Half a King

“I thought it was finished when Trigg started throttling me.”

“Oh, you won’t wriggle out of it that easily.” She caught him by his crooked wrist. “Get up.”

He had been betrayed by his own family, his own people, and found loyalty among a set of slaves who owed him nothing. He was so pathetically glad of it he wanted to weep. But he had a feeling he would need his tears later.

With Sumael’s help he managed to get up. With Rulf’s and Jaud’s to flounder on, hardly thinking about the course except to keep the sinking South Wind somewhere at his back. The icy wetness squelched in his boots, the wind cut through his soaked and chafing clothes as though he wore nothing.

“Did you have to pick the coldest place the gods have made for your escape?” growled Rulf. “And the coldest time of year?”

“I had a better plan.” Sumael sounded less than delighted with the total ruin of it, too. “But it sunk with the South Wind.”

“Plans must sometimes bend with circumstance,” said Jaud.

“Bend?” growled Rulf. “This one’s snapped in pieces.”

“Over there.” Yarvi pointed with the frozen stub of his finger. Up ahead a stunted tree clawed at the night, each branch picked out on top in white, underneath in the faintest flickering of orange. He hardly dared believe his own eyes but he started towards it as fast as he could even so, half walking, half crawling, all desperate. At that moment, even a dream of fire seemed better than nothing.

“Wait!” hissed Sumael, “we don’t know who-”

“We don’t care,” said Rulf, floundering past.

The fire had been built in a hollow beneath that twisted tree where there was some shelter from the wind, the fragments of a broken crate carefully arranged, the smallest flame flickering in their midst. Hunched over it, coaxing it into life with his smoking breath, was Ankran.

Had Yarvi made the choice of who to save Ankran’s name would have been far from the first on his lips. But freeing Rulf and Jaud meant freeing their oarmate, and Yarvi would have thrown himself at Odem’s feet right then had he offered warmth. He flopped onto his knees, holding his shaking hands towards the flames.

Jaud planted his fists on his hips. “You made it, then.”

“Some turds float,” said Rulf.

Ankran only rubbed at his crooked nose. “If my stench bothers you, you could find your own fire.”

A hatchet slid silently from Sumael’s sleeve, the dangling blade gleaming. “I like this one.”

The ex-storekeeper shrugged. “Then far be it from me to turn the desperate away. Welcome one and all to my mansion!”

Sumael had already shinned up the frozen rocks to the tree and neatly lopped off a branch. Now she wedged it in the ground so its twigs were towards the fire. She snapped her fingers at Yarvi. “Get your clothes off.”

“Romance yet survives!” said Rulf, fluttering his lashes at the sky.

Sumael ignored him. “Wet clothes will kill you in the night sure as any enemy.”

Now the cold was loosening its grip Yarvi was feeling his bruises-every muscle aching and his head sore and his neck throbbing from Trigg’s hands. Even had he wanted to, he lacked the strength to object. He peeled off his soaked clothes, some of the hems already stiff with ice, and huddled as close to the fire as he dared, near naked but for collar and chain.

Rulf dumped an old fleece around his shuddering shoulders. “I’m lending that,” he said, “not giving it.”

“Much appreciated … either way,” Yarvi forced through his chattering teeth as he watched Sumael hang his clothes facing the flames, where they began to gently steam.

“What if someone sees the light?” Jaud was asking, frowning back the way they had come.

“If you’d rather freeze, sit in the darkness. You’ll find plenty of it.” Ankran tried to prod more warmth from the fire with a twig. “For my part I suspect the fight, then the ship aflame, then the ship sinking, will have dampened their appetite for a search.”

“As long as we’re well gone before dawn,” said Rulf.

“Gone where?” asked Sumael, squatting beside Yarvi.

East was the obvious choice. East along the coast the way the South Wind had brought them. But west was where Yarvi needed to go. West to Vansterland. West to Gettland. West to Odem, and vengeance, and the sooner the better. He glanced around this motley fellowship, all huddled over the life-giving flames, faces pinched and strange in its light, wondering how he could possibly convince them to go the wrong way.

“East of course,” said Rulf. “How long ago did we pass that trading post?”

Sumael spent a moment reckoning on her fingers. “On foot we might make it in three days.”

“It’ll be hard going.” Rulf scrubbed with his nails at his stubbly chin. “Damn hard going, and-”

“I’ll be going west,” said Ankran, bent jaw clenched and his eyes fixed on the flames.

There was silence as they all looked at him. “West to where?” asked Jaud.

“Thorlby.”