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

She saw it gifted to Stour on his tenth birthday, Black Calder setting his hand on the smiling boy’s shoulder and saying, ‘In war, it’s the winning counts. The rest is for fools to sing about.’

She saw it in the Great Wolf’s scabbard, whipped free as the duel began, cut and thrust, the Circle full of the bright ribbons of its passing.

She saw it swung in a shining blur at neck height, Stour’s teeth bared in a triumphant snarl. A great, heedless, showy sweep fit to take a man’s head right from his shoulders.

She knew with utter certainty where that sword would be, always, but she didn’t feel the joy she had when she knew the arrow, that day in the wet woods. For beyond Stour’s bright sword she saw a crack in the sky, and beyond that crack a black pit yawned, a pit with no bottom and no end and no beginning in which there was a knowing not of a sword or an arrow but of everything. A knowing so vast and terrible that the merest splinter of it might rip her mind apart.

Leo dragged himself to his knees, groggy, bloody, clawing his own blade from the grass.

Rikke tottered up with him, moaning, gasping, gripping her throbbing head. The sky was opening, sucking her in.

Stour smiled. Began to turn. Rikke’s eye was a smouldering coal in her skull.

Leo started to clamber up, head rising towards the shimmering ghost of Stour’s sword.

She clapped her hands over her burning face and screamed out in the Union tongue, screamed at the very top of her lungs.

‘Go low!’

Leo couldn’t have said why, but it seemed important he die on his feet.

Hardly hurt any more. Just numb. Just weak. So heavy.

Took everything he had to heave himself up.

The world wobbled like jelly, all dark earth and bright pink sky and a swimming mass of painted shields and snarling faces and smoking breath.

He could hardly hear for his own thudding heartbeat, hardly tell the roaring of the crowd from the roaring of his breath. He’d clutched up a handful of grass along with his sword. Bloody grass. Bloody dirt.

His mouth tasted like metal. In battle, a man finds out who he truly is. He forced his legs straight, swaying, trying to focus.

He caught a glimpse of Stour turning away, a flash of his bloody grin. Then, over the din of the crowd, he heard a scream.

‘Go low!’

So he dropped. Or just fell, maybe. Felt wind pluck at his hair and with a last effort swung his sword low. Far from his best swing ever. Clumsy and weak, grip loose in his sore fingers.

But sometimes a bad swing can be good enough.

There was a smack as the blade chopped deep into Nightfall’s thigh.

Stour’s eyes bulged, and he opened his mouth very wide and made a strange, high shriek. More shock than pain. He staggered a half-step, took a great whooping breath in the sudden silence and started screeching again. More pain than shock, this time.

Leo pulled his sword free and Nightfall tottered, spluttering bloody spit, rearing up on his good leg, raising his sword high so the blade glimmered red with the setting sun.

A slap as Leo caught Stour’s fist in his and stepped forward, growling, jerking his other arm out hard so the pommel of Barniva’s sword crunched into Nightfall’s face, cutting his shriek off dead. His head snapped up, black blood against the pink sunset, and Leo caught the crosspiece of Stour’s sword and tore it from his limp fingers as he toppled back.

The Great Wolf hit the ground hard, arms flopped out wide, blowing bubbles of blood from his broken nose with each snorting breath. Leo stood over him, by some strange chance holding both the swords. How had that happened?

The painted shields of the men around the Circle drifted down, limp, their mouths dropping open, and no one more shocked than Leo himself.

And now the noise of the crowd on his side rose up, louder than ever. Shock turned to stunned delight, and stunned delight to wild triumph.

‘Leo dan Brock!’

‘The Young Lion!’

And, loudest of all, ‘Kill him!’

No doubt Nightfall would’ve killed Leo, if he’d been the one lying there, helpless. Would’ve killed him in the slowest, most painful, most shameful way he could. Would’ve crowed his victory from the rooftops of Uffrith and laughed as the skalds sang the story back to him for years to come.

Stour tried to wriggle away, gave a bubbling moan as he moved his wounded leg, then cowered as the points of the two swords came to hover over his neck. He stared up, bloody hair stuck across his face, eyes wide and full of fear.

Not invincible, after all.

The shouts found a rhythm and became a chant.

‘Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!’

Louder and louder, the smoke of the shouted words rising up into the chill evening all around.

‘Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!’

Louder and louder, joined by the rattle of weapons, the clash of fist on shield, the thud of stomped boots making the chill ground shake, matching Leo’s thudding heartbeat, echoing through him from his feet to his scalp.

‘Kill him!’ he heard Glaward roaring over his shield.

‘Kill him!’ he heard Antaup shriek, face twisted with fury.

‘Kill the fucker!’ snarled Whitewater Jin.