The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,24

I could fight,” said Sholla.

Looked like that was the end of it. The last few flatheads were running. Clover saw one cut down in a shower of blood, another fall with an arrow in its back, a couple bounding away down the gully even quicker than they came.

“Let ’em go!” Clover roared up at the archers. “They can take the message back. They stay north of the mountains, we’ll have no quarrel. They come south, the Great Leveller’s waiting.”

Downside watched ’em run, eyes wide and wild, spit in his beard and blood streaking his face. No one wanted to tell him to stop and honestly Clover didn’t much, either. But that’s the thing about being chief. You can’t just throw your hands up at everything and say it’s someone else’s problem.

So Clover stepped towards him, one palm raised, the other just tickling the grip of the knife in the back of his belt. There’s no bad time to have one hand on a knife, after all.

“Easy, now,” like he was trying to calm a mean-tempered dog. “Calm.”

Downside stared at him, quite mildly, if anything. “I am calm, Chief,” he said, and wiped blood out of his eyes. “Bleeding, though.”

“Well, your own face is a poor choice of weapon.” Clover let go his knife and surveyed the axe-hacked, spear-stuck, arrow-pricked corpses clogging the gully. Fight won, and he hadn’t even needed to swing in anger.

“By the dead,” muttered Flick. There was a flathead spitted on the end of his spear, still twitching.

“You got one,” said Downside, putting a boot on its neck and hacking its skull open.

“By the dead,” muttered Flick again, then he dropped his spear and was sick.

“Some things don’t change,” said Sholla, busy trying to prise her dagger out o’ the big Shanka’s skull.

“Worked out just the way you said, Chief.” Downside rolled a dead flathead over with his boot and left it goggling at the sky.

“You should never have doubted me,” said Clover. “The first weapon you bring to any fight ain’t a spear or an arrow or an axe.”

Flick blinked at him. “Sword?”

“Surprise,” said Clover. “Surprise makes brave men cowards, strong men weak, wise men fools.”

“Ugly fuckers, ain’t they?” said Sholla, tugging, tugging, then nearly falling over backwards as her dagger suddenly came free.

“I find myself on shaky ground when it comes to criticising others’ looks. Weren’t you a butcher’s boy once, Downside?”

“I was.”

“Reckon you can take the lead on carving these bastards, then.”

“What d’you want from ’em, sausages?”

Some of the others laughed at that, ready to laugh at anything now the fight was done and they likely had a fat gild coming.

“Trouble with sausages is you can’t tell what’s in ’em,” said Clover. “I want no one to be in any doubt. Make us a display like they did with those folk at the village. We might not speak the same tongue as Shanka, but heads in trees gets the point across in every language. Toss a few in that sack for Stour while you’re at it.”

“You want to impress a girl, take a bunch o’ flowers.” Flick gave a sad sigh. “You want to impress a King o’ the Northmen, bring a sack o’ heads.”

“’Tis a sorry observation,” said Clover, “but only the truer for that.”

“Don’t think much o’ flowers myself,” said Sholla.

“No?”

“Never saw the point of ’em.”

“They’ve got no point. That’s the point.”

She tipped her head to the side, thinking that one through.

Downside was frowning at the Shanka corpses, weighing his axe and wondering where to start. “Never thought o’ myself as a man who fills sacks with heads.”

“No one sets off in that direction,” said Clover, puffing out his cheeks one more time. “But before you know it, there you bloody are.”

Visions

“She’s coming back.”

“Thank the dead,” Rikke heard her father say in the fizzing blackness, and she groaned as she pushed the spit-wet dowel out of her mouth. “But that’s four times this week.”

“Fits are getting worse,” croaked Rikke. Her teeth ached. Her head was splitting. She prised one eye open, then the other, saw Isern and her father looking down at her. “Least I didn’t shit this time.”

“To shit you have to eat,” said Isern, hard-faced as ever. “What did you see?”

“I saw a river full of corpses.” Bobbing and turning, face up and face down. “I saw two old men fight a duel in the Circle, and two young women hold hands under a golden dome.” Applause echoing in the gilded spaces. “I saw a flag with an eye upon