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

Leo bared his teeth, squelching forward through mud battered and mashed by countless boots advancing and retreating, advancing and retreating. The fighting had been fiercest here. Bodies everywhere. Bodies from both sides. Men still and men still moving, crawling, crying, pawing at the ground, pawing at themselves. Leo stepped between them, stepped over them, teeth clenched, head throbbing, pushing on towards the bridge.

‘Leo!’ Barniva grabbed him, dragged him down, shield across his face. Something rattled from it. An arrow. Another bounced from Barniva’s armoured shoulder, more flickered into the grass. Someone fell, hands clapped to his throat. Leo peered over the rim of his shield, saw the archers, kneeling in a long row before the bridge, nocking arrows.

Barniva sat down. ‘Lo,’ he said, tongue strangely clumsy.

There was an arrow sticking out of his face. In the hollow between his eye and the bridge of his nose. It looked ridiculous. Like a joke. Like a child wedging his wooden sword between his arm and his ribs and standing sideways on. I’m stabbed! I’m stabbed!

But it was no joke. The white of Barniva’s eye had turned red. Bloodstained.

Leo caught him by the shoulders as he dropped backwards. ‘Luh,’ he said, red eye rolling off to look sideways. The other was slightly crossed, peering at the shaft poking from his face, a look of confused surprise.

‘Uh.’ A long streak of blood leaked from the shaft and down his cheek, like a red tear.

‘Barniva?’ said Leo. But he didn’t move.

‘Barniva?’ He was dead.

Leo stood, numb. More arrows flitted down around him with the rain. He lifted his sword, anger boiling up with it.

‘Charge!’ he bellowed, though it came out just a mad gurgle. Other men roared behind him. Glaward’s voice, and Jin’s, and Jurand’s, war cries, mad screams. They were all running. An arrow flickered past. Another rattled off Leo’s breastplate.

‘Fuckers!’ he screeched, spraying spit. ‘Fuckers!’ He caught his foot and went sliding on his face, took a mouthful of grass, near stabbing himself with his own blade. He scrambled up and charged on, throwing his stolen shield away and lifting his sword in both hands.

A glimpse of the stream, full of bobbing bodies. A glimpse of the archers as he clattered closer. Some old men. Some young men. One had a leather hood. One a shock of curly red hair. One’s face was bent sideways by some old wound. He saw Leo pounding towards him, faltered as he drew an arrow from his quiver, let it fall, turning to run. The one with curly hair loosed a shaft from only a few strides away but he fumbled it in his panic and it went spinning high into the air.

He ducked gasping under Leo’s sword but Leo crashed into him with his shoulder, knocked him on his back, started hacking at the others, ears full of their squeals and gibbers and his own growls and the smashing and cracking of metal and flesh.

‘Die!’ Glaward roared in his ear. ‘Die!’

The archers had no armour and Leo’s sword thudded into them like a butcher’s cleaver into meat, opening great spitting and spurting wounds. One man fell screaming with his side laid right open. Leo broke a man’s bow as he tried to block his sword with it and took his arm off, too, tottered past all off balance, bounced off Antaup as he stabbed a man on the ground with his spear. He fell, rolled, saw an archer with a knife ready to spring on him, lifted a clumsy arm to fend him off, then he was smashed out of the way by a great mace. Whitewater Jin, and he grabbed Leo’s wrist and dragged him up.

The archers were running, being hacked down, floundering into the stream, and Leo wobbled on towards the bridge.

A man was stumbling away, clutching at his shoulder, blood bubbling between his fingers, and Leo hit him across the side of the head with his sword, caught him with the flat and knocked him sprawling, trampled over him.

His chest was on fire now, his limbs numb and floppy. Every step was a mountain.

Onto the bridge. He could feel the stones slippery with mud and blood, slick with the falling rain.

There were Carls here, desperately trying to organise a shield wall. A Named Man with a fox-fur around his shoulders pointed with a thick finger. Leo didn’t so much charge at him as fall onto him, his weary swing clattering harmlessly off the Named Man’s shield. He caught his chin on the rim, mouth filling with the salt taste of blood.

The Northman lurched back a pace but didn’t fall, and they twisted into an awkward, exhausted embrace, shuffling, snarling, wrestling, shouldering and elbowing while armoured men clobbered away at each other around them.

Leo heard the Northman’s desperate, whistling breath in his ear, grunted and clawed at him, wet fur in his mouth. His sword was tangled with something, couldn’t move it. He managed to draw his dagger with his other hand, stabbed, but the blade only scraped uselessly on mail. No room. No breath. No strength, the dagger twisted from his grip, fell in the mud.