A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,137

for more men, but all he did was turn his shifty sneer from the trees to her and spit.

‘What the hell you talking about, girl?’ he growled. ‘There’s no one there.’

‘Fucking mad bitch,’ she heard one of the others mutter as they drifted back into the ruin, shaking their heads.

Rikke wondered if she was going mad. Or more mad, maybe. Men were flooding from the trees now. Hundreds of the bastards. ‘You see ’em, don’t you?’ she asked Isern in a small voice.

The hillwoman leaned on her spear, calmly chewing. ‘The men are rude, but the men are right. There’s no one there.’ She gave Rikke a painful jab with her sharp elbow. ‘But maybe someone will be.’

‘Oh, no.’ And Rikke covered her eyes with a hand and the left one was hot. ‘Wanna be sick.’ She bent over and coughed out an acrid little mouthful, but when she looked up, the men were still there, too brightly lit since the sun was still low, a great standard in their midst, flapping hard even though the breeze had died. ‘They even got a flag.’

‘What flag?’

‘Black with a red circle.’

Isern’s frown got harder. ‘That was Bethod’s standard. Now it’s Black Calder’s.’

Rikke was sick again. Just a little string of drool this time, and she spat and wiped her mouth. ‘Thought he … was way off north.’

‘You cannot force the Long Eye open,’ murmured Isern. ‘But when it opens by itself, it’s a fool who doesn’t see.’ She turned and limped quick across the rubble-strewn yard of the fortress, making men grumble as she shouldered past. ‘Black Calder’s always had a bad habit of turning up where he shouldn’t.’

‘So what’re you doing?’

‘Warning your father.’

‘You sure?’ muttered Rikke as she followed Isern up the crumbling steps, still glimpsing those men out of the corner of her eye. An army of ’em now. ‘I mean, what if they’re going to turn up next week? Or next month? What if they turned up years ago!’

‘Then we’ll look like a right pair o’ fools.’ Isern grinned at her as she limped up onto the roof of the tower. ‘But at least we won’t be two corpses in a big heap of corpses. Dogman!’

‘Isern-i-Phail,’ muttered Rikke’s father with a sideways glance. ‘Make it good, I’ve got a battle to—’

‘Black Calder’s in those woods.’ She nodded off to the North. ‘Planning to sneak men around you, I reckon.’

‘You seen ’em?’

‘I must confess, I did not. But your daughter did.’ She slapped a heavy hand down on Rikke’s shoulder. ‘The moon has smiled upon us all and blessed her with the rare gift o’ the Long Eye. We should make ready for blood.’

‘You’re not joking.’ Rikke’s father pointed in the opposite direction. ‘Stour Nightfall might be coming down that road any bloody minute and Lady Brock’s counting on us to be one-half of a trap for him! We don’t arrive, the whole plan’s in the shit.’

Isern grinned like this was all quite the lark. ‘Not half as deep as if Black Calder sidles up our arses while we’re facing t’other way, though, d’you see?’

Rikke’s father pressed at his temples. ‘By the dead. I can’t turn around just on your say-so, Rikke. I can’t.’

‘I know,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders high as they’d go. ‘I wouldn’t.’

‘You seen ’em, though?’ croaked Shivers.

Rikke glanced sideways and there they still were, a great long line just in front of the trees, hundreds of Carls, their shields bright blobs of colour, gathered around Black Calder’s standard. ‘I see ’em now. The one at the front’s smiling right at me.’

‘Describe him.’

‘A long, lean, pale bastard with an axe and a sword, sort of hunched over, all elbows. Ugh.’ And she had to bend over herself, hands on her knees, head spinning.

‘Sounds a lot like the Nail,’ said Shivers, frowning down towards the woods. ‘If Black Calder sent a man around the back, the Nail’s the sort o’ man he’d send.’

Rikke’s father gave a low grunt. ‘Maybe.’

‘Give me a few Carls,’ said Shivers. ‘I’ll have a root around those woods. I find nothing, nothing lost.’

Rikke’s father looked from Shivers, to Isern, to Rikke, and back. ‘Root around, then, but quick. If we’re called for, we can’t wait.’

Shivers nodded and slipped down the crumbling steps. The sun was getting higher, and down in the valley on the brown strip of the road, men were moving. A few, and coming carefully. ‘Oh, by the dead.’ Rikke covered her eye with her hand, felt it still throbbing hot against