Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,193
who lost his life so they could get this fool job done. Scorry held him a moment while blood showered from his slit neck, caught him as he fell, guided his twitching body soundless to the side of the gate, out of sight of any curious eyes inside.
No more noise than the breeze in the brush, Craw and the rest hurried up the bank, bent double, weapons ready. Scorry was waiting, knife already wiped, peering around the side of the gate post with one hand up behind him to say wait. Craw frowned down at the dead man’s bloody face, mouth a bit open as though he was about to ask a question. A potter makes pots. A baker makes bread. And this is what Craw made. All he’d made all his life, pretty much.
It was hard to feel much pride at the sight, however neatly the work had been done. It was still a man murdered just for guarding his own village. Because they were men, these, with hopes and sorrows and all the rest, even if they lived out here past the Crinna and didn’t wash too often. But what could one man do? Craw took a long breath in, and let it out slow. Just get the task done without any of his own people killed. In hard times, soft thoughts can kill you quicker than the plague.
He looked at Wonderful, and he jerked his head into the village, and she slid around the gate post and in, slipping across to the right-hand track, shaved head swivelling carefully left and right. Scorry followed at her heels and Brack crept after, silent for all his great bulk.
Craw took a long breath, then crept across to the left-hand track, wincing as he tried to find the hardest, quietest bits of the rutted muck to plant his feet on. He heard the hissing of Yon’s careful breath behind him, knew Whirrun was there too, though he moved quiet as a cat. Craw could hear something clicking. A spinning wheel, maybe. He heard someone laugh, not sure if he was imagining it. His head was jerked this way and that to every trace of a sound, like he had a hook through his nose. The whole thing seemed horribly bright and obvious, right then. Maybe they should’ve waited for darkness, but Craw had never liked working at night. Not since that fucking disaster at Gurndrift where Pale-as-Snow’s boys ended up fighting Littlebone’s on an accident and more’n fifty men dead without an enemy within ten miles. Too much to go wrong at night.
But then Craw had seen plenty of men die in the day too.
He slid along beside a wattle wall, and he had that sweat of fear on him. That prickling sweat that comes with death right at your shoulder. Everything was picked out sharper than sharp. Every stick in the wattle, every pebble in the dirt. The way the leather binding the grip of his sword dug at his palm when he shifted his fingers. The way each in-breath gave the tiniest whistle when it got three quarters into his aching lungs. The way the sole of his foot stuck to the inside of his boot through the hole in his sock with every careful step. Stuck to it and peeled away.
He needed to get him some new socks, was what he needed. Well, first he needed to live out the day, then socks. Maybe even those ones he’d seen in Uffrith last time he was there, dyed red. They’d all laughed at that. Him, and Yon, and Wonderful, and poor dead Jutlan. Laughed at the madness of it. But afterwards, he’d thought to himself—there’s luxury, that a man could afford to have his socks dyed—and cast a wistful glance over his shoulder at that fine cloth. Maybe he’d go back after this fool job was done with, and get himself a pair of red socks. Maybe he’d get himself two pairs. Wear ’em on the outside of his boots just to show folk what a big man he was. Maybe they’d take to calling him Curnden Red Socks. He felt a smile in spite of himself. Red socks, that was the first step on the road to ruin if ever he’d—
The door to a hovel on their left wobbled open and three men walked out of it, all laughing. The one at the front turned his shaggy head, big smile still plastered across his face, yellow teeth sticking