A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,148

back, spit flying from his bared teeth. He tried to drag himself forward but Jurand held him back, or maybe held him up, it was only fury stopped Leo’s knees from buckling.

‘We won’t settle this on the field!’ snarled Nightfall.

That was true enough. They were all fought out. Up on the red hill, vague through the rain, the Union were pulling back, but Stour’s men were in no shape to follow and the rain had turned the battlefield to glue.

Stour fought free of his warriors and stood tall, pointing across the bridge with his blood-slathered sword. ‘Let’s settle it like men! In the Circle! You and me!’

Leo hardly even gave a shit about the terms. All he wanted was to fight this bastard. To rip him apart with his bare hands. To bite him with his teeth.

A lion fought a wolf in a circle of blood, and the lion won.

‘In the Circle!’ he bellowed into the rain. ‘You and me!’

PART III

‘Love turns, with a little indulgence,

to indifference or disgust;

hatred alone is immortal.’

William Hazlitt

Demands

Forest stepped into the room wearing his hallmark fur hat and ruggedly grave expression. The hat he removed. The grave expression he kept in place. ‘The Breakers should be here soon, Your Highness.’

‘Good,’ murmured Orso. ‘Good.’ He expressed the exact opposite of his feelings so often, one might have hoped he would be better at it. In fact, the thought of the Breakers’ arrival left him desperately wanting a drink. But dawn was probably considered too early at a peace negotiation, even for a small beer or something. He puffed out a worried sigh.

A local worthy had offered up his dining room as the venue, and though the table was highly polished, Orso found the chairs exceedingly uncomfortable. Or perhaps he simply found himself uncomfortable in the role of negotiator. Or any responsible role, really. He nervously straightened his jacket for the thousandth time. It had fit him perfectly in the safety of Adua, but suddenly it was tight about the throat. He leaned towards Superior Pike with an apologetic smile.

‘I think it might be useful if, when they arrive … you were to play the villain?’

Pike subjected Orso to that withering stare. ‘Because of my hideous burns?’

‘That and all the black.’

The faint twisting of Pike’s face might almost have been a smile. ‘Don’t worry, Your Highness, I have had some practice in the role. Feel free to slap me down if I become too dastardly. I look forward to seeing you as the hero of our little piece.’

‘I hope I can convince,’ murmured Orso, tugging his jacket smooth yet again. ‘I fear I missed all the rehearsals.’

The double doors swung open and the Breakers strode in. Orso’s ever-fertile imagination had built them up into red-handed zealots. In the flesh, they were a slightly disappointingly, then perhaps a rather reassuringly, ordinary group.

In the lead came a weighty old man: brawny shoulders, broad hands, heavy-lidded eyes that settled on Orso and stayed there, immovable. Next came a fellow with a scarred face whose eyes settled on nothing, darting twitchily around the room to windows, doors, the half-dozen guards about the panelled walls, meeting no one’s eye. Finally, there was a woman with a stained coat and an unkempt shag of lank hair, one of the hardest frowns Orso ever saw showing beneath. The look of implacable scorn in her blue eyes actually reminded him more than a little of his mother.

‘Welcome!’ He aimed at a balance between warm indulgence and effortless authority, but no doubt ended up with prickly weakness. ‘I am Crown Prince Orso, this is Colonel Forest, commander of the four regiments currently encircling Valbeck, and this—’

‘We’ve all heard of Superior Pike,’ said the old man, dropping heavily into the middle chair and frowning across the table.

‘Only good things, I hope,’ whispered Pike, oozing menace. Orso felt the hairs on his neck bristling even though he sat on the same side. When it came to playing the villain, he was clearly in the presence of a virtuoso.

‘My name is Malmer.’ The old Breaker’s voice was as weighty as his frame, each word placed as carefully as a master mason fits his stones. ‘This is Brother Heron, fought a dozen years in your father’s armies.’ He nodded towards the scar-faced man, then to the hard-faced woman, who appeared to be reaching greater heights of epic contempt with every breath Orso took. ‘This is Sister Teufel, spent a dozen years in your father’s prison camps.’

‘Charmed?’ ventured Orso,