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366 pages, Hardcover
First published February 3, 2015
Skifr narrowed her eyes. "The true fighter must reckon everyone their enemy."
When do I rest, then?"
"In the songs of great heroes, do you hear often of resting?"
"Gods damn it, then, girl!" Odda sprang up from the fire. "I'll show you what a real man can do!"
Odda showed her the howl a real man makes when a wooden sword whacks him right in the groin, then he showed her the best effort Brand had ever seen of a man eating his own shield, then he showed her a real man's muddy backside as he went sprawling through a bramble-bush and into a puddle.
"I bloody hate people," she muttered.
It was hardly a good thing to say but for once Brand couldn't keep his mouth shut. "Don't worry." He dragged his blanket over one shoulder and turned his back to her. "They feel much the same about you."
Thorn wondered what mountain of corpses this lot might have heaped up between them, but she wasn't one to be easily intimidated. Especially when she had no choice.
She put on her bravest face, stepped up to the biggest man she could see and tapped him on the arm.
"I'm Thorn Bathu."
"I am Dosduvoi." She found herself staring sharply up at one of the biggest heads she ever saw, tiny features squeezed into the center of its doughy expanse, looming so high above her that at first she thought its owner must be standing on a box. "What bad luck brings you here, girl?" he asked, with a faintly tragic quiver to his voice.
She wished she had a different answer, but snapped out, "I'm sailing with you."
His face retreated into an even tinier portion of his head as he frowned.
It was either bluster or look weak and Thorn reckoned that no choice at all, so she puffed herself up and snapped out, "How did you get the scar?"
"How did you get the scar?"
Thorn frowned. "What scar?"
"That's the face the gods gave you?" And with the faintest of smiles the Vansterman went back to coiling rope.
“She is wretched. She is all pride and anger. She has too much confidence and too little. She does not know herself.”
The figure pushed back her hood. A black-skinned old woman with a face lean as famine and hair shaved to gray fuzz. She picked her nose with one long forefinger, carefully examined the results, then flicked them away.
“The girl is stupid as a stump. Worse. Most stumps have the dignity to rot quietly without causing offense.”
Brand stared in sick disbelief. He’d been sure among all those lads someone would speak, for they were honest enough. Or Hunnan would tell his part in it, for he was a respected master-at-arms. The king or the queen would draw out the truth, for they were wise and righteous. The gods wouldn’t allow such an injustice to pass. Someone would do something. Maybe, like him, they were all waiting for someone else to put things right.
“I don’t like the look of him,” she muttered to Brand.
He peered at her over the rim of his cup. “You don’t like the look of anyone.”
She’d never had any objection to the look of Brand at all, but she kept that to herself. “I like his look less than most, then. One of those people with nought in them but hard stares and hard words. Face like a slapped arse.”
He grinned into his ale at that. “Oh, I hate those people.”
She had to grin herself. “Beneath my forbidding exterior I’ve got hidden depths, though.”
“Well hidden,” he said, as he lifted his cup. “But I might be starting to plumb ’em.”
“Bold of you. Plumbing a girl without so much as a by your leave.”
He blew ale out of his nose, fell into a coughing fit and had to be clapped on the back
“...I have an oath to keep.”
Her smile faded. “I didn’t think you took your oaths that seriously.”
“This one I do,” said Father Yarvi.
“Will you break the world to keep it?”
“I hope it won’t come to that.”
"Fools boast of what they will do. Heroes do it"
"A fool doesn't fear. A warrior stands in spite of his fear. You stood."
"Your trouble is you make everyone's trouble your trouble."
"Thorn nodded, frowning. "I am the storm."
"As yet, more of a drizzle," said Skifr. "But we are only beginning."
"You must be quicker to strike and quicker when you do. You must be tougher and quicker when you do, you must always look to attack, and you must fight without honor, without conscience, without pity. Do you understand?"
"If we can't hurt the shepherds, we'll have to hurt the flock."
"It wasn't sheep did this, nor shepherds neither. It was warriors."
[Thorn:] "I'm selfish."
[Brand:] "You're... ambitious, I like that."
"I'm bitter."
"You're funny. I like that too."
She rubbed gently at her scarred cheek. "I'm ugly."
Anger burned up in him then, so hot it took him by surprise. "Who bloody said so? Cause first they're wrong and second I'll punch their teeth out."
"I can punch 'em myself."
"Your first lesson. Always be ready. If I can hit you, you deserve to be hit."
[...]
Thorn clambered to her knees, shaking out her throbbing arm, to find her old friend Brand standing over her, a sack on his shoulder and a grin on his face.
Skifr grinned back. "Funny, eh?"
"Little bit," said Brand.
Skifr slapped him across the face and he tottered against a post... "Are you teaching me to fight?"
"No. But I see no reason you shouldn't be ready too."