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

‘I guess.’ Stour looked back to the bridge, in no hurry. It was a right mess down there now, corpses scattered, arrows flitting, spears tangled, men struggling in the water, even. Stour tapped a finger against his pursed lips as he watched, like a cook judging whether to toss a pinch more salt in the pot, rather’n a War Chief sending men to their deaths. But maybe that’s just the kind o’ carelessness with other men’s lives a general needs. ‘Bring everyone up. I think I’ll have that bridge.’

Wonderful looked stunned, and well she might’ve. ‘You’re playing their bloody game!’ she said. ‘It’s a fucking trap!’

Stour’s wet eyes rolled towards her. ‘’Course it is, but who’s caught in it?’

‘We are,’ snapped Clover, ‘and tripping over our cocks on the way. What’ll your father say to this?’

‘He’ll be fucking delighted.’ The wolf-grin spread across Stour’s face. ‘The whole thing was his idea.’

Clover blinked. ‘What?’

Stour nodded towards the old fortress. ‘He’s on the other side o’ that hill, ready to attack. These fools think they’ll catch us with our trousers down.’ He leaned close to Clover. ‘But it’s us who’ll catch them. Come on, you old bastards!’ And he drew his sword, spun it around in his fingers lightly as an eating knife. ‘We’ve a fucking battle to win!’

Rikke never saw a battle before, and she hoped she never saw another.

Black Calder’s men pressed in on every side. The tumbledown wall had become a mass of straining men, a great tangle of shields and clattering, sliding, stabbing spears. One had a flag on it that had got all wrapped around a Carl’s arm, and he was shrieking with fury as he tried to drag it free and only got himself more tangled. Rikke saw a spear blade poking into his cheek and he twisted and shouted but couldn’t be heard, couldn’t be moved, was eased onto that spear by the weight of men behind, the trickle of blood becoming a bubbling rush and Rikke looked away, the breath crawling in her throat.

She saw her father on the steps of the tower, veins standing from his neck as he roared words she couldn’t hear over the screams of pain and screams of rage. How could anyone bring order to this chaos? Might as well command a storm to stop blowing.

She saw a boy with curly hair just staring, taking a step one way, then the other way, face white and pale and his jaw hanging open, not knowing what to do. Rikke wondered if he was going to die here. Wondered if she was going to die here.

The rain was coming heavier now, on a chill wind, beading weapons and armour, sticking hair to snarling faces, turning ground churned by boots and bodies to sticky mud.

‘Heave!’ The shield wall was no more than ten strides from her, buckling and twisting, shields shrieking and scraping, boots sliding as men tried desperately to shove the attackers back. One stood tall to lash over the top of the wall with his axe. Stood again and squealed as a spear caught him under the rim of his helmet. He fell back, shrieking, thrashing, blood leaking between the fingers clapped to his face. ‘My eye! My eye!’

Arrows flitted down, clicked from the ground, bounced from a dead campfire. A man sank to his knees, leaning on his mace, face all crumpled, drooling, wheezing, a shaft in his back.

‘Careful,’ said Isern, easing Rikke behind a broken pillar, mossy old devil faces carved around the head. ‘Careful,’ and Rikke felt something cold brush her palm, and saw that Isern had slipped a knife into her hand, and she stared at it as if she’d never seen such a thing before.

She saw a man sitting on the ground, cursing as he fiddled with his bloody sleeve, blood in his beard, axe dangling from one wrist. She saw a man stomping on someone’s head, spots of blood across his mad snarl as he lifted his boot and rammed it down, lifted it and rammed it down. ‘Can you save my leg?’ A lad with yellow hair turned dark by the drizzle and the rags of his trousers all oozing black. Another man gibbered, mail pulled up to show a little slit that welled blood and when the healer wiped it welled again and she wiped it again but the blood came too fast to stop, too fast.

There was a kind of groan, and at the crumbling wall where that pretty weed had grown the shields buckled, gave, and Rikke stared as Black Calder’s men surged into the fortress.

A knot of them, mail rain-glinting and mud-spattered. A wedge of them, bristling with sharpened steel. A dagger-thrust of them, screaming their war cries, and at their very front a man with gold on his helmet and a green tree on a shield all scored and dented. He rushed right at Rikke with an axe held high.

That would’ve been a good moment to run, but maybe she’d run enough. Maybe the madness was catching. Without thinking, she dropped into a crouch, and bared her teeth, and raised her knife to meet him.