warrior stands in spite of his fear. You stood.”

Brand plucked at his damp trousers. “I stood and pissed myself.”

“You won’t be the only one.”

“The hero never pisses himself in the songs.”

“Aye, well.” Rulf gave his shoulder a parting squeeze, and stood. “That’s why those are songs, and this is life.”

Mother Sun was high over the steppe when they set off, the pyre-smoke slowly rising. Though the blood had drained from the sky and left only a clear and beautiful blue, it was still crusted dark under Brand’s fingernails, and in his bandages, and at his throbbing neck. It was still a red day. He felt every day he lived would be a red day now.

Four oars lay still beside the mast, the ashes of the men who’d pulled them already whirling out across the plains. Skifr sat brooding among the cargo, hood drawn up, the nearest oarsmen all shuffled as far from her as they could get without falling out of the boat.

Brand glanced across at Thorn as they settled to rowing and she looked back, her face as pale and hollow as Odda’s had been when they stacked the wood around him. He tried to smile, but his mouth wouldn’t find the shape of it.

They’d fought in the wall. They’d stood at the Last Door. They’d faced Death and left a harvest for the Mother of Crows. Whatever Master Hunnan might’ve said, they were both warriors now.

But it wasn’t like the songs.





WHAT GETTLAND NEEDS


Kalyiv was a sprawling mass, infesting one bank of the Denied and spreading like a muddy sickness onto the other, the bright sky above smudged with the smoke of countless fires and dotted with scavenging birds.

The prince’s hall stood on a low hill over the river, gilded horses carved upon its vast roof beams, the wall around it made as much from mud as masonry. Crowding outside that was a riot of wooden buildings ringed by a fence of stout logs, the spears of warriors glinting at the walkway. Crowding outside that, a chaos of tents, yurts, wagons, shacks and temporary dwellings of horrible wretchedness sprawled out over the blackened landscape in every direction.

“Gods, it’s vast,” muttered Brand.

“Gods, it’s ugly,” muttered Thorn.

“Kalyiv is as a slow-filling bladder,” said Skifr, thoughtfully picking her nose, considering the results, then wiping them on the shoulder of the nearest oarsman so gently he didn’t even notice. “In spring it swells with northerners, and folk from the empire, and Horse People from across the steppe all swarming here to trade. In summer it splits its skin and spills filth over the plains. In winter they all move on and it shrivels back to nothing.”

“It surely smells like a bladder,” grunted Rulf, wrinkling his nose.

Two huge, squat towers of mighty logs had been thrown up on either side of the river and a web of chains strung between them, links of black iron spiked and studded, bowing under the weight of frothing water, snarled up with driftwood and rubbish, stopping dead all traffic on the Denied.

“Prince Varoslaf has fished up quite a catch with his iron net,” said Father Yarvi.

Thorn had never seen so many ships. They bobbed on the river, and clogged the wharves, and had been dragged up on the banks in tight-packed rows stripped of their masts. There were ships from Gettland and Vansterland and Throvenland. There were ships from Yutmark and the Islands. There were strange ships which must have come up from the south, dark-hulled and far too fat-bellied for the trip over the tall hauls. There were even two towering galleys, each with three ranks of oars, dwarfing the South Wind as they glided towards the harbor.

“Look at those monsters,” murmured Brand.

“Ships from the Empire of the South,” said Rulf. “Crews of three hundred.”

“It’s the crews he’s after,” said Father Yarvi. “To fight his fool’s war against the Horse People.”

Thorn was far from delighted at the thought of fighting more Horse People. Or for that matter of staying in Kalyiv for the summer. It had smelled a great deal better in her father’s stories. “You think he’ll want our help?”

“Certainly he’ll want it, as we want his.” Yarvi frowned up toward the prince’s hall. “Will he demand it, is the question.”

He had demanded it of many others. The harbor thronged with sour-faced men of the Shattered Sea, all mired in Kalyiv until Prince Varoslaf chose to loosen the river’s chains. They lazed in sullen groups about slumping tents and under rotten awnings, and played loaded dice, and drank sour ale, and swore at great volume, and stared at everything with hardened eyes, the newest arrivals in particular.

“Varoslaf had better find enemies for these men soon,” murmured Yarvi, as they stepped from the South Wind. “Before they find some nearer to hand.”

Fror nodded as he made fast the prow-rope. “Nothing more dangerous than idle warriors.”

“They’re all looking at us.” Brand’s bandages had come off that morning and he kept picking nervously at the rope-scabs snaking up his forearms.

Thorn dug him with her elbow. “Maybe your hero’s fame goes ahead of us, Ship-lifter.”