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

‘He has a wife …’ Leo remembered the wedding. What the hell was her name? Bit of a weak chin. The groom had looked prettier. The happy couple had danced, badly, and Whitewater Jin had bellowed in Northern that he hoped for her sake Ritter fucked better than he danced. Leo had laughed so hard he was nearly sick. He didn’t feel like laughing now. Being sick, yes. ‘By the dead … he has a child.’

‘I will write to them.’

‘What good will a letter do?’ He felt the stinging of tears at the back of his nose. ‘I’ll give them my house! In Ostenhorm!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Why do I need a house? I spend all my time in the saddle.’

‘You’ve a big heart, Leo.’ His mother squatted down before him. ‘Too big, I sometimes think.’ Her pale hands looked tiny in his gauntleted fists, but they were the stronger then. ‘You have it in you to be a great man, but you cannot let yourself be swept off by whatever emotion blows your way. Battles may sometimes be won by the brave, but wars are always won by the clever. Do you understand?’

‘I understand,’ he whispered.

‘Good. Give orders to leave the farm and pull back towards the west before Stour Nightfall arrives in force.’

‘But if we fall back … Ritter died for nothing. If we fall back, how will that look?’

She stood. ‘Like womanly weakness and indecision, I hope. Then perhaps the rash heads on the Northmen’s side will prevail and pursue us with manly smiles on their manly faces, and when the king’s soldiers finally arrive, we’ll cut them to pieces on ground of our choosing.’

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.’