win any?’
Clover snorted. ‘Oh, I like him, Calder. Did you come down here just to toss my hard-won reputation in the muck?’
‘Not just that,’ said Calder. ‘I need your help.’
‘Thinking of learning some sword-work?’
‘You ask me, swords are best swung by other men.’
‘Then …?’
Calder took an unhappy, growling breath. ‘My son.’
‘The Great Wolf? Our king-in-waiting? That peerless warrior Stour Nightfall? Thought he knew how to use a sword.’
‘He does. Too well, if anything. He’s proving somewhat … wilful. Set fire to Uffrith, the bloody idiot. All those years I spent planning how to take the city, and the moment I get it, he sets fire to it.’
‘Once you call it a war, folk tend to get overexcited.’
‘My father used to say you point three Northmen the same way they’ll be killing each other before you can order the charge. I’ve got Gregun Hollowhead and his boys from the West Valleys as like to join the Dogman as fight against him. How do I make them take my say-so when my own blood won’t? If Stour weren’t my son, I’d be forced to say the boy’s a fucking prick.’
‘But he is your son, so …?’
Calder wasn’t listening. ‘He cares about nothing but his own fame. His own legend. What’s a bloody name worth at a market? Warriors.’ He spat the word out like it tasted bitter. ‘I swear, the more they win, the worse they get.’
‘Defeat is good for the spirit.’ Clover scratched gently at his own scar with the little fingernail he left long for the purpose. ‘Learned that the hard way.’
‘He thinks he’s bloody invincible. And his name draws fools like a turd draws flies and they give him fool advice. I sent Wonderful over to be his second, try to teach the Great Wolf some caution.’
‘Good choice. Good woman. Good judgement.’
‘Stour’s got her tearing her bloody hair out.’
Clover frowned. ‘Wonderful’s got hair now?’
‘It’s a figure of speech.’
‘Ah.’
‘I want you to help her out. Keep Stour on the right path.’
‘I’m supposed to know where the right path is?’
‘A damn sight better than my prick of a son. Maybe you can nudge him off a couple of wrong ones, anyway.’
Clover scratched his beard, and watched the boys flounder in the meadow, and Calder’s lad shaking his head in disgust, and he took a slow breath in and slowly breathed it out. ‘All right, then.’ He’d been around long enough to know when there was no squirrelling out of a thing. He grunted as he bent down and fished up his sword. Slowly, because why not? ‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘Reckon that’s all any of us can do, in the end. You’re a straight edge, Clover. You’ve always been loyal.’
‘Doubtless. I was loyal to Bethod, then to Glama Golden, then to Cairm Ironhead, now to you.’
‘Well. You were loyal to them till they put themselves on the losing side.’
‘That sounds almost exactly like disloyalty.’
Calder shrugged. ‘A man has to bend with the breeze.’
‘If I’ve got one talent, it’s bending with the breeze. You keep the apples.’ And Clover nudged the basket towards the scar-lipped lad with his boot. ‘They make my tummy hurt.’
‘And all my dreams came true,’ said Clover, ambling up with his sword over one shoulder.
Wonderful turned her head, showing the white scar through the black and silver stubble on her scalp, and hacked out a laugh. A laugh without much joy in it.
‘Look who it is,’ she said.
He glanced down at himself. ‘I recognise those boots! Jonas Clover has arrived and all wrongs shall be set right.’ He winked at her but she was not much charmed. ‘Must be your lucky day.’
‘I’m fucking due one.’ And she slapped her hand in his, and pulled him close by it, and they clapped each other around the back for good measure.
‘You been eating well?’ he asked, looking her up and down. ‘You’re like hugging a bundle of spears.’
‘Always been lean.’
‘Oh, me too.’ And he patted his belly. ‘The body of a hero lies just below this carefully nurtured layer of fat.’
She raised a brow. Clover loved to see things done well, and she’d a hell of a brow-raise, did Wonderful. ‘And what could possibly drag your fat this close to the fighting?’
‘Black Calder. He tells me you need help.’
‘That I’ll not deny. When does it get here?’
‘You dare trifle with me, woman? I’m supposed to mind the future of the North, the king-in-waiting, the Great Wolf, Stour Nightfall.’
Both her brows went up now. ‘You?’
‘I’m to keep him on the right