She saw her father on the steps of the tower, veins standing from his neck as he roared words she couldn’t hear over the screams of pain and screams of rage. How could anyone bring order to this chaos? Might as well command a storm to stop blowing.
She saw a boy with curly hair just staring, taking a step one way, then the other way, face white and pale and his jaw hanging open, not knowing what to do. Rikke wondered if he was going to die here. Wondered if she was going to die here.
The rain was coming heavier now, on a chill wind, beading weapons and armour, sticking hair to snarling faces, turning ground churned by boots and bodies to sticky mud.
‘Heave!’ The shield wall was no more than ten strides from her, buckling and twisting, shields shrieking and scraping, boots sliding as men tried desperately to shove the attackers back. One stood tall to lash over the top of the wall with his axe. Stood again and squealed as a spear caught him under the rim of his helmet. He fell back, shrieking, thrashing, blood leaking between the fingers clapped to his face. ‘My eye! My eye!’
Arrows flitted down, clicked from the ground, bounced from a dead campfire. A man sank to his knees, leaning on his mace, face all crumpled, drooling, wheezing, a shaft in his back.
‘Careful,’ said Isern, easing Rikke behind a broken pillar, mossy old devil faces carved around the head. ‘Careful,’ and Rikke felt something cold brush her palm, and saw that Isern had slipped a knife into her hand, and she stared at it as if she’d never seen such a thing before.
She saw a man sitting on the ground, cursing as he fiddled with his bloody sleeve, blood in his beard, axe dangling from one wrist. She saw a man stomping on someone’s head, spots of blood across his mad snarl as he lifted his boot and rammed it down, lifted it and rammed it down. ‘Can you save my leg?’ A lad with yellow hair turned dark by the drizzle and the rags of his trousers all oozing black. Another man gibbered, mail pulled up to show a little slit that welled blood and when the healer wiped it welled again and she wiped it again but the blood came too fast to stop, too fast.
There was a kind of groan, and at the crumbling wall where that pretty weed had grown the shields buckled, gave, and Rikke stared as Black Calder’s men surged into the fortress.
A knot of them, mail rain-glinting and mud-spattered. A wedge of them, bristling with sharpened steel. A dagger-thrust of them, screaming their war cries, and at their very front a man with gold on his helmet and a green tree on a shield all scored and dented. He rushed right at Rikke with an axe held high.
That would’ve been a good moment to run, but maybe she’d run enough. Maybe the madness was catching. Without thinking, she dropped into a crouch, and bared her teeth, and raised her knife to meet him.
He twisted at a mad screech and Isern sprang from the crumbling steps on one leg, point of her spear darting over his shield-rim, catching him under the jaw and ripping his throat wide. He wobbled another step or two, blood showering down that green tree and turning it red, then his knees went and he fell on his face, gold-chased helmet bouncing off and rolling right between Rikke’s boots.
She saw Shivers snarling, hacking, snarling, metal eye shining. She saw Red Hat shooting arrows into the midst. She saw other men she knew, some of her father’s closest, good men, gentle men, screeching hate, shoving with shields, chopping with swords and axes.
That wedge of Black Calder’s men was choked off, and hemmed in, and cut down one by one, stabbed with spears, shoved over with shields, stomped on the ground. One huge warrior was left, wearing battered plates of armour, swinging a great axe around in heedless circles, rattling and clattering against the spears that stabbed at him.
Then a snarling Thrall sprang onto his back, caught him around the throat, hacking at him with a knife. Another darted in and chopped at his leg, brought him lurching onto one knee. Then they were all around him, Oxel using his sword like a pick in both hands to chisel his helmet off, chisel his skull open.
She saw Isern, tongue pressed into the hole in her teeth as she stabbed one stricken warrior after another with her spear. One crawled towards Rikke, crying through a faceful of mud, and Shivers stepped on his neck and took the top of his head off with a swing of his sword.
That assault was made into a heap of dead, their bravery all come to nothing, but Black Calder’s men still pressed in all around. Through waving spears she saw the Nail, up on the wall, shaking his axe, blood-dotted face twisted with fury and laughter at once, screaming, ‘Kill the fuckers! Kill the fuckers!’
Arrows flickered over, the noise of fighting like hail on a tin roof. Rikke saw ghosts now, among the fighting, among the killing, among the dead. Ghosts of men fighting, killing, dying. Battles long done, maybe, and battles yet to come, and she slid down the pillar until her backside hit mud, knife dropping from her hand into the dirt, and sat there trembling with her smarting eyes squeezed shut.
Leo stood at the top of the hill, hands helplessly clenching and unclenching.
It was the greatest battle he’d ever seen. The greatest the North had seen since the Battle of Osrung, where his mother loved to say he’d been conceived.
Nightfall’s shield wall had bent back when the Anglanders first charged. It had buckled, looked ready to give under the strain, but it had held. More Northmen had filtered down the road to shore it up and pushed the Anglanders back to the base of the red hill. Now there was a boiling engagement all the way along the valley bottom, the mad clamour echoing from the fells, the carnage at the bridge at one end.
If the Dogman swept down from the other side of the valley now, it would all be over. Nightfall would be surrounded, shattered, they could take every one of his men prisoner. Perhaps they could even capture the Great Wolf himself and make the bastard kneel.
But the Dogman didn’t appear, and the glee of the officers on the hilltop turned to concern, then grim worry.
‘Where the hell is the Dogman?’ muttered Leo’s mother. The ruin on the far side of the valley was just a ghost through the thickening rain. ‘He should be attacking.’
‘Yes,’ said Leo. He couldn’t say more. His mouth was too dry.
‘Can’t see a thing in this damn rain,’ she fretted.
‘No,’ said Leo. He’d always been a doer. Sitting idle while other men fought was torture.
‘If he doesn’t come soon …’
They could all see it. Some of Nightfall’s Thralls were still dribbling onto the battlefield. If the Dogman didn’t come soon, they might get around the flank and the Union line would crumble.
A rider came lurching up the back of the hill, pushing his mount hard. A Northman, rattled and dirt-spattered.
Leo’s mother strode up as he slithered from the saddle. ‘What’s become of the Dogman?’
‘Black Calder came out o’ the woods,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘We’re only just hanging on at the ruin. No way we can help with the attack.’
One officer swallowed. Another stared down into the valley. A third seemed to deflate, like a punctured wineskin.
‘Black Calder was supposed to be a day away,’ breathed Leo’s mother, her eyes wide.
‘He tricked us,’ muttered Leo. They were caught in their own trap, outnumbered and facing destruction. He stared towards the bridge. That was where he belonged, where the names were made and tomorrow’s songs written. He could make the difference. He knew he could.
Strategy had failed. It was time to fight.
‘We have to send in the reserves.’ He stepped close to his mother. No whining now, no wheedling. Just the simple truth. ‘There’s no choice. We’re committed.’
She frowned down into the valley, a muscle on the side of her head constantly working, and said nothing.
‘If we pull back, we leave the Dogman at Black Calder’s mercy. We have to fight.’
She closed her eyes, her mouth a hard, flat line, and said nothing.
‘Mother.’ He put one hand gently on her shoulder. ‘Wars may be won by the clever, but battles have to be fought by the brave. It’s time.’
She opened her eyes, and took a hard breath, and puffed it out. ‘Go,’ she said.
It was as if that one soft word lit a fire in Leo’s belly and set his body tingling, from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes. He felt a great smile spread across his face as he turned. ‘Jurand!’ he barked out, voice quivering with excitement. ‘We’re going in!’
Jurand sprang up. ‘Yes, sir!’ And he hurried for his horse.
‘Leo?’
He turned back. His mother stood there against the grey sky, fists clenched tight.
‘Give those bastards hell,’ she snarled.
‘Come on!’ screamed Stour. He hadn’t bothered with a helmet, which seemed a prime slice of folly to Clover, but if men can’t see your face, how can they tell everyone afterwards who did all the high deeds? ‘I want me that bridge!’ snarled the Great Wolf, wet hair plastered to his forehead and his teeth bared as a wolf’s teeth should properly be. ‘That’s my fucking bridge!’
It was all quite the mess now. Stour’s Carls had only just held the Union at the foot of that red hill, their shield wall twisting back on itself and threatening to burst. But they’d held them, and now there was a mad fight all along the valley, the bridge at one end the fiercest spot, Leo dan Brock’s golden standard fluttering above the carnage. It was a temptation Stour couldn’t ignore
‘Let me at that bastard!’ He was near frothing at the mouth. ‘I’ll slit this Young Lion from his fruits to his throat!’
That bridge really didn’t seem worth all the effort to Clover. If it hadn’t been for all the rain the last week, you could’ve just stepped around the bloody thing without getting your feet wet. He started to slow. Let Stour and his eager young stags charge on ahead. He’d fought enough battles. The fresh lads could claim their share of the action, and the costs, and the lessons.
He stopped, hands on knees, then nearly tripped over his own feet as someone shoved him in the back. He turned with a curse on his lips, but grinned when he saw the culprit.
‘Magweer!’ And with an even stormier look than usual. Like he’d caught Clover fucking his mother rather than just snatching a breather. ‘Thought you’d be up front with the rest o’ the firebrands, pumping your name up with glory.’
‘Seems I’m needed here,’ snarled Magweer, ‘making sure you fight, you fucking old coward!’
‘A coward’s just a man with the proper respect for sharp metal,’ said Clover, waving him down. ‘A battle’s no place for a warrior.’
‘What the fuck?’ spluttered Magweer, all his weapons rattling with upset.
‘No room to swing. More men killed by bad luck than good sword-work. It’s all just shove and grunt, at the mercy of choices made miles away and hours before by men you’ll never meet. Your trouble is you’ve got yourself an idea about how life should be, but it’s just not how life is.’ Magweer twisted his mouth open to spit some rejoinder, but Clover stopped him by bending down to fish a spent flatbow bolt from the grass. Horrible-looking thing, rain gleaming on its barbed head. ‘Let me show you what I mean. Imagine if one of these bastards fell on you.’
Magweer’s voice had gone shrill with fury. ‘Wouldn’t be a battle without—’ His eyes bulged as Clover caught his shoulder and rammed the bolt through his throat, so hard and so sudden the head punched right out of the back of his neck.
Clover caught him as his knees went, lowering him gently. He glanced both ways, but no one was looking. Man dying on a battlefield is hardly suspicious, after all. Magweer fumbled for one of his many knives but Clover caught his hand and held it tight. ‘I warned you.’ He sadly shook his head as Magweer stared up at him, blood bubbling from his nose. ‘A battle’s a dangerous place.’
Clover grabbed a fistful of bloody mail and hauled Magweer over his shoulder, put on a look of shocked concern, then set off quick as he could for the rear. Wasn’t all that quick, being honest. Been quite a while since he last carried a man. After a few steps, he was puffing hard, specially with all Magweer’s weapons dangling about. Just goes to show, hardly matters how many swords you carry if someone else strikes first.
Up the muddy road he struggled, away from the bridge where the fight was going harder than ever, away from the great shield wall that was stretching up the valley, past frowning Carls flooding the other way. More flatbow bolts flickered down from the high ground, peppered the grass.
Clover gritted his teeth and hefted Magweer up his shoulder, feeling the blood seeping warm through his shirt. He kept on, uphill, past a War Chief urging his men to fight harder. Kept on, past a pair of stretcher-bearers with a wounded Thrall wailing between ’em. Kept on, like there was nothing more important than saving this poor arrow-stuck lad on his back. By the dead, it was hard work, but he kept on, all the way up to that farm and its tree with the four bodies still swinging.
The wounded were laid out beside the house, groaning and mewling and squealing for water, or mercy, or their mothers. All the things wounded folk tend to squeal for, they’re highly predictable in that regard. Songs about the glory of it all were thin on the ground right then and there. Clover wished he could’ve shown this to Magweer while he was still alive. Maybe then he’d have seen. But he doubted it. More often than not, men only see what they want to.
He hefted Magweer off his shoulder and down onto the wet grass where one of the healers was working, bloody to her elbows. She took a quick glance across. ‘He’s dead.’
That was no great revelation to Clover. When he chose to stab a man, he aimed to do it in such a way that he’d never need another stabbing, and practice had made him very good at it. But he put on a show of sad surprise even so.
‘What a shame.’ He planted hands on hips and shook his head at the pointlessness of it all. ‘What a waste.’
But, you know. Nothing he hadn’t seen a hundred times before.
He stretched out his aching back, frowning at the way he’d come. Battle was still going strong, misty through the falling rain, a great seething mass of bloodshed in the valley’s bottom.
‘Shit.’ He wiped his sweaty forehead. ‘Daresay it’d all be over by the time I got back down there.’
The healer didn’t answer. Busy tending to the next man in line, who’d a nasty-looking gash out of his shoulder, blood welling down his limp arm in streaks.
Clover found a rock to sit on and set his sword beside it, still sheathed. ‘Probably best if I just stay up here.’