The Collected Joe Abercrombie (362 page)

‘I am the greatest warrior in the Circle of the World.’ Stranger-Come-Knocking didn’t boast it, puffed up and pouting as Glama Golden might have. He didn’t threaten it, fists clenched and glowering as Cairm Ironhead might have. He stated the fact.

Dow scratched absently at the scar where his ear used to be. ‘This is the North. Lot of hard men about. Couple of ’em in this room. So that’s quite a claim you’re making.’

Stranger-Come-Knocking unhooked his great fur cloak and shrugged it off, stood there stripped to the waist like a man ready to wrestle. Scars had always been almost as popular in the North as blades. Every man who reckoned himself a man had to have a couple of both. But Stranger-Come-Knocking’s great expanse of body, sinew-knotted like an ancient tree, was almost more scar than skin. He was ripped, pocked, gouged with wounds, enough to make a score of champions proud.

‘At Yeweald I fought the Dog Tribe and was pierced with seven arrows.’ He pointed out some pink blobs scattered across his ribs with his club of a forefinger. ‘But I fought on, and made a hill of their dead, and made their land my land, and their women and children my people.’

Dow sighed, as if he had a half-naked giant at most of his war meetings and was getting tired of it. ‘Maybe it’s time to think about a shield.’

‘They are for cowards to hide behind. My wounds tell the story of my strength.’ The giant jerked his thumb at a star-shaped mass that covered one shoulder, and his back, and half his left arm with flesh lumped and mottled as oak-bark. ‘The dreaded witch Vanian sprayed me with a liquid fire, and I carried her into the lake and drowned her while I burned.’

Dow picked a fingernail. ‘Reckon I’d have tried to put it out first.’

The giant shrugged, the pink burn across his shoulder creasing like a ploughed field. ‘It went out when she died.’ He pointed to a ragged pink mark that left a bald streak through the pelt of black hair on his chest and appeared to have taken a nipple off. ‘The brothers Smirtu and Weorc challenged me to single combat. They said because they grew together in one womb they counted as one man.’

Dow snorted. ‘You fell for that?’

‘I do not look for reasons
not
to fight. I split Smirtu in half with an axe, then crushed his brother’s skull in my hand.’ The giant slowly closed one massive fist and squeezed the fingers white, muscle squirming in his arm like a giant sausage being stuffed.

‘Messy,’ said Dow.

‘In my country, men are impressed by messy deaths.’

‘Honestly, they’re much the same here. Tell you what – anyone I call my enemy you can kill when you please. Anyone I call my friend … let me know before you give ’em a messy death. I’d hate for you to slaughter Prince Calder by accident.’

Stranger-Come-Knocking looked around. ‘You are Calder?’

That awkward moment wondering whether to deny it. ‘I am.’

‘Bethod’s second son?’

‘The same.’

He slowly nodded his monstrous head, long hair swaying. ‘Bethod was a great man.’

‘A great man for getting other men to fight for him.’ Tenways sucked his rotten teeth and spat one more time. ‘Not much of a fighter himself.’

The giant’s voice had suddenly softened again. ‘Why is everyone so bloodthirsty this side of the Crinna? There is more to life than fighting.’ He leaned down and dragged up his cloak between two fingers. ‘I will be at the place agreed upon, Black Dow. Unless … any of the little men wish to wrestle?’ Golden, and Ironhead, and Tenways all took their turns to peer off into the furthest corners of the stable.

Calder was used to being scared out of his wits, though, and met the giant’s eye with a smile. ‘I would, but I make a point of never stripping unless there are women present. Which is a shame, actually, because I have an almighty spot on my back that I think would quite impress everyone.’

‘Oh, I cannot wrestle with you, son of Bethod.’ The giant might even have had a knowing smirk of his own as he turned away. ‘You are made for other things.’ And he threw his cloak over his scarred shoulder and stooped under the high lintel, the Carls swinging the doors shut on the gust of wind that blew in behind him.

‘He seems a good sort,’ said Calder, brightly. ‘Nice of him not to show off the scars on his cock.’

‘Fucking savages!’ cursed Tenways, which was rich coming from him.

‘Greatest warrior in the world,’ scoffed Golden, though he hadn’t done much scoffing while the giant was in the room.

Dow rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. ‘The dead know I’m no fucking diplomat, but I’ll take the allies I can get. And a man that size’ll stop a lot of arrows.’ Tenways and Golden had themselves an arse-licking chuckle, but Calder saw beyond the joke. If the Bloody-Nine was still alive, maybe a man that size might stop him too. ‘You all know your tasks, eh? Let’s get to ’em.’

Ironhead and Golden gave each other a deadly glare on the way out. Tenways spat at Calder’s feet but he only grinned back, promising himself he’d get the last laugh as the ugly old bastard shambled into the evening.

Dow stood, blood still dotting the ground from the tip of his middle finger, watching the doors as they were closed. Then he gave a sigh. ‘Feuding, feuding, always bloody feuding. Why can no one just get on, eh, Calder?’

‘My father used to say, “Point three Northmen the same way, they’ll be killing each other before you can order the charge.’”

‘Hah! He was a clever bastard, Bethod, whatever else he was. Couldn’t stop the warring, though, once he’d started.’ Dow frowned at his blood-daubed palm, working the fingers. ‘Once your hands get bloody it ain’t so easy to get ’em clean. The Dogman told me that. My hands been bloody all my life.’ Calder flinched as Splitfoot tossed something into the air, but it was only a cloth. Dow snatched it out of the darkness and started winding it around his cut hand. ‘Guess it’s a bit late to clean ’em now, eh?’

‘It’ll just have to be more blood,’ said Splitfoot.

‘I reckon.’ Dow wandered into one of the empty stalls, tipped his head back, rolled his eyes to the ceiling and winced. A moment later Calder heard the sound of his piss spattering the straw. ‘There … we … go.’

If the aim was to make him feel even more insignificant, it worked. He’d been half-expecting them to murder him. Now it seemed they couldn’t be bothered, and that pricked at Calder’s pride. ‘Got any orders for me?’ he snapped.

Dow glanced over his shoulder. ‘Why? You’d only fuck ’em up or ignore ’em.’

Probably true. ‘Why send for me, then?’

‘The way your brother tells it, you’ve got the sharpest mind in the whole North. I got sick of him telling me he couldn’t do without you.’

‘I thought Scale was up near Ustred?’

‘Two days’ ride away, and soon as I learned the Union were moving I sent to him to join up with us.’

‘Not much point me going, then.’

‘Wouldn’t say so …’ The sound of pissing stopped. ‘There it is!’ And started up again.

Calder ground his teeth. ‘Maybe I’ll go see Reachey. Watch this weapontake of his.’ Or talk him into helping Calder live out the month, even better.

‘You’re a free man, ain’t you?’ They both knew the answer to that one. Free as a pigeon already plucked and in the pot. ‘Things are just like they were in your father’s day, really. Any man can do what he likes. Right, Splitfoot?’

‘Right, Chief.’

‘Just as long as it’s exactly what I fucking tell ’em to do.’ And Dow’s Carls all chuckled away like they never heard finer wit. ‘Give Reachey my regards.’

‘I will.’ Calder turned for the door.

‘And Calder!’ Dow was just tapping off the drips. ‘You ain’t going to make more trouble for me, are you?’

‘Trouble? Wouldn’t know how, Chief.’

‘’Cause what with all those Southerners to fight … and unknowable fucks like Whirrun of Bligh and this Crinna-Come-Boasting weirdness … and my own people treading all over each other … I’ve got about as much arse-ache as I need. Can’t stand for anyone playing their own games. Someone tries to dig my roots from under me at a time like this, well, I’ve got to tell you, things’ll get
fucking ugly
!’ He screamed the last two words, eyes suddenly bulging from his face, veins popping from his neck, fury boiling out of him with no warning and making every man in the room flinch. Then he was calm as a kitten again. ‘Get me?’

Calder swallowed, trying not to let his fear show even though his skin was all prickling. ‘I think I have the gist.’

‘Good lad.’ Dow worked his hips about as he finished lacing up, then grinned around like a fox grins at a chicken coop left open. ‘I’d hate to hurt your wife, she’s a pretty little thing. Not so pretty as you, o’ course.’

Calder hid his fury under another smirk. ‘Who is?’

He strode between the grinning Carls and out into the evening, all the while thinking about how he was going to kill Black Dow, and take back what was stolen from his father.

What War?

‘B
eautiful, ain’t it?’ said Agrick, big grin across his freckled face.

‘Is it?’ muttered Craw. He’d been thinking about the ground, and how he might use it, and how an enemy might do the same.

An old habit. It had been the better half of Bethod’s talk, when they were on campaign. The ground, and how to make a weapon of it.

The hill the Heroes stood on was ground an idiot could’ve seen the value of. It sprouted alone from the flat valley, so much alone and so oddly smooth a shape it seemed almost a thing man-made. Two spurs swelled from it – one pushing west with a single needle of rock raised up on end which folk had named Skarling’s Finger, one to the southeast, a ring of smaller stones on top they called the Children.

The river wound through the valley’s shallow bottom, skirting golden barley fields to the west, losing itself in a bog riddled with mirror-pools, then under the crumbling bridge Scorry Tiptoe was watching which was called, with a stubborn lack of imagination, the Old Bridge. The water flowed on fast around the foot of the hill, flaring out in sparkling shallows streaked with shingle. Somewhere down there among the scraggy brush and driftwood Brack was fishing. Or, more likely, sleeping.

On the far side of the river, off to the south, Black Fell rose up. A rough-heaped mass of yellow grass and brown bracken, stained with scree and creased with white-watered gills. To the east Osrung straddled the river, a cluster of houses around a bridge and a big mill, huddled inside a high fence. Smoke drifted from chimneys, into the bright blue and off to nowhere. All normal, and nothing to remark upon, and no sign whatever of the Union, or Hardbread, or any of the Dogman’s boys.

Hard to believe there was any war at all.

But then in Craw’s experience, and he’d plenty, wars were made from ninety-nine parts boredom, usually in the cold and damp, hungry and ill, often hauling a great weight of metal uphill, to one part arse-opening terror. Made him wonder yet again why the hell he ever got into the black business, and why the hell he still hadn’t got out. Talent for it, or a lack of talent for aught else. Or maybe he’d just gone with the wind and the wind had blown him here. He peered up, shreds of cloud shifting across the deep sky, now one memory, now another.

‘Beautiful,’ said Agrick again.

‘Everything looks prettier in the sun,’ said Craw. ‘If it was raining you’d be calling it the ugliest valley in the world.’

‘Maybe.’ Agrick closed his eyes and tipped his face back. ‘But it ain’t raining.’

That was a fact, and not necessarily a happy one. Craw had a long-established tendency to sunburn, and had spent most of yesterday edging around the tallest of the Heroes along with the shade. Only thing he liked less than the heat was the cold.

‘Oh, for a roof,’ he muttered. ‘Damn fine invention for keeping the weather off.’

‘Bit o’ rain don’t bother me none,’ grunted Agrick.

‘You’re young. Wait ’til you’re out in all weathers at my age.’

Agrick shrugged. ‘By then I hope to have a roof, Chief.’

‘Good idea,’ said Craw. ‘You cheeky little bastard.’ He opened his battered eyeglass, the one he’d taken from a dead Union officer they found frozen in the winter, and peered towards the Old Bridge again. Nothing. Checked the shallows. Nothing. Eyed the Ollensand Road, jerked up at a moving spot there, then realised it was some tiny fly on the end of the glass and sank back. ‘Guess a man can see further in fine weather, at least.’

‘It’s the Union we’re watching for, ain’t it? Those bastards couldn’t creep up on a corpse. You worry too much, Chief.’

‘Someone has to.’ But Agrick had a point. Worrying too much or not enough is ever a fine balance, and Craw always found himself falling heavily on the worried side of it. Every hint of movement had him starting, ripe to call for weapons. Birds flapping lazily into the sky. Sheep grazing on the slopes of the fells. Farmers’ wagons creeping along the roads. A little while ago Jolly Yon had started up axe practice with Athroc, and the sudden scrape of metal had damn near made him soak his trousers. Craw worried too much, all right. Shame is, a man can’t just choose not to worry.

‘Why are we here, Agrick?’

‘Here? Well, you know. Sit on the Heroes, watch to see if the Union come, tell Black Dow if they do. Scouting, like always.’