‘Union are pulling back as fast as they can. Some skirmishes but there’s no real fight in ’em. No sign o’ the Dogman’s boys. Running, I reckon.’
‘Suits me well enough,’ said the man. ‘Any luck, they’ll run all the way back to Angland and we can all have a lie down.’
Rikke glanced over at Isern. She’d been right. She always was bloody right, specially when it came to disheartening predictions.
That morning they’d come upon a clearing full of corpses. A dozen or more. Men from both sides, all on the same side now. They say the Great Leveller settles all differences. Rikke had stared at those bodies, her wrist against her mouth, her breath crawling. Then she’d seen Isern, squatting over the dead like a corpse-eater from the songs, plucking at torn clothes, fiddling with buckles.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Looking for anything we can eat.’
And Rikke had set to searching herself. Trying not to look at their faces as she rooted through pockets with numb fingers. Isern had been right about that, too. Your fear, your guilt, your disgust, they all vanish once you get hungry enough. The thing that really upset her as they crept away from the dead was that they hadn’t found anything.
‘Chief!’ someone roared up on the road. ‘Nightfall! The king-in-waiting!’ And there was an approving clatter of weapons on shields.
Rikke stiffened under the water. Stiffened far as she could given she was near enough a block of ice already, and Isern pressed against her and whispered, hardly more’n a breath, ‘Shhhhhhhh …’
‘By the dead,’ she heard the woman mutter above, and then, with forced good cheer, ‘Chief! How’s the day?’
‘Bloodless so far, but it’s still early.’ The voice of Stour Nightfall himself, then. A whining sort of voice for a famous warrior. Sounded like a boy on the edge of a tantrum. ‘They’re thin sauce, these Southerners, always trickling away. The Bloody-Nine had Rudd Threetrees to fight, and Black Dow, and Harding Grim and all the rest. How’s a man meant to win a great name without great enemies to weigh it against?’
A brief pause. ‘It’s a tester, all right,’ said the woman.
‘I’ve a task for you, Wonderful. There’s a girl out in these woods.’ Rikke had a bad feeling in her stomach. Worse than the hunger, and she shrank against the bank like she could become one with the dirt. ‘I want her.’
A snorting chuckle from the enthusiastic pisser. ‘Well, who wouldn’t want a girl out in the woods?’ There was a silence, like the jest had miscarried. Certainly Rikke wasn’t fucking laughing. ‘How do we tell this girl from another?’
‘They say she’s got a twitchy way. She’ll have a gold ring through her nose, maybe a cross painted over her eye.’
Rikke touched the tip of her tongue to the ring through her nose and whispered, ‘Fuck.’
‘She might have some witch of a hillwoman with her. That you can kill. But the girl we need alive.’
‘Must be important,’ said the woman called Wonderful.
Nightfall gave a little hooting giggle. ‘Well, there’s the thing. She’s the Dogman’s daughter.’
‘Double fuck,’ mouthed Rikke.
‘Shhhhhhh,’ hissed Isern.
‘What happens if we catch her?’
An unhappy grunt. ‘Well, if my father gets her, I daresay he’ll ransom her back, dangle her as bait, use her to get his way when it comes to talking peace.’ And Nightfall spat out the word like it tasted bad. ‘You know my father. Plans within plans.’
‘Always been clever, Black Calder,’ came the man’s voice.
‘I see things different. How I see it, the way you break your enemy is you break what they love. Way I hear it, those old fools on the other side love that twitching bitch. Sort of a little mascot for ’em.’ Rikke heard the smile in his voice. ‘So if I get hold of her, I’ll strip her, and whip her, and pull her teeth out, and maybe get some Thralls to fuck her, out between the lines where everyone can hear her squealing.’ Bit of a silence, and Rikke heard her own breath coming ragged, and Isern’s hand tightening around her arm. ‘Or maybe I’d get my horse to fuck her. Or my dogs. Or … like, a pig, maybe?’
The older man sounded more than a touch disgusted. ‘How the hell would you do that?’
‘There’s naught you can’t do if you’ve the imagination and the patience. Then I’ll bind her up in the trees with brambles where everyone can see, and cut the bloody cross in her, and put a bucket underneath to catch her guts, and send ’em to the other side.’
‘What, her guts?’
‘Aye, in a pretty box. Hardwood, nicely carved. With flowers, maybe. Or no! Herbs. So those old fools won’t smell what they’re getting till they open it.’ And he gave a satisfied grunt, like he was talking about a nice fish he’d catch, or a nice meal he’d eat, or a nice sit on the porch he couldn’t wait to have at sunset. ‘Imagine the looks on their faces.’ And he chuckled like her guts in a box would be quite the height of drollery.
‘Fuck,’ breathed Rikke.
Isern just whispered, ‘Shhhhhhhhh …’
‘But that’s for later.’ And Nightfall gave a disappointed sigh. ‘Can’t cook what you haven’t caught, can you? My father’s offering a big gild for her, that’s sure. Whoever brings her in’ll be a wealthy man.’
The woman called Wonderful sounded like she was hardly enjoying this any more than Rikke was. ‘Right y’are, Chief. We’ll be looking.’
‘Lovely. You can get back to your pissing now, Clover.’
‘That’s all right. Won’t need another for a while, I reckon.’
Rikke heard soft footfalls moving away. Perhaps she should’ve been frozen with fear. The dead knew she’d a right to be. But what she felt instead was a boiling fury. A fury that warmed her through despite the icy water frothing to her chin. A fury that tempted her to slip from the stream with her knife between her teeth and cut the bloody cross in Stour Nightfall right then and there.
Rikke’s father had always told her vengeance was a waste of effort. That letting it go was the strong thing, the wise thing, the right thing. That blood only led to more blood. But his lessons seemed far away now, meant for a warmer place. She clenched her jaw, and narrowed her eyes, and swore to herself that if she lived out the week, she’d make it her business to see Stour Nightfall fucked by a pig.
‘I’ll be honest, Wonderful,’ came the man’s voice, the one called Clover, speaking soft like he was sharing a secret, ‘I’m finding that bastard increasingly troubling.’
‘Aye, I know.’
‘Took it for an act at first, but I’m starting to think he’s everything he pretends to be.’
‘Aye, I know.’
‘Guts in a box? With herbs?’
‘Aye, I know.’
‘He’ll be king one o’ these days, will guts-in-a-box over yonder. King o’ the Northmen. Him.’
A long pause, then a weary grunt. ‘It’s a thing no right-thinking person could look forward to.’
Rikke could only agree. She thought she saw a hint of their reflections, dancing among the black branches in the water.
‘You see something down there?’
She stiffened, numb fingers curling tight around the grip of her knife. She saw the jaw muscles clench on the side of Isern’s face, blade of her spear sliding from the water, smeared with pitch so it wouldn’t catch the light.
‘What? Fish?’
‘Aye. Worth getting my rod, d’you think?’
The sound of Wonderful hawking up, then a glob of phlegm came spinning over from above and plopped into the water. ‘Nothing in this stream worth catching, I reckon.’
It Was Bad
The sun was setting when he came home, just a pink glimmer over black hills. The valley was in darkness but Broad could’ve walked the way blindfold. Knew every rut in the track, every stone in the tumbledown wall beside it.
All so familiar. But all so strange.
After two years away, you’d think a man would run headlong towards a place he loved, the people he loved, with the biggest smile his cheeks could hold. But Broad trudged slow as the condemned to the scaffold, and smiled about as much, too. The man who left had feared nothing. The one coming back was scared all the time. He hardly even knew what of. Himself, maybe.