Leo blinked at the floor and felt the tears on his cheeks. ‘I see.’
She had her soft voice, now. ‘It was rash, it was reckless, but it was brave, and … for better or worse, men do look up to a certain kind of man. I won’t deny we all need something to cheer for. You gave Stour Nightfall a bloody nose, and great warriors are quick to anger, and angry men make mistakes.’ She pressed something into his limp hand. The standard with Nightfall’s wolf on it. ‘Your father would have been proud of your courage, Leo. Now make me proud of your judgement.’
He trudged to the tent flap, shoulders drooping under armour that felt three times heavier than when he arrived. Ritter was gone, and never coming back, and had left his weak-chinned wife weeping at the fireside. Killed by his own loyalty, and Leo’s vanity, and Leo’s carelessness, and Leo’s arrogance.
‘By the dead.’ He tried to rub the tears away with the back of his hand but couldn’t do it with his gauntlets on. He used the hem of the captured standard instead.
In battle, a man discovers who he truly is.
He froze as he stepped into the daylight. What looked like a whole regiment had gathered in a crescent, looking up towards his mother’s tent.
‘A cheer for Leo dan Brock!’ roared Glaward, catching Leo’s wrist in his ham of a fist and hoisting it high. ‘The Young Lion!’
‘The Young Lion!’ bellowed Barniva as a rousing cheer went up. ‘Leo dan Brock!’
‘I tried to warn you.’ Jurand leaned over to mutter in his ear. ‘She give you a roasting?’
‘Nothing I didn’t deserve.’ But Leo managed to smile a little, too. Just for the sake of morale. No one could deny they all needed something to cheer for.
It grew louder as he raised that rag of a standard, and Antaup swaggered forwards, throwing up his arms for more noise. One of the men, no doubt drunk already, dragged down his trousers and showed his bare arse to the North, to widespread approval. Then he fell over, to widespread laughter. Glaward and Barniva caught Leo and bundled him high into the air on their shoulders while Jurand planted his hands on his hips and rolled his eyes.
The rain had slackened off and the sun shone on polished armour, and sharpened blades, and smiling faces.
It was hard not to feel much better.
Guilt Is a Luxury
The snow had all melted and left the world cold and comfortless. The icy slop that stood for ground seeped into Rikke’s boots and spattered up her sodden trousers. Cold dew dripped endlessly from the black branches, through her sopping hair, onto her soggy cloak and down her chafed back. The wet from above met the wet from below around her belt, which she’d been obliged to tighten on account of having hardly eaten anything in the three days since she killed a boy and watched her home burn.
At least it couldn’t get any worse. Or so she told herself.
‘Would be a fine thing to be on a road,’ she grumbled as she tried to tear her foot free of a tangle of clutching bramble and only succeeded in grazing herself worse.
Isern had an unnatural trick of finding only the dry parts of a bog to put her feet on. Rikke swore she could’ve danced across a pond on the lily pads and never got her feet wet. ‘Who else might be tiptoeing down the roads now, do we suppose?’
‘Stour Nightfall’s men,’ said Rikke, sulkily.
‘Aye, and his uncle Scale Ironhand’s, and his father Black Calder’s. The thorns may scratch your downy-soft skin, but a lot shallower than their swords would.’
Rikke cursed as the clutching mud near sucked her boot right off. ‘We could make for some high ground, at least.’
Isern rubbed at the bridge of her nose like she never heard such folly. ‘Who else is having a high time on the high ground now, do you imagine?’
Rikke pushed her chagga pellet sourly from her top lip to her bottom. ‘Stour Nightfall’s scouts.’
‘And Scale Ironhand’s, and Black Calder’s. And since they’re there, swarming on the roads and the hills like lice on a log, where should we be?’
Rikke slapped an insect dead on the greasy back of her hand. ‘Down here in the valley bottom, with the brambles, and the mud, and the bloody shitty biters.’
‘It’s almost like an unfriendly army swarming over your land is an inconvenience in all kinds o’ ways. You’re used to reckoning the world your playground. Beset by dangers now, girl. Time to act like it.’ Isern slipped on through the thicket as quick and silent as a snake, leaving Rikke to struggle after, pointlessly cursing.
She liked to think of herself as quite the rugged outdoorswoman, but in this company she was a towny oaf. Isern-i-Phail knew all the ways, that was the rumour. Even better’n her daddy had. Rikke had learned more from watching her the last couple of weeks than she had from that fool Union tutor in Ostenhorm in a year. How to build a shelter from ferns. How to set rabbit traps, even if they hadn’t worked. How to reckon your course from the way the moss grew on the tree trunks. How to tell a man from an animal in the forest just by their footfalls.
Some folk said Isern was a witch, and no doubt she’d a witchy look and a witch’s temper, but even she couldn’t magic food out of rocks and bogwater at the arse-end of winter. Sadly.
As the sun sank behind the hills and left the valleys colder than ever, they wriggled like worms into a crack between boulders, pressed together for warmth, while outside the wind picked up and the slow drizzle turned to a stinging sleet.
‘Reckon you could find a stick in this whole valley dry enough to take a flame?’ whispered Rikke, rubbing her cold-fish hands together in her smoking breath then wedging them in her pits where, rather than getting warmed themselves, they only served to chill her whole body.
Isern hunched over the pack that held their dwindling supplies like a miser over his gold. ‘Even if I could, the smoke might bring hunters.’
‘Guess we’ll stay cold, then,’ said Rikke in a small voice.
‘That’s the birth of spring for you, when your enemies have stole your daddy’s hall so you’ve got no nice warm firepit to curl up beside.’
Rikke knew what folk said about her, and maybe her head didn’t have the right parts in the right places, but she’d always had a sharp eye for things. So in spite of the gloom and Isern’s nimble fingers, Rikke saw the hillwoman only ate half as much as she handed over. She saw it, and was thankful for it, and wished she had the bones to insist on fair shares, but she was just so damn hungry. She stuffed her shred of dry meat down so quickly she swallowed her chagga pellet too without even noticing.
While she licked the wondrous taste of stale bread from her teeth, she found she was thinking of that lad she shot. That bit of dyed cloth around his scrawny neck, like mothers give sons to keep the cold off. That hurt, confused look he’d had. The same look she used to have, maybe, when the other children laughed at her twitching.