“Prince Varoslaf has fished up quite a catch with his iron net,” said Father Yarvi.
Thorn had never seen so many ships. They bobbed on the river, and clogged the wharves, and had been dragged up on the banks in tight-packed rows stripped of their masts. There were ships from Gettland and Vansterland and Throvenland. There were ships from Yutmark and the Islands. There were strange ships which must have come up from the south, dark-hulled and far too fat-bellied for the trip over the tall hauls. There were even two towering galleys, each with three ranks of oars, dwarfing the South Wind as they glided towards the harbor.
“Look at those monsters,” murmured Brand.
“Ships from the Empire of the South,” said Rulf. “Crews of three hundred.”
“It’s the crews he’s after,” said Father Yarvi. “To fight his fool’s war against the Horse People.”
Thorn was far from delighted at the thought of fighting more Horse People. Or for that matter of staying in Kalyiv for the summer. It had smelled a great deal better in her father’s stories. “You think he’ll want our help?”
“Certainly he’ll want it, as we want his.” Yarvi frowned up toward the prince’s hall. “Will he demand it, is the question.”
He had demanded it of many others. The harbor thronged with sour-faced men of the Shattered Sea, all mired in Kalyiv until Prince Varoslaf chose to loosen the river’s chains. They lazed in sullen groups about slumping tents and under rotten awnings, and played loaded dice, and drank sour ale, and swore at great volume, and stared at everything with hardened eyes, the newest arrivals in particular.
“Varoslaf had better find enemies for these men soon,” murmured Yarvi, as they stepped from the South Wind. “Before they find some nearer to hand.”
Fror nodded as he made fast the prow-rope. “Nothing more dangerous than idle warriors.”
“They’re all looking at us.” Brand’s bandages had come off that morning and he kept picking nervously at the rope-scabs snaking up his forearms.
Thorn dug him with her elbow. “Maybe your hero’s fame goes ahead of us, Ship-lifter.”
“More likely Father Yarvi’s does. I don’t like it.”
“Then pretend you do,” said Thorn, putting her bravest face on and meeting every stare with a challenge. Or the most challenge she could manage with a hot wind whipping grit in her eyes and flapping her shirt against her sweaty back.
“Gods, it stinks,” choked Brand as they made it off the creaking wharves and onto Father Earth, and Thorn could not have disagreed even if she could have taken a full breath to do it. The crooked streets were scattered with baking dung, dogs squabbling over rubbish, dead animals skewered on poles beside doorways.
“Are they selling those?” muttered Brand.
“They’re offering them up,” answered Father Yarvi, “so their gods can see which houses have made sacrifices and which have not.”
“What about those?” Thorn nodded toward a group of skinned carcasses dangling from a mast raised in the middle of a square, gently swinging and swarming with flies.
“Savages,” murmured Rulf, frowning up at them.
With an unpleasant shifting in her stomach, Thorn realized those glistening bodies were man-shaped. “Horse People?” she croaked.
Father Yarvi grimly shook his head. “Vanstermen.”
“What?” The gods knew there were few people who liked Vanstermen less than Thorn, but she could see no reason for the Prince of Kalyiv to skin them.
Yarvi gestured toward some letters scraped into a wooden sign. “A crew that defied Prince Varoslaf’s wishes and tried to leave. Other men of the Shattered Sea are discouraged from following their example.”
“Gods,” whispered Brand, only just heard over the buzzing of the flies. “Does Gettland want the help of a man who does this?”
“What we want and what we need may be different things.”
A dozen armed men were forcing their way through the chaos of the docks. The prince might have been at war with the Horse People, but his warriors did not look much different from the Uzhaks Thorn had killed higher up the Denied. There was a woman in their midst, very tall and very thin, coins dangling from a silk headscarf wound around her black, black hair.
She stopped before them and bowed gracefully, a satchel swinging from her slender neck. “I am servant to Varoslaf, Great Prince of Kalyiv.”
“Well met, and I am—”
“You are Father Yarvi, Minister of Gettland. The prince has given me orders to conduct you to his hall.”
Yarvi and Rulf exchanged a glance. “Should I be honored or scared?”
The woman bowed again. “I advise you to be both, and prompt besides.”
“I have come a long way for an audience and see no reason to dawdle. Lead on.”
“I’ll pick out some men to go with you,” growled Rulf, but Father Yarvi shook his head.
“I will take Thorn and Brand. To go lightly attended, and by the young, is a gesture of trust in one’s host.”
“You trust Varoslaf?” muttered Thorn, as the prince’s men gathered about them.