Half the World (Shattered Sea, Book 2)

THE CHOSEN SHIELD

The citadel of Thorlby had not been happy ground for Thorn. The last time she visited it had been as a murderer, herded in chains to the cells. The time before it had been to see her father laid out in the Godshall, pale and cold beneath the dome, her mother sobbing beside her, and she’d looked up at the hard faces of the Tall Gods and known her prayers had all been wasted. She had to swallow a shadow of the anger she’d felt then, the anger that had burned at her ever since, gripping at the pouch that held her father’s fingerbones as she frowned towards the great doors of the Godshall.

There were boys training in the yard, beneath the ancient cedar. Training in the square, the way Thorn used to, their master-at-arms barking out orders as they scrambled into a rickety shield-wall. They seemed so young now. So slow and so clumsy. She could hardly believe she had ever been one of them as Koll led her past.

‘You are Thorn Bathu?’

An old man sat at the corner of the square, swathed in a thick black fur in spite of the warmth, a drawn sword cradled in his arms. He seemed so withered, and hunched, and pale, that even with the golden circle on his brow it took Thorn a moment to recognize him.

She wobbled down onto one knee beside Koll, staring at the grass. ‘I am, my king.’

King Uthil cleared his throat. ‘I hear unarmed you killed seven men, and forged an alliance with the Empress of the South. I did not believe it.’ He narrowed his watery eyes as he looked her up and down. ‘Now I begin to.’

Thorn swallowed. ‘It was only five men, my king.’

‘Only five, she says!’ And he gave a throaty chuckle to the old warriors about him. A couple just about cracked smiles. The faces of the others grew more dour with every word. No deed would ever be high enough to raise her in their estimation: she was as much an object of contempt as ever. ‘I like you, girl!’ said the king. ‘We should practise together.’

So she could practise with him, as long as she didn’t presume to fight for him. Thorn lowered her eyes in case she let her anger show and ended up visiting the citadel’s dungeons for a second time. ‘That would be a high honour,’ she managed to say.

Uthil broke into a coughing fit, and drew his cloak tight about his shoulders. ‘Once my minister’s potions have worked their magic and I am past this illness. I swear those dung-tasting brews only make me weaker.’

‘Father Yarvi is a deep-cunning healer, my king,’ said Thorn. ‘I would have died without his wisdom.’

‘Aye,’ murmured Uthil, staring off into the distance. ‘I hope his wisdom works soon for me. I must go north, and teach these Vanstermen a lesson. The Breaker of Swords has questions for us.’ His voice had withered to a crackling wheeze. ‘What should be our answer?’

‘Steel!’ hissed Thorn, and the other warriors about the king murmured the word as one.

Uthil’s pale hand trembled as he clutched his drawn sword close, and Thorn did not think she would be practising with the king any time soon. ‘Steel,’ he breathed, and settled slowly into his fur, wet eyes fixed on the boys in the square, as if he had forgotten Thorn was there.

‘Father Yarvi’s waiting,’ murmured Koll. He led her away across the grass, into a shadowy hall and up a long flight of steps, the scraping of their boots echoing in the darkness, the shouts of the training boys fading behind them.

‘Is Brand all right?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ Thorn snapped, and felt guilty right away. ‘I’m sorry. I hope he is.’

‘Are you and him …’ Koll peered at her sideways. ‘You know.’

‘I don’t know what me and him are,’ she snapped, another wave of temper and another slow wash of guilt. ‘Sorry.’

‘You’re bored.’

‘I’m idle,’ she growled, ‘while high deeds are being done.’

Her mood had been filthy for days and the scorn of Uthil’s warriors hadn’t helped. She had nothing to do but worry. Worry that Brand wouldn’t want her when he came back or that she wouldn’t want him when he came back or that he wouldn’t come back at all. She had more doubts and frustrations spinning faster around her head than before she’d bedded him and there was nothing she could do about any of it.

‘Bloody men,’ she muttered. ‘We’d be better off without them.’

‘What did I do?’ asked Koll.

‘You don’t count.’ She grinned, and ruffled his hair. ‘Yet.’

A heavy door squealed open on a cave of wonders. A round room, ill-lit by flickering lamps, smelling of spice and fust and lined with shelves stacked with books, with jars of dried leaves and coloured dust, with animals’ skulls and broken sticks, with bunches of herbs and stones glittering with crystals.

Safrit stood in there, beckoning Thorn up some steps towards another archway. She leaned close to whisper. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Eh?’

‘It’ll work out fine, whatever you decide.’

Thorn stared at her. ‘Now I’m worried.’

Father Yarvi sat on a stool by a firepit in the room beyond, the elf-metal staff that leaned beside him gleaming with reflected fire.

Safrit knelt so low at the threshold she nearly butted the floor, but Thorn snorted as she swaggered forward.

‘Having good folk kneel before you, Father Yarvi? I thought you gave up being a king—’ The rest of the room came into view and Thorn saw Queen Laithlin sitting on the other side of the fire. Her robe was shrugged back, one pale shoulder bare, and she clasped a bundle of fur to her chest. Prince Druin, Thorn realized, heir to the Black Chair.

‘Gods.’ Thorn was being ambushed by royalty around every corner. She scrambled down to one knee, knocked a jar off a shelf with her elbow, dislodged another when she shot out a hand to catch it, ended up clumsily crowding the clinking mess back with her chest. ‘Sorry, my queen. I’ve never been much good at kneeling.’ She remembered she had said the very same thing the last time they met, on the docks of Thorlby before the South Wind left, and she felt her face burning just as hot as it had then.

But Laithlin did not seem to notice. ‘The best people aren’t.’ She gestured to another stool beside the firepit. ‘Sit instead.’

Thorn sat, but that was no more comfortable. Queen and minister both tipped their heads back and looked at her through narrowed grey eyes. The resemblance between them was uncanny. Mother and son still, whatever oaths he might have sworn to give up all family but the Ministry. They both gazed at her in calm silence. A double assessment that made Thorn feel the size of a pinhead, and all the while the infant prince sucked, sucked, sucked, and a tiny hand slipped from the fur and pulled at a strand of yellow hair.

‘Last time we met,’ said Laithlin, in the end, ‘I told you that fools boast of what they will do, while heroes do it. It seems you took my words to heart.’

Thorn tried to swallow her nerves. Thorlby might have seemed smaller after all she had seen, famed warriors feeble after all she had done, but the Golden Queen was as awe-inspiring as ever. ‘I’ve tried to, my queen.’

‘Father Yarvi tells me you have become most deadly. He tells me you killed six Horse People in battle on the Denied. That seven men came for the Empress of the South and you fought them alone, unarmed, and won.’

‘I had help. The best of teachers, and a good man beside me – men, that is. Good men beside me.’

Laithlin gave the slightest smile. ‘You have learned humility, then.’

‘Thanks to Father Yarvi I’ve learned many things, my queen.’

‘Tell me about the Empress of the South.’

‘Well …’ All Thorn could think of then was how very different she was from Queen Laithlin. ‘She is young, and small, and clever—’

‘And generous.’ The queen glanced down at the elf-bangle on Thorn’s wrist, which flared with its own pink as she blushed again.

‘I tried not to take it, my queen, but—’

‘It was meant to break an alliance. It helped forge a new one. I could not have hoped for a better return on my investment. Do you wish you had stayed in the First of Cities?’

Thorn blinked. ‘I …’

‘I know the empress asked you to. To stand at her shoulder, and protect her from her enemies, and help steer the course of a great nation. Few indeed will ever receive such an offer.’

Thorn swallowed. ‘Gettland is my home.’

‘Yes. And here you languish in Thorlby while Grandmother Wexen closes the Shattered Sea to our ships and the Vanstermen swarm across the border, a storied warrior sitting on her strong hands while unripe boys and doddering old men are called upon to fight. My husband the king must seem quite a fool to you. Like a man who goes to mow his meadow with a spoon, and leaves his fine new scythe to rust upon the shelf.’ The queen peered down at her infant son. ‘The world changes. It must. But Uthil is a man of iron, and iron does not bend easily to new ways.’

‘He does not seem himself,’ murmured Thorn.

The minister and queen exchanged a glance she could not plumb the meaning of. ‘He is not well,’ said Yarvi.

‘And he must soothe the feelings of older and even more rigid men,’ said Laithlin.

Thorn licked her lips. ‘I’ve done too many foolish things to accuse anyone else of folly, least of all a king.’

‘But you would like to fight?’

Thorn lifted her chin and held the queen’s eye. ‘It’s what I’m made for.’

‘It must grate on your warrior’s pride to be ignored.’

‘My father told me never to get proud.’

‘Fine advice.’ The prince had fallen asleep and Laithlin eased him from her breast and passed him up to Safrit, shrugging her robe closed. ‘Your father was a Chosen Shield for a time, I understand.’

‘To King Uthil’s mother,’ murmured Yarvi.

‘What became of him?’ asked the queen, while Safrit rocked the prince in her arms and gently cooed to him.

Thorn felt the pouch weigh against her chest as she shifted uncomfortably. ‘He was killed in a duel with Grom-gil-Gorm.’

‘The Breaker of Swords. A fearsome warrior. A terrible enemy to Gettland. And now we face him again. I once had a Chosen Shield of my own.’

‘Hurik,’ said Thorn. ‘I saw him fight in the training square. He was a great warrior.’

‘He betrayed me,’ said the queen, her cold eyes on Thorn. ‘I had to kill him.’

She swallowed. ‘Oh …’

‘I have never found one worthy to take his place.’ There was a long and pregnant silence. ‘Until now.’

Thorn’s eyes went wide. She looked at Yarvi, and back to the queen. ‘Me?’

Yarvi held up his crippled hand. ‘Not me.’

Thorn’s heart was suddenly hammering. ‘But … I never passed my warrior’s test. I never swore a warrior’s oath—’

‘You passed far sterner tests,’ said the queen, ‘and the only oath a Chosen Shield must swear is to me.’

Thorn slid off her stool and knelt at Laithlin’s feet, this time without knocking anything into the fire. ‘Tell me the words, my queen.’

‘You are a brave one.’ Laithlin leaned forward, putting her fingertips gently on Thorn’s scarred cheek. ‘But you should not be rash.’

‘You should be careful what oaths you swear,’ said Father Yarvi.

‘This is a burden as well as an honour. You might have to fight for me. You might have to die for me.’

‘Death waits for us all, my queen.’ Thorn did not have to think. It felt more right than anything she had ever done. ‘I’ve dreamed of this since I could hold a sword. I am ready. Tell me the words.’

‘Father Yarvi?’ Koll hurried into the room, flushed with excitement and greatly out of breath.

‘Not now, Koll—’

‘A crow’s come!’ And he held out a little scrap of paper, tiny marks scrawled across it.

‘Mother Scaer replies, at last.’ Yarvi spread it out upon his knees, eyes flickering over the signs. Thorn watched in wonder. To capture words in lines on a scrap of nothing seemed like magic to her as surely as what Skifr had done out on the steppe.

‘What does it say?’ asked Laithlin.

‘Grom-gil-Gorm accepts King Uthil’s challenge. His raids will cease until midsummer’s day. Then the warriors of Vansterland and Gettland will meet in battle at Amon’s Tooth.’ Yarvi turned the paper over and narrowed his eyes.

‘What else?’

‘The Breaker of Swords makes a challenge of his own. He asks if King Uthil will meet him in the square, man against man.’

‘A duel,’ said Laithlin.

‘A duel.’

‘The king is not well enough to fight.’ Laithlin looked over at her son. Her minister. ‘He cannot be well enough to fight.’

‘With the favour of Father Peace, it will never come to that.’

‘Your circles move, Father Yarvi.’

He crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the firepit. ‘They move.’

‘Then we must be ready to ride north within the week.’ Queen Laithlin stood, tall and stern, wise and beautiful, and kneeling at her feet Thorn thought there could never have been a woman more worth following. ‘Teach her the words.’