The smoke was a faint haze that turned day in the streets of Skekenhouse to muddy dusk. It scratched at Raith’s throat. Made every breath an effort. Shapes moved in the murk. Running figures. The looters or the looted.
Strange how smells can bring the memories rushing up so clear. The stink of burning snatched Raith back to that village on the border between Vansterland and Gettland. Halleby, had they called it? That one they’d torched for nothing, and Raith drowned a man in a pig trough. It’d seemed a fine thing to do at the time. He’d boasted of it afterwards and Grom-gil-Gorm had laughed with his warriors and called him a bloody little bastard, and smiled to have so vicious a dog on his leash.
Now Raith’s mouth was sour with fear and his heart thud-thudding in his aching head and his palm all tacky around the grip of his axe. He startled at a crash somewhere, a long scream more like an animal than a man, spun about straining into the gloom.
Maybe he should’ve been giving thanks to Mother War that he stood with the winners. That’s what he used to tell his brother, wasn’t it, when Rakki shook his head over the ashes? But if there was a right side, it was hard to imagine Thorn Bathu’s crew of killers on it.
It was a vicious crowd he’d joined up with, bright-eyed like foxes, slinking like wolves, their persons neglected but their weapons lavished with gleaming care. Most were Gettlanders, but Thorn welcomed anyone with a score to settle and no qualms over how they went about it. Raith didn’t even know the names of most of them. They were nothing to each other, bound together only by hate. Men who’d lost families or friends. Men who’d lost themselves and had nothing left but taking from others what’d been taken from them.
Some dragged folk from their houses while others crashed through inside, smashing chests and slitting mattresses and turning over furniture, supposedly to find hidden treasure but really just for the joy of breaking. The victims fought no more than sheep dragged to the slaughter-pen. Used to surprise Raith, that they didn’t fight. Used to disgust him. Now he understood it all too well. He’d no fight left himself.
Folk aren’t just cowards or heroes. They’re both and neither, depending on how things stand. Depending on who stands with them, who stands against. Depending on the life they’ve had. The death they see waiting.
They were lined up on their knees in the street. Some were pushed down. Some were flung down. Most just joined the end of the line on their own, and knelt there, meek. A slap or a kick where one was needed to get them moving, but otherwise no violence. A beaten slave was worth less than a healthy one, after all, and if they weren’t worth enough to sell, why waste even that much effort on ’em?
Raith closed his eyes. Gods, he felt weary. So weary he could hardly stand. He thought of his brother’s face, thought of Skara’s, but he couldn’t get them clear. The only face he could see was that woman’s, staring at her burning farm, calling her children’s names, her voice gone all broken and grief-mad. He felt tears prickling under his lids and let his eyes flicker open.
A Vansterman with a silver ring through his nose was dragging a woman around by her armpit, laughing, but the laughter was all jagged and forced, like he was trying to convince himself there was something funny in it.
Thorn Bathu didn’t look like laughing. The muscles working on the shaved side of her head, the scars livid on her pale cheeks, the sinews standing stark and merciless from the arm she gripped her axe with.
‘Most o’ these are hardly worth the taking,’ said one of the warriors, a great big Gettlander with a lopsided jaw, shoving an old man down onto his knees at the end of the line.
‘What do we do with ’em, then?’ said another.
Thorn’s voice came flat and careless. ‘I’ve a mind to kill ’em.’
One of the women started sobbing a prayer and someone shut her up with a slap.
Here was the dream. To plunder a big city. To take whatever you saw for your own. To strut like the biggest dog down streets where you’d be sneered at in peacetime. To rule supreme just ’cause you had a blade and were bastard enough to use it.
Raith’s eyes were watery. The smoke, maybe, or maybe he was crying. He thought of that farm burning. He felt crushed, as buried as his brother, could hardly breathe. Seemed like everything worth saving in him died with Rakki, or was left behind with Skara.
He fumbled at the strap on his helmet, pulled it off and tossed it down with a hollow clonk, watched it roll on its edge down the cobbles. He scrubbed hard at his flattened hair with his nails, hardly felt it.
He looked sideways at that row of people, kneeling in the road. He saw a boy clench his fist, clench a handful of dirt out of the gutter. He saw a teardrop dangling from a woman’s nose. Heard the old man at the end wheezing fear with every breath.
Thorn’s boots crunched as she walked over to him.