A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,9

pellet too without even noticing.

While she licked the wondrous taste of stale bread from her teeth, she found she was thinking of that lad she shot. That bit of dyed cloth around his scrawny neck, like mothers give sons to keep the cold off. That hurt, confused look he’d had. The same look she used to have, maybe, when the other children laughed at her twitching.

‘I killed that lad.’ And she sniffed up a noseful of cold snot and spat it away.

‘Aye.’ Isern trimmed off a chagga pellet and stuck it behind her lip. ‘You killed him all to bits, and robbed everyone who knew him, and cut all the good he might ever do out of the world.’

Rikke blinked. ‘Well, you’re the one split his skull!’

‘That was a mercy. He’d have drowned on your arrow for sure.’

Rikke found she was rubbing at her back, trying to get her thumb up to where that shaft had been, but she couldn’t quite reach. No more than that boy had been able to. ‘Don’t reckon he deserved it, really.’

‘Deserving won’t make much difference to an arrow. The best defence against arrows is not a life nobly lived but to be the one who shoots them, d’you see?’ Isern sat back against her, smelling of sweat and earth and chewed chagga. ‘They were your father’s enemies. Our enemies. Wasn’t as if there was any other choice.’

‘Not sure I even made a choice.’ Rikke picked at her sore fingernails as she picked at the memory, over and over. ‘Just fumbled the string. Just a stupid mistake.’

‘You could as well name it a happy accident.’

Rikke hunched into her cold cloak and her bleak mood. ‘No justice, is there? For him or for me. Just a world that looks the other way and doesn’t care a shit about either one of us.’

‘Why should it?’

‘I killed that lad.’ Rikke’s foot twitched, and the twitch became a quiver up her leg, and the quiver became a shiver all over. ‘However I turn it around … just doesn’t feel right.’

She felt Isern’s hand firm on her shoulder, and was grateful for it. ‘If killing folk ever starts to feel right, you’ve a worse kind of problem. Guilt can sting, but you should be thankful for it.’

‘Thankful?’

‘Guilt is a luxury reserved for those still breathing and with no unbearable pain, cold or hunger demanding all their fickle attention. Long as guilt’s your big problem, girl …’ Rikke saw the faint gleam of Isern’s teeth in the gathering darkness. ‘Things can’t be that bad.’

She slapped Rikke’s thigh and gave a witchy cackle, and maybe there was some magic in it after all because Rikke cracked her first smile in a day or two, and that made her feel just a bit better. Your best shield is a smile, her father always said.

‘Why haven’t you just left me behind?’ she asked.

‘I gave my word to your da.’

‘Aye, but everyone says you’re the most untrustworthy bitch in the whole North.’

‘No one should know better than you what the things everyone says are worth. Truth is, I only care about keeping my word to folk I like. I seem untrustworthy because there are only seven of those outside the hills.’ She made a fist of her tattooed hand, trembling tight. ‘To those seven, I am a rock.’

Rikke swallowed. ‘You like me, then?’

‘Meh.’ Isern opened her blue fist and shook out the fingers with a clicking of knuckles. ‘About you, I remain to be convinced, but I like your father and I gave him my word. That I’d try to put an end to your fits and coax your Long Eye open and bring you back to him still breathing. The small matter of an invasion may have nudged him out of Uffrith, but the commitment still stands, far as I’m concerned, wherever Stour Nightfall’s bastards might’ve driven him off to.’ Her eyes flickered to Rikke, cunning as a fox that sees the coop unguarded. ‘But I’ll admit I’ve a selfish reason, too, which is a good thing for you, since selfish reasons are the only reasons you should trust.’

‘What reason?’

Isern opened her eyes very wide so they bulged from her filthy face. ‘Because I know there’s a better North waiting. A North free of the grip of Scale Ironhand, and the one who pulls his strings, Black Calder, and the one who pulls his strings even. A North free for everyone to choose their own way.’ Isern leaned close in the darkness. ‘And your