Swords & Dark Magic (59 page)

Wonderful stopped scratching at the long scar through her shaved-stubble hair long enough to make a contribution. “Looks to me,” she said, “like a confirmed shit-hole.”

“We’re way out east of the Crinna, no?” Craw worked a speck of skin between teeth and tongue and spat it out, wincing at the pink mark left on his finger, way more painful than it had any right to be. “Nothing but hundreds of miles of shit-hole in every direction. You sure this is the place, Raubin?”

“I’m sure. She was most specifical.”

Craw frowned round. He wasn’t sure if he’d taken such a pronounced dislike to Raubin ’cause he was the one that brought the jobs and the jobs were usually cracked, or if he’d taken such a pronounced dislike to Raubin ’cause the man was a weasel-faced arsehole. Bit of both, maybe. “The word is ‘specific,’ half-head.”

“Got my meaning, no? Village in a fork in the river, she said, south o’ the fens, three halls, biggest one with uprights carved like fox heads.”

“Aaaah.” Craw snapped his fingers. “They’re meant to be foxes.”

“Fox Clan, these crowd.”

“Are they?”

“So she said.”

“And this thing we’ve got to bring her. What sort of a thing is it, exactly?”

“Well, it’s a thing,” said Raubin.

“That much we know.”

“Sort of, this long, I guess. She didn’t say, precisely.”

“Unspecifical, was she?” asked Wonderful, grinning with every tooth.

“She said it’d have a kind of a light about it.”

“A light? What? Like a magic bloody candle?”

All Raubin could do was shrug, which wasn’t a scrap of use to no one. “I don’t know. She said you’d know it when you saw it.”

“Oh, nice.” Craw hadn’t thought his mood could drop much lower. Now he knew better. “That’s real nice. So you want me to bet my life, and the lives o’ my crew, on knowing it when I see it?” He shoved himself back off the rocks on his belly, out of sight of the village, clambered up and brushed the dirt from his coat, muttering darkly to himself, since it was a new one and he’d been taking some trouble to keep it clean. Should’ve known that’d be a waste of effort, what with the shitty jobs he always ended up in to his neck. He started back down the slope, shaking his head, striding through the trees towards the others. A good, confident stride. A leader’s stride. It was important, Craw reckoned, for a chief to walk like he knew where he was going.

Especially when he didn’t.

Raubin hurried after him, whiny voice picking at his back. “She didn’t precisely say. About the thing, you know. I mean, she don’t, always. She just looks at you, with those eyes…” He gave a shudder. “And says, get me this thing, and where from. And what with the paint, and that voice o’ hers, and that sweat o’ bloody fear you get when she looks at you…” Another shudder, hard enough to rattle his rotten teeth. “I ain’t asking no questions, I can tell you that. I’m just looking to run out fast so I don’t piss myself on the spot. Run out fast, and get whatever thing she’s after…”

“Well that’s real sweet for you,” said Craw, “except insofar as actually getting this thing.”

“As far as getting the thing goes,” mused Wonderful, splashes of light and shadow swimming across her bony face as she looked up into the branches, “the lack of detail presents serious difficulties. All manner of things in a village that size. Which one, though? Which thing, is the question.” Seemed she was in a thoughtful mood. “One might say the voice, and the paint, and the aura of fear are, in the present case…self-defeating.”

“Oh no,” said Craw. “Self-defeating would be if she was the one who’d end up way out past the Crinna with her throat cut, on account of some blurry details on the minor point of the actual job we’re bloody here to do.” And he gave Raubin a hard glare as he strode out of the trees and into the clearing.

Scorry was sitting sharpening his knives, eight blades neatly laid out on the patchy grass in front of his crossed legs, from a little pricker no longer’n Craw’s thumb to a hefty carver just this side of a short-sword. The ninth he had in his hands, whetstone working at steel,
squick, scrick,
marking the rhythm to his soft, high singing. He had a wonder of a singing voice, did Scorry Tiptoe. No doubt he would’ve been a bard in a happier age, but there was a steadier living in sneaking up and knifing folk these days. A sad fact, Craw reckoned, but those were the times.

Brack-i-Dayn was sat beside Scorry, lips curled back, nibbling at a stripped rabbit bone like a sheep nibbling at grass. A huge, very dangerous sheep. The little thing looked like a toothpick in his great tattooed blue lump of a fist. Jolly Yon frowned down at him as if he were a great heap of shit, which Brack might’ve been upset by, if it hadn’t been Yon’s confirmed habit to look at everything and everyone that way. He properly looked like the least jolly man in all the North at that moment. It was how he’d come by the name, after all.

Whirrun of Bligh was kneeling on his own on the other side of the clearing, in front of his great long sword, leaned up against a tree for the purpose. He had his hands clasped in front of his chin, hood drawn down over his head and with just the sharp end of his nose showing. Praying, by the look of him. Craw had always been a bit worried by men who prayed to gods, let alone swords. But those were the times, he guessed. In bloody days, swords were worth more than gods. They certainly had ’em outnumbered. Besides, Whirrun was a valley man, from way out north and west, across the mountains near the White Sea, where it snowed in summer and no one with the slightest sense would ever choose to live. Who knew how he thought?

“Told you it was a real piss-stain of a village, didn’t I?” Never was in the midst of stringing his bow. He had that grin he tended to have, like he’d made a joke on everyone else and no one but him had got it. Craw would’ve liked to know what it was, he could’ve done with a laugh. The joke was on all of ’em, far as he could see.

“Reckon you had the right of it,” said Wonderful as she strutted past into the clearing. “Piss. Stain.”

“Well, we didn’t come to settle down,” said Craw, “we came to get a thing.”

Jolly Yon achieved what many might’ve thought impossible by frowning deeper, black eyes grim as graves, dragging his thick fingers through his thick tangle of a beard. “What sort of a thing, exactly?”

Craw gave Raubin another look. “You want to dig that one over?” The fixer only spread his hands, helpless. “I hear we’ll know it when we see it.”

“Know it when we see it? What kind of a—”

“Tell it to the trees, Yon, the task is the task.”

“And we’re here now, aren’t we?” said Raubin.

Craw sucked his teeth at him. “Brilliant fucking observation. Like all the best ones, it’s true whenever you say it. Yes, we’re here.”

“We’re here,” sang Brack-i-Dayn in his up-and-down hillman accent, sucking the last shred o’ grease from his bone and flicking it into the bushes. “East of the Crinna where the moon don’t shine, a hundred miles from a clean place to shit, and with wild, crazy bastards dancing all around who think it’s a good idea to put bones through their own faces.” Which was a little rich, considering he was so covered in tattoos he was more blue than white. There’s no style of contempt like the stuff one kind of savage has for another, Craw guessed.

“Can’t deny they’ve got some funny ideas east of the Crinna.” Raubin shrugged. “But here’s where the thing is, and here’s where we are, so why don’t we just get the fucking thing and go back fucking home?”

“Why don’t you get the fucking thing, Raubin?” growled Jolly Yon.

“’Cause it’s my fucking job to fucking tell you to get the fucking thing is why, Yon fucking Cumber.”

There was a long, ugly pause. Uglier than the child of a man and a sheep, as the hillmen have it. Then Yon talked in his quiet voice, the one that still gave Craw prickles up his arms, even after all these years. “I hope I’m wrong. By the dead, I hope I’m wrong. But I’m getting this feeling…” He shifted forwards, and it was awfully clear all of a sudden just how many axes he was carrying, “like I’m being disrespected.”

“No, no, not at all, I didn’t mean—”

“
Respect,
Raubin. That shit costs nothing, but it can spare a man from trying to hold his brains in all the way back home. Am I clear enough?”

“’Course you are, Yon, ’course you are. I’m over the line. I’m all over it on both sides of it, and I’m sorry. Didn’t mean no disrespect. Lot o’ pressure, is all. Lot o’ pressure for everyone. It’s my neck on the block just like yours. Not down there, maybe, but back home, you can be sure o’ that, if she don’t get her way…” Raubin shuddered again, worse’n ever.

“A touch of respect don’t seem too much to ask—”

“All right, all right.” Craw waved the pair of ’em down. “We’re all sinking on the same leaky bloody skiff, there’s no help arguing about it. We need every man to a bucket, and every woman too.”

“I’m always helpful,” said Wonderful, all innocence.

“If only.” Craw squatted, pulling out a blade and starting to scratch a map of the village in the dirt. The way Threetrees used to do a long, low time ago. “We might not know exactly what this thing is, but we know where it is, at least.” Knife scraped through earth, the others all gathering around, kneeling, sitting, squatting, looking on. “A big hall, in the middle, with uprights on it carved like foxes. They look more like dragons to me, but, you know, that’s another story. There’s a fence around the outside, two gates, north and south. Houses and huts all around here. Looked like a pig pen there. That’s a forge, maybe.”

“How many do we reckon might be down there?” asked Yon.

Wonderful rubbed at the scar on her scalp, face twisted as she looked up towards the pale sky. “Could be fifty, sixty fighting men? A few elders, few dozen women and children too. Some o’ those might hold a blade.”

“Women fighting.” Never grinned. “A disgrace, is that.”

Wonderful bared her teeth back at him. “Get those bitches to the cook fire, eh?”

“Oh, the cook fire…” Brack stared up into the cloudy sky like it was packed with happy memories.

“Sixty warriors? And we’re but seven—plus the baggage.” Jolly Yon curled his tongue and blew spit over Raubin’s boots in a neat arc. “Shit on that. We need more men.”

“Wouldn’t be enough food then.” Brack-i-Dayn laid a sad hand on his belly. “There’s hardly enough as it—”

Craw cut him off. “Maybe we should stick to plans using the number we’ve got, eh? Plain as plain, sixty’s way too many to fight fair.” Not that anyone had joined his crew for a fair fight, of course. “We need to draw some off.”

Never winced. “Any point asking why you’re looking at me?”

“Because ugly men hate nothing worse than handsome men, pretty boy.”

“It’s a fact I can’t deny,” sighed Never, flicking his long hair back. “I’m cursed with a fine face.”

“Your curse, my blessing.” Craw jabbed at the north end of his dirt-plan, where a wooden bridge crossed a stream. “You’ll take your unmatched beauty in towards the bridge. They’ll have guards posted, no doubt. Mount a diversion.”

“Shoot one of ’em, you mean?”

“Shoot near ’em, maybe. Let’s not kill anyone we don’t have to, eh? They might be nice enough folks under different circumstances.”

Never sent up a dubious eyebrow. “You reckon?”

Craw didn’t, particularly, but he’d no desire to weight his conscience down any further. It didn’t float too well as it was. “Just lead ’em a little dance, that’s all.”

Wonderful clapped a hand to her chest. “I’m so sorry I’ll miss it. No one dances prettier than our Never when the music gets going.”

Never grinned at her. “Don’t worry, sweetness, I’ll dance for you later.”

“Promises, promises.”

“Yes, yes.” Craw shut the pair of ’em up with another wave. “You can make us all laugh when this fool job’s done with, if we’re still breathing.”

“Maybe we’ll make you laugh too, eh Whirrun?”

The valley man sat cross-legged, sword across his knees, and shrugged. “Maybe.”

“We’re a tight little group, us lot, we like things friendly.”

Whirrun’s eyes slid across to Jolly Yon’s black frown, and back. “I see that.”

“We’re like brothers,” said Brack, grinning all over his tattooed face. “We share the risks, we share the food, we share the rewards, and from time to time we even share a laugh.”

“Never got on too well with my brothers,” said Whirrun.

Wonderful snorted. “Well aren’t you blessed, boy? You’ve been given a second chance at a loving family. You last long enough, you’ll learn how it works.”

The shadow of Whirrun’s hood crept up and down his face as he slowly nodded. “Every day should be a new lesson.”

“Good advice,” said Craw. “Ears open, then, one and all. Once Never’s drawn a few off, we creep in at the south gate.” And he put a cross in the dirt to show where it was. “Two groups, one each side o’ the main hall there, where the thing is. Where the thing’s meant to be, leastways. Me, Yon, and Whirrun on the left.” Yon spat again, Whirrun gave the slightest nod. “Wonderful, take Brack and Scorry down the right.”

“Right y’are, chief,” said Wonderful.

“Right for us,” sang Brack.

“So, so, so,” said Scorry, which Craw took for a yes.

He stabbed at each of ’em with one chewed-to-bugger fingernail. “And all on your best behaviour, you hear? Quiet as a spring breeze. No tripping over the pots this time, eh, Brack?”

“I’ll mind my boots, chief.”

“Good enough.”

“We got a backup plan?” asked Wonderful, “in case the impossible happens and things don’t work out quite according to the scheme?”

“The usual. Grab the thing if we can, then run like fuck. You,” and Craw gave Raubin a look.

His eyes went wide as two cook pots. “What, me?”

“Stay here and mind the gear.” Raubin gave a long sigh of relief, and Craw felt his lip curl. He didn’t blame the man for being a hell of a coward, most men are. Craw was one himself. But he blamed him for letting it show. “Don’t get too comfortable, though, eh? If the rest of us come to grief these Fox fuckers’ll track you down before our blood’s dry and more’n likely cut your fruits off.” Raubin’s sigh rattled to a quick stop.