The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,229

out learning to write has its uses.”

“So…” The Nail narrowed his eyes, counting off the points on his fingers. “You promised the Young Lion you were going with him, then not only did you not go, you stole his ally’s land while he was gone, and warned his enemies he was coming.”

Rikke stretched her chin a long way forward to scratch at her throat, the way he’d done a moment ago. “Sounds somewhat underhand put that way. But once you’ve stabbed a man in the back, you’re best off stabbing him a few more times, don’t you reckon? Make sure of the job.”

“There’s my girl,” grunted Shivers.

“She was listening after all,” said Isern, stretching up on her tiptoes.

The Nail gave a disbelieving little titter, staring at her with something close to admiration. “I could really get to like you,” he said, and he whipped the black fur he wore off his shoulders. “You said something about a cushion?”

“What fine manners,” said Rikke, sitting up long enough for him to slip it behind her then wriggling back into it.

“Best not get carried away with yourself,” said Shivers, nudging at the drooping lid of his metal eye with a knuckle. “Black Calder’s still out there.”

Isern nodded. “He spent a lot of effort winkling his son onto that chair, d’you see? Won’t be overjoyed to hear you’ve wedged your skinny arse into his place.”

“He’ll be ready, the moment you trip up.”

“And he’s got friends all over,” said the Nail, “and debts owed, and favours to call on. King Orso won’t be ridding us of him, no matter what letters you write.”

“No,” said Rikke. “Black Calder we’ll have to deal with ourselves. And unlike his son, he’s a man who earned his name.”

“Earned it with cleverness and treachery and ruthlessness,” said Isern. “All qualities much loved by the moon.”

Shivers had his eye on Skarling’s Chair. “Trouble with being a strong man or a clever man with a big, bad name,” he said, and he ought to know, after all, “is that folk always have their best fight ready for you.”

The Nail nodded along in sympathy. “There are times I wish folk had never heard o’ me. Look small, look foolish, got no name, well… that’s when you’re given chances.”

“Mmmm.” Rikke tapped at the arm of Skarling’s Chair with her fingernail. Picked at the scratched and faded layers of paint that centuries of rulers had picked at before her. That Skarling Hoodless himself picked at, for all she knew. “No strength like looking weak, eh?”

“What you thinking?” asked Shivers.

“What my father would’ve said, once he got over the shock of seeing me here.” And Rikke looked up. “Sitting in it’s nothing special. It’s staying in it that’s the trick.”

The New Harvest

It was a surprise, in a way, to hear that birds still sang.

To see the sun still rose and the wind still blew. But things go on. Orso took a long breath that had a faint, sickening tang of battle about it. “Things always go on,” he murmured.

Not for everyone, mind you. The dead were everywhere. Sparsely dotted, away to the north, then more liberally sprinkled where the fighting had been fiercest, clogged up in knots. Heaps, almost. Perhaps men had felt the need to crawl towards other men while they still had the breath. Perhaps even the dead love company.

The corpse-gatherers had been labouring from before first light. Whole companies of them, dragging cadavers by hand, by stretcher and by cart into orderly piles at the corners of fields. There prisoners made unwilling gravediggers chopped away with pick and shovel in an effort to make holes big enough to hold them all. Flies, crows and human scavengers had meanwhile appeared from nowhere, flitting busily among the bumper crop of bodies while there were still pickings to be had.

The disposal of men made an industry, on the impersonal scale of the new age.

“All that work,” said Orso. “All that effort. All that ingenuity, and courage, and struggle, to make what? Corpses.”

“Few things indeed,” mused Pike, “seem to have so much appeal before, and so little after, as a battle.”

The fires in Stoffenbeck were out but smoke still crept from the embers to smudge the chalky sky. The picturesque town square was a ruin, several of its fine old houses blackened shells, its covered marketplace ripped open to the sky, the clock tower mangled beyond repair by cannon-stones. No bunting now in honour of Orso’s visit.

Rucksted frowned towards the rocky bluff, where yesterday’s cannons still poked