The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,237

old blanket around his shoulders. He glanced at Sholla, sitting beside him with her arm over the tiller. “Quite a feat o’ navigation.”

“Nothing to comment on,” she said modestly, though he knew she’d spent most of the nights awake, frowning at the stars and fretting over the course. Last thing they wanted was to land in the wrong place, after all, and one bit of sea looks much like another.

All the way, Stour snapped and whined like a wounded wolf indeed. Anyone hoping a glimpse of the North would sweeten his mood was sorely disappointed. All it did was remind him that he’d left with big ambitions and a few thousand men, and was coming back with neither.

“Get the oars out and row us in, you bastards!” he snarled, that fine wolfskin cloak of his snapping as he stalked between the benches. He leaned against the mast to rub at the wound on his leg. “Fucking thing! It’s right on top o’ the one the Young Lion gave me!”

“Seems a bonus,” Sholla murmured through tight lips. “You end up with one wound not two.”

“In my experience o’ the Great Wolf,” mused Clover, “and I have about as much these days as any man alive, he’s not prone to look on the sunny side. I’d best try and calm the bastard, eh?” He heaved out a sigh as he stood. “Doubt anyone else will.” And he pulled the damp blanket off and tossed it over Sholla’s head.

Men scurried about the ship as that distant light grew brighter and was joined to either side by the grey rumour of the coast. Wood clonked, rope hissed and salt spray flew as they brought in the sailcloth and leaned to the oars.

“Ready for the shore?” Clover asked Downside as he passed, and the big man gave him a wink with that bloodshot eye, red from a blow to the head in the battle. Stour was still raging, o’ course, as he walked up. What else would he be doing?

“Not a moment too fucking soon! Fucking Union. Fucking disaster.” As though failure had fallen out of the sky, rather than his having any hand in it.

Clover folded his arms and looked off towards the coast. “If no one lost, my king, where’d be the pleasure in winning?”

Stour glared at him. Seemed he found that a touch too philosophical when he was still licking his wounds in the shadow of disappointment.

Clover gave it another try. “Aye, the Young Lion’s done, and you had a good deal in common with him, a sympathetic ear in Angland and so on. No doubt his loss is a terrible shame, but… did you really like him all that much?”

Stour frowned as Sholla slipped around him. “Sorry, my king, just have to get to the prow…”

She nodded at Clover, and he pulled Stour’s attention back by stepping close, speaking soft, everyone’s friend. “Maybe he can’t help you take Uffrith now, but, well… he can’t stop you taking it, either.” Clover stepped closer yet, closer than men usually dared step to the Great Wolf. “Aye, we lost good men back there. But we lost good men before. In your father’s wars, and your grandfather’s wars. There’ll be more men. There’ll be more wars. You got to think of any battle you come out of alive as a victory and look ahead to what comes next.”

Stour considered him. A salt wind swept chill across the deck and stirred his hair, ruffled the fine wolf’s pelt about his shoulders. Ollensand was slipping from the grey up ahead, ghosts of tall masts in the harbour and low houses on the hillside, the beacon-fire burning brighter, joined by some firefly dots of torches held by a little welcoming party on the longest wharf.

The oars creaked and rattled, somewhere on the high air a gull gave a lonely call, and Clover swallowed as the King of the Northmen turned that wet-eyed stare on him. Always an uncomfortable moment.

Then, quick as the weather shifts in autumn, he grinned. “You’ve been loyal to me, Clover. I know I’m not always the easiest. No, no, don’t deny it.” No one had thought about denying it. “But if any man can talk me into looking on the sunny side, it’s you.” He reached out and gave Clover a slap on the shoulder. “You’ll get your reward, don’t worry about that.”

Clover matched him, grin for grin. “I know I will. And sooner’n you think.”

And Sholla slipped up from behind Stour, took the