‘No,’ said Rikke, ‘I’m not leaving you.’
‘Better one of us live than neither. Go.’
‘No,’ said Rikke. She could hear someone crashing through the trees towards them. Someone big.
‘Get behind me, then.’ Isern pushed Rikke back, but she could only stand leaning on her spear. She’d be fighting no one. Not winning, anyway.
‘I’ve hid behind you long enough.’ Strange thing, but Rikke didn’t feel scared any more. ‘I’m not much of a climber anyway.’ She peeled Isern’s fingers from the shaft of her spear and helped her lean against the rocks. ‘Time for me to take a turn at the front.’
Isern’s bloody leg quivered as she sank back. ‘We’re doomed.’
Rikke gripped the spear tight and lowered it towards the trees, wondering whether to hold on to it or throw it when they came, wishing her Long Eye would open again so she didn’t have to guess.
She thought of Nightfall’s voice above her, while she hid in the stream. Her guts in a box, with some herbs, so her father wouldn’t smell them till it was opened.
‘Come on!’ she screamed, spraying spit. ‘I’m fucking waiting!’
Wet leaves rustled and a man stepped into the clearing. A big man in a weather-stained coat, holding a scarred shield and a sword with a silver letter near the hilt. Even through the grey hair hanging lank across his face, Rikke could see the awful scar, from his forehead through his brow and across his cheek to the corner of his mouth, and in the misshapen socket of his left eye there was no eye at all, but a bright ball of dead metal, gleaming as the sun broke through above.
He raised his brows at the two of them, hunched and bloodied against the rocky wall. Or he raised the good one, anyway. The burned one just twitched a little. Then he spoke in a voice like the grinding of a mill wheel.
‘Been looking for you two.’
Rikke stood still, for a moment, just staring. Then she stepped towards him, letting out a long, shuddering breath, and she tossed the spear down in the grass and flung her arms around him.
‘Took your fucking time, Caul Shivers!’ Isern snarled through clenched teeth. ‘There’s some of Nightfall’s boys hunting us.’
‘Put ’em out o’ your mind.’ And Rikke saw his sword was all dashed and speckled with red. He’d always been a man who could get a lot said in a few words. ‘Can you walk?’
‘Without the arrow,’ hissed Isern, ‘I could run rings around you.’
‘Don’t doubt it.’ Shivers puffed out cheeks scattered with silver stubble as he squatted beside her. ‘But you’ve got the arrow.’ And he poked at it with one big finger and made her grimace.
‘You are not fucking carrying me,’ she growled.
‘Ain’t high on my list o’ wants, believe it or not.’ Shivers slid his sword through the clasp at his belt. ‘But once you’ve a task to do, it’s better to do it—’
‘Than live with the fear of it,’ Rikke finished for him. It was one of her father’s favourites.
Shivers pulled Isern up by one arm and hefted her over his shoulder as if she weighed nothing at all. With what they’d been eating, she probably wasn’t far off.
‘This is a bloody indignity,’ Isern grunted into Shivers’ back as he started walking.
‘What about me?’ muttered Rikke. Now she was something close to safe her strength had all leaked away, and her face was twitching and her knees were knocking, and she felt like she might topple over right there and never get up.
‘You always were a moaner.’ Shivers shook his head. ‘Come on. Your father’s waiting.’
Biding Time, Wasting Time
‘Ever think maybe you drink too much?’ asked Wonderful.
Clover smacked his lips. ‘Too much would, by definition, be too much. I find however much I drink is just the right amount.’ And he offered her the bottle.
She shook her head. ‘Drunks tend to say that.’
Clover treated her to his aggrieved look. ‘As do the broadly sober.’ He’d a wonderful aggrieved look. Lots of practice. ‘I find myself aggrieved. Have you ever seen me lose a fight on account of drunkenness?’
‘I’ve never seen you fight.’
Clover slapped the cork back into the bottle. ‘A clear indication of reasonable drinking if ever there was one.’
‘Well, if I was you, I’d at least look sober.’ Wonderful pointed one of her brows off down the track. ‘The Great Wolf approaches.’
And approach he did, with high drama. Storming and swaggering at once with his brow well creased and his brooding young stags at his back, making Thralls scatter from their path like chickens in a farmyard. Given all the damp still in the air, it was a wonder they weren’t steaming.
‘Here come the gods of war,’ mouthed Clover, and then out loud, as the Great Wolf stalked closer, ‘Drink, Chief?’
Stour slapped the bottle from his hand and it bounced away into the bushes.
Clover looked sadly after it. ‘I’ll take that as a no.’
‘She got away!’ snarled the king-in-waiting, in quite the fury even for him. ‘Fucking little bitch got away!’
‘We’re all distraught.’
‘She came through right where you were supposed to be!’ snapped a bastard of Stour’s called Greenway. If legends were built on sneering, he’d have had quite a place in the songs. ‘Did you see her?’
‘Saw her shirt,’ said Clover, tossing the torn thing over. ‘At least, I’m guessing it was hers. Doubt it’ll fit you, though. Bit tight under the arms, I expect—’
Greenway flung it angrily on the ground. ‘Did you see her?’
‘If I had, I’d have caught her.’
‘You’d have had to fucking get up to do that,’ snarled Magweer, aiming for the same caged-wolf act as Stour but only managing a fraction of the menace.
‘I’d have sung out, anyway,’ said Clover. ‘That I can do sitting down.’
He wondered why he hadn’t sung out. She’d just looked like such a desperate, ragged little scrap to have all these bastards chasing her, and when the hunt was on, he’d always secretly rooted for the fox. If you can’t find a way to win that doesn’t involve torturing some half-mad girl, then maybe you don’t deserve to win at all. Or maybe that was all shit, and it was just ’cause she was pretty. The sad truth is that pretty people can slide through all kinds of scrapes that’d end very badly for the ugly.
Clover looked from Greenway to Magweer and shrugged. ‘Seems hunting girls just ain’t my sport.’
Stour stepped closer, staring at Clover with those ever-wet eyes of his. ‘Your sport is whatever I say it is.’
Clover shrugged it off. ‘I’m eager to serve, great prince, but I can’t just turn into a butterfly. Your father sent me for my cunning, not my running. Why, you might as well order the river to blow and the wind to flow.’
‘You’re loyal, ain’t you, Clover?’ Magweer said it softly, like it was some brilliant trap of words.
‘Reasonably so, I like to think. A man has to bend with the breeze.’
‘You turned on Glama Golden, I heard,’ said Greenway, climbing to new heights of sneer. ‘Cairm Ironhead, too.’
‘I was loyal to both,’ said Clover. ‘I was just more loyal to me. Truth is, men love to blab about loyalty till it might trap ’em on the losing side. Then there’s a chorus o’ silence on the issue. So I consider reasonably loyal to be a bit more loyal than most, and a lot more honest than most. It’s a fool who makes folk choose too often between loyalty and good sense. How’d she get loose, anyway?’
‘Caul Shivers was waiting on the other side of the river,’ hissed Stour, clenching his fists. ‘Killed four of my men.’
‘Shivers.’ Magweer was clenching his fists just the same way. ‘Wish I’d run into that old fucker.’
Wonderful and Clover burst out laughing at the exact same time. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, and she leaned back, fist on his shoulder, and no doubt they made quite a picture chortling away but they really couldn’t help ’emsleves.