Craw looked up, surprised. Like he’d realised he wasn’t quite where he’d thought he was. Then he leaned back on one elbow, stretching one boot out towards the fire. ‘Well. Guess it’s your dozen now.’
‘That’s a fact,’ said Wonderful, nudging that boot with hers. ‘And they’ll all be fighting.’ Yon slapped Drofd on the shoulder, all flushed and grinning now at the thought of glory. Wonderful reached out and flicked the pommel of the Father of Swords with a fingernail. ‘Besides, you don’t need a great weapon to win yourself a name. Got yours with your teeth, didn’t you, Craw?’
‘Bite someone’s throat out, did you?’ asked Drofd.
‘Not quite.’ Craw had a faraway look for a moment, firelight picking out the lines at the corners of his eyes. ‘First full battle I was in we had a real red day, and I was in the midst. I had a thirst, back then. Wanted to be a hero. Wanted myself a name. We was all sat around the fire-pit after, and I was expecting something fearsome.’ He looked up from under his eyebrows. ‘Like Red Beck. Then when Threetrees was considering it, I took a big bite from a piece of meat. Drunk, I guess. Got a bone stuck in my throat. Spent a minute hardly able to breathe, everyone thumping me on the back. In the end a big lad had to hold me upside down ’fore it came loose. Could barely talk for a couple of days. So Threetrees called me Craw, on account of what I’d got stuck in it.’
‘Shoglig said …’ sang Whirrun, arching back to look into the sky, ‘I would be shown my destiny … by a man choking on a bone.’
‘Lucky me,’ grunted Craw. ‘I was furious, when I got the name. Now I know the favour Threetrees was doing me. His way of trying to keep me level.’
‘Seems like it worked,’ croaked Shivers. ‘You’re the straight edge, ain’t you?’
‘Aye.’ Craw licked unhappily at his teeth. ‘A real straight edge.’
Scorry gave the straight edge of his latest knife one last flick with the whetstone and picked up the next. ‘You met our latest recruit, Shivers?’ Sticking his thumb sideways. ‘Red Beck.’
‘I have.’ Shivers stared across the fire at him. ‘Down in Osrung. Yesterday.’
Beck had that mad feeling Shivers could see right through him with that eye, and knew him for the liar he was. Made him wonder how none of the others could see it, writ across his face plain as a fresh tattoo. Cold prickled his back, and he pulled his blood-crusted cloak tight again.
‘Quite a day yesterday,’ he muttered.
‘And I reckon today’ll be another.’ Whirrun stood and stretched up tall, lifting the Father of Swords high over his head. ‘If we’re lucky.’
Still Yesterday
The blue skin stretched as the steel slid underneath it, paint flaking like parched earth, stubbly hairs shifting, red threads of veins in the wide whites near the corners of his eyes. Her teeth ground together as she pushed it in, pushed it in, pushed it in, coloured patterns bursting on the blackness of her closed lids. She could not get that damned music out of her head. The music the violinists had been playing. Were playing still, faster and faster. The husk-pipe they had given her had blunted the pain just as they said it would, but they had lied about the sleep. She twisted the other way, huddling under the blankets. As though you can roll over and leave a day of murder on the other side of the bed.
Candlelight showed around the door, through the cracks between the slats. As the daylight had showed through the door of the cold room where they were kept prisoner. Kneeling in the darkness, plucking at the knots with her nails. Voices outside. Officers, coming and going, speaking with her father. Talking of strategy and logistics. Talking of civilisation. Talking of which one of them Black Dow wanted.
What had happened blurred with what might have, with what should have. The Dogman arrived an hour earlier with his Northmen, saw off the savages before they left the wood. She found out ahead of time, warned everyone, was given breathless thanks by Lord Governor Meed. Captain Hardrick brought help, instead of never being heard from again, and the Union cavalry arrived at the crucial moment like they did in the stories. Then she led the defence, standing atop a barricade with sword aloft and a blood-spattered breastplate, like a lurid painting of Monzcarro Murcatto at the battle of Sweet Pines she once saw on the wall of a tasteless merchant. All mad, and while she spun out the fantasies she knew they were mad, and she wondered if she was mad, but she did it all the same.
And then she would catch something at the edge of her sight, and she was there, as it had been, on her back with a knee crushing her in the stomach and a dirty hand around her neck, could not breathe, all the sick horror that she somehow had not felt at the time washing over her in a rotting tide, and she would rip back the blankets and spring up, and pace round and round the room, chewing at her lip, picking at the scabby bald patch on the side of her head, muttering to herself like a madwoman, doing the voices, doing all the voices.
If she’d argued harder with Black Dow. If she’d pushed, demanded, she could have brought Aliz with her, instead of … in the darkness, her blubbering wail as Finree’s hand slipped out of hers, the door rattling shut. A blue cheek bulged as the steel slid underneath it, and she bared her teeth, and moaned, and clutched at her head, and squeezed her eyes shut.
‘Fin.’
‘Hal.’ He was leaning over her, candlelight picking out the side of his head in gold. She sat up, rubbing her face. It felt numb. As if she was kneading dead dough.
‘I brought you fresh clothes.’
‘Thank you.’ Laughably formal. The way one might address someone else’s butler.
‘Sorry to wake you.’
‘I wasn’t asleep.’ Her mouth still had a strange taste, a swollen feeling from the husk. The darkness in the corners of the room fizzed with colours.
‘I thought I should come … before dawn.’ Another pause. Probably he was waiting for her to say she was glad, but she could not face the petty politeness. ‘Your father has put me in charge of the assault on the bridge in Osrung.’
She did not know what to say. Congratulations. Please, no! Be careful. Don’t go! Stay here. Please. Please. ‘Will you be leading from the front?’ Her voice sounded icy.
‘Close enough to it, I suppose.’
‘Don’t indulge in any heroics.’ Like Hardrick, charging out of the door for help that could never come in time.
‘There’ll be no heroics, I promise you that. It’s just … the right thing to do.’
‘It won’t help you get on.’
‘I don’t do it to get on.’
‘Why, then?’
‘Because someone has to.’ They were so little alike. The cynic and the idealist. Why had she married him? ‘Brint seems … all right. Under the circumstances.’ Finree found herself hoping that Aliz was all right, and made herself stop. That was a waste of hope, and she had none to spare.
‘How should one feel when one’s wife has been taken by the enemy?’
‘Utterly desperate. I hope he will be all right.’
‘All right’ was such a useless, stilted expression. It was a useless, stilted conversation. Hal felt like a stranger. He knew nothing about who she really was. How can two people ever really know each other? Everyone went through life alone, fighting their own battle.
He took her hand. ‘You seem…’
She could not bear his skin against hers, jerked her fingers away as though she was snatching them from a furnace. ‘Go. You should go.’
His face twitched. ‘I love you.’
Just words, really. They should have been easy to say. But she could not do it any more than she could fly to the moon. She turned away from him to face the wall, dragging the blanket over her hunched shoulder. She heard the door shut.
A moment later, or perhaps a while, she slid out of bed. She dressed. She splashed water on her face. She twitched her sleeves down over the scabbing chafe marks on her wrists, the ragged cut up her arm. She opened the door and went through. Her father was in the room on the other side, talking to the officer she saw
crushed by a falling cupboard yesterday, plates spilling across the floor. No. A different man.
‘You’re awake.’ Her father was smiling but there was a wariness to him, as if he was expecting her to burst into flames and he was ready to grab for a bucket. Maybe she would burst into flames. She would not have been surprised. Or particularly sorry, right then. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Well.’ Hands closed around her throat and she plucked at them with her nails, ears throbbing with her own heartbeat. ‘I killed a man yesterday.’
He stood, put his hand on her shoulder. ‘It may feel that way, but…’
‘It certainly does feel that way. I stabbed him, with a short steel I stole from an officer. I pushed the blade into his face. Into his face. So. I got one, I suppose.’
‘Finree…’
‘Am I going mad?’ She snorted up a laugh, it sounded so stupid. ‘Things could be so much worse. I should be glad. There was nothing I could do. What can anyone do? What should I have done?’
‘After what you have been through, only a madman could feel normal. Try to act as though … it is just another day, like any other.’
She took a long breath. ‘Of course.’ She gave him a smile which she hoped projected reassurance rather than insanity. ‘It is just another day.’
There was a wooden bowl, on a table, with fruit in it. She took an apple. Half-green, half-blood-coloured. She should eat while she could. Keep her strength up. It was just another day, after all.
Still dark outside. Guards stood by torchlight. They fell silent as she passed, watching while pretending not to watch. She wanted to spew all over them, but she tried to smile as if it was just another day, and they did not look exactly like the men who had strained desperately to hold the gates of the inn closed, splinters bursting around them as the savages hacked down the doors.
She stepped from the path and out across the hillside, pulling her coat tight around her. Wind-lashed grass sloped away into the darkness. Patches of sedge tangled at her boots. A bald man stood, coat-tails flapping, looking out across the darkened valley. He had one fist clenched behind him, thumb rubbing constantly, worriedly at forefinger. The other daintily held a cup. Above him, in the eastern sky, the first faint smudges of dawn were showing.
Perhaps it was the after-effects of the husk, or the sleeplessness, but after what she had seen yesterday the First of the Magi did not seem so terrible. ‘Another day!’ she called, feeling as if she might take off from the hillside and float into the dark sky. ‘Another day’s fighting. You must be pleased, Lord Bayaz!’
He gave her a curt bow. I…’
‘Is it “Lord Bayaz” or is there a better term of address for the First of the Magi?’ She pushed some hair out of her face but the wind soon whipped it back. ‘Your Grace, or your Wizardship, or ‘your Magicosity?’
‘I try not to stand on ceremony.’
‘How does one become First of the Magi, anyway?’
‘I was the first apprentice of great Juvens.’
‘And did he teach you magic?’
‘He taught me High Art.’
‘Why don’t you do some then, instead of making men fight?’
‘Because making men fight is easier. Magic is the art and science of forcing things to behave in ways that are not in their nature.’ Bayaz took a slow sip from his cup, watching her over the rim. ‘There is nothing more natural to men than to fight. You are recovered, I hope, from your ordeal yesterday?’
‘Ordeal? I’ve almost forgotten about it already! My father suggested that I act as though this is just another day. Then, perhaps it will be one. Any other day I would spend feverishly trying to advance my husband’s interests, and therefore my own.’ She grinned sideways. ‘I am venomously ambitious.’
Bayaz’ green eyes narrowed. ‘A characteristic I have always found most admirable.’
‘Meed was killed.’ His mouth opening and closing silently like a fish snatched from the river, plucking at the great rent in his crimson uniform, crashing over with papers sliding across his back. ‘I daresay you are in need of a new lord governor of Angland.’
‘His Majesty is.’ The Magus heaved up a sigh. ‘But making such a powerful appointment is a complicated business. No doubt some relative of Meed expects and demands the post, but we cannot allow it to become some family bauble. I daresay a score of other great magnates of the Open Council think it their due, but we cannot raise one man too close in power to the crown. The closer they come the less they can resist reaching for it, as your father-in-law could no doubt testify. We could elevate some bureaucrat but then the Open Council would rail about stoogery and they are troublesome enough as it is. So many balances to strike, so many rivalries, and jealousies, and dangers to navigate. It’s enough to make one abandon politics altogether.’
‘Why not my husband?’
Bayaz cocked his head on one side. ‘You are very frank.’
‘I seem to be, this morning.’
‘Another characteristic I have always found most admirable.’
‘By the Fates, I’m admirable!’ she said, hearing the door clatter shut on Aliz’ sobs.
‘I am not sure how much support I could raise for your husband, however.’ Bayaz wrinkled his lip as he tossed the dregs from his cup into the dewy grass. ‘His father stands among the most infamous traitors in the history of the Union.’
‘Too true. And the greatest of all the Union’s noblemen, the first man on the Open Council, only a vote away from the crown.’ She spoke without considering the consequences any more than a spinning stone considers the water it skims across. ‘When his lands were seized, his power snuffed out as though it had never existed, I would have thought the nobles felt threatened. For all they delighted in his fall they saw in it the shadow of their own. I imagine restoring his son to some prudent fraction of his power might be made to play well with the Open Council. Asserting the rights of the ancient families, and so on.’
Bayaz’ chin went up a little, his brows drew down. ‘Perhaps. And?’
‘And while the great Lord Brock had allies and enemies in abundance, his son has none. He has been scorned and ignored for eight years. He is part of no faction, has no agenda but faithfully to serve the crown. He has more than proved his honesty, bravery and unquestioning loyalty to his Majesty on the field of battle.’ She fixed Bayaz with her gaze. ‘It would be a fine story to tell. Instead of lowering himself to dabble in base politics, our monarch chooses to reward faithful service, merit and old-time heroism. The commoners would enjoy it, I think.’
‘Faithful service, merit and heroism. Fine qualities in a soldier.’ As though talking about fat on a pig. ‘But a lord governor is first a politician. Flexibility, ruthlessness and an eye for expediency are more his talents. How is your husband there?’
‘Weak, but perhaps someone close to him could supply those qualities.’
She fancied Bayaz had the ghost of a smile about his lips. ‘I am beginning to suspect they could. You make an interesting suggestion.’
‘You have not thought of everything, then?’
‘Only the truly ignorant believe they have thought of everything. I might even mention it to my colleagues on the Closed Council when we next meet.’
‘I would have thought it would be best to make a choice swiftly, rather than to allow the whole thing to become … an issue. I cannot be considered impartial but, even so, I truly believe my husband to be the best man in the Union.’
Bayaz gave a dry chuckle. ‘Who says I want the best man? It may be that a fool and a weakling as lord governor of Angland would suit everyone better. A fool and a weakling with a stupid, cowardly wife.’
‘That, I am afraid, I cannot offer you. Have an apple.’ And she tossed it at him, made him juggle it with one hand before catching it in the other, his cup tumbling into the sedge, his brows up in surprise. Before he could speak she was already walking away. She could hardly even remember what their conversation had been about. Her mind was entirely
taken up with the way that blue cheek bulged as steel slid underneath it, pushing it in, pushing it in.
For What We Are About to Receive…
It’s an awful fine line between being raised above folk like a leader and being raised above ’em like a hanged man on display. When Craw climbed up on an empty crate to give his little speech, he had to admit he felt closer to the latter. A sea of faces opened up in front of him, the Heroes packed with men from one side of the circle to the other and plenty more pressing in outside. Didn’t help that Black Dow’s own Carls were the grimmest, darkest, toughest-looking crowd you’d find anywhere in the North. And you’ll find a lot of tough crowds in the North. Probably these were a long stretch more interested in doing plunder, rape and murder than anyone’s idea of the right thing, and didn’t care much who got on the pointy end of it either.
Craw was glad he had Jolly Yon, and Flood, and Wonderful stood frowning around the crate. He was even gladder he had Whirrun just beside. The Father of Swords was enough metal to add some weight to anyone’s words. He remembered what Threetrees told him when he made him his Second. He was trying to be their leader, not their lover, and a leader’s best feared first, and liked afterward.
‘Men o’ the North!’ he bellowed into the wind. ‘’Case you didn’t hear, Splitfoot’s dead, and Black Dow’s put me in his place.’ He picked out the biggest, nastiest, most scornful-looking bastard in the whole crowd, a man looked like he shaved with an axe, and leaned towards him. ‘Do what I fucking tell you!’ he snarled. ‘That’s your job now.’ He lingered on him for long enough to make the point he feared nothing, even if the opposite was closer to the truth. ‘Keeping everyone alive, that’s mine. There’s a strong likelihood I ain’t going to succeed in every case. That’s war. Won’t stop me trying, though. And by the dead it won’t stop you lot trying either.’
They milled about a little, a long way from won over. Time to list the pedigree. Bragging weren’t his strong suit these days but there’d be no prize for modesty. ‘My name’s Curnden Craw, and I’m thirty years a Named Man! I stood Second to Rudd Threetrees, back in the day.’ That name got a nodding rustle of approval. ‘The Rock of Uffrith himself. Held a shield for him when he fought his duel with the Bloody-Nine.’ That name got a bigger one. ‘Then I fought for Bethod, and now Black Dow. Every battle you pricks heard of I had a part in.’ He curled his lip. ‘So safe to say you needn’t worry about whether I’m up to the task.’ Even if Craw was worrying his bowels loose over it himself. But his voice rang out gruff and deep still. Thank the dead for his hero’s voice, even if time had given him a coward’s guts.
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