Took an effort for Raith to unlock his aching jaw, to push the spit-slick peg out of his mouth with his sore tongue.
Sometimes felt like all he had in him was fear. Of losing his place. Of being alone. Of the things he’d done. Of the things he might do.
Fighting was the one thing didn’t scare him.
Victory
The land was a black mystery when the ships began to plough ashore, the sky a dark blue cloth slashed with cloud and stabbed with stars. Out on the dark water, the scattered remnants of Grandmother Wexen’s fleet were still burning.
The crews began to jump down, to flounder laughing through the surf, eyes shining with triumph in the light of a hundred bonfires set upon the beach.
Skara watched them, desperate to know who was living, who was wounded, who was dead, burning to run into the sea herself to find out sooner.
‘There!’ said Sister Owd, pointing, and Skara saw the prow-beast of the Black Dog, her crew trotting up the shingle. She felt a heady rush of relief when she saw Blue Jenner’s smiling face, then the warrior beside him pulled off a gilded helmet and Raith grinned up towards her. Whether Mother Kyre would have considered it proper or not, Skara took off down the beach to meet them.
‘Victory, my queen!’ called Jenner, and Skara caught him, hugged him, seized his ears and pulled his head down so she could kiss him on his wispy pate.
‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down!’
Jenner was blushing red as he nodded sideways. ‘Thank this one. He killed a captain, man against man. Never saw braver fighting.’
Raith’s eyes were bright and wild and before Skara knew it she was hugging him too, her nose full of the sour-sweat smell of him, somehow anything but unpleasant. He jerked her into the air with easy strength, spun her about lightly as if she was made of straw, both of them laughing, drunk on victory.
‘We’ve got prizes for you,’ he said, upending a canvas bag, and a clinking mass of ring-money spilled onto the sand.
Sister Owd squatted to root through the gold and silver, round face dimpling as she grinned. ‘This will do Throvenland’s treasury no harm, my queen.’
Skara put her hand on her minister’s shoulder. ‘Now Throvenland has a treasury.’ With this she could start to feed her people, maybe even begin to rebuild what Bright Yilling had burned, and be a queen rather than a girl with a title made of smoke. She raised one brow at Raith.
‘I must confess I had no high hopes of you when you first sat beside me.’
‘I’d no high hopes of myself,’ he said.
Jenner grabbed him, scrubbing at his white hair. ‘Who could blame you? He’s an unhopeful-looking bastard!’
‘You’re one to talk, old man,’ said Raith, slapping Blue Jenner’s hand away.
‘You both have proved yourselves great fighters.’ Skara picked out two golden armrings and handed one to Jenner, thinking how proud her grandfather would have been to see her giving gifts to her warriors. ‘And loyal friends.’ She took Raith’s thick wrist and slipped the other around it then, hidden in the darkness between them, let her fingers trail onto the back of his hand. He turned it over so she touched his palm, her thumb brushing across it one way, then the other.
She looked up and his eyes were fixed on hers. As if there was nothing else to look at in the world. Mother Kyre would certainly not have considered that proper. No one would. Perhaps that was why it gave Skara such a breathless thrill to do it.
‘Steel was our answer!’ came a roar and she jerked her hand free, turned to see King Uthil striding up the beach, Father Yarvi smiling at his shoulder. All about men held their swords, their axes, their spears high in salute, blades notched from the day’s work catching the light of the bonfires and burning the colours of flame, so it seemed the Iron King and his companions stalked through a sea of fire.
‘Mother War stood with us!’ Grom-gil-Gorm loomed from the darkness in the dunes, a fresh wound added to his faceful of scars, his beard tangled with clotted blood. Rakki strode beside him with the king’s great shield, scored with new marks of its own, Soryorn on the other side with an armful of captured swords. Mother Scaer stalked after him, thin lips ever-moving as she crooned a prayer of thanks to the Mother of Crows.
The two great kings, the two famed warriors, the two old enemies met, and eyed each other over a guttering fire. All across the crowded beach the laughter and the cheering faded, and She Who Sings the Wind sang a keening tune and tore bright sparks swirling down the shingle and out to sea.
Then the Breaker of Swords puffed out his great chest, that chain made from the pommels of his fallen enemies flashing, and spoke in a voice of thunder.