The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country (173 page)

‘Right y’are,’ said Craw. Yon turned and walked off up the hill, shaking his head. Scorry gave a last nod then followed him.

‘So long, Chief,’ said Flood.

‘I guess I’m no one’s Chief no more.’

‘You’ll always be mine.’ And he limped off after the other two, leaving just Craw and Beck beside the cart. A lad he hadn’t even known two days before to say the last goodbye.

Craw sighed, and he hauled himself up into the seat, wincing at all the bruises he’d gained the last few days. Beck stood below, Father of Swords in both hands, sheathed point on the dirt. ‘I’ve got to hold a shield for Black Dow,’ he said. ‘Me. You ever done that?’

‘More’n once. There’s nothing to it. Just hold the circle, make sure no one leaves it. Stand by your Chief. Do the right thing, like you did yesterday.’

‘Yesterday,’ muttered Beck, staring down at the wheel of the cart, like he was staring right through the ground and didn’t like what he saw on the other side. ‘I didn’t tell you everything, yesterday. I wanted to, but …’

Craw frowned over his shoulder at the two shapes under the blanket. He could’ve done without hearing anyone’s confessions. He was carting enough weight around with his own mistakes. But Beck was already talking. Droning, flat, like a bee trapped in a hot room. ‘I killed a man, in Osrung. Not a Union one, though. One of ours. Lad called Reft. He stood, and fought, and I ran, and hid, and I killed him.’ Beck was still staring at the cartwheel, wet glistening in his eyes. ‘Stabbed him right through with my father’s sword. Took him for a Union man.’

Craw wanted just to snap those reins and go. But maybe he could help, and all his years wasted might be some use to someone. So he gritted his teeth, and leaned down, and put his hand on Beck’s shoulder. ‘I know it burns at you. Probably it always will. But the sad fact is, I’ve heard a
dozen stories just like it in my time. A score. Wouldn’t raise much of an eyebrow from any man who’s seen a battle. This is the black business. Bakers make bread, and carpenters make houses, and we make dead men. All you can do is take each day as it comes. Try and do the best you can with what you’re given. You won’t always do the right thing, but you can try. And you can try to do the right thing next time. That, and stay alive.’

Beck shook his head. ‘I killed a man. Shouldn’t I pay?’

‘You killed a man?’ Craw raised his arms, helplessly let them drop. ‘It’s a battle. Everyone’s at it. Some live, some die, some pay, some don’t. If you’ve come through all right, be thankful. Try to earn it.’

‘I’m a fucking coward.’

‘Maybe.’ Craw jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Whirrun’s corpse. ‘There’s a hero. Tell me who’s better off.’

Beck took a shuddering breath. ‘Aye. I guess.’ He held up the Father of Swords and Craw took it under the crosspiece, hefted the great length of metal up and slid it carefully down in the back, next to Whirrun’s body. ‘You taking it now, then? He left it to you?’

‘He left it to the ground.’ Craw twitched the blanket across so it was out of sight. ‘Wanted it buried with him.’

‘Why?’ asked Beck. ‘Ain’t it God’s sword, fell from the sky? I thought it had to be passed on. Is it cursed?’

Craw took up the reins and turned back to the north. ‘Every sword’s a curse, boy.’ And he gave ’em a snap, and the wagon trundled off.

Away up the road.

Away from the Heroes.

C
alder sat, and watched the guttering flames.

It was looking very much as if he’d used up all his cunning for the sake of another few hours alive. And cold, hungry, itchy, increasingly terrified hours at that. Sitting, staring across a fire at Shivers, bound wrists chafed and crossed legs aching and the damp working up through the seat of his trousers and making his arse clammy-cold.

But when a few hours is all you can get, you’ll do anything for them. Probably he would’ve done anything for a few more. Had anyone been offering. They weren’t. Like his brilliant ambitions the diamond-bright stars had slowly faded to nothing, crushed out as the first merciless signs of day slunk from the east, behind the Heroes. His last day.

‘How long ’til dawn?’

‘It’ll come when it comes,’ said Shivers.

Calder stretched out his neck and wriggled his shoulders, sore from slumping into twisted half-sleep with his hands tied, twitching through nightmares which, when he jerked awake, he felt faintly nostalgic for. ‘Don’t suppose you could see your way to untying my hands, at least?’

‘When it comes.’

How bloody disappointing it all was. What lofty hopes his father had held. ‘All for you,’ he used to say, a hand on Calder’s shoulder and a hand on Scale’s, ‘you’ll rule the North.’ What an ending, for a man who’d spent his life dreaming of being king. He’d be remembered, all right. For dying the bloodiest death in the North’s bloody history.

Calder sighed, ragged. ‘Things don’t tend to work out the way we imagine, do they?’

With a faint clink, clink, Shivers tapped his ring against his metal eye. ‘Not often.’

‘Life is, basically, fucking shit.’

‘Best to keep your expectations low. Maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.’

Calder’s expectations had plunged into an abyss but a pleasant surprise still didn’t seem likely. He flinched at the memory of the duels the Bloody-Nine had fought for his father. The blood-mad shriek of the crowd. The
ring of shields about the edge of the circle. The ring of grim Named Men holding them. Making sure no one could leave until enough blood was spilled. He’d never dreamed he’d end up fighting in one. Dying in one.

‘Who’s holding the shields for me?’ he muttered, as much to fill the silence as anything.

‘I heard Pale-as-Snow offered, and old White-Eye Hansul. Caul Reachey too.’

‘He can hardly get out of it, can he, since I’m married to his daughter?’

‘He can hardly get out of it.’

‘Probably they’ve only asked for a shield so they don’t get sprayed with too much of my gore.’

‘Probably.’

‘Funny thing, gore. A sour annoyance to those it goes on and a bitter loss to those it comes out of. Where’s the upside, eh? Tell me that.’

Shivers shrugged. Calder worked his wrists against the rope, trying to keep the blood flowing to his fingers. It would be nice if he could hold on to his sword long enough to get killed with it in his hand, at least. ‘Got any advice for me?’

‘Advice?’

‘Aye, you’re some fighter.’

‘If you get a chance, don’t hesitate.’ Shivers frowned down at the ruby on his little finger. ‘Mercy and cowardice are the same.’

‘My father always used to say that nothing shows greater power than mercy.’

‘Not in the circle.’ And Shivers stood.

Calder held up his wrists. ‘It’s time?’

The knife glimmered pink with the dawn as it darted out and neatly slit the cord. ‘It’s time.’

‘We just wait?’ grunted Beck.

Wonderful turned her frown on him. ‘Unless you fancy doing a little dance out there. Get everyone warmed up.’

Beck didn’t fancy it. The circle of raked-over mud in the very centre of the Heroes looked a lonely place to be right then. Very bare, and very empty, while all about its pebble-marked edge folk were packed in tight. It was in a circle like this one his father had fought the Bloody-Nine. Fought, and died, and bad.

A lot of the great names of the North were holding shields for this one. Beside the leftovers of Craw’s dozen there was Brodd Tenways, Cairm Ironhead and Glama Golden on Dow’s half of the circle, and plenty of their Named Men around ’em.

Caul Reachey stood on the opposite side of the case, a couple of other old boys, none of ’em looking happy to be there. Would’ve been a sorry lot
compared to Dow’s side if it hadn’t been for the biggest bastard Beck had ever seen, towering over the rest like a mountain peak above the foothills.

‘Who’s the monster?’ he muttered.

‘Stranger-Come-Knocking,’ Flood whispered back. ‘Chief of all the lands east of the Crinna. Bloody savages out there, and I hear he’s the worst.’

It was a savage pack the giant had at his back. Men all wild hair and wild twitching, pierced with bone and prickled with paint, dressed in skulls and tatters. Men who looked like they’d sprung straight from an old song, maybe the one about how Shubal the Wheel stole the crag lord’s daughter. How had it gone?

‘Here they come,’ grunted Yon. A disapproving mutter, a few sharp words, but mostly thick silence. The men on the other side of the circle parted and Shivers came through, dragging Calder under the arm.

He looked a long stretch less smug than when Beck first saw him, riding up to Reachey’s weapontake on his fine horse, but he was still grinning. A wonky, pale-faced, pink-eyed grin, but a grin still. Shivers let go of him, squelched heedless across the seven strides of empty muck leaving a trail of gently filling boot-prints, fell in beside Wonderful and took a shield from a man behind her.

Calder nodded across the circle at each man, like they were a set of old friends. He nodded to Beck. When Beck had first seen that smirk it’d looked full of pride, full of mockery, but maybe they’d both changed since. If Calder was laughing now it looked like he was only laughing at himself. Beck nodded back, solemn. He knew what it was to face your death, and he reckoned it took some bones to smile at a time like that. Some bones.

Calder was so scared the faces across the circle were just a dizzying smear. But he was set on meeting the Great Leveller as his father had, and his brother too. With some pride. He kept that in front of him, and he clung on to his smirk, nodding at faces too blurred to recognise as if they’d turned out for his wedding rather than his burial.

He had to talk. Fill the time with blather. Anything to stop him thinking. Calder grabbed Reachey’s hand, the one without the battered shield on it. ‘You came!’

The old man hardly met his eye. ‘Least I could do.’

‘Most you could do, far as I’m concerned. Tell Seff for me … well, tell her I’m sorry.’

‘I will.’

‘And cheer up. This isn’t a funeral.’ He nudged the old man in the ribs. ‘Yet.’ The scatter of chuckles he got for that made him feel a little less like shitting his trousers. There was a soft, low laugh among them, too. One that came from very high up. Stranger-Come-Knocking, and by all appearances on Calder’s side. ‘You’re holding a shield for me?’

The giant tapped the tiny-looking circle of wood with his club of a forefinger. ‘I am.’

‘What’s your interest?’

‘In the clash of vengeful steel and the blood watering the thirsty earth? In the roar of the victor and the scream of the slaughtered? What could interest me more than seeing men give all and take all, life and death balanced on the edge of a blade?’

Calder swallowed. ‘Why on my side, though?’

‘There was room.’

‘Right.’ That was about all he had to offer now. A good spot to watch his own murder. ‘Did you come for the room?’ he asked Pale-as-Snow.

‘I came for you, and for Scale, and for your father.’

‘And me,’ said White-Eye Hansul.

After all the hate he’d shrugged off, that bit of loyalty almost cracked his smirk wide open. ‘Means a lot,’ he croaked. The really sad thing was that it was true. He thumped White-Eye’s shield with his fist, squeezed Pale-as-Snow’s shoulder. ‘Means a lot.’

But the time for hugs and damp eyes was fading rapidly into the past. There was noise in the crowd across the circle, then movement, then the shield-carriers stood aside. The Protector of the North strolled through the gap, easy as a gambler who’d already won the big bet, his black standard looming behind him like the shadow of death indeed. He’d stripped down to a leather vest, arms and shoulders heavy with branched vein and twisted sinew, the chain Calder’s father used to wear hanging around his neck, diamond winking.

Hands clapped, weapons rattled, metal clanged on metal, everyone straining to get the faintest approving glance from the man who’d seen off the Union. Everyone cheering, even on Calder’s side of the circle. He could hardly blame them. They’d still have to scratch a living when Dow had carved him into weeping chunks.

‘You made it, then.’ Dow jerked his head towards Shivers. ‘I was worried my dog might’ve eaten you in the night.’ There was a good deal more laughter than the joke deserved but Shivers didn’t so much as twitch, his scarred face a dead blank. Dow grinned around at the Heroes, their lichen-spotted tops peering over the heads of the crowd, and opened his arms, fingers spread. ‘Looks like we got a circle custom made for the purpose, don’t it? Quite the venue!’

‘Aye,’ said Calder. That was about all the bravado he could manage.

‘Normally there’s a form to follow.’ Dow turned one finger round and round. ‘Laying out the matter to decide, listing the pedigree of the champions and so on, but I reckon we can skip that. We all know the matter. We all know you got no pedigree.’ Another laugh, and Dow spread his arms again. ‘And if I start naming all the men I’ve put back in the mud we’ll never get started!’

A flood of thigh-slapping manly amusement. Seemed Dow was intent on proving himself the better wit as well as the better fighter, and it was no fairer a contest. Winners always get the louder laughs and, for once, Calder was out of jokes. Dead men aren’t that funny, maybe. So he just stood as the crowd quieted and left only the gentle wind over the muck, the flapping of the black standard, a bird chirruping from the top of one of the stones.