which Stour excelled. He jumped in now, laughing as he swung his red sword in great circles, sending Brock staggering into the wall of shields.
Clover caught the Young Lion on his as he stumbled, gave a little like a good feather mattress, then nudged him back up so he could dodge, catch a blow of Stour’s and steer it wide with a screech of metal.
He doubted it’d change the result any. Looked like a black day for the Union. A black day for Leo dan Brock and anyone who loved him. A fine thing for Jonas Clover, you’d have thought. He did stand on the other side, after all, and winning was supposed to be meat and drink to a warrior.
Just sometimes he wished he had the bones to pick the right side, even if it was the losing one.
Someone had taken to beating a drum, slow and heavy. Rikke could’ve throttled the bastard.
By the dead, the tension. The long-drawn aching in her throat, worse and worse as the two of them circled, watchful, twisting like dogs after a scent, sniffing for an opening. Rikke’s sore mouth tasted of vomit and fear while the men with the shields shouted, stomped, bellowed their hatred and their encouragement.
By the dead, the helplessness. She wanted to scream. Wanted to punch something. Wanted to rip the ring out of her nose. No one, however big an optimist, could’ve doubted Leo was getting killed in there and there was nothing she could do.
Most of the crowd were treating it like a feast day. There were children up in a tree, staring down with wide eyes. Scale, that great fat fucker of a king, was laughing, quaffing from his goblet, laughing again. The great fat mountain of blubber.
‘How can they laugh?’ whispered Finree.
‘’Cause they’re not the ones facing the Great Leveller,’ said Rikke’s father, his face chiselled from grey stone.
The only thing worse than the fear of them coming together was the terror when they did, shocking as lightning every time, Rikke flinching at every movement, arse clenching at every flash of steel. She clung to the bench as if it was the saddle of a horse she was trying to break, clung to Finree’s cold hand in her hot one so hard her wrist ached.
She knew with one twitch of a sword she might lose her lover, her home, her future. People can be so tough, survive so much hunger and cold and disappointment, take beatings you wouldn’t believe and come out stronger. But they can be so fragile, too. One sharp piece of metal is all it takes to turn a man into mud. One little stroke of bad luck. One ill-judged whisper.
Had she done this? Had she made this happen?
She gasped as Nightfall came forward, switched direction in a blink. Steel rang once, twice, Leo lashed back, but too slow and Stour slipped around it, his sword catching Leo’s leg and making him stagger.
‘No.’ A kind of shudder went through Finree, and Rikke gripped her hand harder than ever. Tried to be strong for both of them though she wasn’t halfway strong enough for herself. Tried to bare her teeth, and focus on Stour’s smirk, and turn the sucking of fear and guilt into anger. Tried to make something from it she could use.
You cannot force the Long Eye open, no more than you can order the tide to come in. But where was the harm in trying?
She planted her fists on her knees and sat forward. Refusing to blink. Glaring at the grass like she could glare through it to what might come. Willing that heat into her eye.
Might be she saw what she wanted to. The dead knew there’d been plenty o’ that going on the past few days. But for the briefest moment, she thought she saw ghosts there, in the Circle. Faint, they were, and flickering. Hints of figures. Stour and Leo, and their swords, torn apart like cobwebs on the breeze as the real men passed through them.
Rikke curled back her lips, and clenched her fists, and squeezed her jaw so hard it felt like her teeth might crack, and she stared at the Circle as if she was staring into a gale.
She made herself see.
Stour was laughing now. Giggling as if every contact was a brilliant joke.
Leo wasn’t finding it funny. He told himself he was the Young Lion. The Lord Governor of Angland. The proud son of a proud line of warriors, with glory in his