Half a King. Джо Аберкромби

      ‘—still I like to think of us all as one family!’ The captain gathered the whole ship in her outstretched arms, huge sleeves streaming in the breeze as though she were some rare and enormous sea-bird taking flight. ‘I, the indulgent grandparent, Trigg and his guards the kindly uncles, you the troublesome brood. United against merciless Mother Sea, ever the sailor’s most bitter enemy! You are lucky little children, for mercy, charity and kindness have always been my great weaknesses.’ Rulf hawked up phlegm in disgust at that. ‘Most of you will see the good sense in being obedient offspring, but … perhaps …’ and Shadikshirram’s smile collapsed to leave her dark face a caricature of hurt, ‘there is some malcontent among you thinking of going their own way.’

      Trigg gave a disapproving growl.

      ‘Of turning his back upon his loving family. Of abandoning his brothers and sisters. Of leaving our loyal fellowship at some harbour or other.’ The captain traced the fine scar down her cheek with one fingertip and bared her teeth. ‘Perhaps even of raising a treacherous hand against his doting carers.’

      Trigg gave a horrified hiss.

      ‘Should some devil send such thoughts your way …’ The captain leaned down towards the deck. ‘Think on the last man to try it.’ She came up with the heavy chain and gave it a savage tug, jerking the filthy deck-scrubber from his feet and squawking over in a tangle of limbs, rags, hair. ‘Never let this ungrateful creature near a blade!’ She stepped onto him where he lay. ‘Not an eating knife, not a nail-trimmer, not a fish-hook!’ She walked over him, tall heels grinding into his back, losing not the slightest poise in spite of the challenging terrain. ‘He is nothing, do you hear me?’

      ‘Damn this bitch,’ murmured Rulf again as she hopped lightly from the back of the beggar’s head.

      Yarvi was watching the wretched scrubber as he clambered up, wiped blood from his mouth, retrieved his block, and without a sound crawled stiffly back to his work. Only his eyes showed through his matted hair for an instant as he looked towards the captain’s back, bright as stars.

      ‘Now!’ shouted Shadikshirram, swarming effortlessly up the ladder onto the roof of the aftcastle and pausing to twirl her ring-crusted fingers. ‘South to Thorlby, my little ones! Profits await! And Ankran?’

      ‘My captain,’ said Ankran, bowing so low he nearly grazed the deck.

      ‘Bring me some wine, all this blather has given me a thirst.’

      ‘You heard your grandma!’ roared Trigg, uncoiling his whip.

      There were clatters and calls, the hissing of rope and the creaking of timbers as the few free sailors cast off and prepared the South Wind to leave Vulsgard’s harbour.

      ‘What now?’ muttered Yarvi.

      Rulf gave a bitter hiss at such ignorance.

      ‘Now?’ Jaud spat into his palms and worked his two strong hands about the polished handles of their oar. ‘We row.’

       HEAVE

      Soon enough, Yarvi wished he had stayed in the flesh-dealer’s cellar.

      ‘Heave.’

      Trigg’s boots ground out a ruthless rhythm as he prowled the gangway, whip coiled in meaty fists, eyes sweeping the benches for slaves in need of its encouragement, blunt voice booming out with pitiless regularity.

      ‘Heave.’

      It was no surprise that Yarvi’s withered hand was even worse at gripping the handle of a great oar than it had been the handle of a shield. But Trigg made Master Hunnan seem a doting nursemaid in Yarvi’s memory. The whip was his first answer to any problem, but when that did not cause more fingers to sprout he lashed Yarvi’s crooked left wrist to the oar with chafing thongs.

      ‘Heave.’

      With each impossible haul upon the handles of that terrible oar Yarvi’s arms and shoulders and back burned worse. Though the hides on the bench were worn to a silky softness, and the handles to a dull polish by his predecessors, with each stroke his arse was worse skinned, his hands worse blistered. With each stroke the whip cuts and the boot bruises and the slow-healing burns about his rough-forged thrall-collar were more stung by salt sea and salt sweat.

      ‘Heave.’

      The suffering went far past any point of endurance Yarvi had imagined, but it was astonishing the inhuman efforts a whip in skilful hands could flick from a man. Soon its crack elsewhere, or even the approaching scrape of Trigg’s boots on the gangway, would make Yarvi flinch and whimper and pull that fraction harder, spit flecking from his gritted teeth.

      ‘This boy won’t last,’ growled Rulf.

      ‘One stroke at a time,’ murmured Jaud gently, his own strokes endlessly strong, smooth, regular, as though he was a man of wood and iron. ‘Breathe slow. Breathe with the oar. One at a time.’

      Yarvi could not have said why, but that was some help.

      ‘Heave.’

      And the rowlocks clattered and chains rattled, the ropes squealed and the timbers creaked, the oar-slaves groaned or cursed or prayed or kept grim silence, and the South Wind inched on.

      ‘One stroke at a time.’ Jaud’s soft voice was a thread through the haze of misery. ‘One at a time.’

      Yarvi could hardly tell which was the worse torture – the whip’s stinging or his skin’s chafing or his muscles’ burning or the hunger or the weather or the cold or the squalor. And yet, the endless scraping of the nameless scrubber’s stone, up the deck and down the deck and up the deck again, his lank hair swaying and his scar-crossed back showing through his rags and his twitching lips curled from his yellowed teeth, reminded Yarvi that it could be worse.

      It could always be worse.

      ‘Heave.’

      Sometimes the gods would take pity on his wretched state and send a breath of favourable wind. Then Shadikshirram would smile her golden smile and, with the air of a long-suffering mother who could not help spoiling her thankless offspring, would order the oars unshipped and the clumsy sails of leather-banded wool unfurled, and would airily disclaim on how mercy was her greatest weakness.

      With weeping gratitude Yarvi would slump back against the stilled oar of those behind and watch the sailcloth snap and billow overhead and breathe the close stink of more than a hundred sweating, desperate, suffering men.

      ‘When do we wash?’ Yarvi muttered, during one of these blissful lulls.

      ‘When Mother Sea takes it upon herself,’ growled Rulf.

      That was not rarely. The icy waves that slapped the ship’s side would spot, spray, and regularly soak them to the skin, Mother Sea washing the deck and surging beneath the footrests until everything was crusted stiff with salt.

      ‘Heave.’

      Each gang of three was chained together with one lock to their bench, and Trigg and the captain had the only keys. The oar-slaves ate their meagre rations chained to their bench each evening. They squatted over a battered bucket chained to their bench each morning. They slept chained to their bench, covered by stinking blankets and bald furs, the air heavy with moans and snores and grumbles and the smoke of breath. Once a week they sat chained to their bench while their heads and beards were roughly shaved – a defence against lice which deterred the tiny passengers not at all.

      The only time Trigg reluctantly produced his key and opened one of those locks was when the coughing Vansterman was found dead one chill morning, and was dragged from between his blank-faced oarmates and heaved over the side.

      The only one who remarked on his passing was Ankran, who plucked at his thin beard and said, ‘We’ll need a replacement.’

      For a moment