Half a King

“You worry about the course, Sumael,” grunted Trigg, shoving Yarvi’s companions on again. “The rowers are my business.”

Sumael narrowed her dark eyes at Yarvi as he shuffled past. She had a scar and a notch in her top lip where a little triangle of white tooth showed, and he found himself wondering what southern land she was born in and how she had come here, whether she was older or younger than him, hard to tell with her hair chopped short-

She darted out a quick arm and caught his wrist, twisting it up so his hand came free of his torn sleeve.

“This one has a crippled hand.” No mockery, merely a statement of fact, as though she had found a lame cow in a herd. “There’s only one finger on it.” Yarvi tried to pull free but she was stronger than she looked. “And that seems a poor one.”

“That damn flesh-dealer!” Ankran elbowed past to grab Yarvi’s wrist and twist it about to look. “You said you could row!”

Yarvi could only shrug and mutter, “I didn’t say well.”

“It’s almost as if you can’t trust anyone,” said Sumael, one black eyebrow high. “How will he row with one hand?”

“He’ll have to find a way,” said Trigg, stepping up to her. “We’ve got nine spaces and nine slaves.” He loomed over Sumael and spoke with his blunt nose no more than a finger’s width from her pointed one. “Unless you fancy a turn on the benches?”

She licked at that notch in her lip, and eased carefully backward. “I’ll worry about the course, shall I?”

“Good idea. Chain the cripple on Jaud’s oar.”

They dragged Yarvi along a raised gangway down the middle of the deck, past benches on either side, three men to each huge oar, all shaven-headed, all lean, all collared, watching him each with their own mixtures of pity, self-pity, boredom and contempt.

A man was hunched on hands and knees, scrubbing at the deck-boards, face hidden by a shag of matted hair and colourless beard, so beggarly he made the most wretched of the oarsmen look like princes. One of the guards aimed the sort of careless kick at him you might at a stray dog and sent him crawling away, dragging a great weight of heavy chain after him. The ship did not seem well supplied in general but of chain there was no shortage.

They flung Yarvi down with unnecessary violence between two other slaves, by no means an encouraging pair. At the end of the oar was a hulking southerner with a thick fold of muscle where his neck should have been, head tipped back so he could watch the seabirds circling. Closest to the rowlock was a dour old man, short and stocky, his sinewy forearms thick with gray hair, his cheeks full of broken veins from a life in the weather, picking at the calluses on his broad palms.

“Gods damn it,” grunted this older one, shaking his head as the guards chained Yarvi to the bench beside him, “we’ve a cripple at our oar.”

“You prayed for help, didn’t you?” said the southerner, without looking around. “Here is help.”

“I prayed for help with two hands.”

“Be thankful for half of what you prayed for,” said Yarvi. “Believe me, I prayed for none of this.”

The big man’s mouth curled up a little as he looked at Yarvi sidelong. “When you have a load to lift, you’re better lifting than weeping. I am Jaud. Your sour oarmate is Rulf.”

“My name’s Yorv,” said Yarvi, having turned his story over in advance. Keep your lies as carefully as your winter grain, Mother Gundring would have said. “I was a cook’s boy-”

With a practiced roll of the tongue and twitch of the head the old man spat over the ship’s side. “You’re nothing now, and that’s all. Forget everything but the next stroke. That makes it a little easier.”

Jaud heaved up a sigh. “Don’t let Rulf grind the laughter out of you. He’s sour as lemons, but a good man to have at your back.” He puffed out his cheeks. “Though, one must admit, since he’s chained to your side, that will never happen.”

Yarvi gave a sorry little chuckle, maybe his first since he was made a slave. Maybe his first since he was made a king. But he didn’t laugh long.

The door of the aftcastle banged wide and a woman swaggered into the light, raised both arms with a flourish and shrieked, “I am awake!”

She was very tall, sharp-featured as a hawk with a pale scar across one dark cheek and her hair pinned up in a tangle. Her clothes were a gaudy patchwork of a dozen cultures’ most impractical attire-a silken shirt with frayed embroidery flapping at the sleeves, a silvery fur coat ruffled by the breeze, a fingerless glove on one hand and the other crusted with rings, a crystal-studded belt the gilt end of which flapped about the grip of a curved sword slung absurdly low.

She kicked aside the nearest oarsman so she could prop one sharp-toed boot on his bench and grinned down the ship, gold glinting among her teeth.