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

‘Jonas Steepfield.’ Clover jerked around at the whispering voice, the sound of that name frightening and oddly exciting both at once. A big man stood beside him with a battered shield on his arm, grey hair stirring in the wind about a grey stubbled face with a scar that put Clover’s to shame. And in the midst of that scar, a bright ball of dead metal where an eye should’ve been.

‘If it ain’t Caul Shivers. I don’t go by Steepfield any more. I learned a big hard name makes men want to take a blade to you just so they can cut off a piece of it.’

Shivers gave the kind of weary nod that’s born of hard experience. ‘The world’s full of eager fools, all right.’

‘No call for me to be swelling their number. It’s just Clover now.’

‘There was clover in that Circle, eh? Where you fought.’

‘There was. Whenever I smell it, I remember how being beaten feels.’

Shivers gave that weary nod again, looking off towards the hills. ‘We should talk, sometime. One scarred old warhorse to another.’

‘You’re the warhorse, Shivers. I’m more a crow, picking at the leftovers.’

‘Not that I don’t like the act, it’s a good one.’ Shivers glanced over towards Greenway, prancing around like he was the one about to face the Young Lion and was sure of winning, too. ‘Don’t doubt you’ve got a lot of eager fools taking you for quite the figure of fun.’ He leaned close to whisper. Or maybe to whisper even more throatily. ‘But we both know what y’are.’

Clover had heard it said Caul Shivers could see your thoughts with that metal eye. Horseshit, of course. But he’d seen plenty with the other. Few men more. Might be the hardest name in the North still casting a shadow. He didn’t need a magic eye to make some sharp guesses.

Clover took a breath. ‘Aye, well, we all play the cards we’re dealt.’

‘Some of us do. Some of us kill men with better cards and play theirs instead. What’s this Stour Nightfall like as a fighter?’

‘I wouldn’t want to fight him.’

‘A sensible man does his best to avoid any fight.’

‘Any fair one.’

A pause, and they watched the folk crowd in, from the Union side and the North. Warriors, servants, women, more and more of them until there was a gabbling crowd in every direction.

‘What’s he like as a man?’ asked Shivers.

‘About what you’d expect from someone they call the Great Wolf. Certainly no better. What about Brock?’

Shivers shrugged. ‘About what you’d expect from someone they call the Young Lion. Certainly no worse.’

‘Huh. Since we’ve got all the answers, I sometimes wonder why we follow these bastards.’

The noise swelled up, cheers on one side and grumbles on the other, and Bethod’s sons came through the press, as ill-matched a pair of brothers as ever there were. Scale Ironhand, huge and fleshy and flashing with gold, all smiles. Black Calder, lean as a spear and frowning like thunder.

‘I hear a lot of talk about loyalty,’ said Shivers as the men who’d ruled the North for the best part of twenty years took their high seats above the Circle.

Clover snorted. ‘Since we’ve a dozen dead masters between us, and both had a hand in more’n one of the downfalls, I feel no shame in saying that loyalty is overrated.’

‘Helps to have someone worth being loyal to.’ The cheers and grumbles were reversed as a lean old man with long hair and a pointed face clambered stiffly onto the seats opposite.

‘The Dogman?’ He looked grey. Grey-clothed, grey-haired, grey-faced, like the life had leaked out of him to leave a wispy husk a sudden gust might whisk away. ‘The man looks a touch past his best.’

Shivers cast a lazy eye towards Scale, and back. He had a way of saying a lot with a few words. ‘Least he had one.’

‘Aye.’ Clover gave a weary sigh. ‘Got a lot o’ respect for the Dogman, as it goes. Only man won any kind of power in the North in my lifetime and stayed halfway decent. The rest – Bethod, the Bloody-Nine, Black Dow, Black Calder, well … between you and me …’ Clover scratched gently at his scar and dropped his voice very low. ‘It’s been quite the who’s-the-biggest-cunt contest, wouldn’t you say?’

Shivers slowly nodded. ‘A real arsehole’s parade.’

‘But then the arseholes tend to win, don’t they? Maybe I’m weak, but I’d rather be on the winning side, even if the losers smell sweeter.’

‘You should meet his daughter.’

‘Who, the Dogman’s?’

‘Aye. Rikke. I’ll make no promises for her odour but she’s worth talking to.’ He nodded towards the platform, where a girl was clambering over the back, all knees and elbows, to wedge herself between the Dogman and a pale, hard Union woman Clover reckoned to be the one-time Lady Governor of Angland.

She pushed her tangle of red-brown hair out of her face to show those big grey eyes and he’d no doubt it was her. The one who’d come tumbling down the hill and fallen at his feet. The one he’d let scamper off into the woods.

‘We met in passing. Struck me as two-thirds o’ nothing.’

‘Then you misjudged her.’