‘Maybe.’ Craw jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Whirrun’s corpse. ‘There’s a hero. Tell me who’s better off.’
Beck took a shuddering breath. ‘Aye. I guess.’ He held up the Father of Swords and Craw took it under the crosspiece, hefted the great length of metal up and slid it carefully down in the back, next to Whirrun’s body. ‘You taking it now, then? He left it to you?’
‘He left it to the ground.’ Craw twitched the blanket across so it was out of sight. ‘Wanted it buried with him.’
‘Why?’ asked Beck. ‘Ain’t it God’s sword, fell from the sky? I thought it had to be passed on. Is it cursed?’
Craw took up the reins and turned back to the north. ‘Every sword’s a curse, boy.’ And he gave ’em a snap, and the wagon trundled off.
Away up the road.
Away from the Heroes.
By the Sword
Calder sat, and watched the guttering flames.
It was looking very much as if he’d used up all his cunning for the sake of another few hours alive. And cold, hungry, itchy, increasingly terrified hours at that. Sitting, staring across a fire at Shivers, bound wrists chafed and crossed legs aching and the damp working up through the seat of his trousers and making his arse clammy- cold.
But when a few hours is all you can get, you’ll do anything for them. Probably he would’ve done anything for a few more. Had anyone been offering. They weren’t. Like his brilliant ambitions the diamond-bright stars had slowly faded to nothing, crushed out as the first merciless signs of day slunk from the east, behind the Heroes. His last day.
‘How long ’til dawn?’
‘It’ll come when it comes,’ said Shivers.
Calder stretched out his neck and wriggled his shoulders, sore from slumping into twisted half-sleep with his hands tied, twitching through nightmares which, when he jerked awake, he felt faintly nostalgic for. ‘Don’t suppose you could see your way to untying my hands, at least?’
‘When it comes.’
How bloody disappointing it all was. What lofty hopes his father had held. ‘All for you,’ he used to say, a hand on Calder’s shoulder and a hand on Scale’s, ‘you’ll rule the North.’ What an ending, for a man who’d spent his life dreaming of being king. He’d be remembered, all right. For dying the bloodiest death in the North’s bloody history.
Calder sighed, ragged. ‘Things don’t tend to work out the way we imagine, do they?’
With a faint clink, clink, Shivers tapped his ring against his metal eye. ‘Not often.’
‘Life is, basically, fucking shit.’
‘Best to keep your expectations low. Maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.’
Calder’s expectations had plunged into an abyss but a pleasant surprise still didn’t seem likely. He flinched at the memory of the duels the Bloody-Nine had fought for his father. The blood-mad shriek of the crowd. The ring of shields about the edge of the circle. The ring of grim Named Men holding them. Making sure no one could leave until enough blood was spilled. He’d never dreamed he’d end up fighting in one. Dying in one.
‘Who’s holding the shields for me?’ he muttered, as much to fill the silence as anything.
‘I heard Pale-as-Snow offered, and old White-Eye Hansul. Caul Reachey too.’
‘He can hardly get out of it, can he, since I’m married to his daughter?’
‘He can hardly get out of it.’
‘Probably they’ve only asked for a shield so they don’t get sprayed with too much of my gore.’
‘Probably.’
‘Funny thing, gore. A sour annoyance to those it goes on and a bitter loss to those it comes out of. Where’s the upside, eh? Tell me that.’
Shivers shrugged. Calder worked his wrists against the rope, trying to keep the blood flowing to his fingers. It would be nice if he could hold on to his sword long enough to get killed with it in his hand, at least. ‘Got any advice for me?’
‘Advice?’
‘Aye, you’re some fighter.’
‘If you get a chance, don’t hesitate.’ Shivers frowned down at the ruby on his little finger. ‘Mercy and cowardice are the same.’
‘My father always used to say that nothing shows greater power than mercy.’
‘Not in the circle.’ And Shivers stood.
Calder held up his wrists. ‘It’s time?’
The knife glimmered pink with the dawn as it darted out and neatly slit the cord. ‘It’s time.’
‘We just wait?’ grunted Beck.
Wonderful turned her frown on him. ‘Unless you fancy doing a little dance out there. Get everyone warmed up.’
Beck didn’t fancy it. The circle of raked-over mud in the very centre of the Heroes looked a lonely place to be right then. Very bare, and very empty, while all about its pebble-marked edge folk were packed in tight. It was in a circle like this one his father had fought the Bloody-Nine. Fought, and died, and bad.
A lot of the great names of the North were holding shields for this one. Beside the leftovers of Craw’s dozen there was Brodd Tenways, Cairm Ironhead and Glama Golden on Dow’s half of the circle, and plenty of their Named Men around ’em.
Caul Reachey stood on the opposite side of the case, a couple of other old boys, none of ’em looking happy to be there. Would’ve been a sorry lot compared to Dow’s side if it hadn’t been for the biggest bastard Beck had ever seen, towering over the rest like a mountain peak above the foothills.
‘Who’s the monster?’ he muttered.
‘Stranger-Come-Knocking,’ Flood whispered back. ‘Chief of all the lands east of the Crinna. Bloody savages out there, and I hear he’s the worst.’
It was a savage pack the giant had at his back. Men all wild hair and wild twitching, pierced with bone and prickled with paint, dressed in skulls and tatters. Men who looked like they’d sprung straight from an old song, maybe the one about how Shubal the Wheel stole the crag lord’s daughter. How had it gone?
‘Here they come,’ grunted Yon. A disapproving mutter, a few sharp words, but mostly thick silence. The men on the other side of the circle parted and Shivers came through, dragging Calder under the arm.
He looked a long stretch less smug than when Beck first saw him, riding up to Reachey’s weapontake on his fine horse, but he was still grinning. A wonky, pale-faced, pink-eyed grin, but a grin still. Shivers let go of him, squelched heedless across the seven strides of empty muck leaving a trail of gently filling boot-prints, fell in beside Wonderful and took a shield from a man behind her.
Calder nodded across the circle at each man, like they were a set of old friends. He nodded to Beck. When Beck had first seen that smirk it’d looked full of pride, full of mockery, but maybe they’d both changed since. If Calder was laughing now it looked like he was only laughing at himself. Beck nodded back, solemn. He knew what it was to face your death, and he reckoned it took some bones to smile at a time like that. Some bones.
Calder was so scared the faces across the circle were just a dizzying smear. But he was set on meeting the Great Leveller as his father had, and his brother too. With some pride. He kept that in front of him, and he clung on to his smirk, nodding at faces too blurred to recognise as if they’d turned out for his wedding rather than his burial.
He had to talk. Fill the time with blather. Anything to stop him thinking. Calder grabbed Reachey’s hand, the one without the battered shield on it. ‘You came!’
The old man hardly met his eye. ‘Least I could do.’
