“Steady,” he mouthed, watching, waiting, feeling out the moment. He could see their faces now, if you could call ’em faces. One at the front wore a bloodstained woman’s bonnet and another waved a man’s rusted sword and a third had a horse’s skull over its own face and a fourth a helmet made of spoons bent in a fire or maybe they were nailed into its skull, the rough flesh swollen around the strips of metal.
Grab the moment, ’fore it slips through your fingers.
“Spears!” roared Clover, and men popped from the undergrowth, long spears all pointed down the gully so there was nowhere for the flatheads to run to. They checked and clawed and skittered, surprised by that thicket of bright blades. One couldn’t stop and went tumbling onto the spears, took a point right through the throat and hung there, spitting dark blood and trying to turn around and looking somewhat surprised that it couldn’t.
Clover almost felt sorry for it. But feeling sorry’s always a waste of time, and specially in a battle.
“Arrows!” he roared, and men leaned out over the rocks at the sides of the gully. Bows sang and shafts fluttered down among the Shanka, bounced, rattled, stuck into flesh. He saw one flathead flailing, trying to reach with one twisted arm to where an arrow was sticking from its neck. The archers drew and strung and shot, easy as shooting lambs in a slaughter-pen. A spear went flying up the other way but bounced from a rock, harmless.
The flatheads were shook up, now. Seems Shanka and men don’t behave all that differently when they’re bottled in a gully with shafts showering down on ’em. One tried to climb the rocks and caught three arrows, dropped off on top of another. A third charged at the spears and got stuck through the guts, ripped open all up its side and a metal plate torn from its shoulder, bloody bolts showing underneath.
Clover saw one flathead dragging another that had an arrow in its chest, trying to get it to the back. Almost like something a person might do. A better person than he was, anyway. Made him wonder if flatheads had feelings like people, as well as blood and screams much the same. Then an arrow stuck into the head of the one doing the dragging and it fell with the other one on top and that was that for the demonstration of human feelings. On either side.
Clover got the sense they were ready to break.
“Axes!” he bellowed, and the spearmen split apart, pretty neat. Not too far from what they’d practised, which was quite the wonder under the circumstances. The best fighters Stour had given him came pouring through the gap, mail and shields and good axes smashing into the flatheads from uphill with a sound like hail on a tin roof.
Downside was right at the front, of course. He was a bad bastard. Mad bastard. Fought with that total lack of concern for his own safety that men usually grow out of fast or die of even faster. Hell of a fighter, but no one wanted him ’cause he’d a habit of getting carried away and not really caring who he smashed on the backswing. Or even the frontswing.
Still, when you’re sent to fight monsters, it’s a good idea to have a monster or two of your own. That, and the way he was never happier’n when he was charging at the Great Leveller reminded Clover of himself twenty years past, when they still called him Jonas Steepfield and misfortunes hadn’t taught him to tread lightly. He was just congratulating himself on staying well clear of the action when a spearman gave a screech, dropped clutching at his shoulder, and a giant flathead came roaring out of the pack, a great studded club in its fists.
Clover never saw a Shanka so big nor so covered in iron. They liked to rivet any metal they could find into their skin, but this one was covered all over with hammered plates. A mist sprayed from its mouth as it bellowed, and it sent a man reeling with its club. Others scrambled back, and Clover was not ashamed to say he was with them, jaw well lowered and shield well raised.
The great Shanka took a step forward, lifting its club, then squawked and dropped wobbling on one knee. Sholla had slipped up behind, now set her knife between two of the plates on its head and smashed the pommel with the back of her hatchet calm as hammering a nail. Made this hollow bonk and drove the knife into the Shanka’s skull to the grip, popped one of its eyes right out of its metal-cased head.
“Fuck,” said Clover as it crashed down at his feet with a sound like a chest full of cooking pots.
“Told you I could fight,” said Sholla.
Looked like that was the end of it. The last few flatheads were running. Clover saw one cut down in a shower of blood, another fall with an arrow in its back, a couple bounding away down the gully even quicker than they came.
“Let ’em go!” Clover roared up at the archers. “They can take the message back. They stay north of the mountains, we’ll have no quarrel. They come south, the Great Leveller’s waiting.”
Downside watched ’em run, eyes wide and wild, spit in his beard and blood streaking his face. No one wanted to tell him to stop and honestly Clover didn’t much, either. But that’s the thing about being chief. You can’t just throw your hands up at everything and say it’s someone else’s problem.
So Clover stepped towards him, one palm raised, the other just tickling the grip of the knife in the back of his belt. There’s no bad time to have one hand on a knife, after all.
“Easy, now,” like he was trying to calm a mean-tempered dog. “Calm.”
Downside stared at him, quite mildly, if anything. “I am calm, Chief,” he said, and wiped blood out of his eyes. “Bleeding, though.”
“Well, your own face is a poor choice of weapon.” Clover let go his knife and surveyed the axe-hacked, spear-stuck, arrow-pricked corpses clogging the gully. Fight won, and he hadn’t even needed to swing in anger.
“By the dead,” muttered Flick. There was a flathead spitted on the end of his spear, still twitching.
“You got one,” said Downside, putting a boot on its neck and hacking its skull open.
“By the dead,” muttered Flick again, then he dropped his spear and was sick.
“Some things don’t change,” said Sholla, busy trying to prise her dagger out o’ the big Shanka’s skull.
“Worked out just the way you said, Chief.” Downside rolled a dead flathead over with his boot and left it goggling at the sky.
“You should never have doubted me,” said Clover. “The first weapon you bring to any fight ain’t a spear or an arrow or an axe.”
Flick blinked at him. “Sword?”
“Surprise,” said Clover. “Surprise makes brave men cowards, strong men weak, wise men fools.”
“Ugly fuckers, ain’t they?” said Sholla, tugging, tugging, then nearly falling over backwards as her dagger suddenly came free.
“I find myself on shaky ground when it comes to criticising others’ looks. Weren’t you a butcher’s boy once, Downside?”
“I was.”
“Reckon you can take the lead on carving these bastards, then.”
“What d’you want from ’em, sausages?”
Some of the others laughed at that, ready to laugh at anything now the fight was done and they likely had a fat gild coming.
“Trouble with sausages is you can’t tell what’s in ’em,” said Clover. “I want no one to be in any doubt. Make us a display like they did with those folk at the village. We might not speak the same tongue as Shanka, but heads in trees gets the point across in every language. Toss a few in that sack for Stour while you’re at it.”
“You want to impress a girl, take a bunch o’ flowers.” Flick gave a sad sigh. “You want to impress a King o’ the Northmen, bring a sack o’ heads.”
“’Tis a sorry observation,” said Clover, “but only the truer for that.”
“Don’t think much o’ flowers myself,” said Sholla.
“No?”
“Never saw the point of ’em.”
“They’ve got no point. That’s the point.”
She tipped her head to the side, thinking that one through.
Downside was frowning at the Shanka corpses, weighing his axe and wondering where to start. “Never
thought o’ myself as a man who fills sacks with heads.”
“No one sets off in that direction,” said Clover, puffing out his cheeks one more time. “But before you know it, there you bloody are.”
Visions
“She’s coming back.”
“Thank the dead,” Rikke heard her father say in the fizzing blackness, and she groaned as she pushed the spit-wet dowel out of her mouth. “But that’s four times this week.”
“Fits are getting worse,” croaked Rikke. Her teeth ached. Her head was splitting. She prised one eye open, then the other, saw Isern and her father looking down at her. “Least I didn’t shit this time.”
“To shit you have to eat,” said Isern, hard-faced as ever. “What did you see?”
“I saw a river full of corpses.” Bobbing and turning, face up and face down. “I saw two old men fight a duel in the Circle, and two young women hold hands under a golden dome.” Applause echoing in the gilded spaces. “I saw a flag with an eye upon it, standing behind a high chair.” And someone sitting in the chair… who had it been? “I saw an old woman…” Rikke winced and pressed her hand against her left eye, burning hot, and shuddered at the memory, still faint on the inside of her lids. “And her face was stitched together with golden wire. She spoke to me…”
Isern sagged back on her haunches. “I know this woman.”
“You sure?” asked Rikke’s father.
“’Tis a distinctive look, d’you not think? She is a witch.” Isern took up the dangling necklace of runes and fingerbones she wore, tattooed knuckles whitening as she squeezed it tight. “She is a woman much loved by the moon, or perhaps much hated.” Rikke never saw Isern-i-Phail look anywhere near scared before, and it made her feel scared. Even more scared than usual. “She is a sorceress who returned from the land of the dead.”
“None escape the Great Leveller,” muttered Rikke’s father.
“None escape. But they say some few…” Isern’s voice faded to a scratchy whisper. “Are sent back.” She leaned close, hard hands gripping Rikke’s shoulders. “What did she tell you?”
“That I had to choose,” whispered Rikke, feeling cold all over.
“Choose what?”
“I don’t know.”
Isern bared her teeth, tongue stuck in the hole where one was missing. “Then we must pick a path up into the High Places. There is a forbidden cave there, beside a forbidden lake. That’s where she lives. If you can use the word about a dead woman.”
Rikke’s father stared. “Do we really want help from a corpse stitched together with golden wire?”
“Help with strange problems comes from strange people.”
“I guess.” Rikke’s father helped her up, the horribly familiar pain pulsing away behind her eyes. “You should eat something.”
Her gorge rose at the thought. “I’m not hungry.”
“You’re skin and bones, girl.”
“I just need some air. Just need to breathe.”
Isern pushed the door creaking open and bright daggers glittered along its edge, stabbing, stabbing. Rikke closed one eye altogether and the other to a slit, groaning as they helped her through the doorway. She felt weak as a newborn calf. Everything hurt. The soles of her feet. The tips of her fingers. The inside of her arse.
They helped her onto her father’s favourite bench in the overgrown garden, with the view of Uffrith’s steep streets sloping down to the glittering sea. “Oh, the sun’s a bastard,” she muttered, but she managed to smile as the salt breeze came up and kissed her clammy face. “But the wind’s a good friend.”
“Other way around where we’re going,” said Isern, dumping a sheepskin about Rikke’s shoulders. “Up into the hills.”
“Everything’s a matter of where you stand.” Rikke’s father took both her hands in his. “I have to get back to this bloody moot. If I’m not there, they’ll argue.”
“They’ll argue more if you are there. They’re like bloody children.”
“We’re all like children, Rikke. The older you get, the more you realise the grown-ups won’t suddenly walk in and set things right. You want things right, you have to put ’em right yourself.”
“With your bones and your brains, eh?”
“And your heart, Rikke. And your heart.”
She squeezed her father’s hands, so thin and crooked. “I worry they’ll wear you down.”
“Me?” He gave a smile that was convincing no one. “Never.”
“They already have.”
He smiled again. Truer this time. “That’s what it is to be chief. You make the hard choices so your people won’t have the trouble of ’em.” He glanced about at the weed-choked beds as he stood, brushing off his knees. “One day I’ll tame this bloody garden, you’ll see. You just sit in the breeze, now. Sit and rest.”
Wasn’t like she had much choice. Didn’t have the strength to do much else. She sat and listened to the gulls squawking on the rooftops and the bees busy at the garden’s first ramshackle hints of blossom. She watched the fishermen on the wharves, the women at the well, the carpenters still mending the wounds Stour Nightfall had cut into Uffrith. She wondered if her father would live to see it put right again, and the thought made her feel sad. Sad and lonely. Who’d she be when he was gone?
She closed her eyes again and felt tears prickling. She hardly dared look these days in case she saw something that wasn’t there yet. Hardly dared breathe in case she choked on years-old smoke. Isern had always told her that you cannot force the Long Eye open, but she’d tried, when Leo fought his duel against Stour Nightfall. She’d tried, and seen a crack in the sky. She’d tried, and seen too much, and now she couldn’t force the Long Eye closed again.
“Hear tell you had a fit.”
A shaggy shape loomed over her, a dull glint where one eye should be. “Hey, hey, Shivers,” she said.
He sat beside her, looking out towards the sea. “Hey, hey, stringy.”
“That’s rude.”
“I’m an infamous killer. What d’you expect?”
“One can still kill politely.” It was then she noticed a building not far away was on fire. Going up like a torch, it was, flames gouting from the windows and burning straws whirling from the thatch.
Rikke gently cleared her throat. Even that made her head pound. “That building over there…” She watched a fire-wreathed figure stagger from the doorway and flop down near the well, no one taking much notice.
“What, the inn?”
“Aye. Is it… would you say… on fire, at all?”
Shivers raised his brows at it. Or he raised the one that worked, at least. “Not that I can tell. Does it look on fire to you?”
She winced as the tottering chimney stack collapsed into the charred rafters in a gout of sparks. “Little bit. But I’ve a habit of seeing things that aren’t there.”
“Getting worse?”
“Despite my efforts to look on the sunny side, it seems so.” Rikke felt tears in her eyes and had to wipe them away. The left one was hot again. It was always hot, now. “Isern says there’s someone up in the mountains might help. A dead witch whose face is stitched together with golden wire.”
“That’s your help?”
“Help with strange problems comes from strange people.”
“I guess,” he said.
“At this point, I’ll take any I can get. What’ve you been up to?”
“I was sitting in this moot of your father’s. They’re talking of the future.”
“And what’s in it?”
“You’re the one with the Long Eye.”
Rikke stared at that burning building that wasn’t really burning. The one next door had caught fire, too, now, just patches among the thatch. By the dead, she wanted to reach for a bucket, but how do you put out flames that aren’t there yet? Or that burned out long ago? “Fire and discord,” she muttered.
Shivers gave a grunt. “Takes no magic to see that coming. Red Hat thinks the Protectorate should be
part o’ the Union, with seats on their bloody Open Council and everything, I daresay.”
“Hard to imagine.”
“Oxel thinks we should kneel to Stour Nightfall.”
Rikke curled her lip and spat, but weak as she was, she got most of it down her front. “Give it all away before he tears it from us?”
“Or bargain for something while we’ve still got something to bargain with.”
“What about Hardbread?”
“He can’t decide one way or the other, so he agrees with whoever’s talking. No one reckons we can stay as we are once your father’s gone. And no one reckons he’ll be around much longer.”
Rikke blinked at him. “That’s harsh.”
Shivers’ metal eye twinkled with the colours of fire. “I’m an infamous killer. What d’you expect?”
By the dead but the whole of Uffrith was burning now, clouds lit orange and yellow and red and the air heavy with screams and clatters of war, and Rikke gave a groaning sigh, right from her hollow belly, and closed her smarting eyes, and clapped her sore hands over ’em, but even then she could feel the heat pressing on her face, the smoke harsh in her nose.
Something was forced between her jaws and she gagged, tried to twist in a sudden panic but couldn’t move, gripped tight as swelling ice might grip a drowned corpse.
“She’s coming back.”
“Thank the dead,” Rikke heard her father say in the fizzing blackness. “But that’s four times this week.”
She jerked up, pain stabbing behind her eyelids, and spat out the dowel. “Fits are getting worse!”
She was in her room again. Her teeth ached. Her head was splitting. She stared up bleary at her father’s worried face, trying to make sense of it.
“What did you see?” asked Isern. Again.
“The river of corpses and the old men fighting and the young women holding hands and the flag with the eye and an old woman…” blathered Rikke, pressing her hand against her left eye, burning hot. “And her face was stitched together with golden wire.” The same words slobbering out. The same words as before. “She said I had to choose.”
The Trouble with Peace Page 7
