She felt dizzy. Hot and prickly all over.
Someone was screaming. Hoarse, strange, bubbling screams, and in between she heard the burbling of the prayer-weaver, burbling, burbling, begging for help, begging for mercy.
She tottered to the doorway, nearly fell, burst into the yard, was sick, nearly fell in her sick, clawed her dress out of the way as she was sick again, wiped the long string of bile from her mouth and leaned against the wall, shaking.
‘Are you all right, my queen?’ Mother Owd stood wiping her hands on a cloth.
‘I’ve always had a weak stomach—’ Skara coughed, retched again, but all that came up was bitter spit.
‘We all have to keep our fears somewhere. Especially if we cannot afford to let them show. I think you hide yours in your stomach, my queen.’ Owd put a gentle hand on Skara’s shoulder. ‘As good a place as any.’
Skara looked towards the doorway, the moans of the wounded coming faint from beyond. ‘Did I make this happen?’ she whispered.
‘A queen must make hard choices. But also bear the results with dignity. The faster you run from the past, the faster it catches you. All you can do is turn to face it. Embrace it. Try and meet the future wiser for it.’ And the minister unscrewed the cap from a flask and offered it to Skara. ‘Your warriors look to you for an example. You don’t have to fight to show them courage.’
‘I don’t feel like a queen,’ muttered Skara. She took a sip and winced as she felt the spirits burn all the way down her sore throat. ‘I feel like a coward.’
‘Then act as if you’re brave. No one ever feels ready. No one ever feels grown up. Do the things a great queen would do. Then you are one, however you feel.’
Skara stood tall, and pushed her shoulders back. ‘You are a wise woman and a great minister, Mother Owd.’
‘I am neither one.’ The minister leaned close, rolling her sleeves up a little further. ‘But I have become quite good at pretending to be both. Do you need to be sick again?’
Skara shook her head, took another burning sip from the flask and handed it back, watched Owd take a lengthy swig of her own. ‘I hear I have the blood of Bail in my veins—’
‘Forget the blood of Bail.’ Owd gripped Skara’s arm. ‘Your own is good enough for anyone.’
Skara took a shuddering breath. Then she followed her minister back into the darkness.
Sprouted a Conscience
Raith stood on the man-built stretch of wall near Gudrun’s Tower, staring across the scarred, trampled, arrow-prickled turf towards the stakes that marked the High King’s lines.
He’d hardly slept. Dozed outside Skara’s door. Dreamed again of that woman and her children, and started up in a chill sweat with his hand on his dagger. Nothing but silence.
Five days since the siege began and every day they’d come at the walls. Come with ladders, and wicker screens to guard them from the shower of arrows, the hail of stones. Come bravely, with their fiercest faces and their fiercest prayers, and bravely been beaten back. They hadn’t killed many of the thousand defenders but they’d made their mark even so. Every warrior in Bail’s Point was pink-eyed from sleeplessness, grey-faced from fear. Facing Death for a wild moment is one thing. Her cold breath on your neck day in and day out is more than men were made to bear.
Great humps of fresh-turned earth had been thrown up just out of bowshot. Barrows for the High King’s dead. They were still digging now. Raith could hear the scraping of distant shovels, some priest’s song warbled in the southerner’s tongue to the southerner’s One God. He lifted his chin, winced as he scratched at his neck with the backs of his fingernails. A warrior should rejoice in the corpses of his enemies, but Raith had no rejoicing left in him.
‘Beard bothering you?’ Blue Jenner strolled up yawning, smoothing down his few wild strands of hair and leaving them wilder than before.
‘Itchy. Strange, how little things still find a way to niggle at you, even in the midst of all this.’
‘Life’s a queue of small irritations with the Last Door at the end. You could just shave.’
Raith kept scratching. ‘Always pictured myself dying with a beard. Like most things long anticipated, turns out rather a disappointment.’
‘A beard’s just a beard,’ said Jenner, scratching at his own. ‘Keeps your face warm in a snowstorm and catches food from time to time, but I knew a man grew his long and got it caught in his horse’s bridle. Dragged through a hedge and broke his neck.’
‘Killed by his own beard? That’s embarrassing.’
‘The dead feel no shame.’
‘The dead feel no anything,’ said Raith. ‘No coming back through the Last Door, is there?’
‘Maybe not. But we always leave a bit of ourselves on this side.’
‘Eh?’ muttered Raith, not caring much for that notion.