the corner of her eye and a sick crunch. She hardly felt as if she fell. But suddenly the sand was roughing her up pretty good, then she was staring stupidly at the sky.
There’s your problem with going for one and ignoring the other two.
Gulls called above, circling.
The towers of Thorlby cut out black against the bright sky.
Best get up, her father said. Won’t win anything on your back.
Thorn rolled, lazy, clumsy, pouch slipping from her collar and swinging on its cord, her face one great throb.
Water surged cold up the beach and around her knees and she saw Sordaf stamp down, heard a crack like a stick breaking.
She tried to scramble up and Rauk’s boot thudded into her ribs and rolled her over, coughing.
The wave sucked back and sank away, blood tickling at her top lip, dripping pit-patter on the wet sand.
‘Should we stop?’ she heard Edwal say.
‘Did I say stop?’ came Hunnan’s voice, and Thorn closed her fist tight around the grip of her sword, gathering one more effort.
She saw Rauk step towards her and she caught his leg as he kicked, hugged it to her chest. She jerked up hard, growling in his face, and he tumbled over backwards, arms flailing.
She tottered at Edwal, more falling than charging, Mother Sea and Father Earth and Hunnan’s frown and the faces of the watching lads all tipping and reeling. He caught her, more holding her up than trying to put her down. She grabbed at his shoulder, wrist twisted, sword torn from her hand as she stumbled past, floundering onto her knees and up again, her shield flapping at her side on its torn strap as she turned, spitting and cursing, and froze.
Sordaf stood, sword dangling limp, staring.
Rauk lay propped on his elbows on the wet sand, staring.
Brand stood among the other boys, mouth hanging open, all of them staring.
Edwal opened his mouth but all that came out was a strange squelch like a fart. He dropped his practice blade and lifted a clumsy hand to paw at his neck.
The hilt of Thorn’s sword was there. The wooden blade had broken to leave a long shard when Sordaf stamped on it. The shard was through Edwal’s throat, the point glistening red.
‘Gods,’ someone whispered.
Edwal slumped down on his knees and drooled bloody froth onto the sand.
Master Hunnan caught him as he pitched onto his side. Brand and some of the others gathered around them, all shouting over each other. Thorn could hardly pick out the words over the thunder of her own heart.
She stood swaying, face throbbing, hair torn loose and whipping in her eye with the wind, wondering if this was all a nightmare. Sure it must be. Praying it might be. She squeezed her eyes shut, squeezed them, squeezed them.
As she had when they led her to her father’s body, white and cold beneath the dome of the Godshall.
But that had been real, and so was this.
When she snapped her eyes open the lads were still kneeling around Edwal so all she could see were his limp boots fallen outwards. Black streaks came curling down the sand, then Mother Sea sent a wave and turned them red, then pink, then they were washed away and gone.
And for the first time in a long time Thorn felt truly scared.
Hunnan slowly stood, slowly turned. He always frowned, hardest of all at her. But there was a brightness in his eyes now she had never seen before.
‘Thorn Bathu.’ He pointed at her with one red finger. ‘I name you a murderer.’
‘Do good,’ Brand’s mother said to him the day she died. ‘Stand in the light.’
He’d hardly understood what doing good meant at six years old. He wasn’t sure he was much closer at sixteen. Here he was, after all, wasting what should have been his proudest moment, still trying to puzzle out the good thing to do.
It was a high honour to stand guard on the Black Chair. To be accepted as a warrior of Gettland in the sight of gods and men. He’d struggled for it, hadn’t he? Bled for it? Earned his place? As long as Brand could remember, it had been his dream to stand armed among his brothers on the hallowed stones of the Godshall.
But he didn’t feel like he was standing in the light.
‘I worry about this raid on the Islanders,’ Father Yarvi was saying, bringing the argument in a circle, as ministers always seemed to. ‘The High King has forbidden swords to be drawn. He will take it very ill.’
‘The High King forbids everything,’ said Queen Laithlin, one hand on her child-swollen belly, ‘and takes everything ill.’
Beside her, King Uthil shifted forward in the Black Chair. ‘Meanwhile he orders the Islanders and the Vanstermen and any other curs he can bend to his bidding to draw their swords against us.’
A surge of anger passed through the great men and women of Gettland gathered before the dais. A week before Brand’s voice would’ve been loudest among them.
But all he could think of now was Edwal with the wooden sword through his neck, drooling red as he made that honking pig sound. The last he’d ever make. And Thorn, swaying on the sand with her hair stuck across her blood-smeared face, jaw hanging open as Hunnan named her a murderer.
‘Two of my ships taken!’ A merchant’s jewelled key bounced on her chest as she shook her fist towards the dais. ‘And not just cargo lost but men dead!’
‘And the Vanstermen have crossed the border again!’ came a deep shout from the men’s side of the hall, ‘and burned steadings and taken good folk of Gettland as slaves!’
‘Grom-gil-Gorm was seen there!’ someone shouted, and the mere mention of the name filled the dome of the Godshall with muttered curses. ‘The Breaker of Swords himself!’
‘The Islanders must pay in blood,’ growled an old one-eyed warrior, ‘then the Vanstermen, and the Breaker of Swords too.’
‘Of course they must!’ called Yarvi to the grumbling crowd, his shrivelled crab-claw of a left hand held up for calm, ‘but when and how is the question. The wise wait for their moment, and we are by no means ready for war with the High King.’
‘One is always ready for war.’ Uthil gently twisted the pommel of his sword so the naked blade flashed in the gloom. ‘Or never.’
Edwal had always been ready. A man who stood for the man beside him, just as a warrior of Gettland was supposed to. Surely he hadn’t deserved to die for that?
Thorn cared for nothing past the end of her own nose, and her shield-rim in Brand’s still-aching balls had raised her no higher in his affections. But she’d
