Half a King

Sometimes she threaded among the rowers, clambering heedlessly over men, oars and benches to pick at some fixing or other, or to lean over the ship’s side to check depths with a knotted plumbline. The only time Yarvi ever saw her smile was when she was perched on one of the mastheads with the wind tearing at her short hair, as happy there as Yarvi might have been at Mother Gundring’s firepit, scanning the coast through a tube of bright brass.

It was Throvenland that ground by now, gray cliffs besieged by the hungry waves, gray beaches where the sea sucked at the shingle, gray towns where gray-mailed spearmen frowned from the wharves at passing ships.

“My home was near here,” said Rulf, as they unshipped the oars on one gray morning, a thin drizzle beading everything with dew. “Two days’ hard ride inland. I had a good farm with a good stone chimney, and a good wife who bore me two good sons.”

“How did you end up here?” asked Yarvi, fiddling pointlessly at the strapping on his raw left wrist.

“I was a fighting man. An archer, sailor, swordsman and raider in the summer months.” Rulf scratched at his heavy jaw, already gray stubbled, for his beard seemed to spring out an hour after it was shaved. “I served a dozen seasons with a captain called Halstam, an easy-going fellow. I became his helmsman and, along with Hopki Strangletoes and Blue Jenner and some other handy men we enjoyed some successes in the raiding business, enough that I could sit with my feet to the fire and drink good ale all winter.”

“Ale never agreed with me, but it sounds a happy life,” said Jaud, gazing into the far distance. Towards a happy past of his own, perhaps.

“The gods love to laugh at a happy man.” Rulf noisily gathered some spit and sent it spinning over the side of the ship. “One winter, somewhat the worse for drink, Halstam fell from his horse and died, and the ship passed to his oldest son, Young Halstam, who was a different kind of man, all pride and froth and scant wisdom.”

“Sometimes father and son aren’t much alike,” muttered Yarvi.

“Against my better judgment I consented to be his helmsman, and not a week from port, ignoring my advice, he tried to take a too-well-guarded merchant ship. Hopki and Jenner and most of the rest went through the Last Door that day. I was one among a handful taken prisoner and sold on. That was two summers ago, and I’ve been pulling an oar for Trigg ever since.”

“A bitter ending,” said Yarvi.

“Many sweet stories have them,” said Jaud.

Rulf shrugged. “Hard to complain. In my voyages we must’ve stolen ten score Inglings and sold ’em for slaves and taken great delight in the profits.” The old raider rubbed his rough palm against the grain of the oar. “They say the seed you scatter will be the seed you harvest, and so it seems indeed.”

“You wouldn’t leave if you could?” muttered Yarvi, with a glance towards Trigg to make sure they were not heard.

Jaud snorted. “There is a well in the village where I used to live, a well that gives the sweetest water in the world.” He closed his eyes and licked at his lips as if he could taste it. “I would give anything to drink from that well again.” He spread his palms. “But I have nothing to give. And look at the last man who tried to leave.” And he nodded towards the scrubber, his block scraping, scraping, scraping endlessly down the deck, his heavy chain rattling as he shuffled stiffly on scabbed knees to nowhere.

“What’s his story?” asked Yarvi.

“I don’t know his name. Nothing, we all call him. When I was first brought to the South Wind he pulled an oar. One night, off the coast of Gettland, he tried to escape. Somehow he got free of his chain and stole a knife. He killed three guards and cut another’s knee so he never walked again, and he gave our captain that scar before she and Trigg put a stop to him.”

Yarvi blinked at the shambling scrubber. “All that with a knife?”

“And not a large one. Trigg wanted to hang him from a mast but Shadikshirram chose to keep him alive as an example to the rest of us.”

“Mercy’s ever been her weakness,” said Rulf, and gave a grunt of joyless laughter.

“She stitched her cut,” said Jaud, “and put that great chain on him, and hired more guards, and told them never to let him get his hands upon a blade, and ever since he has been scrubbing the deck, and never since have I heard him say a word.”

“What about you?” asked Yarvi.

Jaud grinned sideways at him. “I speak when I have something worth saying.”

“No. I mean, what’s your story?”

“I used to be a baker.” Ropes hissed as they brought up the anchor, and Jaud sighed, and worked his hands about the handles his own palms had polished to a gleam. “Now my story is I pull this oar.”

13

THE FOOL STRIKES