A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,119

moment.’ Clover sighed. ‘Sooner or later, they’ll be setting a trap for us.’

‘And at this rate, these two heroes will be blundering right into it.’ Calder frowned harder than ever at his son. ‘How did he end up with so little of me in him?’

‘Never had to face hard times,’ said Wonderful, softly.

Clover wagged a finger at her. ‘There speaks the stern voice of experience. Defeats do men far more good than victories.’ And he reached up and scratched gently at his scar. ‘Best gift I was ever given. Taught me humility.’

‘Humility,’ scoffed Calder. ‘Can’t think of a man with a higher opinion of himself than you.’

Clover raised his cup to Magweer, who’d picked him out for another dose of glaring as Stour’s manly legend reached its climax. ‘The world’s brimming with folk keen to break me down. Don’t see any reason to do their work for ’em.’

‘You don’t see any reason to do any work at all.’

There was no point denying it. Luckily for Clover, the King of the Northmen chose that moment to struggle up, raising his iron hand for silence.

‘Here comes the wisdom,’ murmured Black Calder, without much relish.

‘My father, Bethod!’ Scale roared at the gathering, swaying from good ale and bad knees. ‘Made himself King of the Northmen! He built cities, and bound them with roads. He forced the clans together, and carved out a nation where there was none before.’ No mention of the thirty years of bloodshed that had got it done. But that’s the nice thing about looking backwards. You can pick out the bits that suit your story and toss the unhappy truths to the wind.

Scale was frowning down into the firepit now. ‘My father was betrayed. My father was struck down! His kingdom torn up like meat between greedy dogs.’ His dewy eyes rolled up, and he pointed to Stour with his good hand. ‘But we’ll put right the wrongs of the past. We’ll finish the Dogman’s fucking Protectorate! We’ll drive the bloody Union out of the North! Stour Nightfall, my nephew and my heir, will rule supreme from the Whiteflow to the Crinna and beyond!’ And he held up his cup, ale slopping over the rim and spattering down his front. ‘Bethod’s dream lives on in his grandson! The Great Wolf!’

And all raised their drinks and competed with each other to roar out Stour’s name the loudest, and Clover and Wonderful raised theirs just as high as anyone else.

‘Still say he’s a prick,’ whispered Clover, smiling wide.

‘More so with each day,’ forced Wonderful through clenched teeth, and they tapped their cups together and took a swallow, because Clover had never worried much over what he drank to, as long as he drank.

Calder didn’t join the toast. Just frowned at his brother as he sagged back down on his bench and bellowed for more ale. ‘Some men never learn,’ he murmured.

‘We all learn.’ Clover watched those old warriors and those young, and ever so gently scratched at his scar. ‘Just some of us have to learn hard.’

A Deal

‘You promised me, Gunnar.’ Liddy’s voice came muffled through the flimsy wall, but easily understood. ‘You promised me you’d stay out of trouble.’

‘I’ve tried, Liddy. I haven’t looked for it, it’s just … it’s found us out.’

‘Trouble has a habit of finding you out.’

Savine looked across the little room at May, light from outside the ill-fitting window catching her clenched jaw, head turned away from her parents’ voices as if to pretend she could not hear them.

‘I’m just trying to get from one day to the next,’ came Gunnar’s voice. ‘Trying to keep things together.’

Keeping things together was no easy task in Valbeck. The riots might mostly have stopped but the heat, and the anger, and the fear hung over the city thick as the vapours had when the furnaces were still lit. Fear of violence. Fear of hunger. Fear of what would happen when the authorities returned. Fear that they might not. Who was in charge depended on who you asked, which part of town you were in, whether it was day or night. If there was any plan in all this madness, all this destruction, Savine could not see it. No one was safe in Valbeck now. Perhaps no one ever truly was. Perhaps safety was a lie people told themselves so they could carry on.

She closed her eyes, and thought of the feeling as she stabbed that squinting man through the chest. As she ran the one with the cap