A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,153

North hanging on a single—’

Rikke’s father looked horrified. ‘Those were supposed to be warnings, boy, not encouragements!’

‘Has it occurred to either of you that I might bloody win?’ Leo angrily bunched one scabbed fist. ‘We’re fought out! We’ve no help coming and Scale Ironhand has fresh men ready! This might be our only chance to take back Uffrith. To keep the Protectorate alive!’

Rikke’s father folded his arms, and puffed up a slow sigh, and glanced at Leo’s mother from under his bushy brows. ‘Can’t deny he’s got a point.’

‘I can win!’ Leo came to stand right next to the frozen knight herald, the big seal on the scroll that wasn’t there almost touching his face. ‘I know I can! Rikke saw it!’

Rikke’s father and Leo’s mother turned together to look at her. She stood frozen, mouth and eyes wide open like a burglar caught with her hand in a purse.

And it came to her then that Isern had been right. What she’d seen was one thing but what she said another, and there needn’t be a straight road between the two, but any kind of maze she chose to put there. Sorry, Leo, I made a mistake. Sorry, Leo, your mother’s right. Sorry, Leo, actually the lion lost, and got his fruits ripped off and stuck on a pike.

Might be she was holding the reins after all. Might be she always had been. Might be she’d done this, and could undo it.

But somewhere at the back of her mind, in a dark corner she’d hardly known she had, she found she wanted to see Leo fight Stour Nightfall. To see him spill that evil bastard’s blood in front of the whole North. To take her share of vengeance, for her father, for those wounded in the glade, for the dead already in the mud, for the shit she’d gone through out in the cold woods.

She could’ve said anything. She chose to tell the truth.

‘I saw a lion and a wolf fight in a circle of blood, and the lion won.’

Leo’s mother pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘So you are going to risk your life, not to mention the future of the North, because this girl saw animals fighting while she had a fit?’

‘She saw the Nail come from the woods before it happened,’ said Rikke’s father, forced against his better judgement into defending her. ‘Weren’t for that, we might all be in the mud already.’

‘For pity’s sake, Rikke!’ shouted Finree. ‘You’re no fool! Tell him this is madness!’

‘Well …’ Rikke frowned at jingling footsteps outside, spurs on armoured boots, and she rolled her eyes up to the tent’s ceiling. ‘Ahhhhh. I get it.’

‘Get what?’

‘Hardly matters what I think. Or you.’

‘Might I ask why?’

Rikke nodded towards the tent flap. ‘Because of him.’

It was swept open with a swirling of cloth and the knight herald stomped into the tent. He pulled the scroll from his satchel and stepped forward, coming to stand just exactly where he’d been standing the whole time, scroll offered out to Leo, great seal dangling.

‘My Lord Brock,’ he said. ‘A message from the king.’

There was a breathless stillness in the tent as Leo took the scroll and slowly unrolled it. He read the first few lines and looked up, eyes wide.

‘The king confirms me in my father’s place as Lord Governor of Angland.’

Rikke’s father let go a long, slow breath. Leo’s mother took a half-step forwards.

‘Leo—’

‘No,’ he said. Not sharp, but very firm. ‘I know you want what’s best for me, Mother. I’m grateful for all you’ve taught me. But I have to stand on my own now. I’m fighting Stour Nightfall. Nothing anyone can say will change my mind.’

And he turned and pushed his way out of the tent.

The knight herald nodded, somewhat sheepishly, to Lady Finree, then followed the new Lord Governor of Angland, thankfully taking his ghost with him.

Rikke’s father rubbed wearily at his stubbled jaw. ‘Well. We tried.’ And he patted Rikke on the shoulder and made his own way out.

Lady Finree was left staring towards the flap. A few moments ago, she’d been in total command. With a stroke of the king’s pen, she was cut down to some warrior’s worried mother.

‘It feels like yesterday I was feeding him, and dressing him, and wiping his arse.’ She looked at Rikke, voice turning harsh. ‘He’s a bloody idiot who knows nothing about anything, but he was born with a cock, so he gets to decide for all of us!’

She looked old, of a