‘Why not?’ Shivers slid back until only the glint of his metal eye showed in the shadows. ‘I’m no monster.’
‘Back to the snake pit,’ muttered Calder.
Seff caught his hand, eyes wide as she looked up at him, fearful and eager at once. Almost as fearful and eager as he was. ‘Be patient, Calder. Tread carefully.’
‘I’ll tiptoe all the way there.’ If he even made it. He reckoned there was about a one in four Shivers had been told to cut his throat on the way and toss his corpse in a bog.
She took his chin between her finger and thumb and shook it, hard. ‘I mean it. Dow fears you. My father says he’ll take any excuse to kill you.’
‘Dow should fear me. Whatever else I am, I’m my father’s son.’
She squeezed his chin even harder, looking him right in the eye. ‘I love you.’
He looked down at the floor, feeling the sudden pressure of tears at the back of his throat. ‘Why? Don’t you realise what an evil shit I am?’
‘You’re better than you think.’
When she said it he could almost believe it. ‘I love you too.’ And he didn’t even have to lie. How he’d raged when his father announced the match. Marry that pig-nosed, dagger-tongued little bitch? Now she looked more beautiful every time he saw her. He loved her nose, and her tongue even more. It was almost enough to make him swear off other women. He drew her close, blinking back the wet, and kissed her once more. ‘Don’t worry. No one’s less keen to attend my hanging than I am. I’ll be back in your bed before you know it.’
‘With your armour on?’
‘If you like,’ as he backed away.
‘And no lying while you’re gone.’
‘I never lie.’
‘Liar,’ she mouthed at him before the guards closed the door and slid the bolt, leaving Calder in the shadowy hallway with only the sappy-sad thought that he might never see his wife again. That gave him a rare touch of bravery and he hurried after Shivers, catching up with him as he trudged away and slapping a hand down on his shoulder. He was more than a little unnerved by the wood-like solidity of it, but plunged on regardless.
‘If anything happens to her, I promise you—’
‘I hear your promises ain’t up to much.’ Shivers’ eye went to the offending hand and Calder carefully removed it. He might only rarely be brave, but he was never brave past the point of good sense.
‘Who says so? Black Dow? If there’s anyone in the North whose promises are worth less than mine it’s that bastard’s.’ Shivers stayed silent, but Calder wasn’t a man to be easily put off. Good treachery takes effort. ‘Dow won’t ever give you more than you can rip from him with both hands, you know. There’ll be nothing for you, however loyal you are. In fact, the more loyal you are, the less there’ll be. You’ll see. Not enough meat and too many hungry dogs to feed.’
Shivers’ one eye narrowed just the slightest fraction. ‘I’m no dog.’
That chink of anger would have been enough to scare most men silent, but to Calder it was only a crack to chisel at. ‘I see that,’ he whispered, as low and urgent as Seff had whispered to him. ‘Most men don’t see past their fear of you, but I do. I see what you are. A fighter, of course, but a thinker too. An ambitious man. A proud man, and why not?’ Calder brought them to a halt in a shadowy stretch of the hallway, leaned in to a conspiratorial distance, smothering his instinct to cringe away as that awful scar turned towards him. ‘If I had a man like you working for me I’d make better use of him than Black Dow does, that much I promise.’
Shivers raised one beckoning hand, a big ruby on his little finger gleaming the colour of blood in the gloom. Giving Calder no choice but to come closer, closer, far too close for comfort. Close enough to feel Shivers’ warm breath. Close enough almost to kiss. Close enough so all Calder could see was his own distorted, unconvincing grin reflected in that dead metal ball of an eye.
‘Dow wants you.’
The Best of Us
Your August Majesty,
We are entirely recovered from the reverse at Quiet Ford and the campaign proceeds. For all Black Dow’s cunning, Lord Marshal Kroy is driving him steadily north towards his capital at Carleon. We are no more than two weeks’ march from the city, now. He cannot fall back for ever. We will have him, your Majesty can depend upon it.
General Jalenhorm’s division won a small engagement on a chain of hills to the northeast yesterday. Lord Governor Meed leads his division south towards Ollensand in the hope of forcing the Northmen to split their forces and give battle at a disadvantage. I travel with General Mitterick’s division, close to Marshal Kroy’s headquarters. Yesterday, near a village called Barden, Northmen ambushed our supply column as it was stretched out along the bad roads. Through the alertness and bravery of our rearguard they were beaten back with heavy losses. I recommend to your Majesty one Lieutenant Kerns who showed particular valour and lost his life in the engagement, leaving, I understand, a wife and young child behind him.
The columns are well ordered. The weather is fair. The army moves freely and the men are in the highest spirits.
I remain your Majesty’s most faithful and unworthy servant,
Bremer dan Gorst, Royal Observer of the Northern War
The column was in chaos. The rain poured down. The army was mired in the filth and the men were in the most rotten spirits. And mine the most rotten in the whole putrefying swarm.
Bremer dan Gorst forced his way through a mud-spattered crush of soldiers, all wriggling like maggots, their armour running with wet, their shouldered pikes poking lethally in all directions. They were stopped as solid as milk turned rank in a bottle but men still squelched up from behind, adding their own burdens of ill temper to the jostling mass, choking the thread of muck that passed for a road and forcing men cursing into the trees. Gorst was already late and had to assert himself as the press tightened, brushing men aside. Sometimes they would turn to argue as they stumbled in the slop, but they soon shut their mouths when they saw who he was. They knew him.
The adversary that had so confounded his Majesty’s army proved to be one of its own wagons, slid from the ankle-deep mud of the track and into the considerably deeper bog beside. Following the universal law that the most frustrating thing will always happen, no matter how unlikely, it had somehow ended up almost sideways, back wheels mired to their axles. A snarling driver whipped two horses into a pointless lather of terror while a half-dozen bedraggled soldiers floundered ineffectually about the back. On both sides of the road men slithered through the sodden undergrowth, cursing as gear was torn by brambles, pole-arms were tangled by branches, eyes were whipped at by twigs.
Three young officers stood nearby, the shoulders of their scarlet uniforms turned soggy maroon by the downpour. Two were arguing, stabbing at the wagon with pointed fingers while the other stood and watched, one hand carelessly resting on the gilded hilt of his sword, idle as a mannequin in a military tailor’s.
The enemy could scarcely have arranged a more effective blockage with a thousand picked men.
‘What is this?’ Gorst demanded, fighting and, of course, failing, to sound authoritative.
‘Sir, the supply train should be nowhere near this track!’
‘That’s nonsense, sir! The infantry should be held up while—’
Because the blame is what matters, of course, not the solution. Gorst shouldered the officers aside and squelched into the quagmire, wedging himself between the muddy soldiers, delving into the muck for the wagon’s back axle, boots twisting through the slime to find a solid footing. He took a few short breaths and braced himself.