A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,139

son. ‘Could be someone else’s?’ he tried, hopefully. ‘No one’s in particular?’

‘No, it’s his.’ Stour worked the words around and spat ’em out. ‘The Young Lion. What kind o’ name is that?’

‘Ridiculous.’ Clover held up his hands and fluttered the fingers. ‘The Great Wolf! Now that’s a name.’

Wonderful made a little squeak. She had her lips pressed together tight like she was trying not to shit herself. Stour frowned at her, then at Clover.

‘Are you making light o’ me, you old fucker?’

Clover looked dumbstruck. ‘Man like me, make light of a man like you? I wouldn’t dare. I’m agreeing the Young Lion is a stupid name for a man to have. For one thing, he’s not a lion, is he? For another he’s, what, twenty-ish?’

‘About that,’ said Wonderful.

‘So … considering the lifespan of a lion …’ Clover squinted up at the grey sky, no idea how long a lion lived, ‘probably … maybe … he’d be quite an old lion, would he?’

He kept his face blank as fresh snow, counting on the short attention span common to famous warriors and, indeed, soon enough, the Great Wolf forgot all about it, fully occupied glowering down the valley, towards that bridge. Towards that standard. He gave a great sniff. ‘Let’s have a poke at those bastards.’

All of a sudden, Wonderful looked like shitting herself for very different reasons. ‘Don’t know about that, Chief. You sure?’

‘Ever known me to not be sure?’

In Clover’s experience, only idiots were ever sure about anything. He nodded up towards that ruined tower above the bridge, the red-topped fell on the other side. ‘Could be a trap. If they’ve got men waiting on those hills, we’d be putting ourselves in a right pickle.’

‘No doubt,’ said Wonderful, jaw set tight.

Stour gave an irritated hiss. ‘Everything looks like a trap to you two.’

‘Act that way,’ said Clover, ‘you’ll never be surprised.’

‘You’ll never surprise your enemy, either. Bring up a couple of hundred Carls, Wonderful.’ And Stour bunched his fists, white-knuckle tight, like he couldn’t wait to start throwing punches. ‘Let’s give those bastards a poke.’

She pointed that brow of hers at Clover but he could only shrug, so she turned and bellowed at one of the scouts to bring up more men. What else could she do? Getting folk to do what your chief says is what being a second is all about. Whether or not your chief’s a prick is beside the point.

Rikke crouched on the roof of the broken tower, twitching, chewing, fretting, even more nervous than before. Almost too nervous to bear.

First the Union had been forced back over the bridge, then more Union men had come up and driven the Northmen back, then more Northmen had come up, and now there was a great clog of warriors crowding in on either side of the river, more of Nightfall’s Carls flooding down the road towards it. Strange sounds floated up, twisted by wind and distance.

‘That bloody fool’s stumbled right into it!’ Rikke’s father was licking his lips, but she couldn’t share his joy. Couldn’t twitch free of the feeling it was them stumbling into something. She glanced towards the trees again. The men she’d seen with the Long Eye had faded now. Maybe she caught their ghostly after-images. Maybe nothing.

‘We can’t wait any longer. Red Hat?’

‘Aye, Chief?’

‘Send Oxel and Hardbread the word—’

‘Wait!’ hissed Rikke. There was something moving in the woods. Branches thrashing, a glimmer of metal through the leaves. ‘Tell me you see that!’

Her father’s face had turned grim. ‘I see that.’

Shivers burst from the trees, running full tilt for the fortress. Some of his scouts shot from the woods around him, one looking back as they started to scramble up the grassy hillside.

‘Man the walls!’ roared Shivers. Arrows flitted from the trees, twittering about him. One of his men took a shaft in the back and slipped, tottered up, carried on running with the shaft sticking from his shoulder. ‘Woods are full o’ the bastards!’

Rikke’s father stood up tall at the crumbling battlements, bellowing down into the yard. ‘Man the walls! Black Calder’s coming from the North!’

Then Rikke saw that pale man step out of the trees, right to the spot she’d already seen him in. He beckoned with his axe, just the way she’d already seen him do, and men started to spill from the woods around him.

‘It’s the Nail!’ roared Red Hat, waving his sword, and warriors swarmed towards the ruined walls, falling over each other in their haste to shift from the