Half a King. Джо Аберкромби

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СКАЧАТЬ setting the story to song? Would my triumph not make a merry tune?’ He laughed, and let his arms drop. ‘My hands are bloody to the shoulder, cook’s boy, for of all things blood pleases me the most. But, sad to say, not all men that die are killed by me.’

      One of the daggers had eased forward in his belt, its horn handle pointing toward Yarvi. He could have snatched it. Had he been his father, or his brother, or brave Keimdal who died trying to protect his king, he might have lunged for that blade, sunk it into Grom-gil-Gorm’s belly and fulfilled his solemn oath for vengeance.

      ‘Do you want this bauble?’ Gorm drew the knife now, and held it out to Yarvi by the bright blade. ‘Then take it. But you should know that Mother War breathed upon me in my crib. It has been foreseen that no man can kill me.’

      How huge he seemed, against the white sky, hair blowing, and mail shining, and the warm smile on his battle-weathered face. Had Yarvi sworn vengeance against this giant? He, half-man, with his one thin, white hand? He would have laughed at the arrogance of it were he not shivering with cold and fear.

      ‘He should be pegged on the beach and his guts unwound for the crows,’ said Gorm’s minister, her blue eyes fixed on Yarvi.

      ‘So you always say, Mother Scaer.’ Gorm slid the knife back into his belt. ‘But the crows never thank me. This is just a little boy. It is hardly as if this outrage was his idea.’ Truer than he knew. ‘Unlike the noble King Odem, I do not need to swell myself with the killing of weak things.’

      ‘What of justice?’ The minister frowned over at the shrouded bodies, muscles working on the sides of her shaven head. ‘The low folk are hungry for vengeance.’

      Gorm pushed out his lips and made a farting sound. ‘It is the lot of low folk to be hungry. Have you learned nothing from the Golden Queen of Gettland, wise and beautiful Laithlin? Why kill what you can sell? Collar him and put him with the others.’

      Yarvi squawked as one of the men dragged him up while another snapped a collar of rough iron around his neck.

      ‘If you change your mind about the knife,’ Gorm called after him, smiling all the while, ‘you can seek me out. Fare you well, ex-cook’s boy!’

      ‘Wait!’ hissed Yarvi, realizing what was to come, mind racing for some trick to put it off. ‘Wait!’

      ‘For what?’ asked Mother Scaer. ‘Stop his bleating.’

      A kick in the stomach left him breathless. They forced him limp upon an old stump, and while one held him gasping the other brought the pin, yellow-hot from the forge, and worked it through the clasp of his collar with pincers. The first struck it with a hammer to squash it fast but he bungled the task, caught the pin a glancing blow and scattered molten iron across Yarvi’s neck.

      He had never known pain like it, and he shrieked like a boiling kettle and sobbed and blubbered and writhed on the block, and one of them took him by his shirt and flung him in a fetid pool so the iron hissed cold.

      ‘One less cook’s boy.’ Mother Scaer’s face was pale as milk and smooth as marble and her eyes were blue as the winter sky and had no pity in them. ‘One more slave.’

II

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      Yarvi squatted in the stinking darkness, fingering the raw burns on his neck and the fresh scabs on his rough-shaved scalp, sweating by day and shivering by night, listening to the groans and whimpers and unanswered prayers in a dozen languages. From the broken throats of the human refuse around him. From his own loudest of all.

      Upstairs the best wares were kept clean and well fed, lined up on the street in polished thrall-collars where they might draw in the business. In the back of the shop the less strong or skilled or beautiful were chained to rails and beaten until they smiled for a buyer. Down here in the darkness and the filth were kept the old, sick, simple and crippled, left to squabble over scraps like pigs.

      Here in the sprawling slave-market of Vulsgard, capital of Vansterland, everyone had their price, and money was not wasted on those who would fetch no money. A simple sum of costs and profits, shorn of sentiment. Here you could learn what you were truly worth, and Yarvi learned what he had long suspected.

      He was close to worthless.

      At first his mind spilled over with plans and stratagems and fantasies for his revenge. He was plagued by a million things he could have done differently. But not by one he could do now. If he screamed out that he was the rightful King of Gettland, who would believe it? He had scarcely believed it himself. And if he found a way to make them believe? Their business was to sell people. They would ransom him, of course. Would King Odem smile to have his missing nephew back under his tender care? No doubt. A smile calm and even as fresh-fallen snow.

      So Yarvi squatted in that unbearable squalor, and found it was amazing what a man could get used to.

      By the second day he scarcely noticed the stink.

      By the third he huddled up gratefully to the warmth of his gods-forsaken companions in the chill of the night.

      By the fourth he was rooting through the filth as eagerly as any of them when they were tossed the slops at feeding time.

      By the fifth he could hardly remember the faces of those he knew best. His mother and Mother Gundring became confused, his treacherous uncle and his dead father melted together, Hurik no longer could be told from Keimdal, Isriun faded to ghost.

      Strange, how quickly a king could become an animal. Or half a king half an animal. Perhaps even those we raise highest never get that far above the mud.

      It was not long after sunrise on his seventh day in that man-made hell, the calls of the merchant in dead men’s armour next door just starting to challenge the squawking of the sea-birds, that Yarvi heard the voice outside.

      ‘We’re looking for men as can pull an oar,’ it said, deep and steady. The voice of a man used to straight talk and blunt dealing.

      ‘Nine pairs of hands.’ A softer, subtler voice followed the first. ‘The trembles has left some gaps on our benches.’

      ‘Of course, my friends!’ The voice of the shop’s owner – Yarvi’s owner, now – slick and sticky as warm honey. ‘Behold Namev the Shend, a champion of his people taken in battle! See how tall he stands? Observe those shoulders. He could pull your ship alone. You will find no higher quality—’

      A hog snort from the first customer. ‘If we was after quality we’d be at the other end of the street.’

      ‘You don’t grease an axle with the best oil,’ came the second voice.

      Footsteps from above, and dust sifting down, and shadows shifting in the chinks of light between the boards over Yarvi’s head. The slaves around him stiffened, quieting their breathing so they could listen. The shop-owner’s voice filtered muffled to their ears, a little less honey on it now.

      ‘Here are six healthy Inglings. They speak little of the Tongue but understand the whip well enough. Fine choices for hard labour and at an excellent price—’

      ‘You don’t grease an axle with good СКАЧАТЬ