‘There is a song in that, I think,’ muttered Gorm, staring at the naked body of the man who’d ruled the Shattered Sea, sprawled with scant dignity on his unfinished floor. ‘But there will be many songs sung of this day.’
‘Songs of the fall of cities and the death of kings,’ said Raith. He knelt, offering the golden cup to his master. Just as he used to after every duel and battle. After every victory. After every burned farm. After every petty murder. ‘A toast to the new High King!’ he called. ‘Drunk from the cup of the old!’
‘I have missed you, Raith.’ Gorm smiled as he reached for the cup, just as Skara had when she was fitted for her mail, but this time Raith’s hands stayed firm. ‘I have been ungenerous, and we can see what happens to an ungenerous king. You shall return to me, and carry my sword again, and my cup too.’ And Grom-gil-Gorm lifted the drink to his lips.
Raith took a long breath and let it sigh away. ‘That’s all I ever wanted.’
‘Ugh.’ The Breaker of Swords wrinkled his nose. ‘This wine has an ugly flavour.’
‘Everything has an ugly flavour here.’
‘Too true.’ Gorm narrowed his eyes at Raith over the cup’s rim as he took another draught. ‘You have changed a great deal. Your time beside my queen-to-be has taught you much of perception and patience.’
‘Queen Skara has made me see things differently, my king. I should tell her I’m quitting her service to return to my right place. That’d be the proper thing.’
‘The proper thing? I might almost call you house-broken!’ Gorm drained his cup and tossed it rattling on the altar, wiping the stray drips from his beard. ‘Go to the queen, then. She should be ashore by now. We are to be married in the morning, after all. She will be sad, I think, to lose her favourite dog.’ And the Breaker of Swords reached down to scratch roughly at Raith’s head. ‘But I will be happy to have mine back.’
Raith bowed low. ‘Not near so happy as the dog will be, my king.’ And he turned and strutted down from the dais with some of his old swagger, nodding to Soryorn, who was just coming the other way with the High King’s scarred pommel.
‘Shall we burn this place, my king?’ Raith heard the standard-bearer ask.
‘Why burn what you can use?’ said Gorm. ‘A few strokes of the chisel will change these miserable statues into Mother War, and at once we have raised a mighty temple to her! A fitting gift for she that has given her favoured son the whole Shattered Sea …’
Raith stepped out smiling into the night. For once he had no regrets.
The Happiest Day
Skara stared at herself in the mirror.
She remembered doing the same when she first came to Thorlby, a hundred years ago it seemed, after she fled from the burning ruins of her grandfather’s hall. She had hardly recognized the brittle-looking girl in the glass then. She was not sure she knew the sharp-faced woman there now any better. A woman with a proud defiance in her eye, and a ruthless set to her mouth, and a dagger at her jewelled belt she looked more than willing to use.
Skara twisted the armring Bail the Builder had once worn, the red stone winking. She remembered her grandfather giving it to her, thought how proud he would have been to see her now, pictured his smiling face, then flinched at the thought of his body pitching in the firepit, had to swallow the familiar surge of sickness, shut her eyes and try to calm her thumping heart.
She had told herself that when she saw Bright Yilling dead she would be free. She felt her thrall gently arranging the chain of pommels around her neck, the chain the High Queen’s key would soon hang from, and she felt the cold weight of it on her bare shoulders, the weight of things done and choices made.
Instead of banishing the ghosts of Mother Kyre and King Fynn she had added the ghosts of Bright Yilling and his Companions. Instead of freeing herself from the cold touch of his fingertips in the shadows of the Forest she had chained herself further with his death-gripping fist on the fields before Bail’s Point.
Mother Owd had been right. The faster you run from the past, the faster it catches you. All you can do is turn and face it. Embrace it. Try and meet the future stronger for it.
There was a heavy knock at the door, and Skara took a long, sharp breath, and opened her eyes. ‘Come in.’
Blue Jenner was due to take her father’s place in the ceremony, which seemed apt, as he was the closest thing she had to family now. She felt a fresh surge of sickness at the sight of the sacred cloth over his shoulder. The one that would be wrapped around her hand and Gorm’s to bind them together for a lifetime.
The old raider came to stand beside her, his battered features looking doubly battered in the mirror, and slowly shook his head. ‘You look a High Queen indeed. How do you feel?’
‘As if I’m going to puke.’
‘I hear that’s just how a girl’s meant to feel on her wedding day.’