her palm. ‘Tell me you see them?’
‘Oh, aye. Stour Nightfall’s scouts, I reckon.’ And Isern spat. ‘’Course I see them.’
Muddy grey dawn had become muddy grey morning by the time Leo rode up through the red bracken on the hillside. The men of Angland sat in massed ranks where they were hidden from the valley, armed and ready. Some stood to salute, a few held up their swords. Others called out, ‘The Young Lion!’ against their orders to stay quiet. Seemed the soldiers approved of him a lot more than his mother did.
She was kneeling in the bracken just beyond the summit, an eyeglass trained on the valley, a whispering group of scouts and officers around her.
She shook her head as he crept over, keeping low. ‘I thought I gave Antaup orders that you shouldn’t come up here?’
‘Yes, and I came anyway …’ He trailed off. There were men in the valley. Mounted men, spread out, watching their little show of incompetence down at the bridge. Northmen, without a doubt. ‘Nightfall’s scouts?’ he asked in an eager whisper.
She handed him her eyeglass. ‘And his main body is following close behind. Head of the column is there at the farm.’
Leo trained the glass on a few pale farm buildings higher up the valley. Metal gleamed on the brown strip of road. Mail and spear points. A column of armed men, moving towards the bridge. Carls, from the little spots of bright colour which must be their shields. Like seeing one ant in the grass and suddenly seeing dozens, Leo became aware of another column, and another.
‘Bloody hell,’ he squawked, excitement surging up his throat and nearly choking him. ‘They’re taking the bait!’
He squinted harder. There was something waving beside the farm. A tall grey flag, and though he couldn’t be sure at this distance, he’d a feeling there was a black wolf on it.
‘Nightfall’s standard,’ he whispered.
‘Yes.’ His mother pulled her eyeglass from his limp grip and set it to her own eye again. ‘And this time, I’ve no doubt, the Great Wolf is here in person.’
‘What did these bastards do?’ asked Clover, frowning up at the bodies.
‘They was on the Dogman’s side,’ said Greenway, nodding like a family dangling from a tree was a job well done.
Couple of Thralls had dragged a cupboard from the farmhouse, now they shoved it over in the dirt and started hacking at it with axes. Clover squinted at ’em, bemused.
‘What is it they think an axe will reveal that opening the doors won’t?’
‘Hidden stuff. Gold, maybe.’
‘Gold? You’re having a laugh.’
Greenway frowned a pouty frown – aside from sneers, it was his one expression. ‘Silver, then.’
‘Silver? If these bastards had silver, let alone gold, why the hell would they be up here farming for a pittance? They’d be in town, drunk, which is where I should bloody be.’
‘Best to be sure,’ said one of the men.
‘Oh, aye,’ said Clover. ‘Daresay you’ll be burning the house once you’ve found nothing, ’cause fire is pretty.’
The man glanced over at Greenway, somewhat sheepish, and scratched his head. Seemed that was exactly what he’d been planning.
‘And if Stour wants somewhere to sleep tonight, he can curl up in the ashes, can he?’ Clover strolled past, shaking his head. What a waste. Waste of people, waste of things, waste of effort. But that was war for you. Nothing he hadn’t seen a dozen times before. If the Great Wolf wanted to decorate his new land with corpses and have creaking ropes for music, then who was he to complain?
The king-in-waiting was a little further on with Wonderful, considering the view while he chewed on a stolen apple.
‘Don’t like the looks of this,’ said Clover, folding his arms tight. ‘Not one bit.’
‘No,’ said Wonderful. ‘It fucking stinks.’
The road dropped into a grassy valley ahead, a steep hill on either side. One had some old ruin clinging to its rocky top, the other was bigger and shallower, red bracken giving the crown a dried-blood look Clover didn’t much care for.
Between the two fells, down in the valley’s bottom, a little bridge crossed a stream. Looked like there might be a few Union men tangled up on both sides of it. Clover’s eyes weren’t all they once had been, but he thought he could see a flag waving above them.
Stour’s eyes were sharper, and thoughtfully narrowed in its direction. ‘You reckon that’s Leo dan Brock’s standard down there?’
Clover felt his heart sinking. It was getting to be a familiar feeling around Black Calder’s