“That’s one word for it,” said Vick, glancing around. “Risinau sent us. He wants your prisoners.”
Judge reached for a bottle and took a long pull. Seeing folk drink always made Broad thirsty, but there was something about the way she wrapped her tongue around the glass neck made him especially want to be in her place. Or maybe it was the bottle’s place he wanted.
Judge narrowed her eyes at Vick. “If Risinau wants a favour, he should’ve come himself.”
“He sent me.”
“Should I be scared?” The Burners were waking up to the new arrivals now, staring blearily over, hands creeping towards weapons.
Vick didn’t step forward, didn’t step back. “Not if you give me the prisoners.”
“My prisoners have charges to answer, sister, but don’t worry!” Judge waved towards the jury. “They deliberate like lightning, these bitches. Sometimes I have to stop ’em giving the verdict before I’ve even named the accused! If they were in charge in Adua, we’d soon have the case backlog cleared and every lawyer out of work.”
“They’d be selling their arses in the gutter!” squealed one of the whores, to gales of laughter from her fellow jury members, and the naked lawyer flinched, and looked down at his feet.
Judge leaned forward, smile turning to a snarl. “We didn’t throw down our masters just to raise up another! Far as I can see, Risinau’s setting himself up like an owner above his workers, like a king above his subjects, like—”
“A judge above her jury?” offered Vick.
“Ouch!” Judge pushed out her lips in a pantomime of upset. “Cut with my own razor, you cunning fucker.” She leaned from her box to shriek at the tiny clerk’s desk below, where a bent old beggar-woman was sitting. “Strike that from the record!”
“Can’t write anyway,” muttered the beggar, and went back to drawing scribbles in the ledgers.
“I get it.” Vick stepped forward. “You want to see someone pay. No doubt there’s plenty to pay for.” Broad didn’t know how she could stay so cool with all this sweltering madness around her. “No one wants to see them pay more than me. But we’ve a city full of people to think about. We need something to bargain with.”
It was a good effort. Very calm. Very reasonable. But Broad didn’t reckon this was the place for calm or reason. Strip it all back, it’s the authority of the fist that counts. Judge was right about that, and Broad knew it better than anyone. Beside him, Sarlby eased the dowel from the trigger of his flatbow.
Judge slowly stood, clenched fists on her scarred desk, bony shoulders hunched around her neck, stolen chains swinging. “Oh, I see. You’re going to march my prisoners up to our oppressors and swap ’em for a better world. Just you and your honeyed tongue.” She stuck out her tongue and made the pointed end wiggle in a way Broad found disgusting and strangely exciting both at once. She was trouble made flesh. Everything he’d sworn he was done with. Felt he was breaking his word just looking at her. And he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“Please,” she spat. “You can’t buy freedom.” And she snatched up her hatchet and hacked at the desktop, making everyone jump. “You have to cut it out of them! You have to burn the bastards, then dig through their ashes for it! Look at you sorry fuckers. A crowd o’ cowards, playing at change. Someone get these fools out o’ my sight.”
“Your honour!” One of the motley clowns stepped towards Vick. “She says out you go, so—” He was cut off in a squawk as Broad caught him by the neck and flung him across the room. He crashed into the witness box, staving in the panelling with the side of his head and going down in a tangle of limbs and splinters, his sword clattering away across the floor.
One of those long, silent moments, then. Broad heard some hard breaths behind, the scrape as men stood, the rattle as Sarlby brought his bow to his shoulder, the soft ring of steel as weapons were drawn. Broad unhooked the lenses from his ears, folded them, slid them into his coat pocket. Ready to let go. Always ready.
“Ooooooooh.” Judge’s throaty voice had gone all purry-soft, and even though she was just a sparkly blur now, Broad knew she was staring straight at him. “You I like. You’ve got a devil in you. Takes one to know one, eh?”
Felt like Broad stood at a precipice, and all it would take was a nudge to tip him over. His voice seemed to come from a long way off. Hardly sounded like his at all. “I don’t want to hurt no one—”
“’Course you fucking do! It’s written all over you. ’Cause you’re not much at anything else, are you? But at hurting people you’re the best! Don’t apologise for it! Don’t snuff your candle, bad man, let it burn! You belong with us. You belong with me. Don’t want to hurt anyone?” She clicked her tongue. “Your mouth says you don’t but your fists say you do.”
Then Broad felt a hand on his shoulder. Gentle. But firm. “We just want the prisoners.” Vick’s voice. Solid as a wall. “Then no one gets hurt.”
That wonderful, awful moment stretched out just a little longer. Then Judge slumped back into her seat, stuck out her tongue and blew a long fart. “You’re one o’ those stubborn bitches, aren’t you? Once you’ve latched your teeth into something, no amount o’ beating will get you off. You know why they call me Judge?”
“Can’t say I do,” said Vick.
“Used to settle the disputes among the whores, down on the docks in Keln. Judge who had the right of it. Judge what was fair. Those girls can dispute fucking anything, believe me. And in that game, well, sometimes you’ve got to find a compromise. We’re all on the same side, aren’t we, after all? All seeking a better world? A world where we’re all equal?”
“That’s right,” said Vick, her hand still on Broad’s prickling shoulder. “All equal.”
“Even if our methods are different, meaning mine might fucking work and yours most assuredly fucking won’t.” Judge gave a generous wave of her hand, ring-covered fingers twirling. “Take the prisoners. But if you think you’re getting anything for ’em from Old Sticks, I reckon you’ll learn a bitter lesson. Warden of the court?”
A man stepped forward and planted his gilded halberd on the tiles with a bang, smiling hugely, stark naked apart from a filthy sock over his fruits. “Your fucking honour?”
“Conduct these worthies to the yard where the majority of our prisoners are taking their ease. And mind your foul mouth, you rogue, you, our guests have delicate sensibilities.” She waved Vallimir away. “Take him down and give him into the custody of the Breakers, the lucky fucker. The fucky lucker. Ha! Case dismissed.”
No more violence today, then. Broad wasn’t sure whether it was relief or disappointment he felt as he fumbled his lenses back on to see Judge pointing down at him, lips split in a mad smile. “As for you, you beautiful bastard, you get tired o’ pretending, my arms are always open.” She whipped her hat off and tossed it spinning at the Kantic smoker. “Don’t hog that pipe, you shit! Stoke it up and give me a suck.”
Broad stood staring at her a moment longer, pulse still thudding in his skull, then let Vick steer him after the warden’s hairy buttocks and out of the courtroom. The jeers of the jury followed him but they were half-hearted. It seemed, for now, the Burners had drunk their fill of justice.
He thought he could hear the creaking of rigging as he followed Vick down the shadowy steps behind the courtroom. The sound he’d heard when he looked up at the billowing sails on the voyage to Styria. But there was no reason for that much wood and rope behind a courthouse.
“Bloody hell,” whispered Sarlby as they stepped out into the light.
Across the cobbled yard, between the broken windows to either side, the Burners had set up a dozen great beams, stolen from some half-built mill, maybe. From those beams, at neat intervals, bodies hung. Might’ve been a hundred. Might’ve been more. Swaying just a little with the breeze. There were men and women. There were young and old.
All equal now, all right.
“Bloody hell,” whispered Sarlby again.
None of the other
Breakers said a word. Vick stood staring. Broad stood staring. High ideals, like the ones that’d led him to Styria. They surely can take you to some dark places.
“There’s a few haven’t been tried yet, down in the cells.” The warden sniffed and adjusted his dirty sock. “Guess you can have them, too.”
Young Men’s Folly
“Prince Orso isn’t coming,” said Leo, stomping up the crumbling stairway after his mother with the Dogman behind him. “We have to fight.”
Her only reply was a frustrated sigh as she stepped onto the moss-speckled roof of the tower. From the top there was a fine view of the valley below the ruined holdfast, the road threading along its bottom and the high fell on the far side, crowned by red bracken. Off to the west, the road met a fast-flowing stream and crossed it by an ancient-looking bridge. There must’ve been a village beyond, the houses out of sight but the smoke from their chimneys faintly smudging the sky.
Cries drifted over as the wind picked up. Thousands of men, hundreds of horses, dozens of wagons trickling down the road between the two hills and over the bridge in a glittering ribbon. The army of Angland pulling back steadily to the south and west. Just as it had been for weeks.
“Mustred and Clensher brought two thousand men from Angland. We won’t get any more.” Leo stepped up next to his mother, planting his fists on the crumbling parapet. “Hold off now… we’ll look like cowards.”
His mother gave a dry little laugh. “The one advantage of being a woman in command of an army is that you don’t have to worry about looking cowardly. Everyone expects it.”
“We’ll bloody be cowards!”
The Dogman snorted. “Your mother was a prisoner of Black Dow, and faced him down, and didn’t only talk her own way free but saved sixty men besides. I’ll hear her given no lessons in courage, boy. There’s a world o’ difference between being scared to fight and waiting till you can win.”
“As long as you stop waiting!” Leo waved off in a direction he hoped was south-west, past the bridge towards Angland. The direction the Union men were retreating. Always retreating. “We’re no more than eighty miles from the border, and if we’re pushed all the way to the Whiteflow we’ll never push back. The Protectorate will be finished.”
He might’ve hoped for some support from the Dogman. His bloody Protectorate, wasn’t it? And he’d stood beside the Bloody-Nine, the greatest champion the world ever saw, who won eleven duels and claimed the crown of the North in the Circle!
But the old Northman only frowned into the valley, and thoughtfully rubbed at his pointed jaw, and quietly said, “Well, you have to be realistic. Naught lasts for ever.”
“I understand the stakes,” said Leo’s mother, turning from the road to frown at the dark woods to the north, fussing absently at that bald patch she had under her hair. You could see the footprint of the fortress on the hilltop below them, the walls little more than heaps of rubble, loose stones scattered down the hillside, the forest pressing in at the base. “If you think all we do is run away, our enemies might, too.”
Creases spread around the corners of the Dogman’s eyes as he grinned. “You’re going to fight ’em here.”
“You approve?”
“Ground’s good.” He considered the steep-sided trough of a valley with its grey thread of a river, its brown thread of a road, the rocky hills to either side. “Could be very good, if luck’s with us.”
“You’re going to fight them here?” asked Leo, eyes wide.
“This is a war, isn’t it? Stour Nightfall has moved ahead of his father and his uncle. Perhaps as much as a day ahead. His men are scattered, tired, undersupplied and exposed.”
The Dogman grinned. “Touch reckless of him.”
“A mistake I hope we can make fatal.”
“If we put a fat enough worm on the hook.”
“You know how warriors are about their flags.” Leo’s mother turned to look at him. “Your standard should be the very bait he needs. Especially after you stung his pride by stealing one of his. We’ll make it look as though our rearguard is caught in a tangle on the bridge. Hopefully, it’ll be a temptation he can’t resist.”
“You want me here in the ruin?” asked the Dogman.
“Hidden and waiting for my signal. Angland’s forces will be concentrated behind that hill to the south. Once Nightfall is committed, we fall upon him from both sides and catch him against the river. If we manage it well, we might destroy him in one throw.”
“That’d do a lot to even the odds.”
“And make me feel a great deal better about all this retreating. Believe it or not, Leo, I enjoy it no more than you do.”
Leo couldn’t stop the smile spreading across his face. “We’re going to fight them here.”
“The day after tomorrow, I hope. Do either of you have an opinion on the plan?”
Leo was too busy imagining the victory. The two hills would be the jaws of their trap. The Great Wolf, lured into the valley between them by his own arrogance, surrounded at the bridge and crushed against the water. What a song that would make! He was already wondering what they’d call the battle, when the history books were written.
“I like it,” said the Dogman. “If there’s one thing you can rely on, it’s young men’s folly. I’ll send word for Uffrith’s warriors to gather here and be ready for a battle.” He paused, wind stirring the grey hair about his craggy face. “Lady Finree… I’ve fought beside great warriors. Great War Chiefs. Against some, too. But I rarely saw an army better handled than by you. Might be men who think there’s something weak in what you’ve done, the last few weeks.” He curled his tongue and spat over the battlements. “Those men know less’n nothing about war. Would’ve been easy to break faith with us. Let us be swallowed up. But you kept your word. Aren’t many who do, once they see it’ll cost them.” And he held out his hand.
Leo’s mother blinked, evidently moved, and took it. “I’ll have kept my word when you are back in your garden in Uffrith, not a moment before.”
He broke out a great toothy grin. “Then we’ll drink to our victory there.” And the Dogman turned and trotted down the crumbling stair with a new spring in his step.
It gave Leo a flush of pride, to see the respect the old Northman had for his mother. The respect they had for each other. He took a breath of sharp air through his nose and let it sigh happily out. “I’ll lead those men at the bridge—”
“No,” said his mother. “I want your standard there to draw him on. But not you.”
“The first wave of reinforcements, then—”
“No.” And she gave him that look down her nose that always made him feel like he was still a little boy. “We’ll keep our cavalry in reserve in the village of Sudlendal.” She nodded towards the faint smoke rising beyond the bridge. “I want you with them.”
“With the reserves?” He waved a hand towards the valley. Towards the glory. Towards the songs. “Finally we fight and you leave me with the baggage?”
“It’s not as if I’m sending you back to Ostenhorm.” The muscles at her temple squirmed as she clenched her jaw. “If something goes wrong, as it very well might, you can ride in and save the day. That’s why we’re all here, isn’t it? To bear witness to your legend?”
“That’s so unfair!” he whined, the niggling thought that it might be entirely fair making him even angrier. “When you’re fighting for your life, you don’t leave your best sword on the mantelpiece and charge in with a bread knife!”
“There are other men in this army who can fight.” She spoke with icy calm, but there was an angry colour spreading across her face. “Experienced men who understand the value of caution, and planning, and of doing as they’re bloody told. You’re reckless, Leo. I can’t risk it.”
“No!” he snarled, thumping the crumbling battlements with his fist and sending stones clattering down the wall. “I’ll be lord governor soon! I’m not a boy any more—”
“Then fucking act like it!” she snarled
, with such violence he shrank back a little. “This isn’t a negotiation! You’ll stay with the reserves, and that’s the end of it! Your father’s dead! He’s dead, and I can’t lose you, too, do you understand?” She turned her back on him to look into the valley. “I can’t lose you, too.”
There was the slightest quaver in her voice, and somehow that cut him down more sharply than any sword blow. He stood staring, suddenly guilty and ashamed and feeling an utter fool. She’d carried him, when his father died and he fell all to pieces. She’d stood dry-eyed and stern by the grave, and through his tears Leo had thought how heartless she was. But he saw now she’d stayed strong because someone had to. She’d been carrying them all, ever since. Instead of being grateful, being a good son, helping her lift this impossible weight, he’d moped, and whined, and picked at her as if there was nothing bigger at stake than his pride.
He had to blink back tears himself, and he stepped up and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You won’t lose me, Mother,” he said. “You’ll never lose me.”
She laid her hand on his. An old hand, it seemed, suddenly, frail, the skin on the back wrinkled around the knuckles.
“I’ll lead the reserves,” he said.
They stood together in the wind, looking down into the valley.
The Party’s Over
The clatter of the handle, the gurgle of filthy water as it surged into the bucket, the slop and trickle as she lifted it, breath wheezing, legs, arms, shoulders trembling, and passed it to May, and took an empty bucket from the old man on her left, handle clattering, and bent to the water again.
She stood hunched, up to her knees in the river, soaked dress rolled and tucked into a belt made from knotted rope, all thought of propriety long gone. All thought of propriety had gone the moment she staggered from this sewer of a river the first time, shivering in her drawers.
Clatter, gurgle, slop and trickle. How long had she been filling buckets now? It felt like hours. As blue evening turned to grey twilight turned to mad darkness lit by the glow of fires. As the distant tang of burning became a tickling reek then an endless scratching of smoke that even with a wet rag across her face made her want to choke with every breath. How long had she been filling buckets now? It felt like days. It felt as if she had always been filling buckets, and always would be.
A Little Hatred Page 32