Half a King

“You can weep over each other’s hidden nobility when we’re safe!” called Sumael, a black outline on a boulder above them, pointing off into the misty gray. “For now, we have to turn south. If we reach the river ahead of them we’ll need some way to cross. We won’t make a raft from stones and steam.”

“Will we make it to the river before we die of thirst?” asked Rulf, licking the last drops from one of the bottles and peering hopefully into it as though some might be stuck in there.

“Thirst.” Nothing barked out a chuckle. “It’s a Banya spear in your back you need to worry about.”

They slid down endless slopes of scree, hopped between boulders as big as houses, clambered down spills of black rock like waterfalls frozen. They crossed valleys where the ground was painful to touch it was so hot, choking steam hissing from cracks like devil’s mouths, skirting pools of bubbling water slick with many-colored oil. They toiled upward, sending stones clattering down dizzy drops, clinging with cut fingertips, Yarvi pawing at cracks with his useless hand, finally looking back from the heights …

To see those black dots through Sumael’s eyeglass still following, and always slightly closer than before.

“Do they never tire?” asked Jaud, wiping the sweat from his face. “Will they never stop?”

Nothing smiled. “They will stop when they are dead.”

“Or we are,” said Yarvi.

25

DOWNRIVER

They heard the river before they saw it, a whisper through the woods that put a little lost spring in Yarvi’s ruined legs and a little lost hope in his aching heart. The whisper became a growl, then a surging roar as they finally burst from the trees, all filthy with sweat, dust, ash. Rulf flung himself down the shingle onto his face and started lapping up water like a dog. The rest of them were not far behind him.

When the burning thirst of a day’s hard scrambling was quenched, Yarvi sat back and stared across the river to the trees on the far side, so like the ones about them, yet so different.

“Vansterland,” muttered Yarvi. “Thank the gods!”

“Thank ’em once we’re across,” said Rulf, clean mouth and patch of beard pale in his ash-streaked face. “That doesn’t look like friendly water to this sailor.”

Nor did it to Yarvi. His relief was already turning to dread as he took in the width of the Rangheld, the steep far bank perhaps twice bowshot away, the river high with meltwater from the burning land at their backs. On the black surface patterns of frothing white showed swift currents and ripping eddies and hinted at hidden rocks, deadly as traitor’s knives.

“Can you build a raft to cross this?” he muttered.

“My father was the foremost shipwright in the First of Cities,” said Sumael, peering into the woods. “He could pick the best keel from a forest with one look.”

“Doubt we’ll have time for a carved figurehead,” said Yarvi.

“Maybe we could mount you on the front,” said Ankran.

“Six small trunks for the raft, then a larger one cut in half for crossbeams.” Sumael hurried to a nearby fir, running her hand up the bark. “This will do for one. Jaud, you hold it, I’ll chop.”

“I’ll keep watch for our old mistress and her friends.” Rulf shrugged the bow from his shoulder and turned back the way they came. “How far back do we reckon ’em now?”

“Two hours if we’re lucky, and we generally aren’t.” Sumael slid out her hatchet. “Yarvi, find the rope, then look for some wood that might make a paddle. Nothing, when we’ve felled the trunks, you trim the branches.”

Nothing hugged his sword tight. “This is no saw. I will need the blade keen when Shadikshirram comes.”

“We hope to be long gone by then,” said Yarvi, too much water sloshing in his aching belly as he rooted through the packs.

Ankran held out his hand. “If you won’t use it give me the sword-”

Faster than seemed possible the immaculate point was grazing Ankran’s stubbled throat. “Try to take it and I will give it to you point first, storekeeper,” murmured Nothing.

“Time presses,” hissed Sumael through her gritted teeth, sending splinters flying from the base of her chosen tree with short, quick blows. “Use your sword or snap them off in your arse, but trim the bloody branches. And leave some long so we have something to hold on to.”

Soon Yarvi’s right hand was cut and dirty from dragging lengths of timber, his left wrist, which he hooked underneath them, riddled with splinters. Nothing’s sword was slathered in sap, Jaud’s fuzzy growth of hair was full of wood dust, Sumael’s right palm was bloody from wielding the hatchet and still she chopped, chopped, chopped.

They sweated and strained, snapping at each other through bared teeth, not knowing when the Banyas’ dogs would be snapping at them instead, but knowing it could not be long.