“I reckon.”
“Grom-gil-Gorm.”
“Unless he’s so scared he decides not to turn up.”
“The Breaker of Swords. The Maker of Orphans.” The names dropped dead in the darkness. Names great warriors quailed at. Names mothers scared their children with. “How many duels has he fought?”
“They say a score.”
“How many have you?”
“You know how many, Brand.”
“None.”
“It’s around that number.”
“How many men has he killed?”
“Pits full of them.” Her voice was getting hard, now, a fiery glow under the blanket from her elf-bangle. “More than any man around the Shattered Sea, maybe.”
“How many pommels on that chain of his? A hundred? Two?”
“And my father’s is one of them.”
“You looking to follow in his footsteps?”
That glow grew brighter, showing him the lines of her scowl. “Since you ask, I’m hoping to kill the big bastard and leave his corpse for the crows.”
Silence between them, and someone passed outside with a torch, orange flaring across the side of Thorn’s face, the star-shaped scar on her cheek. Brand knelt, level with her. “We could just go.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Father Yarvi, he twisted you into this. A trick, a gamble, like that poisoner in Yaletoft. This is all his plan—”
“What if it is? I’m not a child, Brand, my eyes were open. I swore an oath to him and another to the queen and I knew what they meant. I knew I might have to fight for her. I knew I might have to die for her.”
“If we took horses we could be ten miles off by dawn.”
She kicked angrily at the blanket and lay back, hands over her face. “We’re not running, Brand. Neither one of us. I told Gorm his death comes. Be a bit of a let-down for everyone if I never even arrived, wouldn’t it?”
“We could go south to Throvenland, join a crew and go down the Divine. On to the First of Cities. Vialine would give us a place. For the gods’ sake, Thorn, he’s the Breaker of Swords—”
“Brand, stop!” she snarled, so suddenly that he jerked back. “You think I don’t know all this? You think my head isn’t buzzing with it already like a nest of bloody wasps? You think I don’t know everyone in our camp is working at the same sums and coming to the same answer?” She leaned farther forward, eyes gleaming. “I’ll tell you what you could do for me, Brand. You could be the one man in fifty miles who thinks I can win. Or at least pretends I can. This isn’t your choice, it’s mine, and I’ve made it. Your choice is to be my shoulder-man or go.”
He knelt there naked, blinking for a moment as if he’d been slapped. Then he took a long, shuddering breath, and blew it out. “I’ll always be your shoulder-man. Always.”
“I know you will. But I’m meant to be the one terrified.”
“I’m sorry.” He reached out, touched her face in the darkness and she pressed her cheek into his hand. “It’s just … It took us a long time getting here. I don’t want to lose you.”
“I don’t want to be lost. But you know I was born to do this.”
“If anyone can beat him, you can.” He wished he believed it.
“I know. But I might not have much time left.” She took his wrist, and dragged him into the bed. “I don’t want to spend it talking.”
BRAND SAT WITH THORN’S sword across his knees and polished it.
He’d polished it plain hilt to bright point a dozen times already. As the stars were snuffed out, and the sky brightened, and Mother Sun showed herself behind Amon’s Tooth. The steel couldn’t be any cleaner, the edge any keener. But still he scrubbed, muttering prayers to Mother War. Or the same prayer, over and over.
“… let her live, let her live, let her live …”
You want a thing when you can’t have it. When you get it you suddenly sprout doubts. Then when you think you might lose it you find you need it worse than ever.
Father Yarvi was muttering some prayers of his own while he tended to a pot over the fire, from time to time tossing a few dried leaves from one pouch or another into a brew that smelled like feet.
“You could probably stop polishing,” he said.
“I can’t stand in the square with her.” Brand flipped the sword over and set furiously to work on the other side. “All I can do is polish and pray. I plan to do both the best I can.”
Brand knew Thorn would show no fear. But she even had the hint of a smile as she sat, elbows on her knees and her hands calmly dangling, the elf-bangle on her wrist glowing bright. She had a steel guard on her left arm but otherwise no armor, just leather stitched in places with steel rings, bound tight with straps and belts so there was nothing left loose to catch a hold of. Queen Laithlin stood at her side, binding her tangled hair tight against her skull, fingers moving sure and steady as if it was for a wedding feast rather than a duel. Two brave faces there, and no mistake. The bravest in the camp, for all they were the two with most to lose.
So when Thorn glanced over at him, Brand did his best to nod back with a brave face of his own. That much he could do. That, and polish, and pray.
“Is she ready?” murmured Father Yarvi.
“It’s Thorn. She’s always ready. Whatever these idiots might think.”
The warriors had been gathering since first light and now there was a whispering crowd looking on, pressed in about the tents, peering over one another’s shoulders. Master Hunnan was in the front rank, and couldn’t have frowned any harder without tearing the deep-creased skin on his forehead. Brand could see the dismay and disgust on their faces. That some girl should be fighting for Gettland’s honor while the sworn warriors stood idle. A girl who’d failed a test and been named a murderer. A girl who wore no mail and carried no shield.
Thorn showed no sign of giving a damn for their opinion as she stood, though. She looked as long and lean as a spider, the way Skifr used to but taller, and broader, and stronger, and she spread her arms wide and worked the fingers, her jaw set hard and her narrowed eyes fixed on the valley.
Queen Laithlin set a hand on her shoulder. “May Mother War stand with you, my Chosen Shield.”
“She always has, my queen,” said Thorn.
“It’s nearly time.” Father Yarvi poured some of his brew into a cup and held it out with his good hand. “Drink this.”
Thorn sniffed at it and jerked back. “Smells foul!”
“The best brews do. This will sharpen your senses, and quicken your hands and dull any pain.”
“Is that cheating?”
“Mother Isriun will be using every trick she can devise.” And Yarvi held out the steaming cup again. “A champion must win, the rest is dust.”
Thorn held her nose, swallowed it down, and spat with disgust.
Rulf stepped up, shield held like a tray with two knives laid on it, freshly sharpened. “Sure you don’t want mail?”
Thorn shook her head. “Speed will be my best armor and my best weapon. Speed, and surprise, and aggression. These might come in handy too, though.” She took the blades and slid them into sheaths at her chest and her side.
“One more for luck.” Brand held out the dagger that Rin made him, the one he’d carried up and down the Divine and the Denied. The one that saved his life out on the steppe.
“I’ll keep it safe.” Thorn slid it through her belt at the small of her back.
“I’d rather it kept you safe,” murmured Brand.
“A lot of blades,” said Father Yarvi.
“Got caught without any once and didn’t enjoy the experience,” said Thorn. “I won’t be dying for lack of stabbing back, at least.”
“You won’t be dying.” Brand made sure his voice held no doubts, even if his heart was bursting with them. “You’ll be killing the bastard.”
“Aye.” She leaned close. “I feel like my guts are going to drop out of my arse.”
“I’d never know.”
“No doubt.”
“I wish Skifr was here.”
“You’ve got nothing left to learn from her.”
“A little of that elf-magic might not hurt, though. Just in case.”
“And rob you of the glory? No.” Brand showed her both sides of the sword, a frosty glint to the edges he’d been polishing since the first hint of light. “Don’t hesitate.”
“Never,” she said, as she slid the blade through the clasp at her side and held her hand out for the ax. “Why did you? That day on the beach?”
Brand thought back, back down a long, strange year to the training square on the sand. “I was thinking about doing good.” He spun the ax around, steel etched with letters in five tongues flashing. “Looking at both sides of the case, like the fool I am.”
“You’d have beaten me if you hadn’t.”
“Maybe.”
Thorn slid the ax through its loop. “I would’ve failed my test and Hunnan would never have given me another. I wouldn’t have killed Edwal. I wouldn’t have been called a murderer. I wouldn’t have been trained by Skifr, or rowed down the Divine, or saved the empress, or had songs sung of my high deeds.”
“I wouldn’t have lost my place on the king’s raid,” said Brand. “I’d be a proud warrior of Gettland now, doing just as Master Hunnan told me.”
“And my mother would have married me off to some old fool, and I’d be wearing his key all wrong and sewing very badly.”
“You wouldn’t be facing Grom-gil-Gorm.”
“No. But we’d never have had … whatever we’ve got.”
He looked into her eyes for a moment. “I’m glad I hesitated.”
“So am I.” She kissed him, then. One last kiss before the storm. Her lips soft against his. Her breath hot in the dawn chill.
“Thorn?” Koll was standing beside them. “Gorm’s in the square.”
Brand wanted to scream, then, but he forced himself to smile instead. “The sooner you start, the sooner you kill him.”
He drew Odda’s sword and started beating on Rulf’s shield with the hilt, and others did the same with their own weapons, their own armor, noise spreading out through the ranks, and men began to shout, to roar, to sing out their defiance. She was nowhere near the champion they’d have picked, but she was Gettland’s champion even so.
And Thorn strode tall through a thunder of clashing metal, the warriors parting before her like the earth before the plow.
Striding to her meeting with the Breaker of Swords.
STEEL
“I have been waiting for you,” said Grom-gil-Gorm in his sing-song voice.
He sat upon a stool with his white-haired blade- and shield-bearers kneeling to either side, one of them smiling at Thorn, the other scowling as if he might fight her himself. Behind them, along the eastern edge of the square, twenty of Gorm’s closest warriors were ranged, Mother Isriun glaring from their midst, hair stirred about her gaunt face by a breath of wind, Sister Scaer sullen beside her. Behind them were hundreds more fighting men, black outlines along the top of the ridge, Mother Sun bright as she rose beyond Amon’s Tooth.
“Thought I’d give you a little more time alive.” Thorn put on her bravest face as she stepped between Queen Laithlin and Father Yarvi. Stepped out in front of Gettland’s twenty best and into that little plot of close-cut grass. A square just like the many she’d trained in, eight strides on a side, a spear driven into the ground at each corner.
A square where either she or Grom-gil-Gorm would die.
“No gift to me.” The Breaker of Swords shrugged his great shoulders and his heavy mail, forged with zigzag lines of gold, gave an iron whisper. “Time drags when the Last Door stands so near.”
“Perhaps it stands nearer for you than for me.”
“Perhaps.” He toyed thoughtfully with one of the pommels on his chain. “You are Thorn Bathu, then?”
“Yes.”
“This one they sing the songs of?”
“Yes.”
“The one who saved the Empress of the South?”
“Yes.”
“The one who won a priceless relic from her.” Gorm glanced down at the elf-bangle, glowing red as a burning coal on Thorn’s wrist, and raised his brows. “I had taken those songs for lies.”
She shrugged. “Some of them.”
“However grand the truth, it is never enough for the skalds, eh?” Gorm took his shield from the smiling boy, a mighty thing, painted black with a rim scored and dented by a hundred old blows. Gifts from the many men he had killed in squares like this one. “I think we met before.”
“In Skekenhouse. Where you knelt before the High King.”
His cheek gave the faintest twitch of displeasure. “We all must kneel to someone. I should have known you sooner, but you have changed.”
“Yes.”
“You are Storn Headland’s daughter.”
“Yes.”
“That was a glorious duel.” The frowning boy offered Gorm’s sword and he curled his great fingers about the grip and drew it. A monstrous blade, Thorn would have needed both hands to swing it but he carried it lightly as a willow switch. “Let us hope ours will make as jolly a song.”
“Don’t count on the same outcome,” said Thorn, watching Mother Sun’s reflection flash down his steel. He would have the reach, the strength, the armor but, weighed down by all that metal, she would have the speed. She would last the longer. Who would have the upper hand in the contest of wits, it remained to be seen.
“I have fought a score of duels, and put a score of brave men in their howes, and learned one thing. Never count on the outcome.” Gorm’s eyes moved over her clothes, her weapons, judging her as she was judging him. She wondered what strengths he saw. What weaknesses. “I never fought a woman before, though.”
“Nor will you again. This is your last fight.” She raised her chin at him. “Mother War’s breath will not shield you from me.”
She had hoped for anger, some sign he might be taunted into rashness, but all the King of Vansterland gave her was a sad little smile. “Ah, the confidence of the young. It was foreseen no man could kill me.” And he stood, his great shadow stretching toward her across the stubbled grass, a giant stepped out from the songs. “Not that you could.”
“MOTHER WAR, LET HER LIVE,” mouthed Brand, both fists clenched aching tight. “Mother War, let her live …”
An eerie silence fell across the valley as the fighters took their places. Only the stirring of the wind in the grass, a bird calling high and harsh in the iron sky, the faint jingle of war-gear as one man or another shifted nervously. Mother Isriun stepped out into the lonely space between the two champions.
“Are you ready to kill? Are you ready to die?” She held up her hand, a curl of white goose-down in her fingers. “Are you ready to face the One God’s judgment?”
Gorm stood straight and tall, huge as a mountain, his broad shield held before him, his long sword out behind. “Mother War will be my judge,” he growled.
Thorn crouched low, teeth bared in a vicious grin, tense as a full-bent bow. “Whichever.” She turned her head and spat. “I’m ready.”
“Then begin!” called Mother Isriun, and let the feather fall, and hurried back, out of the short grass and into the rank of warriors opposite.
Down that feather drifted, slow, slow, every eye on both sides fixed upon it. It was caught by an eddy, whirled and spun. Down it drifted, and down, every breath on both sides held.
“Mother War, let her live, Mother War, let her live …”
THE INSTANT THAT SCRAP of down touched the close-cropped grass Thorn sprang. She had not forgotten Skifr’s lessons. They were in her flesh. Always attack. Strike first. Strike last.
One stride and the wind rushed at her. Gorm stayed rigid, watching. Two strides and she crushed the feather into the dirt beneath her heel. Still he was froz
en. Three strides and she was on him, screaming, swinging high with Skifr’s ax, low with the sword forged from her father’s bones. Now he moved, moved to meet her, and her blade crashed on his, and the ax chopped splinters from his shield.
In that instant she knew she had never fought anyone so strong. She was used to a shield giving when she hit it, used to staggering a man with the weight of her blows. But striking Gorm’s shield was like striking a deep-rooted oak. Striking his sword jarred her from her palm to the tip of her nose and left her bared teeth rattling.
Thorn had never been one to get discouraged at the first reverse, though.
Gorm had thrust his heavy left boot recklessly forward and she dropped low, trying to hook it with her ax and bring him down. He stepped back nimbly for all his mountainous bulk and she heard him grunt, felt the great sword coming, whipping at her like a scorpion’s tail. She only just lurched under as it ripped past at a vicious angle, a blow to split shields, to split helms, to split heads, the wind of it cold on her face.
She twisted, watching for the opening a swing like that must leave, but there was none. Gorm handled that monstrous blade as neatly as Thorn’s mother might a needle, no rage or madness in it, all control. His eyes stayed calm. His door of a shield never drifted.
That first exchange she judged a draw, and she danced back into room to wait for another chance. To seek out a better opening.
Slowly, carefully, the Breaker of Swords took one step toward the center of the square, twisting his great left boot into the sod.
“YES!” HISSED RULF AS Thorn darted in, letting go a flurry of blows. “Yes!” Blades clattered as they scarred Gorm’s shield, Brand clenching his fists so tight the nails bit at his palms.
He gasped as Thorn rolled under the shining arc of Gorm’s sword, came up snarling to hack at his shield, pushed a great thrust scornfully away and danced back out of range, using the full width of the square. She went in a drunken swagger, weapons drifting, the way that Skifr used to, and Gorm studied her over the rim of his shield, trying to find some pattern in the chaos.
“He is cautious,” hissed Queen Laithlin.
“Stripped of the armor of his prophecy,” muttered Father Yarvi. “He fears her.”
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