Half a King

The door banged wide and that seeking wind tore through the chamber. The flames in the firepit jumped as Yarvi did, dancing distorted in the hundred hundred jars and bottles on the shelves. A figure blundered up the steps, setting the bunches of plants swinging like hanged men behind him.

It was Yarvi’s Uncle Odem, hair plastered to his pale face with the rain and his chest heaving. He stared at Yarvi, eyes wide, and opened his mouth but made no sound. One needed no gift of empathy to see he was weighed down by heavy news.

“What is it?” croaked Yarvi, his throat tight with fear.

His uncle dropped to his knees, hands on the greasy straw. He bowed his head, and spoke two words, low and raw.

“My king.”

And Yarvi knew his father and brother were dead.

2

DUTY

They hardly looked dead.

Only very white, laid out on those chill slabs in that chill room with shrouds drawn up to their armpits and naked swords gleaming on their chests. Yarvi kept expecting his brother’s mouth to twitch in sleep. His father’s eyes to open, to meet his with that familiar scorn. But they did not. They never would again.

Death had opened the Last Door for them, and from that portal none return.

“How did it happen?” Yarvi heard his mother saying from the doorway. Her voice was steady as ever.

“Treachery, my queen,” murmured his Uncle Odem.

“I am queen no more.”

“Of course.… I am sorry, Laithlin.”

Yarvi reached out and gently touched his father’s shoulder. So cold. He wondered when he last touched his father. Had he ever? He remembered well enough the last time they had spoken any words that mattered. Months before.

A man swings the scythe and the ax, his father had said. A man pulls the oar and makes fast the knot. Most of all a man holds the shield. A man holds the line. A man stands by his shoulder-man. What kind of man can do none of these things?

I didn’t ask for half a hand, Yarvi had said, trapped where he so often found himself, on the barren ground between shame and fury.

I didn’t ask for half a son.

And now King Uthrik was dead, and his King’s Circle, hastily resized, was a weight on Yarvi’s brow. A weight far heavier than that thin band of gold deserved to be.

“I asked you how they died,” his mother was saying.

“They went to speak peace with Grom-gil-Gorm.”

“There can be no peace with the damn Vanstermen,” came the deep voice of Hurik, his mother’s Chosen Shield.

“There must be vengeance,” said Yarvi’s mother.

His uncle tried to calm the storm. “Surely time to grieve, first. The High King has forbidden open war until-”

“Vengeance!” Her voice was sharp as broken glass. “Quick as lightning, hot as fire.”

Yarvi’s eyes crawled to his brother’s corpse. There was quick and hot, or had been. Strong-jawed, thick-necked, already the makings of a dark beard like their father’s. As unlike Yarvi as it was possible to be. His brother had loved him, he supposed. A bruising love where every pat was just this side of a slap. The love one has for something always beneath you.

“Vengeance,” growled Hurik. “The Vanstermen must be made to pay.”

“Damn the Vanstermen,” said Yarvi’s mother. “Our own people must be made to serve. They must be shown their new king has iron in him. Once they are happy on their knees you can make Mother Sea rise with your tears.”

Yarvi’s uncle gave a heavy sigh. “Vengeance, then. But is he ready, Laithlin? He has never been a fighter-”

“He must fight, ready or not!” snapped his mother. People had always talked around Yarvi as though he was deaf as well as crippled. It seemed his sudden rise to power had not cured them of the habit. “Make preparations for a great raid.”

“Where shall we attack?” asked Hurik.

“All that matters is that we attack. Leave us.”

Yarvi heard the door closing and his mother’s footsteps, soft across the cold floor.

“Stop crying,” she said. It was only then that Yarvi realized his eyes were swimming, and he wiped them, and sniffed, and was ashamed. Always he was ashamed

She gripped him by the shoulders. “Stand tall, Yarvi.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to puff out his chest the way his brother might have. Always he was sorry.

“You are a king, now.” She twisted his crooked cloak-buckle into place, tried to tame his pale blonde hair, close-clipped but always wild, and finally laid cool fingertips against his cheek. “You must never be sorry. You must wear your father’s sword, and lead a raid against the Vanstermen.”

Yarvi swallowed. The idea of going on a raid had always filled him with dread. To lead one?

Odem must have seen his horror. “I will be your shoulder-man, my king, always beside you, my shield at the ready. However I can help you, I will.”