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

Stour thrust, but off-centre. It was easy for Leo to step around it, finally sensing an opening. But just as he pounced, Stour dipped his shoulder, whipped his sword across in a flicking cut. Leo gasped as he felt the wind of the blade across his face. He slashed back but the Great Wolf was already dancing away, grinning, always grinning.

The crowd roared. For a moment, Leo thought it was for him. Then he felt something tickling his cheek. Stour’s point had scratched his face, so quick and so sharp he’d hardly felt it. It was blood the crowd were cheering for. His blood.

As Leo backed off, the cut began to tingle, then to throb. He wondered how bad a scar it would leave. Wondered if it was a Naming Wound. But as that cold doubt crept all the way up to his throat, he realised you had to live through the duel for that. The dead get no names.

Stour’s grin grew a tooth wider. A tooth crueller.

‘I’m going to bleed you, boy,’ he said.

Clover jerked away as the point of Brock’s sword flashed past on the backswing not a hand’s width from his nose. Stour darted in, all snarl and fury, thrust, thrust again. Brock gasped as he jumped back, knocking Stour’s sword wide so it gouged into the shield just next to Clover’s.

By the dead, the noise. The grind of steel, the growls of the fighters, the monstrous fury of the crowd.

By the dead, the crush. Shield-carriers straining, rims scraping against his as they shifted, shoulders squeezing against his as they shoved, the ring of shields twisting as the fighters danced close, boots mashing the dirt as men pushed back against the watchers behind, shoving ever inwards at the sight of blood.

Clover told himself he hated this fight between fools, watched by fools. A brutal waste of at least one life that appealed to all that was worst in men. But in some deep-hidden part of him, he loved it, too. Thrilled to the sharp metal swung and the hot blood spilled. A little piece of Jonas Steepfield, stuck in him like a splinter he could never quite dig out.

There wasn’t much in the world to get your heart pumping harder than watching two men fight to the death. Only being one of ’em. He felt a guilty surge of excitement as Stour dashed forward again. Felt the eager grin on his own lips as Brock parried and fell back. No doubt he was a fine swordsman. But Stour was making him look ordinary. More so with every moment. He used that big sword nimbly as a dressmaker might her needle, all wrist and flick and effortless mastery.

Another flurry of blows, high and low, point and edge. Brock shuffled, blocked, but Stour caught him with the last cut as he whipped by. A slice across his left arm that sent a few spots of blood into the crowd. More than likely he could’ve left Brock’s arm hanging off, but Stour hadn’t become the Great Wolf by passing up a chance to pose, and he grinned as he showed the red edge of his sword to the crowd. He wasn’t only a hell of a swordsman but a hell of a braggart. The two went together with depressing frequency.

Brock gritted his teeth, cheek red from the cut on his face, and came on doggedly. You couldn’t fault his courage, but courage isn’t a warrior’s most valuable virtue, whatever the songs say. It’s ruthlessness, and savagery, and quickness to strike that win fights, the very qualities in which Stour excelled. He jumped in now, laughing as he swung his red sword in great circles, sending Brock staggering into the wall of shields.

Clover caught the Young Lion on his as he stumbled, gave a little like a good feather mattress, then nudged him back up so he could dodge, catch a blow of Stour’s and steer it wide with a screech of metal.

He doubted it’d change the result any. Looked like a black day for the Union. A black day for Leo dan Brock and anyone who loved him. A fine thing for Jonas Clover, you’d have thought. He did stand on the other side, after all, and winning was supposed to be meat and drink to a warrior.

Just sometimes he wished he had the bones to pick the right side, even if it was the losing one.

Someone had taken to beating a drum, slow and heavy. Rikke could’ve throttled the bastard.

By the dead, the tension. The long-drawn aching in her throat, worse and worse as the two of them circled, watchful, twisting like dogs after a scent, sniffing for an opening. Rikke’s sore mouth tasted of vomit and fear while the men with the shields shouted, stomped, bellowed their hatred and their encouragement.

By the dead, the helplessness. She wanted to scream. Wanted to punch something. Wanted to rip the ring out of her nose. No one, however big an optimist, could’ve doubted Leo was getting killed in there and there was nothing she could do.

Most of the crowd were treating it like a feast day. There were children up in a tree, staring down with wide eyes. Scale, that great fat fucker of a king, was laughing, quaffing from his goblet, laughing again. The great fat mountain of blubber.

‘How can they laugh?’ whispered Finree.