Half a War

Choices

‘Are you ready?’ asked Father Yarvi, stacking books in a chest. Those favourite books of his, forbidden writings on elf-ruins and elf-relics. ‘We must leave on the next tide.’

‘Entirely ready,’ said Koll. Meaning he was packed. This was a voyage he’d never be ready for.

‘Talk to Rulf. Make sure we have plenty of ale to shore up the crew’s courage. Even with a favourable wind it will be five days down the coast to Furfinge.’

‘One cannot count on a favourable wind,’ murmured Koll.

‘No, indeed. Especially when we cross the straits to Strokom.’

Koll swallowed. He would have liked to put it off until the end of the world, but it would only make things worse, and he did that enough. ‘Father Yarvi …’ Gods, he was a coward. ‘Perhaps … I should stay behind.’

The minister looked up. ‘What?’

‘While you’re gone King Uthil might need-’

‘He will not be negotiating a trade deal, spinning a coin trick or carving a chair. He will be fighting. Do you think King Uthil needs your advice on how to fight?’

‘Well-’

‘Mother War rules here.’ Yarvi shook his head as he went back to his books. ‘Those of us who speak for Father Peace must find other ways to serve.’

Koll made another effort. ‘Honestly, I’m afraid.’ A good liar weaves as much truth into the cloth as he can, after all, and there had never been a truer word spoken than that.

Father Yarvi frowned at him. ‘Like a warrior, a minister must master their fear. They must use it to sharpen their judgment, rather than let it become a fog that blinds them. Do you think I am not afraid? I am terrified. Always. But I do what must be done.’

‘Who decides what must be done, though-’

‘I do.’ Father Yarvi slammed the lid of his chest and stepped close. ‘We have a great opportunity! A minister is a seeker of knowledge, and you more than most. I have never known a more curious mind. We have the chance to learn from the past!’

‘To repeat the mistakes of the past?’ Koll muttered, and instantly regretted it as Father Yarvi caught him by the shoulders.

‘I thought you wanted to change the world? To stand at the shoulder of kings and guide the course of history? I’m offering you that chance!’

Gods, he did want that. Father Koll, feared and admired, never talked down to, never taken lightly, and certainly never butted in the face by some white-haired thug. He forced it away. ‘I’m grateful, Father Yarvi, but-’

‘You made a promise to Rin.’

Koll blinked. ‘I …’

‘You are not too hard a book to read, Koll.’

‘I made a promise to Brand!’ he blurted out. ‘She needs me!’

‘I need you!’ snapped Father Yarvi, gripping at his shoulders. His hand might have been withered, but it could still squeeze hard enough to make Koll squirm. ‘Gettland needs you!’ He mastered himself, let his hands fall. ‘I understand, Koll, believe me, no one better. You want to do good, and stand in the light. But you are a man now. You know there are no easy answers.’ Yarvi winced down at the floor, as if in pain. ‘When I brought you and your mother out of slavery I never expected anything in return-’

‘Why bring it up so often, then?’ snapped Koll.

Father Yarvi looked up. Surprised. Even a little hurt. Enough to give Koll a familiar surge of guilt. ‘Because I made Safrit a promise. To see you become the best man you could be. A man she could be proud of.’

A man who does good. A man who stands in the light. Koll hung his head. ‘I keep thinking about all the things I could have done differently. I keep thinking … about the offer Mother Adwyn made-’

Yarvi’s eyes went wide. ‘Tell me you did not speak of it to my mother!’

‘I’ve told no one. But … if we had, perhaps she might have found a way to peace …’

Father Yarvi’s shoulders seemed to sag. ‘The price was too high,’ he muttered. ‘You know that.’

‘I know.’

‘I could not risk fracturing our alliance. We had to have unity. You know that.’

‘I know.’

‘Grandmother Wexen cannot be trusted. You know that.’

‘I know, but …’

‘But Brand might be alive.’ Father Yarvi looked far older than his years, of a sudden. Old, and sick, and bent under a weight of guilt. ‘Do you suppose I do not have a thousand such thoughts every day? It is a minister’s place always to doubt, but always to seem certain. You cannot let yourself be paralysed by what might be. Even less by what might have been.’ He made a fist of his shrivelled hand, mouth twisting as though he might hit himself with it. Then he let it fall. ‘You must try to pick the greater good. You must try to find the lesser evil. Then you must shoulder your regrets, and look forward.’

‘I know.’ Koll knew when he was beaten. He had known he was beaten before he opened his mouth. In the end, he had wanted to be beaten.

‘I’ll come,’ he said.

He didn’t need to tell her, which was just as well. He doubted he’d have had the courage.

Rin looked up at him, and that was all it took. She turned back to her work, jaw set tight.

‘You’ve made your choice, then.’

‘I wish I didn’t have to choose,’ he muttered, guilty as a thief.

‘But you do and you have.’

He would’ve preferred her to break down in tears, or come at him in a rage, or beg him to think again. He’d worked out a cowardly little plan to twist any of those back on her. But this chilly indifference he had no answer to.

Dribbling out, ‘I’m sorry,’ was the feeble best he could manage. He wondered if his mother would’ve been proud of this, and didn’t much care for the answer.

‘Don’t be. We’ve wasted enough time on each other. And I’ve only myself to blame. Brand warned me this would happen. He always said you were too full of your own hopes to hold anyone else’s.’

Gods, that hit like a punch in the balls. He opened his mouth to blurt it wasn’t fair, but how could he defend himself against a dead man’s judgment? Especially when he was busy proving it true.

‘I always knew best.’ Rin gave a hiss through gritted teeth. ‘Guess Brand gets the last laugh, eh?’

Koll took a shuffling step towards her. Maybe he couldn’t give her what she wanted, couldn’t be what she needed, but he could see her safe at least. He owed her that much. Owed Brand that much.

‘Bright Yilling might be here in a few days,’ he muttered. ‘And thousands of the High King’s warriors with him.’

Rin snorted. ‘You always did like to frame common knowledge as deep-cunning. Used to find that endearing but, I have to say, it’s wearing thin.’

‘You should go back to Thorlby-’

‘For what? My brother’s dead and my home’s a burned-out shell.’

‘It’s not safe here …’

‘If we lose here how safe do you think Thorlby will be? I’d rather stay, do what I can to help. That’s what Brand would’ve done. That’s what he did do.’ Gods, she had courage. So much more than he did. He loved that about her.

He found himself reaching for her shoulder. ‘Rin-’

She slapped his hand away, fist clenched as if she was about to hit him. He knew he deserved it. But she was in no mood to make things easy. She turned away in disgust. ‘Just go. You’ve made your choice, Brother Koll. Get on and live with it.’

What could he say to that? He needn’t have worried she’d cry. He was the one sniffing back tears as he skulked from the forge, feeling as far from the best man he could be as he ever had in his life.

There was a thin rain falling on the elf-built quay of Bail’s Point. A spitting rain that drew a gloomy curtain across the world to match Koll’s mood, that clung like dew to the fur on Rulf’s shoulders where he stood frowning on the steering platform, that stuck the oarsmen’s hair to their hard-set faces as they loaded the stores. He wished Fror was with them, or Dosduvoi, but the crew Koll sailed with down the wide Divine were scattered to the winds. These were mostly men he hardly knew.

‘Why the funeral face, my dove?’ asked Skifr, worming one long finger out of her cloak to pick carefully at her nose. ‘You once asked me if you could see magic, did you not?’

‘I did, and you told me I was young and rash, and that magic has terrible risks and terrible costs, and that I should pray to every god I knew of that I never saw it.’

‘Huh.’ She raised her brows at the result of her rummaging, then flicked it towards Gorm’s ships, and Uthil’s ships, and the captured ships of Bright Yilling rocking on the tide. ‘That was dour of me. Did you pray?’

‘Not hard enough, it seems.’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘You told me you knew enough magic to do much harm, but not enough to do much good.’

‘This is a war. I came to do harm.’

‘That isn’t very reassuring.’

‘No.’

‘Where did you learn magic?’

‘I cannot say.’

‘Cannot or will not?’

‘Cannot and will not.’

Koll sighed. Every answer she gave seemed to leave him knowing less. ‘Can you really take us safely into Strokom?’

‘Take you into Strokom? Yes. Safely?’ She shrugged her shoulders.

‘That isn’t very reassuring either.’

‘No.’

‘Will we find weapons there?’

‘More than Mother War herself could make use of.’

‘And if we use them … do we risk another Breaking of God?’

‘As long as we break Grandmother Wexen, I will be satisfied.’

‘That’s less reassuring than ever.’

Skifr stared out towards the grey sea. ‘If you suppose I came here to reassure you, you are very much mistaken.’

‘Why is nothing ever easy?’ Father Yarvi was frowning at the long ramp of pitted elf-stone that led to the yard of the fortress. A lean figure was coming down it. A tall, shaven-headed figure with elf-bangles stacked up her tattooed arm. ‘Mother Scaer, what a surprise! I thought you wanted no part of this madness?’

The Minister of Vansterland turned her head and spat. ‘I want no one to have any part of this madness, but my king has chosen his path. My place is to make sure he walks it to victory. That is why I am coming with you.’

‘Your company will be a delight.’ Yarvi stepped close to her. ‘As long as you mean to help me. Stand in my way, you will regret it.’

‘We understand one another, then,’ said Mother Scaer, curling her lip.

‘We always have.’

Koll sighed to himself. What better foundation for an alliance than mutual hatred and suspicion?

‘To your oars, then!’ called Rulf. ‘I’m getting no younger!’