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

‘I meant do get up,’ he said.

‘Ah.’

Clover took his time. He considered it a point of principle to always take as much time as he could get away with. Then he shook out his aching legs, then slapped the dirt and dried pine needles from the arse of his trousers, then slapped his palms clean, too.

‘There we go,’ he said. ‘I’m up.’

‘Let ring the bells,’ said Calder. ‘This here is Jonas Clover.’

Clover looked around and got quite the shock to see someone had come up behind him and was leaning against the tree. A black-haired lad maybe twelve or thirteen years old with a cleft top lip and watchful eyes. He looked Clover up and down, and didn’t say a thing.

‘Used to be called Steepfield,’ added Calder, which made Clover scratch unhappily at the back of his head. ‘Maybe you heard of him.’

‘No,’ said the lad, looking over at the two fighting boys with his pale eyes narrowed. ‘Who’re these?’ They’d fallen to wrestling, lurching about with their sticks waggling at the sky.

‘Those …’ Clover considered denying any acquaintance with them, but doubted he’d get away with it. ‘Are my pupils.’

The lad considered ’em a moment, then pronounced his solemn judgement. ‘They’re no good.’

‘You’ve an excellent eye. They’re shit. But that’s how you know what a truly great teacher I am. Any fool can get results from the gifted.’

The lad considered that. ‘So where’s the results?’

‘You have to trust they’ll be along. Patience is a warrior’s most fearsome weapon. Take it from me. I’ve been in a few fights.’

‘Did you win any?’

Clover snorted. ‘Oh, I like him, Calder. Did you come down here just to toss my hard-won reputation in the muck?’

‘Not just that,’ said Calder. ‘I need your help.’

‘Thinking of learning some sword-work?’

‘You ask me, swords are best swung by other men.’

‘Then …?’

Calder took an unhappy, growling breath. ‘My son.’

‘The Great Wolf? Our king-in-waiting? That peerless warrior Stour Nightfall? Thought he knew how to use a sword.’

‘He does. Too well, if anything. He’s proving somewhat … wilful. Set fire to Uffrith, the bloody idiot. All those years I spent planning how to take the city, and the moment I get it, he sets fire to it.’

‘Once you call it a war, folk tend to get overexcited.’

‘My father used to say you point three Northmen the same way they’ll be killing each other before you can order the charge. I’ve got Gregun Hollowhead and his boys from the West Valleys as like to join the Dogman as fight against him. How do I make them take my say-so when my own blood won’t? If Stour weren’t my son, I’d be forced to say the boy’s a fucking prick.’

‘But he is your son, so …?’

Calder wasn’t listening. ‘He cares about nothing but his own fame. His own legend. What’s a bloody name worth at a market? Warriors.’ He spat the word out like it tasted bitter. ‘I swear, the more they win, the worse they get.’

‘Defeat is good for the spirit.’ Clover scratched gently at his own scar with the little fingernail he left long for the purpose. ‘Learned that the hard way.’

‘He thinks he’s bloody invincible. And his name draws fools like a turd draws flies and they give him fool advice. I sent Wonderful over to be his second, try to teach the Great Wolf some caution.’

‘Good choice. Good woman. Good judgement.’

‘Stour’s got her tearing her bloody hair out.’

Clover frowned. ‘Wonderful’s got hair now?’

‘It’s a figure of speech.’

‘Ah.’

‘I want you to help her out. Keep Stour on the right path.’

‘I’m supposed to know where the right path is?’

‘A damn sight better than my prick of a son. Maybe you can nudge him off a couple of wrong ones, anyway.’

Clover scratched his beard, and watched the boys flounder in the meadow, and Calder’s lad shaking his head in disgust, and he took a slow breath in and slowly breathed it out. ‘All right, then.’ He’d been around long enough to know when there was no squirrelling out of a thing. He grunted as he bent down and fished up his sword. Slowly, because why not? ‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘Reckon that’s all any of us can do, in the end. You’re a straight edge, Clover. You’ve always been loyal.’

‘Doubtless. I was loyal to Bethod, then to Glama Golden, then to Cairm Ironhead, now to you.’

‘Well. You were loyal to them till they put themselves on the losing side.’

‘That sounds almost exactly like disloyalty.’

Calder shrugged. ‘A man has to bend with the breeze.’

‘If I’ve got one talent, it’s bending with the breeze. You keep the apples.’ And Clover nudged the basket towards the scar-lipped lad with his boot. ‘They make my tummy hurt.’

‘And all my dreams came true,’ said Clover, ambling up with his sword over one shoulder.

Wonderful turned her head, showing the white scar through the black and silver stubble on her scalp, and hacked out a laugh. A laugh without much joy in it.

‘Look who it is,’ she said.

He glanced down at himself. ‘I recognise those boots! Jonas Clover has arrived and all wrongs shall be set right.’ He winked at her but she was not much charmed. ‘Must be your lucky day.’