Half a War (Shattered Sea, Book 3)

The Rise

‘There!’ bellowed Koll, stabbing his open palm towards the drover to halt the dozen straining oxen, the great chain creaking and twitching. There was a grinding, then a mighty clonk as the feet of the vast gable dropped into their stone-carved sockets.

‘Stake it!’ shouted Rin, and teams of carpenters who not long ago had been warriors, and not long before that farmers, began to hammer posts into the ground, hauling tight a web of ropes that would keep the great truss from falling.

Skara stared up, neck aching it reared so high above them. It stood over the ruined steps of different-coloured marble where Mother Kyre had once greeted visitors to Yaletoft. Just where the great gable of her grandfather’s hall had stood. The one she had watched fall the night Bright Yilling came. Could it only have been a few months ago? It felt a hundred years and more. It felt as if a different girl had watched it happen in a different world, and Skara had only heard the story.

Blue Jenner showed his gap-toothed smile as he stared up at it. ‘Stands just where the old hall did.’

‘But higher, and wider, and far more graceful,’ said Skara. Each of the two posts and two rafters had been fashioned from a spear-straight pine-trunk, floated downriver from the high hills above Throvenland where the trees grew oldest and tallest, stripped to the pale wood and beautifully shaped. ‘It’s fine work.’ And Skara set her gloved hand on Rin’s shoulder. ‘I swear I could not have found a better smith and carpenter anywhere in the whole Shattered Sea.’

Rin grinned over her shoulder. ‘A well-known fact, my queen. You’re lucky we were tired of making swords.’

‘All this and modest too?’ murmured Mother Owd.

Rin twitched her apron straight. ‘Modesty’s for folk with nothing to boast of.’

‘Hold them here!’ Koll called to the drovers, catching the long chain that linked their yoke to the very top of the truss and swinging underneath it.

Rin started towards him. ‘Where the hell are you going, you fool?’

‘Up!’ he called, and swarmed off underneath the chain with his legs crossed over it, nimble and fearless as a squirrel, soon far overhead and swinging in the breeze.

Rin clutched at her head with both hands, hair sticking out between her fingers, the two keys she wore rattling together on her chest. ‘Get down from there before you kill yourself!’

‘This is an excellent chain!’ called Koll as he climbed higher and higher. ‘You should be proud!’

‘Gods damn it!’ Rin screamed up at him, near-jumping in the air to shake her fist, then giving Skara a begging look. ‘Can’t you order him to come down, my queen?’

‘I could.’ Skara watched him clamber onto the highest point of the truss where the two massive beams crossed, remembering Mother Kyre’s words to her on this very ground. ‘But the secret to keeping authority is to give only orders that you know will be obeyed.’

‘The joints all look good!’ Koll slapped happily at the smooth meeting of the two rafters. ‘Your new bolts are all holding, Rin!’

‘I’ll bolt your bloody feet to the ground when you get back down here!’

‘How will I carve the roof beams then?’ he called, sliding his fingers over the pale wood. ‘What do you fancy, my queen? Dragons?’

‘Black dogs!’ she called up, setting a hand on Blue Jenner’s shoulder. ‘Like the worn prow-beast on the ship that carried me away to safety, saw me through a storm and brought me home again!’

Blue Jenner set his hand on top of hers and gave it a pat, while a group of prayer-weavers gathered around the foot of the truss and droned out entreaties to She Who Shapes the Wood and He Who Shelters andShe Who Raises High the Stones that this hall should never fall.

Koll caught one of the dangling ropes and slithered down. ‘Black dogs it is!’

‘Why didn’t I marry a bloody farmer?’ muttered Rin, scrubbing at her scalp with her fingernails.

Koll dropped the last few strides and ambled back towards them. ‘You couldn’t find one who’d take you?’

‘How many of these will we need?’ asked Mother Owd, peering up at the towering truss.

‘Fifteen will make the skeleton,’ said Koll, looking up and sketching the timbers in the air with jerky movements of his pointing fingers. The gods knew how he managed it, but he gave some sense of the building completed, the huge beams above, the vast space they would enclose, and Skara found herself smiling as she pictured the warm dimness within, the echoing of the skalds’ voices, the women’s oiled hair and the men’s polished cloak-buckles gleaming in the light of the great firepit, just as it used to be in her grandfather’s day.

Mother Owd gave a soft whistle as she considered the emptiness overhead. ‘We could be here a while.’

‘The Forest took twenty-eight years to build,’ said Skara.

‘I hope to be finished a splinter more quickly, my queen.’ Koll gave a smoky sigh as he looked up proudly at the work done so far. ‘But nothing worth building is ever built quickly.’

‘Mother War strikes like lightning,’ said Mother Owd. ‘Father Peace grows like the sapling tree, and needs the same care.’

‘Yaletoft grows more like mushrooms.’ Blue Jenner peered down from the steps and into the town. ‘You wake up one morning after the rains and there they are.’

It was true, the new city sprang from the ashes of the old, the frames of fine new houses sprouting along the wide straight streets Mother Owd had laid out between the site of the hall and the sea, the saws and hammers and masons’ shouts a constant chorus from dawn until dark.

More people flooded in every day. Some of them folk who had lived in Yaletoft and fled the burning, but Gettlanders and Yutmarkers, Inglings and Lowlanders, too. Folk from all across the Shattered Sea who had lost their old lives in the war. Folk looking for fresh starts and hearing that Queen Skara had honest silver for honest work.

‘Some of what Bright Yilling burned can never be replaced,’ murmured Mother Owd.

‘Then we must remember it fondly and look forward to fresh glories. It is hard to lose something.’ Skara turned back towards the towering truss. ‘But it gives you the chance to make something better.’

Koll was laying out his plans with vast flourishes of his hands while Rin watched, arms folded and one sceptical brow arched high.

‘I’ll hope to have five of them up and braced together before winter comes. The rest will have to wait until spring. I’ll need to go into the hills and pick out the right trees first, though.’ He scratched innocently at the back of his head, sidling up towards her. ‘Maybe my wife will come with me, keep me warm when the snows come?’

‘The snows come three men high up there! We’ll be trapped till spring.’

‘Exactly,’ he said, hooking the golden elf-bangle she wore on her wrist and gently easing her arms unfolded.

‘You’re mad.’

‘I’m just trying to be the best man I can be.’ He took her chain and ducked nimbly inside so it was around both their necks. ‘Just trying to stand in the light.’

She laughed as he gathered her in his arms and held her tight, swaying from one foot to the other. Soon they were kissing shamelessly, eyes closed, his hand tangled in her hair, her hand up under his chin, their jaws working. Never mind seeing it, it was kissing one could hear from a few strides distant, and several of the waiting workmen tossed their tools down and wandered off, shaking their heads.

Mother Owd rolled her eyes. ‘The one drawback of this particular smith and carpenter.’

‘We all have our foibles.’ Skara was glad for them, but watching made her sad for herself. She turned away and stared out towards the sea, and found she was thinking of Raith.

By now, if the South Wind had beaten the ice on the Divine, he would be rowing down the long Denied. She hoped he was happy, but he had always struck her as someone to whom happiness did not come easily. They had always had that much in common, if so little else. She thought of his face, forehead deep-furrowed and mouth pressed hard, the way it used to be. She thought of the warmth of him beside her. She wondered if he ever thought of her. She wondered if—

‘An eagle came from Grandfather Yarvi,’ said Mother Owd.

Skara shook herself. She had no time to waste on fancies. ‘Good news?’

‘The Vanstermen have a new king. Mother Scaer organized a trial by combat and this man drove every warrior before him. His name is Yurn-gil-Ram.’

Jenner scratched at his sparse hair. ‘Means naught to me.’

‘He is a chieftain from the utmost north where the snows never melt, and they call him The Ram because he breaks men with his head.’

Skara puffed out her cheeks. ‘Charming.’

‘He has declared himself the greatest warrior the Shattered Sea has ever seen, and offers to kill anyone who dares challenge him.’

‘I am eighteen years old and already had my lifetime’s fill of warriors’ boasting.’

‘They say he mixes blood with his beer and is making a chain from the fingerbones of his enemies.’

Blue Jenner gave Skara a wink. ‘Sounds fine husband material, my queen.’

She snorted. ‘Send him a bird to say Blue Jenner happily consents to wear his key.’

‘Marriage is the last thing on his mind,’ said Mother Owd, folding her arms tight. ‘Grandfather Yarvi fears he is already planning raids over the border into Gettland.’

Jenner gave a disgusted shake of his head. ‘Can the Vanstermen really be battle-hungry again? Aren’t they scared of elf-magic?’

‘Even as a bow only has so many arrows,’ said Owd, ‘it seems those elf-weapons can only send Death so many times. And with the witch Skifr gone to the south, Strokom is once again forbidden.’

Blue Jenner put his weathered face in his calloused hands and gave a groan. ‘Seems the world hasn’t changed as much as we thought.’

‘In the ashes of every war the seeds of the next take root,’ murmured Skara. She felt the old nerves bubbling up her throat, pressed a hand to her stomach and tried to swallow them back down again. ‘Send a bird to Mother Scaer with our congratulations and a bird to Queen Laithlin with our sympathies.’

‘And then?’ asked Mother Owd.

‘Watch carefully, speak softly, smile sweetly, gather our friends close, pray fervently to Father Peace for calm, and keep our swords handy.’

‘Orders that suit any situation.’

‘Might be wise to rebuild the walls of Bail’s Point too,’ said Jenner, ‘and stronger than ever.’

‘My queen!’ A boy was hurrying up from the docks, his boots squelching in the half-frozen mud. ‘There are three ships coming in! Their sails have the white horse of Kalyiv!’

‘Duke Varoslaf’s emissaries,’ said Jenner. ‘You want to greet them at the docks?’

Skara considered the message that would send. ‘We must not seem over-eager. Set a chair here, beneath the gable. It would be proper for them to come to me.’

Mother Owd smiled. ‘We must always think of what is proper.’

‘We must. And then, where necessary, ignore it.’

‘I’ll carve you a better one in due course, my queen.’ Koll thumped down one of the rough chairs the carpenters sat on while they ate. ‘But this might have to serve for now.’ And he flicked a little dirt from the seat with the side of his hand.

It was a simple old thing, and a little rickety, the wood blackened in places by fire.

‘It is not the chair that makes the queen,’ said Mother Owd. ‘But the queen that makes the chair.’

‘It must’ve come through the night Bright Yilling came,’ murmured Blue Jenner, ‘and survived.’

‘Yes.’ Skara smiled as she stroked its arm. ‘But so has Throvenland. And so have I.’

She sat, facing the sea, with Mother Owd at her left hand and Blue Jenner at her right. Chest up, shoulders down, chin high, the way Mother Kyre had taught her. Strange, how what had seemed so awkward once could feel so natural now.

‘Warn the emissaries my hall is still a little draughty,’ said Skara. ‘But the Queen of Throvenland is ready to receive them.’