The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,180

for his ring. “What shall I tell him?”

You Asked for Killers

“Well, here’s a mess,” said Clover, wearily puffing out his cheeks.

“Just went wrong, is all.” Dancer knelt in the muddy yard with wrists tied behind him to his ankles. Not the most comfortable position, but he’d no one else to blame. His fat friend was similarly tied but he’d got knocked over when Downside slapped him and couldn’t find a way to wriggle back to his knees, or maybe he’d thought better of trying. Now he was sobbing away softly on his side, one pink cheek caked in muck and the other streaked with tears. Flick, meanwhile, was being sick behind the shed. That boy could never get enough to eat, but somehow he never ran out of sick, neither.

“Just went wrong.”

“Wrong?” barked Downside, stabbing angrily at the woman’s corpse with a pointed finger and making Dancer and the rest of ’em cringe. For a man who made so many corpses, he could get quite upset over the ones other people made. “That all you got to say? Wrong?”

“We just wanted the sheep!” One of ’em bleated from the pen, as if to lend support to that part of Dancer’s story if no other. “We even asked nicely.”

Clover rubbed at his temples. Had a bit of a headache. Thinking about it, he’d had a headache for weeks. “If those sheep were all you had in the world, would asking nicely get you to hand ’em over?”

“Would if this was the alternative,” said Sholla softly, squatting beside the old man. He was sat against the tumbledown wall with his head back like he was sleeping. Except for the arrow in his ribs and his shirt below it soggy black with blood, of course.

“We asked nicely,” whined Dancer. “Then we asked less nicely. Think we did, anyway, you know, the language ain’t my strong point.”

“Remind me what your strong point is, again?” asked Clover.

“Then the old man comes out with an axe so Prettyboy shot him.”

Prettyboy must’ve been named by a real wag since he was, by any standard, a thoroughly ugly man. “Just pointed the bow,” he said, shifting awkwardly on his knees. Everything’s awkward when your hands are tied to your ankles, to be fair. The bow in question lay in the mud not far away, and he gave it a filthy look like it was to blame for the whole business. “But I fumbled the string, you know, and shot him.”

“Then the woman set to screaming and, well…” Dancer winced down at the mud. “It went wrong, is all. You never had anything go wrong, Clover?”

Clover wearily puffed out his cheeks again. “I’ve barely had anything go right.” A scene like this didn’t make him feel sick any more, or angry, or even sad. Just tired. Maybe that’s when you know you’ve been in the bloody business too long, when tragedies start to feel like chores. When some poor bastard’s end of everything becomes your minor pain in the arse. “Could you shut up?” he asked the fat one, and the man cut his sobbing back to snivelling, which if anything was worse.

Clover pronounced every word with care. “It’s ’cause it can all go wrong so easily that you make every effort to be sure it goes right. Like not being drunk. And not drawing your bloody bow till you want to shoot. And knowing who you’re dealing with and where they are, so an old man with an axe comes as no surprise. That type o’ thing!” He’d ended up shouting, and he winced and rubbed at his head, and forced his voice soft again. “The way you came blundering at this, it’s a wonder you didn’t kill each other into the bargain.”

“Shame they didn’t,” grunted Downside. “Would’ve saved us some fucking trouble.”

Clover could not but agree. Even Dancer couldn’t disagree. “Aye, you’re right,” he said, “I know you’re right, Clover. But you bring warriors to a place like this, it’s the type o’ thing that happens.”

“Shit warriors, maybe,” said Sholla, picking her nose.

Dancer shuffled closer on his knees. Not dancing much with his hands tied to his feet, of course. He looked up, big eyes, little voice, wheedle, wheedle. “No chance we could let it go?”

If there had been a time when Clover was impressed by wheedling, it was far in the past. “Not up to me, is it? If Stour lets it go, I guess it’s gone.”

Dancer’s smile withered like blooms in late summer, and he