“Sit down.”
That wasn’t hard to do. He was so weak at the knees he was near falling already. He stared across the windswept hilltop as the crew put aside their weapons and started dragging the corpses into lines, others setting about the stunted trees with axes to make a great pyre. Safrit leaned over him, probing at the cut on his neck with strong fingers.
“It’s not deep. There’s plenty worse off.”
“I killed a man,” he muttered, to no one in particular. Maybe it sounded like a boast, but it surely wasn’t meant to be. “A man with his own hopes, and his own worries, and his own family.”
Rulf squatted beside him, scratching at his gray beard. “Killing a man is nowhere near so light a matter as the bards would have you believe.” He put a fatherly hand on Brand’s shoulder. “You did well today.”
“Did I?” muttered Brand, rubbing his bandaged hands together. “Keep wondering who he was, and what brought him here, and why we had to fight. Keep seeing his face.”
“Chances are you’ll be seeing it till you step through the Last Door yourself. That’s the price of the shield wall, Brand.” And Rulf held out a sword to him. A good sword, with silver on the hilt and a scabbard stained from long use. “Odda’s. But he’d have wanted you to take it. A proper warrior should have a proper blade.”
Brand had dreamed of having his own sword, now looking at it made him feel sick. “I’m no warrior.”
“Yes y’are.”
“A warrior doesn’t fear.”
“A fool doesn’t fear. A warrior stands in spite of his fear. You stood.”
Brand plucked at his damp trousers. “I stood and pissed myself.”
“You won’t be the only one.”
“The hero never pisses himself in the songs.”
“Aye, well.” Rulf gave his shoulder a parting squeeze, and stood. “That’s why those are songs, and this is life.”
Mother Sun was high over the steppe when they set off, the pyre-smoke slowly rising. Though the blood had drained from the sky and left only a clear and beautiful blue, it was still crusted dark under Brand’s fingernails, and in his bandages, and at his throbbing neck. It was still a red day. He felt every day he lived would be a red day now.
Four oars lay still beside the mast, the ashes of the men who’d pulled them already whirling out across the plains. Skifr sat brooding among the cargo, hood drawn up, the nearest oarsmen all shuffled as far from her as they could get without falling out of the boat.
Brand glanced across at Thorn as they settled to rowing and she looked back, her face as pale and hollow as Odda’s had been when they stacked the wood around him. He tried to smile, but his mouth wouldn’t find the shape of it.
They’d fought in the wall. They’d stood at the Last Door. They’d faced Death and left a harvest for the Mother of Crows. Whatever Master Hunnan might’ve said, they were both warriors now.
But it wasn’t like the songs.
WHAT GETTLAND NEEDS
Kalyiv was a sprawling mass, infesting one bank of the Denied and spreading like a muddy sickness onto the other, the bright sky above smudged with the smoke of countless fires and dotted with scavenging birds.
The prince’s hall stood on a low hill over the river, gilded horses carved upon its vast roof beams, the wall around it made as much from mud as masonry. Crowding outside that was a riot of wooden buildings ringed by a fence of stout logs, the spears of warriors glinting at the walkway. Crowding outside that, a chaos of tents, yurts, wagons, shacks and temporary dwellings of horrible wretchedness sprawled out over the blackened landscape in every direction.
“Gods, it’s vast,” muttered Brand.
“Gods, it’s ugly,” muttered Thorn.
“Kalyiv is as a slow-filling bladder,” said Skifr, thoughtfully picking her nose, considering the results, then wiping them on the shoulder of the nearest oarsman so gently he didn’t even notice. “In spring it swells with northerners, and folk from the empire, and Horse People from across the steppe all swarming here to trade. In summer it splits its skin and spills filth over the plains. In winter they all move on and it shrivels back to nothing.”
“It surely smells like a bladder,” grunted Rulf, wrinkling his nose.
Two huge, squat towers of mighty logs had been thrown up on either side of the river and a web of chains strung between them, links of black iron spiked and studded, bowing under the weight of frothing water, snarled up with driftwood and rubbish, stopping dead all traffic on the Denied.