‘Can I take?’ asked Isern. ‘I was six when my da first sent me to cut arrows from the dead. I can take as much as there is. Can you take? If you fall down and can’t get up, we’ll have riddled out your limit. Until then …’ She looked off through the trees, picking at her berry-stained teeth with a fingernail. ‘We can’t sit still. Nor make it up into the hills to my people. So we must find the Union, or your father’s men, and they’re all backing off towards the Whiteflow quick as goats before a wolf. We have to move faster than they are, and the enemy are between us and them, so the further we go, the more dangerous it gets. We’ll be marching for days, still. Weeks, even.’
Weeks of marching through bog and bramble, dodging bitter enemies, eating worms and sleeping under hanged men. Rikke felt her shoulders slump.
She thought of her father’s hall in Uffrith. The faces carved in the rafters and the meat dripping gravy into the firepit. The hounds begging with their sad eyes and their chins on her knee. The songs sung of high deeds done in the sunny valleys of the past. Her father getting dewy-eyed at every mention of Threetrees, and Thunderhead, and Black Dow, even, raising his cup when a voice rumbled out the name of the Bloody-Nine.
She thought of the Named Men ranged along both sides of the firepit. All smiling at some joke of hers. Some song of hers. That Rikke, she’s a funny one. You wouldn’t want your own daughter wrong in the head, but she’s funny.
She thought of wandering comfortably drunk into her room, and her own warm cot with the blanket her mother made, and the pretty things she’d found placed nicely on the shelf, and the pretty clothes all dry and beautiful in the chest.
She thought of the steep streets of Uffrith, cobbles shining from the rain, and the boats on the grey harbour, and the people gabbling in the market, and the fish sliding glistening from the nets as the catch came in.
She knew she’d been unhappy there. She’d said it so often, even she was tired of her moaning. Now she rubbed at the torn and stinking fur on her cloak and wondered how she could’ve been so hurt by cold words and sharp looks. Seemed foolish and childish and weak. But that’s what growing up is, maybe. Realising what a fucking arse you’ve been.
By the dead, she wanted to go back to the safe and warm, and instead of being hunted just be scorned, but Rikke had seen Uffrith burn. It might be that the Long Eye can peek into the past, but of one thing there’s no doubt – you can never go there. The world she’d known was gone and wasn’t coming back any more than that dead man dangling, and the world she was left with was bitter chill and a mean bully besides.
She couldn’t help herself. So hungry and cold and sore and scared and with more of the same the best she could hope for. She stood with her numb hands dangling, and her shoulders shaking, and the tears silently trickled down her face and dripped from her nose and brought the faint taste of salt to her waggling lower lip.
She felt Isern step close. Put a gentle hand on her shoulder. Take her chin, and tip it up, and speak in a softer voice than she’d ever heard her use before. ‘D’you know what my da would say, whenever I cried?’
‘No,’ warbled Rikke, slobbery with snot.
With a sharp and shocking smack, Isern slapped her across the face.
Rikke blinked, jaw hanging open, putting one hand to her burning cheek. ‘What the—’
‘That’s what he would say.’ Isern shook her, hard. ‘And when that is the answer to your tears, you soon learn to stop mewling and attend to what has to be done.’
‘Ow,’ muttered Rikke, her whole face throbbing.
‘Yes, you’ve had hardships. The sickness and the fits, and the being thought mad and blah, blah, blah. But you were also born with all your limbs and a fine set of teeth in your pretty face, the only child of a powerful chief, with no mother and a hall full of soft-headed old warriors doting upon you.’
‘That’s not bloody fair—’
She gasped as Isern slapped her again, even harder, hard enough that salt blood joined salt tears on her lips.
‘You are used to twisting the old men around your fingers. But if Black Calder gets his hands upon you, he will twist you around his. He will twist you until you are all broken apart and you will have no one but yourself to blame. You have been coddled, Rikke. You are soft as pig fat.’ And that merciless finger poked Rikke painfully in her tit again. ‘Lucky for you, I am here, and I will pare the fat away and leave the iron which I see beneath well sharpened.’ Poke, poke, in the same old bruise. ‘Lucky for you, because out here that softness will kill you, and that iron can save you.’ Poke, poke. ‘It may be just a needle now, but one day we might make a dagger—’
‘You cunt!’ screeched Rikke and punched Isern in the mouth. It was a decent punch, snapping her head back and sending specks of spit flying. Rikke had always reckoned herself weak. More a weeper than a fighter. Now a fury she never knew she had boiled up in her. It was a fine, strong feeling. The first flicker of warmth she’d felt in days.
She raised her fist again but Isern caught her wrist, caught her hair, too, and wrenched her head back, made her squawk as she was pinned against the tree with fearsome strength.
‘There’s that iron!’ Isern grinned, showing teeth blood- as well as berry-stained. ‘Perhaps it is a dagger after all. One day, we might forge a sword from it that strong men will cower at and the moon itself will smile upon.’ She let go of Rikke’s hair. ‘Now, are you warmed up and ready to dance with me westwards?’ Her eyes rolled upwards to the dangling body. ‘Or would you prefer to dance beside our friend?’
Rikke took a long, ragged breath and blew it smoking out into the chill air. Then she held up her empty hands, one now painfully throbbing across the knuckles to add to her woes. ‘I’m all packed.’
Young Heroes
‘Bastards,’ breathed Jurand, studying the valley through his eyeglass.
Leo plucked it from his hand and trained it on the ridge. Through its round window, wobbling with his own barely controlled frustration, he could see the Northmen, their spears black pinpricks against the dull sky. They hadn’t moved all morning. Maybe three score of them, thoroughly enjoying the sight of Angland’s shameful retreat. Leo thrust the eyeglass at Whitewater Jin. ‘Bastards.’
‘Aye,’ agreed Jin in his thick Northern accent, lowering the glass and thoughtfully scratching at his beard. ‘They’re some bastards, all right.’
Glaward slumped over his saddle bow with a groan. ‘Who’d have thought war could be so bloody boring?’
‘Nine-tenths of war is waiting,’ said Jurand. ‘According to Stolicus.’ As though quoting a famous source made it any easier to bear.
‘You’ve two choices in war,’ said Barniva, ‘boredom or terror, and in my experience boredom’s far preferable.’