There was a low drone, like one of those flowering bushes the bees can’t leave alone, but made of murmurs, whimpers, groans and sobs. A chorus of pain. Quite the downer, all told. Rikke shivered and pulled the fur tight around her neck with her free hand.
“Hold it higher, I said.”
“Sorry.” Her shoulder ached as she lifted the torch again so Isern could see her business, tongue tip wedged into the gap in her teeth as she stitched the red wound in a boy’s shoulder. He had a stick to bite on, eyes closed and tear-tracks gleaming on his pink cheeks.
“Never really thought of you as a healer,” said Rikke, wincing as Isern sponged blood away with a rag.
“No?”
“Didn’t think you’d be gentle enough.”
“Gentle? Ha! If you’re wounded, a gentle healer’s the last thing you want.” Isern made the boy gurgle as she dug the needle back into his shoulder. “If you’re wounded, a gentle healer could be the last thing you get. A great healer needs to be tougher and more ruthless than a great warrior. They’re taking on a far harder job with far less reward.”
One of the other healers grunted agreement around the little knife she was holding in her teeth.
Isern gave Rikke a significant look from under her brows. “A great healer, like a great leader, must make of her heart a stone.”
The lad Isern was working on pulled the spit-slathered stick out of his mouth. “For the dead’s sake, don’t distract her.”
“I can stitch you and talk to her at once, boy.” And Isern plucked the stick from his hand, shoved it back between his jaws and carried on stitching.
Rikke looked wide-eyed across the groaning glade. “So many wounded.”
“And these are the best-looking ones. The ones who might yet get up.”
“You wonder why they keep doing it.”
“What, war?”
“Aye, war.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t if all the Named Men came down here to have their faces rubbed in what’s growed from what they’ve sowed, but they don’t come down here, do they? Not very nice down here, d’you see? Not much shiny metal, except the bits we dig out o’ the dying men. Women’s work, isn’t it, healing?”
Sounded a touch hypocritical in Isern’s case, since Rikke had seen her kill at least five men with that spear of hers, but as a general principle it was hard to disagree. “They break,” she murmured, “we make.”
Isern shook her head, lips pressed into a hard line as she nimbly worked that needle. “All the effort it takes to make a person but it’s the killers they sing about. When did you last hear a man sing a woman’s name? Unless he was singing for his mummy when the Great Leveller had a hand on him.”
“No doubt there’s many ways in which the world could be better,” said Rikke, with a smoky sigh.
“My heartfelt thanks for that revelation,” said Isern, rolling a scornful eye towards her. “The one thing I’ve learned in thirty-six winters is the world won’t change itself. You want some wounds mended, you’d better be ready to stitch.”
Rikke felt even more than usually helpless in the midst of all this pain. “What can I do?”
“You? Rikke, with the Long Eye? Saw Black Calder’s men coming, didn’t you? Saved the army, maybe. Saved us all, maybe.”
“Maybe.” It was true folk were looking at her different since the battle. Like they respected her, which was a pleasant change. Like they feared her, which was less so. Like they hated her, a couple of ’em, which oddly was unpleasant and pleasant both at once. She’d never thought she’d be important enough to hate.
“You’re not nobody any more, Sticky Rikke.” Isern opened her eyes very wide. “The legend grows.”
“Legend.” Rikke snorted. “I’m nothing and no one.”
“Ah, but isn’t that how all the best legends begin? I’d hazard you’re better equipped to lead us to a brighter tomorrow than most.”
“I’m no bloody leader.”
“How could you be, shuffling along at the back whining about how useless y’are? Hold that torch higher.”
“Sorry. You’ll have to find someone else to hold it soon. I’ve been called to a meeting at dawn.” Rikke puffed herself up. “By Lady Governor Brock, in fact.”
“Wants to use your womanly wiles to convince her son not to fight, does she?”
Rikke sagged back down. “If she’s counting on my womanly wiles, she must be bloody desperate.”
“Oh, I reckon you’ve more wiles than you realise. Talked the boy into fighting in the first place, didn’t you?” And Isern gave her this sidewise glance, like they were in on some cunning scheme together.
“What?”
“With your lions and wolves and circles of blood.”
“That’s just what I saw, in the vision. You asked me what I saw!”
Isern paused in her work. “You can’t choose what you see. But you can choose what you say. Moment ago, you were talking about changing the world. Now you can’t even change one boy’s mind? Let’s face the facts, it’s not the biggest mind around.” She tore the thread with her teeth and reached for the bandages. “I know you like to think you’re jolting about helpless in a runaway cart, carried off to who-knows-where with no say in the matter, but if you look down, you might see you’re holding the reins.” She gave Rikke another one of those looks. “Might be it’s time to use ’em. Now hold that bloody torch up.”
The Young Lion never looked bad, but being angry suited him, and being battle-scratched suited him, and even being a touch sulky seemed to suit him. Overall, Rikke was having some trouble imagining a better-looking man.
The trouble is that duels to the death aren’t always won by the best-looking. If anything, history favours ugly champions. Maybe they spend the time training that the pretty ones spend preening in the mirror. Rikke kept that thought to herself, though, since everyone was rattled enough already. Leo had staked all their futures on a duel with one of the most dangerous men in the North, after all, and about the only person who didn’t reckon that the worst idea since swords made of cake was Leo himself, known widely for his poor judgement.
Rikke’s mood was by no means helped by the knight herald standing motionless in the middle of the tent, a letter from His August Majesty held out in one gauntleted fist. When she’d slipped through the flap and seen him standing there, she’d wondered where they found all these tall bastards. Then she’d wondered why everyone else was ignoring him. Then, during a particularly impassioned rant, the lady governor had walked right through him and back the other way, and Rikke had realised her left eye was hot and he wasn’t actually there. Or wasn’t there yet, maybe.
When she’d seen Black Calder coming, she’d started to reckon the Long Eye a blessing. Now it was looking like a curse all over again.
“I can’t back out,” Leo was saying, all sullen and scratched and beautiful. “What’ll I look like?”
His mother stared in disbelief. She’d been doing that a lot. “There are bigger things at stake than what you look like!”
Rikke’s father took a turn, easing himself between the two of them, putting a calming hand on Leo’s shoulder. “Look, son, it’s an irony of life that the older you get, and the less years there are ahead of you, the more you fear the loss of ’em. When you’re young, it can feel like you’re invincible, but…” He snapped his fingers under Leo’s nose. “Fast as that, it can all be took away.”
“I know that!” said Leo. “It was your stories of the Bloody-Nine that made me fascinated by duels in the first place! All his great victories in the Circle. The fate of the North hanging on a single—”
Rikke’s father looked horrified. “Those were supposed to be warnings, boy, not encouragements!”
“Has it occurred to either of you that I might bloody win?” Leo angrily bunched one scabbed fist. “We’re fought out! We’ve no help coming and Scale Ironhand has fresh men ready! This might be our only chance to take back Uffrith. To keep the Protectorate alive!”
<
br /> Rikke’s father folded his arms, and puffed up a slow sigh, and glanced at Leo’s mother from under his bushy brows. “Can’t deny he’s got a point.”
“I can win!” Leo came to stand right next to the frozen knight herald, the big seal on the scroll that wasn’t there almost touching his face. “I know I can! Rikke saw it!”
Rikke’s father and Leo’s mother turned together to look at her. She stood frozen, mouth and eyes wide open like a burglar caught with her hand in a purse.
And it came to her then that Isern had been right. What she’d seen was one thing but what she said another, and there needn’t be a straight road between the two, but any kind of maze she chose to put there. Sorry, Leo, I made a mistake. Sorry, Leo, your mother’s right. Sorry, Leo, actually the lion lost, and got his fruits ripped off and stuck on a pike.
Might be she was holding the reins after all. Might be she always had been. Might be she’d done this, and could undo it.
But somewhere at the back of her mind, in a dark corner she’d hardly known she had, she found she wanted to see Leo fight Stour Nightfall. To see him spill that evil bastard’s blood in front of the whole North. To take her share of vengeance, for her father, for those wounded in the glade, for the dead already in the mud, for the shit she’d gone through out in the cold woods.
She could’ve said anything. She chose to tell the truth.
“I saw a lion and a wolf fight in a circle of blood, and the lion won.”
Leo’s mother pressed her fingers to her temples. “So you are going to risk your life, not to mention the future of the North, because this girl saw animals fighting while she had a fit?”
“She saw the Nail come from the woods before it happened,” said Rikke’s father, forced against his better judgement into defending her. “Weren’t for that, we might all be in the mud already.”
“For pity’s sake, Rikke!” shouted Finree. “You’re no fool! Tell him this is madness!”
“Well…” Rikke frowned at jingling footsteps outside, spurs on armoured boots, and she rolled her eyes up to the tent’s ceiling. “Ahhhhh. I get it.”
“Get what?”
“Hardly matters what I think. Or you.”
“Might I ask why?”
Rikke nodded towards the tent flap. “Because of him.”
It was swept open with a swirling of cloth and the knight herald stomped into the tent. He pulled the scroll from his satchel and stepped forward, coming to stand just exactly where he’d been standing the whole time, scroll offered out to Leo, great seal dangling.
“My Lord Brock,” he said. “A message from the king.”
There was a breathless stillness in the tent as Leo took the scroll and slowly unrolled it. He read the first few lines and looked up, eyes wide.
“The king confirms me in my father’s place as Lord Governor of Angland.”
Rikke’s father let go a long, slow breath. Leo’s mother took a half-step forwards.
“Leo—”
“No,” he said. Not sharp, but very firm. “I know you want what’s best for me, Mother. I’m grateful for all you’ve taught me. But I have to stand on my own now. I’m fighting Stour Nightfall. Nothing anyone can say will change my mind.”
And he turned and pushed his way out of the tent.
The knight herald nodded, somewhat sheepishly, to Lady Finree, then followed the new Lord Governor of Angland, thankfully taking his ghost with him.
Rikke’s father rubbed wearily at his stubbled jaw. “Well. We tried.” And he patted Rikke on the shoulder and made his own way out.
Lady Finree was left staring towards the flap. A few moments ago, she’d been in total command. With a stroke of the king’s pen, she was cut down to some warrior’s worried mother.
“It feels like yesterday I was feeding him, and dressing him, and wiping his arse.” She looked at Rikke, voice turning harsh. “He’s a bloody idiot who knows nothing about anything, but he was born with a cock, so he gets to decide for all of us!”
She looked old, of a sudden, and weak, and helpless, and Rikke felt sorry for her, and sorry for what she’d done, but there was no undoing it. You might see the past with the Long Eye. But you can never go there.
She shrugged so high her shoulders were tickling her ears, then let them flop helplessly down. “Maybe he’ll win?”
A Fool’s Weapon
“The bloody fool!” snarled Calder, stalking through the village.
“Aye.” Clover sighed as he followed. “Bloody fool.”
The muddy place was crawling with Scale’s warriors, men armed and angry and used never to backing down. They soon scrambled aside, though, when they saw Black Calder coming with a face like thunder.
“I loved my wife, Clover,” he growled. “Loved her more than my own life.”
“Well… that’s a good thing, I guess?”
“That was my great weakness.”
“Ah.”
“I loved her, and she died, and all that was left of her was our son.”
“Oh.”
Calder strode on towards the chieftain’s hall the King of the Northmen had made into his temporary tavern. “So I indulged him, and I spoiled him, and on the many occasions when I should’ve given the bloody fool the beating he deserved, I saw her face in his face and I couldn’t do it.”
“Might be a bit late to spank him now,” murmured Clover.
“We’ll fucking see,” said Calder, shoving the doors of the hall wide and storming through.
King Scale was drinking. What else would he be doing? He was drinking, and laughing lustily at stories of the battle, already bloating out with lies like so much watered beer. His nephew, the mighty Stour Nightfall, decorated with a few fresh cuts and bruises, grinned to hear of his own exploits, even more at the falsehoods than the facts. About these two heroes, old warriors and young basked in the sunny radiance of a victory they hadn’t won yet.
They fell silent as Calder strode in, carrying no weapon but with his face sharp as a drawn sword. “Get. Out.”
The old cunts and the young bristled, grumbled, looked to their respective masters, and Scale puffed his vein-threaded cheeks and gestured to the door. Up they got, out they filed, giving Clover his usual serving of scorn while he beamed back his usual good humour. The doors were shut on their performance, leaving only four in the room. King Scale Ironhand, his brother Black Calder, his son Stour Nightfall. And Clover.
Quite the party.
“My loving family, all together!” sang Calder in a voice rich with scorn.
Stour was all preening dismissal. “Father—”
“Don’t ‘Father’ me, boy! You approve of this madness, do you, Scale?”
“We’re at war, brother.” The King of the Northmen looked calmly at Calder from under his grey-streaked brows. “And in war, yes, I approve of warriors fighting.”
“It’s how they fight and when that’s the issue! You’d put all our gains at risk! All our work!” Meaning all Calder’s work, since Scale had done nothing but drink at the back and Stour nothing but strut at the front. “You’re our future, Stour! The future of the North! We can’t risk you—”
“You said the same when I fought Stranger-Come-Knocking!” Stour waved his father away like a cobweb. “He’s too dangerous, we can’t risk you, you’re all our futures.” He put on a parroting whine which was, to be fair, not too bad a match for Calder’s prating. “But I beat him! Like the Bloody-Nine beat Shama Heartless, when no one said he could!” And his chest puffed and his eyes twinkled, like a cock that spies another in his yard. “This Union child isn’t half the warrior Stranger-Come-Knocking was! Not one quarter!”
“The Young Lion, they call him, and my spies tell me he’s formidable. How often have I said to you—never fear your enemy, but always respect him? Every duel is a risk and we don’t need to gamble. The enemy are fought out and we have fresh warriors. Flatstone can come around on the flank and the ground is—”
“Enough strategy.
” Scale wrinkled his nose as if the word smelled. “Back in winter, you told me the war would be won in spring. In spring, you told me it would be won in summer. In summer, by autumn. Last week, you told me the war was won now. That you’d out-thought that Union bitch and outfought the Dogman. Seems the Union bitch is a sharper thinker and the Dogman a tougher fighter than you reckoned. What if you misjudge ’em again, and you can’t finish ’em before the weather turns, and the sluggardly King of the Union wakes up and sends help? What then?”
Calder angrily waved it away. “If help was coming from Midderland, it would’ve come already. We can still finish them before winter.”
“Don’t worry,” said Stour. “I can finish ’em before sunset tomorrow.” And he laughed, and Scale laughed, and Calder very decidedly didn’t, and Clover watched ’em, thinking this was no great way to run a kingdom. “The Bloody-Nine never backed out of a fight, nor Black Dow, nor Whirrun of Bligh, and nor will I.”
“You’ve made a list of dead fools,” hissed Calder, near tearing his hair. “Tell him, Clover, for the sake of the dead, tell him!”
Clover had been telling Stour for near half a year and made no mark, like shooting a quiver full of daffodils at a man in full plate armour. But one more daffodil could do no harm. He spread his hands as if he held out a platter covered in fine advice. “There’s no bigger foolishness than to choose to face a dangerous man on equal terms. Look at me. Lost everything in the Circle.”
Stour’s lip curled. “Your fruits, too?”
“They’re still there, my prince, if a little shrivelled. But I don’t think with ’em any more.”
“My nephew beat Stranger-Come-Knocking in the Circle,” said the king, blowing some froth from his ale. “He can beat some Union fool.”
“Who was it took your hand, brother?” said Calder. “Some Union fool, as I recall?”
Scale didn’t anger, just smiled to show his missing front teeth. “You’re wise, brother. You’re cunning. Just like our father. What I have I owe to your wits and your ruthlessness and your loyalty, I know that. There are many things you understand far better than me. But you’re no fighter.”
A Little Hatred Page 38