All the way, Stour snapped and whined like a wounded wolf indeed. Anyone hoping a glimpse of the North would sweeten his mood was sorely disappointed. All it did was remind him that he’d left with big ambitions and a few thousand men, and was coming back with neither.
“Get the oars out and row us in, you bastards!” he snarled, that fine wolfskin cloak of his snapping as he stalked between the benches. He leaned against the mast to rub at the wound on his leg. “Fucking thing! It’s right on top o’ the one the Young Lion gave me!”
“Seems a bonus,” Sholla murmured through tight lips. “You end up with one wound not two.”
“In my experience o’ the Great Wolf,” mused Clover, “and I have about as much these days as any man alive, he’s not prone to look on the sunny side. I’d best try and calm the bastard, eh?” He heaved out a sigh as he stood. “Doubt anyone else will.” And he pulled the damp blanket off and tossed it over Sholla’s head.
Men scurried about the ship as that distant light grew brighter and was joined to either side by the grey rumour of the coast. Wood clonked, rope hissed and salt spray flew as they brought in the sailcloth and leaned to the oars.
“Ready for the shore?” Clover asked Downside as he passed, and the big man gave him a wink with that bloodshot eye, red from a blow to the head in the battle. Stour was still raging, o’ course, as he walked up. What else would he be doing?
“Not a moment too fucking soon! Fucking Union. Fucking disaster.” As though failure had fallen out of the sky, rather than his having any hand in it.
Clover folded his arms and looked off towards the coast. “If no one lost, my king, where’d be the pleasure in winning?”
Stour glared at him. Seemed he found that a touch too philosophical when he was still licking his wounds in the shadow of disappointment.
Clover gave it another try. “Aye, the Young Lion’s done, and you had a good deal in common with him, a sympathetic ear in Angland and so on. No doubt his loss is a terrible shame, but… did you really like him all that much?”
Stour frowned as Sholla slipped around him. “Sorry, my king, just have to get to the prow…”
She nodded at Clover, and he pulled Stour’s attention back by stepping close, speaking soft, everyone’s friend. “Maybe he can’t help you take Uffrith now, but, well… he can’t stop you taking it, either.” Clover stepped closer yet, closer than men usually dared step to the Great Wolf. “Aye, we lost good men back there. But we lost good men before. In your father’s wars, and your grandfather’s wars. There’ll be more men. There’ll be more wars. You got to think of any battle you come out of alive as a victory and look ahead to what comes next.”
Stour considered him. A salt wind swept chill across the deck and stirred his hair, ruffled the fine wolf’s pelt about his shoulders. Ollensand was slipping from the grey up ahead, ghosts of tall masts in the harbour and low houses on the hillside, the beacon-fire burning brighter, joined by some firefly dots of torches held by a little welcoming party on the longest wharf.
The oars creaked and rattled, somewhere on the high air a gull gave a lonely call, and Clover swallowed as the King of the Northmen turned that wet-eyed stare on him. Always an uncomfortable moment.
Then, quick as the weather shifts in autumn, he grinned. “You’ve been loyal to me, Clover. I know I’m not always the easiest. No, no, don’t deny it.” No one had thought about denying it. “But if any man can talk me into looking on the sunny side, it’s you.” He reached out and gave Clover a slap on the shoulder. “You’ll get your reward, don’t worry about that.”
Clover matched him, grin for grin. “I know I will. And sooner’n you think.”
And Sholla slipped up from behind Stour, took the hilt of his sword and whipped it from the scabbard.
Instant later, Clover had him around the throat, butted him full in the mouth and snapped his head back. Clover snarled as he butted him again and felt Stour’s cheekbone crunch under his forehead. Stour gave a shocked little hoot as Clover butted him a third time. He’d had few sweeter feelings in his life than when he watched the King of the Northmen go sprawling on his back beside the mast.
Greenway’s jaw hung open. “What—” And Downside’s axe split his head in half, spraying blood. Seemed Rikke had been right about him dying on the water, and not just him. All over the boat, Clover’s boys stabbed the men beside them, cut throats, smashed skulls, stuck blades in backs and fronts and sides. All done too close and too quiet and too sudden for swords. Just the way Clover always said it should be done. Far faster than when Stour killed Scale and his men. Far neater.
By the time the Great Wolf shook his head, spitting blood, Clover’s boys were already rooting through the corpses of his bastards for anything worth the taking. Stour blinked, like he hadn’t quite caught up yet, and found Greenway staring back at him. Well, one side of his head was, the other it was hard to tell. Stour’s bloody lip twisted as he tried to sit up, but Clover put a boot on his chest and shoved him back down.
“Best stay there, I reckon.”
“You futhing traithor!” He spluttered red through his broken mouth, the chain Bethod once wore all tangled up around his neck.
“Traitor, did he say?” Clover raised a brow at Downside. Downside shrugged and set to wiping Greenway’s brains off his axe. “Traitor, did you say?” Clover shoved Stour down again and smiled. After so long under this little shit’s boot, felt awfully nice to have their positions swapped about.
“You got some bones, calling me traitor,” he said. “You, who murdered your own uncle. All I’ve done is what I always told you to do. Wait for your moment. Then go all the way.” He leaned down closer. “It’s just you weren’t fucking listening.”
There were raised voices up near the prow. One of Stour’s men left alive. Couple of the boys were arguing ’cause it seemed he was someone’s cousin and a good enough fellow by all accounts and letting him live would be a fine thing for his old mother.
Clover gave Downside an impatient flick of the head, and Downside stepped up and ended the argument with his axe in much the same way he’d ended Greenway. Once you’ve chosen your moment, holding back is folly. Holding back is cowardice.
Stour opened his mouth again but Sholla shut him up by brushing his cheek with the point of his own sword, and Clover leaned down and undid the buckle on his cloak, and dragged it free of him, and swept it around his own shoulders.
“Always liked this,” he said, rubbing his cheek against that fine fur.
“Suits you,” said Sholla.
The men finished up their robbing of the dead and set to the oars. A skeleton crew, maybe, but enough to bring the ship in. One grey Northern city on the grey Northern coast looks much like another, but as the oars kept dipping, they could all see it wasn’t Ollensand coming up out of the mist at all, but Uffrith. The light they’d seen wasn’t a beacon on a hill, but a bonfire in a cage up on a high pole beside the wharf.
“Quite a piece of navigating,” said Clover.
Sholla allowed herself a grin rare as the Northern sun. “Nothing to comment on.”
There were men waiting in the light of the fake beacon, just as they’d arranged. Hard-bitten men with weapons, scars and scowls in abundance. Clover knew a few faces. Named Men of Uffrith and the West Valleys, the Nail standing among ’em in that crookback slouch of his with thumbs in his sword-belt. At their front, arms folded, metal eye glinting through his long hair, stood Caul Shivers.
“You brought him, then,” he said as Clover clambered somewhat ungainly from the ship, wood of the wharf feeling unsteady under his sea legs.
“I said I would. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I gave you about a one in three. You know the Nail?”
“By reputation,” said Clover.
The Nail grinned, all teeth and menace. “It’s a good one, ain’t it?”
“It’s a peach. Must say I’m sorry about your father.”
“Not as sorry as he’s going to
be.” The Nail grinned even wider as Downside hauled Stour from the boat, hands trussed tight behind him. “Well, well, well!” And he gave a flourishing bow fine as any Union courtier might have managed. “The King o’ the Northmen comes home!”
“Rikke wi’ the Long Eye sends her regards,” said Shivers.
“Fuck her!” snarled Stour. “And fuck you, too, Caul Shivers!”
Stour’s threats had lost a lot of their menace in the last few moments, though, and most of the men laughed, if they did anything.
“She was gutted she couldn’t greet you in person.” The Nail leaned forward to poke Stour in the chest with one great big finger. “Gutted.”
“But she’s arranged a greeting that’ll make it all up to you,” said Shivers.
“She’s got that cage ready for you. You remember? The one in Skarling’s Hall? The one you kept my da in?”
“Aye, I remember,” spat Stour. “Remember how he pissed himself and cried like—”
He was an odd-looking bastard, the Nail, all stringy and loose, all shoulders and elbows. But Clover never saw a man hit so fast. From nowhere, his fist crunched into Stour’s ribs and the King of the Northmen doubled up, wheezing out a long string of drool, the diamond on his chain dangling.
“Ow,” said Sholla, deadpan.
“Funny,” said the Nail, back in his floppy slouch already. “Barbs don’t sting so much from a man you can slap whenever you please.”
Seemed that punch knocked out all Stour’s bluster. It can get that way, with men who’re always giving blows but never called upon to take ’em. “Look…” Gulping and glugging as he struggled for his breath. “I’ll give… twice what… she’s giving!”
Clover grinned. “All I’m getting is the chance to butt you in the face. Well, that and the cloak.”
“Fight me, you bastards!” Stour struggled at the ropes round his wrists, provoking nothing but another round o’ chuckles.
“We already fought,” said Clover. “And you lost. You lost everything.”
“I’m the greatest swordsman in the Circle of the World!”
The Nail gave a high little titter. “Can’t see it. To be a swordsman you have to be able to stand up.” And he bent down, grabbed hold of two fistfuls of Stour’s trouser legs and yanked them down hard. Yanked them right down to his ankles.
“What’re you doing?” he squealed, twisting and struggling, but Downside had him under one arm now and the Nail under the other and he wasn’t going far with them two holding on.
Shivers took out a knife. A small knife, it was, with a bright little blade. But a knife don’t have to be big to change things. Stour stared at it, over his shoulder, his eyes wet now, all right, but with fear rather’n threat.
“What’re you doing?”
Clover caught him by the jaw and hissed the words in his face. “Giving you your last lesson. Those big names o’ the past you’re always wanking over. Shama Heartless. Black Dow. The Bloody-Nine. The dead know they were bastards, but they earned those names. They tore ’em from the world with their hands and their will. Nightfall?” Clover turned his head and spat into the sea. “What the fuck is that? You were born with it. All you have you’ve been handed. Well, here’s the thing, boy…” And he caught hold of that big diamond and tore the great chain that Bethod once wore over Stour’s head. “What’s easily given… is easily took away.”
Shivers reached down and with a calm little movement, like peeling an apple, slit the tendons behind the Great Wolf’s knee.
There was a silent pause, like it took a moment for Stour to realise what had happened, then his eyes bulged and he gave a great sobbing shriek, wriggling and twisting, blood running in streaks down his calf. Sholla winced and looked the other way. Downside frowned, and held Stour tight, careless as a shepherd holding a sheep for shearing. The Nail grinned like he’d never heard such a joke.
“Come on,” he called over Stour’s squealing. “Ain’t fair to leave a man lopsided!”
Shivers shrugged, good eye showing no more feeling than his metal one, and he did the same to Stour’s other knee.
Clover tucked the king’s chain into a pocket in his new cloak and watched, arms folded. He didn’t think much of vengeance, in the main, and it had been a long time since he took much pleasure in other men’s pain, but he had to admit this felt good. Not so good as having Wonderful still around might have. But it was something.
“Best get him bandaged.” Shivers carefully wiped his little knife clean on a rag. “Don’t want him bleeding out.” He glanced sideways at Clover and gave him a nod. “Glad you came to see things our way.”
“I always did.” Clover watched as the Nail dragged the King of the Northmen away, squealing and crying, his blood-streaked bare legs dragging and the jewelled buckle on his belt bouncing and clattering after. “Just waiting for my moment.”
A Footnote to History
Climbing the steps to the platform might’ve been the hardest thing Leo had ever done, but he was determined to get there on his own. Determined to salvage that much pride though, the dead knew, pride had done him no favours. Pride had put him here in the first place.
He used to laugh at climbing mountains. Now he had to gather himself for each step, sweat springing from his forehead. The old wound in his right leg still hurt. Hurt worse than ever now it had to bear most of his weight. But it was nothing to the pain in his other leg. An endless, crushing, sickening throb. And the irony was, the leg wasn’t even there.
He kept trying to wriggle his sore toes, work his aching ankle, put his burning foot down to steady himself. Then he remembered they were gone. His leg was crushed, the wreckage sawn off and burned, and everything he’d been was gone with it. No longer a warrior. No longer a leader. No longer a Lord Governor. He’d be a footnote to history. A man who turned himself from hero to villain with his own arrogance, and recklessness, and—
He gave a whoop as his crutch slipped on the top step and spun from his hand. He clutched at nothing, then the side of his face banged hard into the platform. He heard a few gasps, a whimper from somewhere. Maybe him.
His left arm was close to useless. With an agonising effort he could lift the hand, produce the slightest trembling twitch in the first finger, but the rest dangled limp. He barely felt a pin stuck into them. The surgeon said metal blasted from a cannon, along with bits of his shield, had riddled his arm and ruined the nerves. They’d stitched the wounds but there was nothing more to do. And the irony was, they were healing a man they were about to hang.
He worked himself up with his good arm, teeth gritted, managed to ease his right leg under him, groaning as his weight went onto the stump of his left. But once he’d made it to hands and knees—or hand and knee, at any rate—how to get further? He couldn’t reach for the crutch without falling, and even if he could, how would he push himself up? There’d been a time when achieving the impossible for Leo dan Brock had meant besting the greatest swordsman of the age, or breaking an enemy’s line single-handed, or turning the tide of war against the odds. Now achieving the impossible meant standing up.
He felt a firm hand under his elbow and was lifted carefully to his feet. Or foot. “There we go.” The crutch was wedged into his armpit again. He glanced sideways to see one of the executioners. Kind brown eyes through the holes in his black mask as he helped Leo forward.
“I’m fine,” said Leo, weakly shaking the man off.
Fine. Broken, defeated, in constant agony, with a useless arm and an amputated leg, convicted of treason and already on the gallows. Fine.
He blinked about at the ruined town square of Stoffenbeck. The scene of his crime, and now of his punishment. The corpses had been hauled away but there were still heaps of rubble in every corner, only blackened pillars left of the ruined market hall where his last charge foundered. The shattered clock tower loomed above, its one remaining face with hands frozen at the moment of his downfall. The place still smelled faintly of burning.
Eleven of
his fellow conspirators stood in a row on the platform, all with hands tied behind them, all watching him. Some he didn’t even recognise. Lord Mustred was at the far end, bloody bandages wrapped around one eye. Lady Wetterlant, even now keeping her pointed chin high. Lord Barezin, closest to Leo, blinking about as though he could hardly believe what had happened. What was happening. At the feet of each one of them was a trapdoor. Beside each one of them was a lever. Above each one of them was a noose.
It all felt strangely bland. Strangely banal. He’d hardly known what to expect. Yet another irony. The first hanging he’d ever attended would be his own.
With jaw clenched, he hopped to the trapdoor and stood swaying, each breath a smothered groan. There was a taste in his mouth. Blood from the fall, maybe. Or a lingering sweetness from his breakfast. He licked at the grooves between his teeth, trying to root out more. Tiny pleasures seem huge when you know there’s no time left. All the wonderful things he used to have, used to do, that he’d hardly noticed, let alone appreciated. Now a sweet taste on his gums was a bounty to feel thankful for.
He glanced up. The sun bright in the sky. The long beam black overhead. The nooses dangling down. His noose, right above him. He wondered how many necks had already been stretched by it. After what he’d done, there were a lot of traitors to hang. They might’ve done ten batches already today. From the cellars where they’d been keeping the prisoners, you could just hear the clatter as the trapdoors dropped open. The thud as the ropes stretched taut. The faint gasp of the onlookers, each and every time.
Was there dried blood on the rope? He felt vaguely affronted by that. For something so intimate, each person should surely get their own. Felt like dying in another man’s underwear. Though the underwear of those who’d gone ahead was no doubt in a far worse state. People pissed and shat and leaked every fluid when they were hanged, he knew. It had seemed quite a laugh when Antaup told them all about it over drinks. Didn’t seem much of a laugh now, needless to say.
The Trouble with Peace Page 59