Yarvi’s eyes went wide. ‘Tell me you did not speak of it to my mother!’
‘I’ve told no one. But … if we had, perhaps she might have found a way to peace …’
Father Yarvi’s shoulders seemed to sag. ‘The price was too high,’ he muttered. ‘You know that.’
‘I know.’
‘I could not risk fracturing our alliance. We had to have unity. You know that.’
‘I know.’
‘Grandmother Wexen cannot be trusted. You know that.’
‘I know, but …’
‘But Brand might be alive.’ Father Yarvi looked far older than his years, of a sudden. Old, and sick, and bent under a weight of guilt. ‘Do you suppose I do not have a thousand such thoughts every day? It is a minister’s place always to doubt, but always to seem certain. You cannot let yourself be paralysed by what might be. Even less by what might have been.’ He made a fist of his shrivelled hand, mouth twisting as though he might hit himself with it. Then he let it fall. ‘You must try to pick the greater good. You must try to find the lesser evil. Then you must shoulder your regrets, and look forward.’
‘I know.’ Koll knew when he was beaten. He had known he was beaten before he opened his mouth. In the end, he had wanted to be beaten.
‘I’ll come,’ he said.
He didn’t need to tell her, which was just as well. He doubted he’d have had the courage.
Rin looked up at him, and that was all it took. She turned back to her work, jaw set tight.
‘You’ve made your choice, then.’
‘I wish I didn’t have to choose,’ he muttered, guilty as a thief.
‘But you do and you have.’
He would’ve preferred her to break down in tears, or come at him in a rage, or beg him to think again. He’d worked out a cowardly little plan to twist any of those back on her. But this chilly indifference he had no answer to.
Dribbling out, ‘I’m sorry,’ was the feeble best he could manage. He wondered if his mother would’ve been proud of this, and didn’t much care for the answer.
‘Don’t be. We’ve wasted enough time on each other. And I’ve only myself to blame. Brand warned me this would happen. He always said you were too full of your own hopes to hold anyone else’s.’
Gods, that hit like a punch in the balls. He opened his mouth to blurt it wasn’t fair, but how could he defend himself against a dead man’s judgment? Especially when he was busy proving it true.
‘I always knew best.’ Rin gave a hiss through gritted teeth. ‘Guess Brand gets the last laugh, eh?’
Koll took a shuffling step towards her. Maybe he couldn’t give her what she wanted, couldn’t be what she needed, but he could see her safe at least. He owed her that much. Owed Brand that much.
‘Bright Yilling might be here in a few days,’ he muttered. ‘And thousands of the High King’s warriors with him.’
Rin snorted. ‘You always did like to frame common knowledge as deep-cunning. Used to find that endearing but, I have to say, it’s wearing thin.’
‘You should go back to Thorlby-’
‘For what? My brother’s dead and my home’s a burned-out shell.’
‘It’s not safe here …’
‘If we lose here how safe do you think Thorlby will be? I’d rather stay, do what I can to help. That’s what Brand would’ve done. That’s what he did do.’ Gods, she had courage. So much more than he did. He loved that about her.
He found himself reaching for her shoulder. ‘Rin-’
She slapped his hand away, fist clenched as if she was about to hit him. He knew he deserved it. But she was in no mood to make things easy. She turned away in disgust. ‘Just go. You’ve made your choice, Brother Koll. Get on and live with it.’
What could he say to that? He needn’t have worried she’d cry. He was the one sniffing back tears as he skulked from the forge, feeling as far from the best man he could be as he ever had in his life.
There was a thin rain falling on the elf-built quay of Bail’s Point. A spitting rain that drew a gloomy curtain across the world to match Koll’s mood, that clung like dew to the fur on Rulf’s shoulders where he stood frowning on the steering platform, that stuck the oarsmen’s hair to their hard-set faces as they loaded the stores. He wished Fror was with them, or Dosduvoi, but the crew Koll sailed with down the wide Divine were scattered to the winds. These were mostly men he hardly knew.
‘Why the funeral face, my dove?’ asked Skifr, worming one long finger out of her cloak to pick carefully at her nose. ‘You once asked me if you could see magic, did you not?’
‘I did, and you told me I was young and rash, and that magic has terrible risks and terrible costs, and that I should pray to every god I knew of that I never saw it.’
‘Huh.’ She raised her brows at the result of her rummaging, then flicked it towards Gorm’s ships, and Uthil’s ships, and the captured ships of Bright Yilling rocking on the tide. ‘That was dour of me. Did you pray?’
‘Not hard enough, it seems.’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘You told me you knew enough magic to do much harm, but not enough to do much good.’
‘This is a war. I came to do harm.’
‘That isn’t very reassuring.’
‘No.’
‘Where did you learn magic?’
‘I cannot say.’
‘Cannot or will not?’
‘Cannot and will not.’
Koll sighed. Every answer she gave seemed to leave him knowing less. ‘Can you really take us safely into Strokom?’
‘Take you into Strokom? Yes. Safely?’ She shrugged her shoulders.
‘That isn’t very reassuring either.’
‘No.’
‘Will we find weapons there?’
‘More than Mother War herself could make use of.’
‘And if we use them … do we risk another Breaking of God?’
‘As long as we break Grandmother Wexen, I will be satisfied.’
‘That’s less reassuring than ever.’
Skifr stared out towards the grey sea. ‘If you suppose I came here to reassure you, you are very much mistaken.’
‘Why is nothing ever easy?’ Father Yarvi was frowning at the long ramp of pitted elf-stone that led to the yard of the fortress. A lean figure was coming down it. A tall, shaven-headed figure with elf-bangles stacked up her tattooed arm. ‘Mother Scaer, what a surprise! I thought you wanted no part of this madness?’
The Minister of Vansterland turned her head and spat. ‘I want no one to have any part of this madness, but my king has chosen his path. My place is to make sure he walks it to victory. That is why I am coming with you.’
‘Your company will be a delight.’ Yarvi stepped close to her. ‘As long as you mean to help me. Stand in my way, you will regret it.’
‘We understand one another, then,’ said Mother Scaer, curling her lip.
‘We always have.’
Koll sighed to himself. What better foundation for an alliance than mutual hatred and suspicion?
‘To your oars, then!’ called Rulf. ‘I’m getting no younger!’
Gudrun’s Example
It was a beautiful morning in late summer, Mother Sun making last night’s rain glitter like jewels in the grass.
‘This is our weakest point,’ said Raith.
It took no great warrior to see that. The northeastern corner of the fortress had been sliced away by the Breaking of God as if by a giant knife, and kings of the distant past had built a tower to plug the gap. It was an ill-made and neglected thing, its roof fallen in and birds swarming on the dropping-caked rafters, the man-built stretch of wall beside it bowing outwards, shored up with crumbling bastions.
‘Gudrun’s Tower,’ murmured Skara.
‘How did it get the name?’ asked Mother Owd.
Skara had been greatly annoyed when Mother Kyre taught her the story but, like most of the minister’s lessons, she found she remembered it well enough. ‘Princess Gudrun was the granddaughter of a king of Throvenland.’
‘A poor start,’ grunted Mother Owd. She tended to be grumpy in the mornings. ‘Still, I know a few of those who turned out well.’