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

First the Union had been forced back over the bridge, then more Union men had come up and driven the Northmen back, then more Northmen had come up, and now there was a great clog of warriors crowding in on either side of the river, more of Nightfall’s Carls flooding down the road towards it. Strange sounds floated up, twisted by wind and distance.

‘That bloody fool’s stumbled right into it!’ Rikke’s father was licking his lips, but she couldn’t share his joy. Couldn’t twitch free of the feeling it was them stumbling into something. She glanced towards the trees again. The men she’d seen with the Long Eye had faded now. Maybe she caught their ghostly after-images. Maybe nothing.

‘We can’t wait any longer. Red Hat?’

‘Aye, Chief?’

‘Send Oxel and Hardbread the word—’

‘Wait!’ hissed Rikke. There was something moving in the woods. Branches thrashing, a glimmer of metal through the leaves. ‘Tell me you see that!’

Her father’s face had turned grim. ‘I see that.’

Shivers burst from the trees, running full tilt for the fortress. Some of his scouts shot from the woods around him, one looking back as they started to scramble up the grassy hillside.

‘Man the walls!’ roared Shivers. Arrows flitted from the trees, twittering about him. One of his men took a shaft in the back and slipped, tottered up, carried on running with the shaft sticking from his shoulder. ‘Woods are full o’ the bastards!’

Rikke’s father stood up tall at the crumbling battlements, bellowing down into the yard. ‘Man the walls! Black Calder’s coming from the North!’

Then Rikke saw that pale man step out of the trees, right to the spot she’d already seen him in. He beckoned with his axe, just the way she’d already seen him do, and men started to spill from the woods around him.

‘It’s the Nail!’ roared Red Hat, waving his sword, and warriors swarmed towards the ruined walls, falling over each other in their haste to shift from the south side of the fortress to the north.

Now came the standard, black with the red circle. Bethod’s standard. Black Calder’s standard. Suddenly the treeline was alive with men.

Isern gave a sigh. ‘There’s the problem with looking for a fight.’ And she pulled the deerskin cover from the bright blade of her spear. ‘Sometimes you get more fight than you wanted.’

Seemed the Nail was smiling right at Rikke now. Just the way she’d known he would.

Without taking her eyes from the valley, Leo’s mother held up a finger. ‘Get the troops on their feet.’

Leo heard the calls of the officers spreading out across the back of the hill. The great scrape and rattle as the men stood, took up their weapons, began to form ranks.

The valley was flooded with Northmen now. Hundreds of them. Thousands. An iron plague, spreading steadily down the road towards the bridge. Leo felt utterly useless. All he could do was kneel in the dirt, the steadily thickening drizzle seeping through his armour, and watch.

‘The men are ready, Lady Finree,’ said an officer. ‘Should we advance?’

She shook her head. ‘Just a little longer, Captain. Just a little longer.’

The time stretched, slow, silent, unbearably tense. A bird hovered, high overhead, feathers ruffling in the wind, poised and ready to swoop.

‘Knowing the right moment.’ Her eyes flickered over the disorganised fighting at the bridge, across the columns of Northmen in the valley, up to the farm, and back. ‘My father always told me that was half a general’s job.’

‘The other half?’ asked Leo.

‘Looking like you know the right moment.’ And she stood up tall and slapped the dirt from the knees of her skirt. ‘Ritter?’ A freckled little boy stepped up with a bugle clenched tight in one fist.

‘Your Grace?’

‘Sound the advance.’

It rang out over the valley, piercingly loud, and there was an almighty clattering as several thousand armoured men began to march.

‘Shit,’ said Wonderful, frowning at the red hill.

Clover felt that familiar sinking feeling as he followed her eyes. That feeling he’d got at least once in every battle he’d ever fought in. Spear tips showed over the brow, against the spitting sky, then helmets, then men. Ranks and ranks of men. Union foot, well armed and organised and coming down from the high ground on their flank.

They didn’t seem to trouble the Great Wolf any. Quite the reverse. ‘Lovely,’ he purred, grinning like an eager groom watching his bride shown in. ‘Fucking beautiful. Form a shield wall facing that fell and we’ll get to grips with these Union bastards.’

‘Lovely? We don’t know where the Dogman is!’ Clover pointed up towards the ruined fortress with a stabbing finger. Even his old eyes could pick out figures on the roof of that tower. ‘What if there’s men up there? We’ll be showing ’em our bare arses!’