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

‘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.’

Leo was tiring of Barniva’s experience. Of his talk of horrors the rest of them couldn’t understand. Of his frowning off at the horizon as if there were haunting memories beyond. All because he’d spent eight months on campaign in Styria, and barely left Lord Marshal Mitterick’s well-guarded command post the whole time.

‘Not everyone’s as fashionably war-weary as you.’ Leo loosened his sword in the scabbard for the hundredth time that morning then shoved it back. ‘Some of us want to see some action.’

‘Ritter saw some action.’ Barniva rubbed at his scar with a fingertip. ‘That’s all I’ll say.’

Leo frowned, wishing he had a scar of his own. ‘If war’s so terrible, why don’t you take up farming or something?’

‘I tried. I was no good at it.’ And Barniva frowned off at the horizon as if there were haunting memories beyond.

Jurand caught Leo’s eye and rolled his to the heavens, and Leo had to smother a laugh. They knew each other’s minds so well they hardly even needed words.

‘They still up there?’ Antaup reined his horse in beside them, standing in his stirrups as Jin handed him the eyeglass.

‘They’re there,’ said Leo.

‘Bastards.’ Antaup tossed back that loose lock of dark hair that always hung across his forehead and right away it flopped down again. He was the one the girls couldn’t leave alone, slick and quick and well groomed as a winning racehorse, but all of Leo’s friends were fine-looking men in their own ways. Jin was fierce as the Bloody-Nine in a fight, but when that toothy grin split his red beard and those blue eyes twinkled, it was like the sun coming out. You couldn’t deny Barniva made the brooding veteran act work for him, especially with the scar on his forehead and the white streak it had left in his hair. Then Glaward was a slab of good-humoured manliness, with the height, and the shoulders, and the stubble already thick an hour after he shaved.

As handsome a crowd of young heroes as you could hope to find. What a painting they’d make! Maybe Leo would get one commissioned. Who’d know an artist? He found himself glancing sideways.