Half a King. Джо Аберкромби

and they would be acknowledged great among the dead.

      Uncle Odem stepped out before the ranks of battle-ready warriors massed upon the sand, a torch in one hand. With his silvered mail and winged helm and red cloak snapping he looked like a son, and brother, and uncle of kings indeed. He nodded solemnly to Yarvi, and Yarvi nodded back, and he felt his mother clutch his right hand and squeeze it hard.

      Odem set the torch to the pitch-soaked kindling. The flames licked about the ship and in a moment it was all ablaze, a sorrowful moan drawn from the crowds – from the honoured and wealthy upon the high terraces before the walls of Thorlby, the crafters and merchants below them, the foreigners and peasants below them, the beggars and slaves scattered in whatever crevices the wind allowed them, each person in the place the gods had reckoned proper.

      And Yarvi had to swallow, because he realized of a sudden that his father would never come back and he truly would have to be king, from now until he was burned himself.

      He sat there, cold and sickly, a drawn sword across his knees, as Father Moon showed himself and his children the stars came out, and the flames of the burning ship, and the burning goods, and his burning family lit up the faces of the hundred hundred mourners. As scattered lights showed in the stone buildings of the city, and the wattle hovels huddled outside the walls, and in the towers of the citadel upon the hill. His citadel, although to him it had always had the look of a prison.

      It took a hero’s struggle to stay awake. He had barely slept last night, or any night since they put the King’s Circle on him. The shadows in the cold depths of his father’s yawning bedchamber seemed crowded with fears, and by ancient tradition there was no door he could bolt since the King of Gettland is one with the land and the people and must hide nothing from them.

      Secrets, and bedroom doors, were luxuries reserved for luckier folk than kings.

      A queue of proud men in their war-gear and proud women with keys polished, some of them sore trouble to King Uthrik while he lived, filed past Yarvi and his mother to wring their hands, and press gaudy grave gifts on them, and speak in swollen terms of the dead lord’s high deeds. They lamented that Gettland would never see his like again, then remembered themselves and bowed and mouthed ‘my king’ while behind their smiles no doubt they wondered how it might be made to profit them to have this one-handed weakling in the Black Chair.

      Only the occasional hiss passed between Yarvi and his mother. ‘Sit up. You are a king. Do not apologize. You are a king. Straighten your cloak-buckle. You are a king. You are a king. You are a king.’ As if she was trying to convince him, and herself, and the world of it against all the evidence.

      Surely the Shattered Sea had never seen so cunning a merchant, but he doubted even she could sell this.

      They sat until the flames sank to a flickering, and the dragon-carved keel sagged into whirling embers, and the first muddy smear of dawn touched the clouds, glittering on the copper dome of the Godshall and setting the sea-birds calling. Then his mother clapped her hands and the slaves with clinking collar-chains began to dig the earth over the still-smouldering pyre, raising a great howe that would stand tall beside that of Yarvi’s uncle Uthil, swallowed in a storm, and his grandfather Brevaer, and his great-grandfather Angulf Clovenfoot. On down the coast marched the grassy humps until they were lost among the dunes, diminishing into the fog of time before She Who Writes entrusted woman with the gift of letters, and ministers trapped the names of the dead in their high books.

      Then Mother Sun showed her blinding face and put fire upon the water. The tide would soon be draining, carrying with it the many ships drawn up upon the sand, sharp-tailed so they could slip away as swiftly as they arrived, ready to sweep the warriors to Vansterland to rip their vengeance from Grom-gil-Gorm.

      Uncle Odem climbed the hill with fist firm on sword’s hilt and his easy smile traded for a warrior’s frown.

      ‘It is time,’ he said.

      So Yarvi stood, and stepped past his uncle, and held high his borrowed sword, swallowing his fears and roaring into the wind as loud as he could. ‘I, Yarvi, son of Uthrik and Laithlin, King of Gettland, swear an oath! I swear a sun-oath and a moon-oath. I swear it before She Who Judges, and He Who Remembers, and She Who Makes Fast the Knot. Let my brother and my father and my ancestors buried here bear witness. Let He Who Watches and She Who Writes bear witness. Let all of you bear witness. Let it be a chain upon me and a goad within me. I will be revenged upon the killers of my father and my brother. This I swear!’

      The gathered warriors clashed the bearded heads of their axes against their helms, and their fists against their painted shields, and their boots against Father Earth in grim approval.

      Yarvi’s uncle frowned. ‘That is a heavy oath, my king.’

      ‘I may be half a man,’ said Yarvi, struggling to get his sword back into its sheepskin-lined sheath. ‘But I can swear a whole oath. The men appreciated it, at least.’

      ‘These are men of Gettland,’ said Hurik. ‘They appreciate deeds.’

      ‘I thought it was a fine oath.’ Isriun stood near, yellow hair streaming in the wind. ‘A kingly oath.’

      Yarvi found he was very glad to see her there. He wished no one else had been, then he could have kissed her again, and probably made a better effort at it. But all he could do was smile, and half-raise his half-hand in an awkward farewell.

      There would be time for kisses when they next met.

      ‘My king.’ It seemed Mother Gundring’s eyes, forever dry in any smoke or dust or weather, held tears. ‘May the gods send you fine weatherluck, and even better weaponluck.’

      ‘Don’t worry, my minister,’ he said, ‘there’s always the chance I’ll survive.’

      His true mother shed no tears. All she did was fasten his twisted cloak-buckle yet again and say, ‘Stand like a king, Yarvi. Speak like a king. Fight like a king.’

      ‘I am a king,’ he said, however much of a lie it felt, and he forced through his tightened throat, ‘I’ll make you proud,’ even though he had never known how.

      But he looked back, as he walked with his uncle’s gently steering hand upon his shoulder, the warriors forming snakes of glimmering steel as they filed towards the water, and he saw his mother clutch Hurik by his mail and drag him close, strong man though he was.

      ‘Watch over my son, Hurik,’ he heard her say in a choking voice. ‘He is all I have.’

      Then the Golden Queen was gone with her guards and attendants and her many slaves towards the city, and Yarvi was striding through the colourless dawn towards the ships, their masts a swaying forest against the bruising sky. Trying to walk the way his father used to, eager for the fight, even though he was weak-kneed, and sore-throated, and red-eyed, and his heart was crowded with doubts. He could still smell the smoke.

      He left Father Peace to weep among the ashes, and hastened to the iron embrace of Mother War.

       MAN’S WORK

      Each wave born of Mother Sea would lift him, roll him, tug his sodden clothes, make him twitch and stir as if struggling to rise. Each wave hissed back out would drag the body down the beach and leave it grounded, tangled hair stuck with froth and sand, limp as the knots of seaweed on the shingle.

      Yarvi stared at him, wondering who he was. Or had been. Boy or man? Had he died running or fought bravely?

      What was the difference now?

      The keel ground against sand, the deck shuddered, Yarvi stumbled and had to clutch at Hurik’s arm to steady himself. With a clunk and clatter the men unshipped their oars, unhooked their shields, and sprang over the ship’s sides into the surf, sullen at being last to land, too late for any glory or plunder worth the taking. Crewing the king’s ship would have been a high honour in King Uthrik’s reign.

      No honour at all in King Yarvi’s.