Half a War

The Thousand

Soryorn was a grand archer and cut a hero’s figure against the bloody sunset, one foot up on the battlements at the top of Gudrun’s tower, back curved as he bent his great bow, the light from the flaming arrow shifting on his hard-set face.

‘Burn it,’ said Gorm.

The eyes of the thousand picked warriors of Throvenland, Vansterland and Gettland followed the streak of fire as the shaft curved through the still evening and thudded into the deck of Bright Yilling’s ship. Blue flame shot from it as the southern oil caught with a gentle whomp. In a moment the whole boat was alight in a blaze Raith could almost feel the heat of, even up here on the wall.

He glanced sideways and saw the warm glow light up Skara’s smile. It had been her idea. A warrior’s ship is his heart and his home, after all.

It had been a bastard of a job hauling it out of the harbour and on rollers up the long ramp to the yard. Raith’s back was aching and his hands raw from his part in it. Queen Skara had given the gilded weathervane to Blue Jenner, King Gorm had torn out the silver fittings to melt down and make cups, King Uthil had taken the red-dyed sail to spare the women of Gettland some weaving. They’d pulled the mast down to fit it through the entrance passage and they’d gouged the fine carvings when it got wedged in the gateway, but they’d got it outside in the end.

Raith hoped Bright Yilling would appreciate the effort they’d made to welcome him to Bail’s Point. But either way the defenders enjoyed the sight of his ship in flames. There was cheering, there was laughter, there were insults spat at Yilling’s scouts, sat calmly on horseback far out of bowshot. The high spirits were shortlived, though.

Grandmother Wexen’s army was beginning to arrive.

They tramped down the road from the north in an orderly column, an iron snake of men with the High King’s great standard at their head, the seven-rayed sun of the One God bobbing here and there above the crowd, and the marks of a hundred heroes and more hanging limp in the evening stillness. On they came, through the ruins of the village, more, and more, stretching away into the haze of distance.

‘When do they stop coming?’ Raith heard Skara whisper, one arm across her chest to nervously twist her armring.

‘I’d been hoping the scouts got their numbers wrong,’ muttered Blue Jenner.

‘Looks like they did,’ grunted Raith. ‘They guessed too few.’

Up on the walls mocking laughs became grim smiles, then even grimmer frowns as that mighty snake of men split, flowed about the fortress like flooding water about an island, and the warriors of the Lowlands, and Inglefold, and Yutmark encircled Bail’s Point from the cliffs in the east to the cliffs in the west.

No need for shows of defiance on their side. Their numbers spoke in thunder.

‘Mother War spreads her wings over Bail’s Point,’ murmured Owd.

A fleet of wagons came now, groaning with forage, and after them an endless crowd of families and thralls, servants and merchants, priests and profiteers, diggers and drovers with a lowing and bleating herd of sheep and cows that put any market Raith had ever seen to shame.

‘A whole city on the move,’ he muttered.

Darkness was closing in and the rearguard were only just arriving in a river of twinkling torches. Wild-looking men, their bone standards lit by flame, their bare chests marked with scars and smeared with war-paint.

‘Shends,’ said Raith.

‘Aren’t they sworn enemies of the High King?’ asked Skara, her voice more shrill than usual.

Mother Owd’s mouth was a hard line. ‘Grandmother Wexen must have prevailed upon them to be our enemies instead.’

‘I hear they eat their captives alive,’ someone muttered.

Blue Jenner gave the man a glare. ‘Best not get captured.’

Raith worked his sweaty palm around the handle of his shield and glanced towards the harbour, where plenty of ships were still gathered behind the safety of the chains to carry the thousand defenders away …

He bit his tongue until he tasted blood and forced his eyes back to the host gathering outside their walls. He’d never felt scared of a fight before. Maybe it was that the odds had always been stacked on his side. Or maybe it was that he’d lost his place, and his family, and any hope of getting them back.

They say it’s men with nothing to lose you should fear. But it’s them who fear most.

‘There,’ said Skara, pointing out at the High King’s ranks.

Someone was walking towards the fortress. Swaggering the way you might to a friend’s hall rather than an enemy’s stronghold. A warrior in bright mail that caught the light of the burning ship and seemed to burn itself. A warrior with long hair breeze-stirred and an oddly soft, young, handsome face, who carried no shield and propped his left hand loose on his sword’s hilt.

‘Bright Yilling,’ growled Jenner, baring all the teeth he still had.

Yilling stopped well within bowshot, grinning up towards the crowded battlements, and called out high and clear. ‘I don’t suppose King Uthil’s up there?’

It was some comfort to hear Uthil’s voice just as harsh and careless whether he faced one enemy or ten thousand. ‘Are you this man they call Bright Yilling?’

Yilling gave an extravagant shrug. ‘Someone has to be.’

‘The one who killed fifty men in the battle at Fornholt?’ called Gorm, from the roof of Gudrun’s tower.

‘Couldn’t say. I was killing, not counting.’

‘The one who cut the prow-beast from Prince Conmer’s ship with a single blow?’ asked Uthil.

‘It’s all in the wrist,’ said Yilling.

‘The one who murdered King Fynn and his defenceless minister?’ barked Skara.

Yilling kept smiling. ‘Aye, that one. And you should have seen what I did to my dinner just now.’ He happily patted his belly. ‘There was a slaughter!’

‘You are smaller than I expected,’ said Gorm.

‘And you are larger than I dared hope.’ Yilling wound a strand of his long hair around one finger. ‘Big men make a fine loud crash when I knock them down. I am dismayed to find the Iron King and the Breaker of Swords penned up like hogs in a sty. I felt sure you would be keen to test your sword-work against mine, steel to steel.’

‘Patience, patience.’ Gorm leaned on the battlements, his hands dangling. ‘Perhaps when we are better acquainted I can kill you.’

Uthil gave a stiff nod. ‘A good enmity, like a good friendship, takes time to mature. One does not start at the end of a story.’

Yilling smirked the wider. ‘Then I will bide my time and earnestly hope to kill you both in due course. It would be a shame to deny the skalds as fine a song as that would make.’

Gorm sighed. ‘The skalds will find something to sing about, either way.’

‘Where is Thorn Bathu?’ asked Yilling, glancing about as though she might be hiding in the ditch. ‘I’ve killed some women but never one of her fame.’

‘No doubt she will introduce herself presently,’ said Uthil.

‘No doubt. It is the fate of every strong warrior to one day cross the path of a stronger. That is our great blessing and our great curse.’

Uthil nodded again. ‘Death waits for us all.’

‘She does!’ Yilling spread his arms wide, fingers working. ‘Long have I yearned to embrace my mistress, but I have yet to find a warrior skilful enough to introduce us.’ He turned to the blazing ship. ‘You burned my boat?’

‘A gracious host gives guests a place at the fire,’ called Gorm, and a gale of mocking laughter ran along the battlements. Raith forced up a jagged chuckle of his own, even though it took a hero’s effort.

Yilling only shrugged, though. ‘Bit of a waste. It was a fine ship.’

‘We have more ships than we know what to do with since we captured all of yours,’ growled Gorm.

‘And you have so few men to put in them, after all,’ said Yilling, dampening the laughter again. He sighed at the flames. ‘I carved the prow-beast myself. Still, what’s burned is burned, say I, and cannot be unburned.’

Skara clutched at the battlements. ‘You’ve burned half of Throvenland to no purpose!’

‘Ah! You must be the young Skara, queen of the few unburned bits.’ Yilling pushed out his plump lips and squinted up. ‘Make me your villain if you please, my queen, blame me for all your woes, but I have broken no oaths, and have a noble purpose in my burning. To make you kneel before the High King. That … and fire is pretty.’

‘It takes a moment to burn what takes a lifetime to build!’

‘That’s what makes it pretty. You’ll be kneeling to the High King soon enough, either way.’

‘Never,’ she snarled.

Yilling wagged a finger. ‘Everyone says that till the tendons in their legs are cut. Then, believe me, they go down quick enough.’

‘Just words, my queen,’ said Blue Jenner, easing Skara back from the parapet. But if words were weapons, Raith felt Yilling had the best of that bout.

‘Are you just going to stand and blather?’ Gorm stretched his arms wide and gave a showy yawn. ‘Or have a go at our walls? Even little men make a fine loud crash when I knock them down from this height, and I fancy some exercise.’

‘Ooh, that’s a worthy question!’ Yilling peered up at the bruising sky, and then back towards his men, busy surrounding Bail’s Point in an ever-thickening ring of sharpened steel. ‘I find myself in two minds … let’s toss for it and let Death decide, eh, Queen Skara?’

Skara’s pale face twitched, and she gripped tight to Jenner’s arm.

‘Heads we come for you, tails we stay!’ And Yilling flicked a coin high into the air, flickering orange with the light of his burning ship, and let it fall in the grass, hands on hips as he peered down.

‘Well?’ called Gorm. ‘Heads or tails?’

Yilling gave a burst of high laughter. ‘I’m not sure, it rolled away! So it goes sometimes, eh, Breaker of Swords?’

‘Aye,’ grunted Gorm, somewhat annoyed. ‘So it goes.’

‘Let’s leave it till tomorrow. I’ve a feeling you’ll still be here!’

The High King’s champion turned, the smile still on his soft, smooth face, and sauntered back towards his lines. At twice bowshot from the walls they’d started hammering stakes into ground.

A circle of thorns, facing in.