Craw wanted just to snap those reins and go. But maybe he could help, and all his years wasted might be some use to someone. So he gritted his teeth, and leaned down, and put his hand on Beck’s shoulder. ‘I know it burns at you. Probably it always will. But the sad fact is, I’ve heard a dozen stories just like it in my time. A score. Wouldn’t raise much of an eyebrow from any man who’s seen a battle. This is the black business. Bakers make bread, and carpenters make houses, and we make dead men. All you can do is take each day as it comes. Try and do the best you can with what you’re given. You won’t always do the right thing, but you can try. And you can try to do the right thing next time. That, and stay alive.’
Beck shook his head. ‘I killed a man. Shouldn’t I pay?’
‘You killed a man?’ Craw raised his arms, helplessly let them drop. ‘It’s a battle. Everyone’s at it. Some live, some die, some pay, some don’t. If you’ve come through all right, be thankful. Try to earn it.’
‘I’m a fucking coward.’
‘Maybe.’ Craw jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Whirrun’s corpse. ‘There’s a hero. Tell me who’s better off.’
Beck took a shuddering breath. ‘Aye. I guess.’ He held up the Father of Swords and Craw took it under the crosspiece, hefted the great length of metal up and slid it carefully down in the back, next to Whirrun’s body. ‘You taking it now, then? He left it to you?’
‘He left it to the ground.’ Craw twitched the blanket across so it was out of sight. ‘Wanted it buried with him.’
‘Why?’ asked Beck. ‘Ain’t it God’s sword, fell from the sky? I thought it had to be passed on. Is it cursed?’
Craw took up the reins and turned back to the north. ‘Every sword’s a curse, boy.’ And he gave ’em a snap, and the wagon trundled off.
Away up the road.
Away from the Heroes.
By the Sword
Calder sat, and watched the guttering flames.
It was looking very much as if he’d used up all his cunning for the sake of another few hours alive. And cold, hungry, itchy, increasingly terrified hours at that. Sitting, staring across a fire at Shivers, bound wrists chafed and crossed legs aching and the damp working up through the seat of his trousers and making his arse clammy-cold.
But when a few hours is all you can get, you’ll do anything for them. Probably he would’ve done anything for a few more. Had anyone been offering. They weren’t. Like his brilliant ambitions the diamond-bright stars had slowly faded to nothing, crushed out as the first merciless signs of day slunk from the east, behind the Heroes. His last day.
‘How long ’til dawn?’
‘It’ll come when it comes,’ said Shivers.
Calder stretched out his neck and wriggled his shoulders, sore from slumping into twisted half-sleep with his hands tied, twitching through nightmares which, when he jerked awake, he felt faintly nostalgic for. ‘Don’t suppose you could see your way to untying my hands, at least?’
‘When it comes.’
How bloody disappointing it all was. What lofty hopes his father had held. ‘All for you,’ he used to say, a hand on Calder’s shoulder and a hand on Scale’s, ‘you’ll rule the North.’ What an ending, for a man who’d spent his life dreaming of being king. He’d be remembered, all right. For dying the bloodiest death in the North’s bloody history.
Calder sighed, ragged. ‘Things don’t tend to work out the way we imagine, do they?’
With a faint clink, clink, Shivers tapped his ring against his metal eye. ‘Not often.’
‘Life is, basically, fucking shit.’
‘Best to keep your expectations low. Maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.’
Calder’s expectations had plunged into an abyss but a pleasant surprise still didn’t seem likely. He flinched at the memory of the duels the Bloody-Nine had fought for his father. The blood-mad shriek of the crowd. The ring of shields about the edge of the circle. The ring of grim Named Men holding them. Making sure no one could leave until enough blood was spilled. He’d never dreamed he’d end up fighting in one. Dying in one.
‘Who’s holding the shields for me?’ he muttered, as much to fill the silence as anything.
‘I heard Pale-as-Snow offered, and old White-Eye Hansul. Caul Reachey too.’
‘He can hardly get out of it, can he, since I’m married to his daughter?’
‘He can hardly get out of it.’
‘Probably they’ve only asked for a shield so they don’t get sprayed with too much of my gore.’
‘Probably.’
‘Funny thing, gore. A sour annoyance to those it goes on and a bitter loss to those it comes out of. Where’s the upside, eh? Tell me that.’
Shivers shrugged. Calder worked his wrists against the rope, trying to keep the blood flowing to his fingers. It would be nice if he could hold on to his sword long enough to get killed with it in his hand, at least. ‘Got any advice for me?’
‘Advice?’
‘Aye, you’re some fighter.’
‘If you get a chance, don’t hesitate.’ Shivers frowned down at the ruby on his little finger. ‘Mercy and cowardice are the same.’
‘My father always used to say that nothing shows greater power than mercy.’
‘Not in the circle.’ And Shivers stood.
Calder held up his wrists. ‘It’s time?’
The knife glimmered pink with the dawn as it darted out and neatly slit the cord. ‘It’s time.’
‘We just wait?’ grunted Beck.
Wonderful turned her frown on him. ‘Unless you fancy doing a little dance out there. Get everyone warmed up.’
Beck didn’t fancy it. The circle of raked-over mud in the very centre of the Heroes looked a lonely place to be right then. Very bare, and very empty, while all about its pebble-marked edge folk were packed in tight. It was in a circle like this one his father had fought the Bloody-Nine. Fought, and died, and bad.
A lot of the great names of the North were holding shields for this one. Beside the leftovers of Craw’s dozen there was Brodd Tenways, Cairm Ironhead and Glama Golden on Dow’s half of the circle, and plenty of their Named Men around ’em.
Caul Reachey stood on the opposite side of the case, a couple of other old boys, none of ’em looking happy to be there. Would’ve been a sorry lot compared to Dow’s side if it hadn’t been for the biggest bastard Beck had ever seen, towering over the rest like a mountain peak above the foothills.
‘Who’s the monster?’ he muttered.
‘Stranger-Come-Knocking,’ Flood whispered back. ‘Chief of all the lands east of the Crinna. Bloody savages out there, and I hear he’s the worst.’
It was a savage pack the giant had at his back. Men all wild hair and wild twitching, pierced with bone and prickled with paint, dressed in skulls and tatters. Men who looked like they’d sprung straight from an old song, maybe the one about how Shubal the Wheel stole the crag lord’s daughter. How had it gone?
‘Here they come,’ grunted Yon. A disapproving mutter, a few sharp words, but mostly thick silence. The men on the other side of the circle parted and Shivers came through, dragging Calder under the arm.
He looked a long stretch less smug than when Beck first saw him, riding up to Reachey’s weapontake on his fine horse, but he was still grinning. A wonky, pale-faced, pink-eyed grin, but a grin still. Shivers let go of him, squelched heedless across the seven strides of empty muck leaving a trail of gently filling boot-prints, fell in beside Wonderful and took a shield from a man behind her.
Calder nodded across the circle at each man, like they were a set of old friends. He nodded to Beck. When Beck had first seen that smirk it’d looked full of pride, full of mockery, but maybe they’d both changed since. If Calder was laughing now it looked like he was only laughing at himself. Beck nodded back, solemn. He knew what it was to face your death, and he reckoned it took some bones to smile at a time like that. Some bones.
Calder was so scared the faces across the circle we
re just a dizzying smear. But he was set on meeting the Great Leveller as his father had, and his brother too. With some pride. He kept that in front of him, and he clung on to his smirk, nodding at faces too blurred to recognise as if they’d turned out for his wedding rather than his burial.
He had to talk. Fill the time with blather. Anything to stop him thinking. Calder grabbed Reachey’s hand, the one without the battered shield on it. ‘You came!’
The old man hardly met his eye. ‘Least I could do.’
‘Most you could do, far as I’m concerned. Tell Seff for me … well, tell her I’m sorry.’
‘I will.’
‘And cheer up. This isn’t a funeral.’ He nudged the old man in the ribs. ‘Yet.’ The scatter of chuckles he got for that made him feel a little less like shitting his trousers. There was a soft, low laugh among them, too. One that came from very high up. Stranger-Come-Knocking, and by all appearances on Calder’s side. ‘You’re holding a shield for me?’
The giant tapped the tiny-looking circle of wood with his club of a forefinger. ‘I am.’
‘What’s your interest?’
‘In the clash of vengeful steel and the blood watering the thirsty earth? In the roar of the victor and the scream of the slaughtered? What could interest me more than seeing men give all and take all, life and death balanced on the edge of a blade?’
Calder swallowed. ‘Why on my side, though?’
‘There was room.’
‘Right.’ That was about all he had to offer now. A good spot to watch his own murder. ‘Did you come for the room?’ he asked Pale-as-Snow.
‘I came for you, and for Scale, and for your father.’
‘And me,’ said White-Eye Hansul.
After all the hate he’d shrugged off, that bit of loyalty almost cracked his smirk wide open. ‘Means a lot,’ he croaked. The really sad thing was that it was true. He thumped White-Eye’s shield with his fist, squeezed Pale-as-Snow’s shoulder. ‘Means a lot.’
But the time for hugs and damp eyes was fading rapidly into the past. There was noise in the crowd across the circle, then movement, then the shield-carriers stood aside. The Protector of the North strolled through the gap, easy as a gambler who’d already won the big bet, his black standard looming behind him like the shadow of death indeed. He’d stripped down to a leather vest, arms and shoulders heavy with branched vein and twisted sinew, the chain Calder’s father used to wear hanging around his neck, diamond winking.
Hands clapped, weapons rattled, metal clanged on metal, everyone straining to get the faintest approving glance from the man who’d seen off the Union. Everyone cheering, even on Calder’s side of the circle. He could hardly blame them. They’d still have to scratch a living when Dow had carved him into weeping chunks.
‘You made it, then.’ Dow jerked his head towards Shivers. ‘I was worried my dog might’ve eaten you in the night.’ There was a good deal more laughter than the joke deserved but Shivers didn’t so much as twitch, his scarred face a dead blank. Dow grinned around at the Heroes, their lichen-spotted tops peering over the heads of the crowd, and opened his arms, fingers spread. ‘Looks like we got a circle custom made for the purpose, don’t it? Quite the venue!’
‘Aye,’ said Calder. That was about all the bravado he could manage.
‘Normally there’s a form to follow.’ Dow turned one finger round and round. ‘Laying out the matter to decide, listing the pedigree of the champions and so on, but I reckon we can skip that. We all know the matter. We all know you got no pedigree.’ Another laugh, and Dow spread his arms again. ‘And if I start naming all the men I’ve put back in the mud we’ll never get started!’
A flood of thigh-slapping manly amusement. Seemed Dow was intent on proving himself the better wit as well as the better fighter, and it was no fairer a contest. Winners always get the louder laughs and, for once, Calder was out of jokes. Dead men aren’t that funny, maybe. So he just stood as the crowd quieted and left only the gentle wind over the muck, the flapping of the black standard, a bird chirruping from the top of one of the stones.
Dow heaved out a sigh. ‘Sorry to say I’ve had to send to Carleon for your wife. She stood hostage for you, didn’t she?’
‘Let her be, you bastard!’ barked Calder, nearly choking on a surge of anger. ‘She’s got no part in this!’
‘You’re in no place to tell me what’s what, you little shit.’ Dow turned his head without taking his eyes off Calder, and spat into the mud. ‘I’ve half a mind to burn her. Give her the bloody cross, just for the fucking lesson. Wasn’t that the way your father liked to do it, back in the old days?’ Dow held up his open palm. ‘But I can afford to be generous. Reckon I’ll let it pass. Out of respect to Caul Reachey, since he’s the one man in the North who still does what he fucking says he will.’
‘I’m right grateful for it,’ grunted Reachey, still not meeting Calder’s eye.
‘’Spite of my reputation, I don’t much care for hanging women. I get any softer they’ll have to call me White Dow!’ Another round of laughter, and Dow let go a flurry of punches at the air, so fast Calder could hardly count how many. ‘Reckon I’ll just have to kill you twice as much to make up for it.’
Something poked him in the ribs. The pommel of his sword, Pale-as-Snow handing it over with a look that said sorry, belt wrapped around the sheath.
‘Oh, right. You got any advice?’ asked Calder, hoping the old warrior would narrow his eyes and spout some razor observations about how Dow led with the point too much, or dipped his shoulder too low, or was awfully vulnerable to a middle cut.
All he did was puff out his cheeks. ‘It’s fucking Black Dow,’ he muttered.
‘Right.’ Calder swallowed sour spit. ‘Thanks for that.’ It was all so disappointing. He drew his sword, held the sheath uncertainly for a moment, then handed it back. Couldn’t see why he’d have any need for it again. There was no talking his way out of this. Sometimes you have to fight. He took a long breath and a step forwards, his worn-out Styrian boot squelching into the muck. Only a little step over a ring of pebbles, but still the hardest he’d ever taken.
Dow stretched his head one way, then the other, then drew his own blade, taking his time about it, metal hissing softly. ‘This was the Bloody-Nine’s sword. I beat him, man against man. You know. You were there. So what do you reckon your fucking chances are?’ Looking at that long grey blade, Calder didn’t reckon his chances were very good at all. ‘Didn’t I warn you? If you tried to play your own games things’d get ugly.’ Dow swept the faces around the circle with his scowl. It was true, there were few pretty ones among them. ‘But you had to preach peace. Had to spread your little lies around. You had to—’
‘Shut your fucking hole and get on with it!’ screamed Calder. ‘You boring old cunt!’
A mutter went up, then some laughter, then another, bowel-loosening round of clattering metal. Dow shrugged, and took his own step forwards.
There was a rattle as men eased inwards, rims of their shields scraping, locking together. Locking them in. A round wall of bright painted wood. Green trees, dragon heads, rivers running, eagles flying, some scarred and beaten from the work of the last few days. A ring of hungry faces, teeth bared in snarls and grins, eyes bright with expectation. Just Calder, and Black Dow, and no way out but blood.
Calder probably should’ve been thinking about how he might beat the long, long odds, and get out of this alive. Opening gambits, thrust or feint, footwork, all the rest. Because he had a chance, didn’t he? Two men fight, there’s always a chance. But all he could think about was Seff’s face, and how beautiful it was. He wished he’d been able to see it one more time. Tell her that he loved her, or not to worry, or to forget him and live her life or some other useless shit. His father always told him, ‘You find out what a man really is, when he’s facing death.’ It seemed, after all, he was a sentimental little prick. Maybe we all are at the end.
Calder raised his sword, open hand out in front, th
e way he thought he remembered being taught. Had to attack. That’s what Scale would’ve said. If you’re not attacking you’re losing. He realised too late his hand was trembling.
Dow looked him up and down, his own blade hanging carelessly at his side, and snorted a joyless chuckle. ‘I guess not every duel’s worth singing about.’ And he darted forwards, lashing out underhand with a flick of his wrist.
Calder really shouldn’t have been surprised to see a sword coming at him. That was what a duel was all about, after all. But even so he was pitifully unprepared. He lurched a pace back and Dow’s sword crashed into his with numbing force, near ripping it from his hand, sending the blade flapping sideways and him stumbling, spare arm flailing for balance, all thought of attacking barged away by the overwhelming need to survive just one more moment.
Fortunately White-Eye Hansul’s shield caught his back and spared him the indignity of sprawling in the mud, pushed him up straight in time to reel sideways as Dow sprang again, sword catching Calder’s with a clang and wrenching his wrist the other way, a hearty cheer going up. Calder floundered back, cold with terror, trying to put as much space between them as he could, but the ring of shields was only so big. That was the point of it.
They slowly circled each other, Dow strutting with easy grace, sword swinging loose, as cocky and comfortable in a duel to the death as Calder might’ve been in his own bedchamber. Calder took the doddery, uncertain steps of a child just learning to walk, mouth hanging open, already breathing hard, cringing and stumbling at Dow’s every tiniest taunting movement. The noise was deafening, breath going up in smoky puffs as the onlookers roared and hissed and hooted their support and their hatred and their—
The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country Page 127