08 A Little Hatred: Book One (The Age of Madness)

‘I doubt we’ll keep you away from the swords for long.’ Leo’s mother had a dry smile as she slipped a folded paper from her sleeve. ‘You received a letter. A message from the king. Or from his lord chamberlain, anyway.’

‘Don’t tell me, they’re finally sending reinforcements.’

‘They’ve heard they don’t need to. So, naturally, they overflow with praise for your martial prowess.’

‘Their praise will be quite the salve on my wounds, I’m sure.’

‘They offer more than that,’ she said, looking back to the letter. ‘You are invited to Adua for a triumph. A grand parade, to celebrate your victory over the Northmen! I suspect the Closed Council want the king and his son to bask in your reflected glory.’

Leo rubbed at his slit shoulder through the bandages. By the dead, that smarted. ‘You’re the one who deserves the triumph.’

‘For what? Retreating?’ She put her hand on his. ‘You fought. You won. You deserve the rewards.’ She paused a moment, looking into his eyes. ‘I’m proud of you.’

It was as if those words were another sword-cut, and he shut his eyes, and felt tears stinging at the lids.

He’d never realised how much he wanted to hear them.

It wasn’t easy.

He walked with a stick, every step an aching effort, the Northmen scattered about the vale competing over who could give him the most threatening glare as he struggled past. One was sharpening a sword with a steady scrape, scrape, scrape that seemed to be applied directly to his raw nerves.

‘I’m getting the feeling they don’t like us much,’ murmured Jurand through tight lips.

‘I’m getting the feeling they don’t like anyone,’ whispered Glaward.

‘They don’t have to like us, as long as they don’t kill us.’ Leo was starting to suspect this had been a very bad idea. But it would hardly have been his first. He put his head back and tried to walk as if he was looking for another duel right now.

It wasn’t easy. But if changing the world was easy, everyone would be at it.

There was a house down by the sluggish stream in the valley’s bottom, smoke smudging from its squat chimney. A man was just ducking from the low doorway, with iron-grey hair and an iron-hard frown. Leo recognised him from the Circle. Black Calder. Father of Stour Nightfall, brother of Scale Ironhand. The man who really ruled the North.

‘You’re bold to come here, Leo dan Brock.’ He narrowed his eyes as though he was a cat and Leo an especially reckless mouse. ‘Very bold or very foolish.’

Leo ventured a winning smile. ‘Can’t a man be both?’

It won nothing from Black Calder. ‘The two often go together, in my experience. Have you come to mock my son?’

‘I’ve come to make a friend of him.’

Black Calder raised his grey brows. ‘Even bolder. But if you want to stick your head in the wolf’s jaws, who am I to stop you?’

‘Which leaves only one thing.’

‘Yes?’

Leo nodded towards the glowering warriors. ‘Your men have no business squatting on the Dogman’s land, specially with such warlike looks. High time they went back to their families and remembered how to smile.’

Black Calder looked at him a moment longer, then gave a snort. ‘Defeat makes them surly.’ And he stalked off.

‘You two wait here,’ said Leo to his friends. He’d have liked nothing more than to take them with him. But some things you have to do alone.

It wasn’t much different from the room where he’d been lying the last few days. The sharp smell of healer’s herbs and stale sweat. The smothering warmth from the overbanked fire. The one bed, the one chair. The well-used war gear heaped in the corner. A reminder that the man in here had been a warrior. A stubborn insistence that he would be again.

‘Well, well. The Young Lion himself come a-calling.’ Stour Nightfall lay back in a shadowed corner, bandaged leg raised on rolled blankets. His lip was twisted into an epic sneer, as if to make up for the bruises around both eyes and the crusting of blood under his swollen nose. ‘The last bastard I expected to see at my sickbed is the bastard who put me here.’

Leo hooked his walking stick over the back of the chair and sat down heavily. ‘A great warrior always tries to surprise.’

‘You speak good Northern.’

‘I lived a year in Uffrith, with the Dogman.’

Stour’s eyes gleamed in the half-light. Like a wolf’s eyes in the darkness of the forest. ‘And I hear you poke his scrag of a daughter.’

Leo held his eye. ‘When I’m not stabbing Black Calder’s scrag of a son.’

Stour’s sneer grew more savage. ‘’Cause of your sword, they say I might not walk again.’

Leo was too sore himself to find much sympathy. It would win nothing here anyway. ‘You’re mistaking me for someone who cares a shit,’ he said. ‘I’m no nursemaid and no fucking diplomat, either. I’m a warrior. Like you.’

‘You’re nothing like me.’ Stour squirmed back on his mattress, grimacing as he shifted his leg. ‘I could’ve put you in the mud a dozen times over.’

‘I daresay.’

‘I was the better swordsman, by far.’

‘I daresay.’

‘If I hadn’t made a show of it—’