“The Union?” And Rikke looked down at the wolf’s head badly daubed on his badly made shield. “A wolf ate the sun,” she whispered.
“She is bloody mad.” The big one stepped forwards. “Now drop the—” And he made this long wheeze, and his shirt stuck out, a glint of metal showing.
“Oh,” he said, dropping to his knees.
The lad turned around.
Rikke’s arrow stuck into his back, just under his shoulder blade.
Her turn to say, “Oh,” not sure whether she’d meant to let go the string or not.
A flash of metal and the old man’s head jolted, the blade of Isern’s spear catching him in the throat. He dropped his own spear, grabbed for her with clumsy fingers.
“Shush.” Isern slapped his hand away and ripped the blade free in a black gout. He wriggled on the ground, fiddling with the great wound in his neck as if he might stop it splurting. He was trying to say something, but fast as he could spit the blood out, his mouth filled up again. Then he stopped moving.
“You killed ’em.” Rikke felt all hot. There were some red speckles on her hand. The big one was lying on his face, shirt soaked dark.
“You killed this one,” said Isern. The lad knelt there, making these squeaky little gasps as he tried to reach around his back to the arrow shaft, though what he’d do if he got his fingertips to it, Rikke had no idea. Probably he’d no idea, either. Isern was the only one thinking clearly right then. She leaned down and calmly plucked the knife from the lad’s belt. “Was hoping to set him a question or two, but he’ll be giving no answers with that shaft in his lung.”
As if to prove the point, he coughed some blood into his hand, and stared over it at Rikke. He looked a bit offended, like she’d said something hurtful.
“Still, no one ever gets things all their own way.” Rikke jumped at the crack as Isern rammed the lad’s knife into the crown of his head. His eyes rolled up and his leg kicked and his back arched. Just like hers did, maybe, when a fit came upon her.
The hairs were standing on Rikke’s arms as he slumped down limp. She never saw a man killed before. All happened so fast she didn’t know how she ought to feel about it.
“They didn’t seem so bad,” she said.
“For a girl struggling to penetrate the mists of the future, you don’t half miss what’s right in front of you.” Isern was already rooting through the old man’s pockets, point of her tongue wedged in the hole in her teeth. “If you wait till they seem bad, you’ve waited way too long.”
“Could’ve given ’em a chance.”
“To what? Put you in the mud? Or drag you off to Stour Nightfall? Chafing would’ve been the least of your worries then, that boy’s got a bastard of a reputation.” She caught the old man’s leg and dragged him from the path into the undergrowth, tossed his spear after. “Or were we going to invite ’em dancing through the woods with us, and all wear flowers in our hair and win ’em over to our side with my pretty words and your pretty smile?”
Rikke spat some chagga juice and wiped her chin, watching the blood work its way through the dirt about the lad’s nailed head. “Doubt my smile’s up to the task and I’m damn sure your words ain’t.”
“Then killing ’em was all o’ the one choices we had, eh? Your problem is you’re all heart.” And she stabbed Rikke in the tit with one bony finger.
“Ow!” Rikke took a step away, holding her arms across her chest. “That hurts, you know!”
“You’re all heart all over, so you feel every sting and buffet. You must make of your heart a stone.” And Isern thumped her ribs with a fist, the finger bones around her neck rattling. “Ruthlessness is a quality much loved o’ the moon.” As if to prove the point, she bent down and heaved the dead lad into the bushes. “A leader must be hard, so others don’t have to be.”
“Leader o’ what?” muttered Rikke, rubbing at her sore tit. And that was when she caught a whiff of smoke, just like in her dream. As if it was a tugging she couldn’t resist, she set off down the path.
“Oy!” called Isern around a stick of dry meat she’d rooted out of the big one’s pouch. “I need help dragging this big bastard!”
“No,” whispered Rikke, the smell of fire getting stronger and her worry getting stronger with it. “No, no, no.”
She burst from the trees and into cold daylight, took a couple more wobbling steps and stopped, bow dangling from her limp hand.
The morning mist was long faded and she could see all the way across the patchwork of new-planted fields to Uffrith, wedged in against the grey sea behind its grey wall. Where her father’s old hall stood with the scraggy garden out the back. Safe, boring Uffrith, where she’d been born and raised. Only it was burning, just the way she’d seen it, and a great column of dark smoke rolled up and smudged the sky, drifting out over the restless sea.
“By the dead,” she croaked.
Isern wandered from the trees with her spear across her shoulders and a great smile across her face. “You know what this means?”
“War?” whispered Rikke, horrified.
“Aye, that.” Isern waved it away like it was a trifle. “But more to the matter, I was right!” And she clapped Rikke on the shoulder so hard she near knocked her down. “You do have the Long Eye!”
Where the Fight’s Hottest
In battle, Leo’s father used to say, a man discovers who he truly is.
The Northmen were already turning to run as his horse crashed into them with a thrilling jolt.
He smashed one across the back of the helmet with the full force of the charge and ripped his head half off.
He snarled as he swung to the other side. A glimpse of a gawping face before his axe split it open, blood spraying in black streaks.
Other riders tore into the Northmen, tossing them like broken dolls. He saw one horse spitted through the head with a spear. The rider turned a somersault as he was flung from the saddle.
A lance shattered, a shard flying into Leo’s helmet with an echoing clang as he wrenched away. The world was a flickering slit of twisted faces, glinting steel, heaving bodies, half seen through the slot in his visor. Screams of men and mounts and metal mashed into one thought-crushing din.
A horse swerved in front of him. Riderless, stirrups flapping. Ritter’s horse. He could tell by the yellow saddlecloth. A spear stabbed at him, jolting the shield on his arm, rocking him in his saddle. The point screeched down his armoured thigh.
He gripped the reins in his shield-hand as his mount bucked and snorted, face locked in an aching smile, flailing wildly with his axe on one side, then the other. He beat mindlessly at a shield with a black wolf painted on it, kicked at a man and sent him staggering back, then Barniva’s sword flashed as it took his arm off.
He saw Whitewater Jin swinging his mace, red hair tangled across gritted teeth. Just beyond him, Antaup was shrieking something as he tried to twist his spear free of bloody mail. Glaward wrestled with a Carl, both without weapons, all tangled with their reins. Leo hacked at the Northman and smashed his elbow back the wrong way, hacked again and sent him flopping into the mud.
He pointed at Stour Nightfall’s standard with his axe, black wolf streaming in the wind. He howled, roared, throat hoarse. No one could hear him with his visor down. No one could’ve heard him if it had been up. He hardly knew what he was saying. He flailed furiously at the milling bodies instead.
Someone clutched at his leg. Curly hair. Freckles. Looked bloody terrified. Everyone did. Didn’t seem to have a weapon. Maybe surrendering. Leo smashed Freckles on the top of the head with the rim of his shield, gave his horse the spurs and trampled him into the mud.
This was no place for good intentions. No place for tedious subtleties or boring counter-arguments. None of his mother’s carping on patience and caution. Everything was beautifully simple.
In battle, a man discovers who he truly is, and Leo was the hero he’d always dreamed of being.
He swung again but his axe felt strange. Th
e blade had flown off, left him holding a bloody stick. He dropped it, dragged out his battle steel, buzzing fingers clumsy in his gauntlet, hilt greasy from the thickening rain. He realised the man he’d been hitting was dead. He’d fallen against the fence, so it looked as if he was standing but there was black pulp hanging out of his broken skull, so that was that.
The Northmen were crumbling. Running, squealing, being hacked down from behind, and Leo herded them towards their standard. Three riders had a whole crowd of them hemmed into a gateway, Barniva in their midst, scarred face flecked with blood as he chopped away with his heavy sword.
The standard-bearer was a huge man with desperate eyes and blood in his beard, still holding high the flag of the black wolf. Leo spurred right at him, blocked axe with shield, caught him with a sword-cut that screeched over his cheek guard and opened a great gash across his face, carved half his nose off. He tottered back and Whitewater Jin crushed the man’s helmet with his mace, blood squirting from under the rim. Leo kicked him over, tearing the standard from his limp hand as he fell. He thrust it up, laughing, gurgling, half-choking on his own spit then laughing again, his axe’s loop still stuck around his wrist so the broken haft clattered against his helmet.
Had they won? He stared around for more enemies. A few ragged figures bounded through the crops towards the distant trees. Running for their lives, weapons abandoned. That was all.
Leo ached all over: thighs from gripping his horse, shoulders from swinging his axe, hands from gripping the reins. The very soles of his feet throbbed from the effort. His chest heaved, breath booming in his helmet, damp, and hot, and tasting of salt. Might’ve bit his tongue somewhere. He fumbled with the buckle under his chin, finally tore the damn thing free. His skull burst with the noise, turned from fury to delight. The noise of victory.
He almost fell from his horse, clambered up onto the wall. Something was soft under his gauntleted hand. A Northman’s corpse, a broken spear sticking from his back. All he felt was giddy joy.
No corpses, no glory, after all. Might as well regret the peelings from a carrot. Someone was helping him up, giving him a steadying hand. Jurand. Always there when he needed him. Leo stood tall, the joyful faces of his men all turned towards him.
“The Young Lion!” roared Glaward, climbing up beside him and clapping a heavy hand on his shoulder, making him wobble. Jurand stretched out his arms to catch him, but he didn’t fall. “Leo dan Brock!” Soon they were all shouting his name, singing it like a prayer, chanting it like a magic word, stabbing their glittering weapons at the spitting sky.
“Leo! Leo! Leo!”
In battle, a man discovers who he truly is.
He felt drunk. He felt on fire. He felt like a king. He felt like a god. This was what he was made for!
“Victory!” he roared, shaking his bloody sword and the Northmen’s bloody standard.
By the dead, could there be anything better than this?
In the lady governor’s tent, they were fighting a different kind of war. A war of patient study and careful calculation, of weighed odds and furrowed brows, of lines of supply and an awful lot of maps. A kind of war Leo frankly hadn’t the patience for.
The glow of victory had been dampened by the stiffening rain on the long trudge up from the valley, doused further by the niggling pain from a dozen cuts and bruises, and was almost entirely smothered by the cool stare his mother gave him as Leo pushed through the flap with Jurand and Whitewater Jin at his back.
She was in the midst of talking to a knight herald. Ridiculously tall, he had to stoop respectfully to attend to her.
“… please tell His Majesty we are doing everything to check the Northmen’s advance, but Uffrith is lost and we are giving ground. They struck with overwhelming force at three points and we are still gathering our troops. Ask him… no, beg him to send reinforcements.”
“I will, my Lady Governor.” The knight herald nodded to Leo as he passed. “My congratulations on your victory, Lord Brock.”
“We don’t need the king’s bloody help!” snapped Leo as soon as the flap dropped. “We can beat Black Calder’s dogs!” His voice sounded oddly weak in the tent, deadened by wet cloth. It didn’t carry anywhere near so nicely as it had on the battlefield.
“Huh.” His mother planted her fists on the table and frowned down at her maps. By the dead, sometimes he thought she loved those maps more than him. “If we are to fight the king’s battles, we should expect the king’s help.”
“You should’ve seen them run!” Damn it, but Leo had been so sure of himself a few moments ago. He could charge a line of Carls and never falter, but a woman with a long neck and greying hair leached all the courage out of him. “They broke before we even got to them! We took a few dozen prisoners…” He glanced towards Jurand, but he was giving Leo that doubtful look now, the one he used when he didn’t approve, the one he’d given him before the charge. “And the farm’s back in our hands… and…”
His mother let him stammer into silence before she glanced at his friends. “My thanks, Jurand. I’m sure you did your best to talk him out of it. And you, Whitewater. My son couldn’t ask for better friends or I for braver warriors.”
Jin slapped a heavy hand down on Leo’s shoulder. “It was Leo who led the—”
“You can go.”
Jin scratched sheepishly at his beard, showing a lot less warrior’s mettle than he had down in the valley. Jurand gave Leo the slightest apologetic wince. “Of course, Lady Finree.” And they slunk from the tent, leaving Leo to fiddle weakly with the fringe of his captured standard.
His mother let the withering silence stretch a moment longer before she passed judgement. “You bloody fool.”
He’d known it was coming, but it still stung. “Because I actually fought?”
“Because of when you chose to fight, and how.”
“Great leaders go where the fight’s hottest!” But he knew he sounded like the heroes in the badly written storybooks he used to love.
“You know who else you find where the fight’s hottest?” asked his mother. “Dead men. We both know you’re not a fool, Leo. For whose benefit are you pretending to be one?” She shook her head wearily. “I should never have let your father send you to live with the Dogman. All you learned in Uffrith was rashness, bad songs and a childish admiration for murderers. I should have sent you to Adua instead. I doubt your singing would be any better but at least you might have learned some subtlety.”
“There’s a time for subtlety and a time for action!”
“There is never a time for recklessness, Leo. Or for vanity.”
“We bloody won!”
“Won what? A worthless farm in a worthless valley? That was little more than a scouting party, and now the enemy will guess our strength.” She gave a bitter snort as she turned back to her maps. “Or the lack of it.”
“I captured a standard.” It seemed a pitiful thing now he really looked at it, though, clumsily stitched, the pole closer to a branch than a flagstaff. How could he have thought Stour Nightfall himself might ride beneath it?
“We have plenty of flags,” said his mother. “It’s men to follow them we’re short of. Perhaps you could bring back a few regiments of those next time?”
“Damn it, Mother, I don’t know how to please you—”
“Listen to what you’re told. Learn from those who know better. Be brave, by all means, but don’t be rash. Above all, don’t get yourself bloody killed! You’ve always known exactly how to please me, Leo, but you choose to please yourself.”
“You can’t understand! You’re not…” He waved an impatient hand, failing, as always, to quite find the right words. “A man,” he finished lamely.
She raised one brow. “Had I been confused on that point, it was put beyond doubt when I pushed you out of my womb. Have you any notion how much you weighed as a baby? Spend two days shitting an anvil and we’ll talk again.”
“Bloody hell, Mother! I mean that men will look up to
a certain kind of man, and—”
“Like your friend Ritter looked up to you?”
Leo was caught out by the memory of that riderless horse clattering past. He realised he hadn’t seen Ritter’s face among his friends when they celebrated. Realised he hadn’t even thought about that until now.
“He knew the risks,” he croaked, suddenly choked with worry. “He chose to fight. He was proud to fight!”
“He was. Because you have that fire in you that inspires men to follow. Your father had it, too. But with that gift comes responsibility. Men put their lives in your hands.”
Leo swallowed, pride melting to leave ugly guilt behind as pristine snow melts to show the world rotten and bedraggled. “I should go and see him.” He turned towards the tent flap, nearly tripping on the loose strap of one of his greaves. “Is he… with the wounded?”
His mother’s face had softened. That made him more worried than ever. “He’s with the dead, Leo.” There was a long, strange silence, and outside the wind blew up and made the canvas of the tent flap and whisper. “I’m sorry.”
No corpses, no glory. He sank onto a folding field chair, captured standard clattering to the ground.
“He said we should wait for you,” he muttered, remembering Ritter’s worried face as he looked down into the valley. “So did Jurand. I told them they could stay with the ladies… while we handled the fighting.”
“You did what you thought was right,” murmured his mother. “In the heat of the moment.”
“He has a wife…” Leo remembered the wedding. What the hell was her name? Bit of a weak chin. The groom had looked prettier. The happy couple had danced, badly, and Whitewater Jin had bellowed in Northern that he hoped for her sake Ritter fucked better than he danced. Leo had laughed so hard he was nearly sick. He didn’t feel like laughing now. Being sick, yes. “By the dead… he has a child.”
“I will write to them.”
“What good will a letter do?” He felt the stinging of tears at the back of his nose. “I’ll give them my house! In Ostenhorm!”
“Are you sure?”
A Little Hatred Page 2