A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,163

finally Leo was pushed off balance and had to stumble away, their swords ringing apart. He gasped as Stour’s blade came hissing at him, dodged desperately, slipped and nearly fell, reeled back into a little space, breathing hard.

The crowd on the Northern side bellowed their approval. The crowd on the Union’s murmured their disappointment. The Great Wolf gave a showy flourish of his sword and grinned. It was plain they were all coming to the same conclusion.

Stour was the better swordsman.

Still, Leo once heard someone say there’s always a way. He’d had his doubts at the time, but now it struck him as a hopeful philosophy. Words to live by? If he couldn’t beat the Great Wolf with speed or strength, he’d have to outlast him. Tire him with a dogged defence, a sullen determination, a stubborn endurance. He’d be the deep-rooted tree the hurricane can’t shift. He had to wear the bastard down.

Stour thrust, but off-centre. It was easy for Leo to step around it, finally sensing an opening. But just as he pounced, Stour dipped his shoulder, whipped his sword across in a flicking cut. Leo gasped as he felt the wind of the blade across his face. He slashed back but the Great Wolf was already dancing away, grinning, always grinning.

The crowd roared. For a moment, Leo thought it was for him. Then he felt something tickling his cheek. Stour’s point had scratched his face, so quick and so sharp he’d hardly felt it. It was blood the crowd were cheering for. His blood.

As Leo backed off, the cut began to tingle, then to throb. He wondered how bad a scar it would leave. Wondered if it was a Naming Wound. But as that cold doubt crept all the way up to his throat, he realised you had to live through the duel for that. The dead get no names.

Stour’s grin grew a tooth wider. A tooth crueller.

‘I’m going to bleed you, boy,’ he said.

Clover jerked away as the point of Brock’s sword flashed past on the backswing not a hand’s width from his nose. Stour darted in, all snarl and fury, thrust, thrust again. Brock gasped as he jumped back, knocking Stour’s sword wide so it gouged into the shield just next to Clover’s.

By the dead, the noise. The grind of steel, the growls of the fighters, the monstrous fury of the crowd.

By the dead, the crush. Shield-carriers straining, rims scraping against his as they shifted, shoulders squeezing against his as they shoved, the ring of shields twisting as the fighters danced close, boots mashing the dirt as men pushed back against the watchers behind, shoving ever inwards at the sight of blood.

Clover told himself he hated this fight between fools, watched by fools. A brutal waste of at least one life that appealed to all that was worst in men. But in some deep-hidden part of him, he loved it, too. Thrilled to the sharp metal swung and the hot blood spilled. A little piece of Jonas Steepfield, stuck in him like a splinter he could never quite dig out.

There wasn’t much in the world to get your heart pumping harder than watching two men fight to the death. Only being one of ’em. He felt a guilty surge of excitement as Stour dashed forward again. Felt the eager grin on his own lips as Brock parried and fell back. No doubt he was a fine swordsman. But Stour was making him look ordinary. More so with every moment. He used that big sword nimbly as a dressmaker might her needle, all wrist and flick and effortless mastery.

Another flurry of blows, high and low, point and edge. Brock shuffled, blocked, but Stour caught him with the last cut as he whipped by. A slice across his left arm that sent a few spots of blood into the crowd. More than likely he could’ve left Brock’s arm hanging off, but Stour hadn’t become the Great Wolf by passing up a chance to pose, and he grinned as he showed the red edge of his sword to the crowd. He wasn’t only a hell of a swordsman but a hell of a braggart. The two went together with depressing frequency.

Brock gritted his teeth, cheek red from the cut on his face, and came on doggedly. You couldn’t fault his courage, but courage isn’t a warrior’s most valuable virtue, whatever the songs say. It’s ruthlessness, and savagery, and quickness to strike that win fights, the very qualities in