Half a War

She closed her eyes, repeating her grandfather’s words over and over in her thoughts. You were always a brave one, Skara. Always a brave one. Always a brave one.

The young Vansterman, Raith, was hardly lending her confidence. He was striking, all right. Striking as an axe to the throat, his face pale and hard as chiselled silver, a deep nick cut from one battered ear, his forehead angrily furrowed, his short-clipped hair and his scarred brows and even his eyelashes all white, as if all sentiment had been wrung out of him and left only cold scorn.

They might as well have come from different worlds. He looked tough and savage as a fighting dog, calm and disdainful in this deadly company as a wolf at the head of his own pack. He would have seemed in his right place smirking among Bright Yilling’s Companions, and Skara swallowed sour spit, and tried to pretend he was not there.

‘Death waits for us all.’ King Uthil’s grinding voice echoed at her as if he stood at the top of a well and she was drowning at the bottom. ‘The wise warrior favours the sword. He strikes for the heart, confounds and surprises his enemy. Steel is the answer, always. We must attack.’

A predictable rattling of approval rose from Uthil’s side of the hall, a predictable grunting of disgust from Gorm’s.

‘The wise warrior does not rush into Death’s arms. He favours the shield.’ Gorm laid a loving hand on the great black shield Raith’s twin carried. ‘He draws his enemy onto his own ground, and on his own terms crushes him.’

King Uthil snorted. ‘What has favouring the shield won you? In this very hall I challenged you and from this very hall you skulked like a beaten dog.’

Sister Owd worked her way forward. Her face reminded Skara of the peaches that used to grow outside the walls of Bail’s Point: soft, round, blotched with pink and fuzzed with downy hair. ‘My kings, this is not helpful—’

But Grom-gil-Gorm boomed over her like thunder over birdsong. ‘The last time Gettlanders and Vanstermen faced each other your famous sword went missing from the square, Iron King. You sent a woman to fight in your place and I defeated her, but chose to let her live—’

‘We can try it again whenever you please, you giant turd,’ snarled Thorn Bathu.

Skara saw Raith’s hand grip the arm of his chair. A big, pale hand, scarred across the thick knuckles. A hand whose natural shape was a fist. Skara caught his wrist and made sure she stood first.

‘We must find some middle ground!’ she called. More of a desperate shriek, in truth. She swallowed as every eye turned towards her, hostile as a rank of levelled spears. ‘Surely the wisest warrior uses shield and sword together, each at the proper time.’

It seemed hard to argue with, but the moot found a way. ‘Those who bring ships should speak on the strategy,’ said King Uthil, blunt as a birch-club.

‘You bring only one crew to our alliance,’ said King Gorm, fondling his chain.

‘It’s a good one,’ observed Jenner. ‘But I can’t argue it’s more than one.’

Sister Owd made another effort. ‘The proper rules of a moot, laid down by Ashenleer in the depths of history, give equal voice to each party to an alliance, regardless of … regardless …’ She caught sight of her erstwhile mistress, Mother Scaer, giving her the frostiest glare imaginable, and her voice died a slow death in the great spaces of the Godshall.

Skara had to struggle to keep her voice level. ‘I would have brought more ships if my grandfather was alive.’

‘But he is dead,’ answered Uthil, without bothering to soften it.

Gorm frowned across at his rival. ‘And had betrayed us to Grandmother Wexen.’

‘What choice did you leave him?’ barked Skara, her fury taking everyone by surprise, herself most of all. ‘His allies should have come to his aid but they sat bickering over who sat where while he died alone!’

If words were weapons, those ones struck home. She seized the silence they gave her, leaned forward and, tiny though they looked, planted her fists on the table the way her grandfather used to.

‘Bright Yilling is busy spreading fire across Throvenland! He puts down what resistance remains. He paves the road for the High King’s great army. He thinks himself invincible!’ She let Yilling’s disdain chafe at all the tender pride gathered in the room, then added softly, ‘But he has left his ships behind him.’

Uthil’s grey eyes narrowed. ‘A warrior’s ship is his surest weapon, his means of supply, his route of escape.’

‘His home and his heart.’ Gorm combed his fingers carefully through his beard. ‘Where are these boats of Bright Yilling’s?’

Skara licked her lips. ‘In the harbour at Bail’s Point.’

‘Ha!’ The elf-bangles rattled on Mother Scaer’s tattooed wrist as she swatted the whole business away. ‘Safe behind the great chains.’

‘The place is elf-built,’ said Father Yarvi. ‘Impregnable.’

‘No!’ Skara’s voice echoed back from the dome above like a clap. ‘I was born there and I know its weaknesses.’

Uthil twitched with annoyance but Laithlin set her hand ever so gently on the back of his clenched fist. ‘Let her speak,’ she murmured, leaning close. As the king looked at his wife his frown softened for an instant, and Skara wondered if he truly was a man of iron, or only one of flesh like others, trapped in the iron cage of his own fame.

‘Speak, princess,’ he said, turning his hand over to clasp Laithlin’s as he sat back.

Skara craned forward, pushing her words to every corner of the chamber, striving to fill the hall with her hopes and her desires and make every listener share them, the way Mother Kyre had taught her. ‘The elf-walls cannot be breached, but parts of them were destroyed by the Breaking of God and the gaps closed by the work of men. Mother Sea chews endlessly at their foundations. To shore them up my grandfather built two great buttresses by the cliffs on the southwest corner. So great they nearly touch. A nimble man could climb up between, and bring others after.’

‘A nimble madman,’ murmured Gorm.

‘Even if a few could get in,’ said Uthil, ‘Bright Yilling is a tested war-leader. He would not be fool enough to leave the great gates unguarded—’

‘There is another gate, hidden, only wide enough for one man at a time, but it could let the rest of your warriors into the fortress.’ Skara’s voice cracked with her desperate need to persuade them, but Blue Jenner was at her side, and a finer diplomat than he appeared.

‘I may not know much,’ he said, ‘but I know the Shattered Sea, and Bail’s Point is the lock on it and the key to it. The fortress controls the Straits of Skekenhouse. That’s why Grandmother Wexen was so keen to take it. Long as Bright Yilling holds it he can strike anywhere, but if we can take it from him …’ And he turned to Skara, and gave her a wink.

‘We win a victory for the songs,’ she called, ‘and bring the High King’s chair itself under threat.’

There was a low muttering as men turned over the chances. Skara had caught their interest, but the two kings were restless bulls, hard indeed to yoke to one purpose.

‘What if the ships have been moved?’ grated out Uthil. ‘What if you misremember the weaknesses of Bail’s Point? What if Yilling has learned of them and guards them already?’

‘Then Death waits for us all, King Uthil.’ Skara would win no battles with meekness, not against such opponents as these. ‘I heard you say we must strike for the heart. Yilling’s heart is his pride. His ships.’

‘This is a gamble,’ murmured Gorm. ‘There is much that could go wrong—’

‘To win against a stronger opponent you must risk.’ Skara thumped the table with her fist. ‘I heard you say we must meet the enemy on our own ground. What better ground could there be than the strongest fortress in the Shattered Sea?’

‘It is not my ground,’ grumbled Gorm.

‘But it is mine!’ Skara’s voice cracked again but she forced herself on. ‘You forget! The blood of Bail himself flows in my veins!’

Skara felt them teeter. Their hatred for each other, and their fear of the High King, and their need to look fearless, and their lust for glory, all balanced on a sword’s edge. She almost had them but at any moment, like doves flying to familiar cages, they might lurch back into their well-ploughed feud and the chance would be lost.

Where reason fails, Mother Kyre once told her, madness may succeed.

‘Perhaps you need to see it!’ Skara reached down and snatched the dagger from Raith’s belt.

He made a desperate grab at her but too late. She pressed the bright point into the ball of her thumb and slit her palm open to the root of her little finger.

She had expected a few delicate crimson drops, but Raith clearly kept his knife well-sharpened. Blood spattered the table, flicked across Blue Jenner’s chest and into Sister Owd’s round face. There was a collective gasp, Skara the most shocked of anyone, but there could be no retreat now, only a mad charge forward.

‘Well?’ She held up her fist in the sight of the Tall Gods, blood streaking her arm and pattering from her elbow. ‘Will you proud warriors draw your swords and shed your blood with mine? Will you give yourselves to Mother War and trust to your weaponluck? Or will you skulk here in the shadows, pricking each other with words?’

Grom-gil-Gorm’s chair toppled over as he rose to his full great height. He gave a grimace, and his jaw muscles bulged, and Skara shrank back, waiting for his fury to crush her. Then she realized he was chewing his tongue. He spat red across the table.