‘Stodder,’ mumbled around a mouthful of some rotten-looking meat by a hangdog lad with a fat lower lip, wet and dangling like he was touched in the head.
‘I’m Brait,’ piped a boy even smaller’n Colving, ragged as a beggar, dirty toes showing through the end of one split boot. Beck was getting ready to feel sorry for him until he realised how bad he smelled. Brait offered his skinny hand but Beck didn’t take it. He was busy sizing up the last of the group, older’n the others with a bow over his shoulder and a scar through one dark eyebrow. Probably just fell off a wall, but it made him look more dangerous than he’d any right to. Beck wished he had a scar.
‘What about you?’
‘Reft.’ He’d this knowing little grin on his face Beck didn’t much like the look of. Felt right away like he was being laughed at.
‘Something funny?’
Reft waved a hand at the muddle all around ’em. ‘Something not funny?’
‘You laughing at me?’
‘Not everything’s about you, friend.’
Beck weren’t sure if this lad was making him look a fool, or if he was doing it to himself, or if he was just hacked off ’cause none of this matched his hopes, but he was getting angry, and fast. ‘You might want to watch your fucking…’
But Reft weren’t listening. He was looking over Beck’s shoulder, and so were the rest of the lads. Beck turned to see what at, got a shock to find a rider looming over him on a high horse. A good horse with an even better saddle, metal on the harness polished to a neat twinkle. A man of maybe thirty years, by Beck’s guess, clear-skinned and sharp-eyed. He wore a fine cloak with a stitched edge and a rich fur collar, might’ve made Beck shamed of the one his mother had given him if most of the others in the row hadn’t been wearing little better’n rags.
‘Evening.’ The rider’s voice was soft and smooth, the word hardly even sounding like Northern.
‘Evening,’ said Reft.
‘Evening,’ said Beck, no chance he was going to let Reft play at being leader.
The rider smiled down from his fancy saddle, just like they were all old mates together. ‘I don’t suppose you lads could point me to Reachey’s fire?’
Reft stuck a finger into the gathering gloom. ‘Over yonder, I reckon, on that rise there, lee o’ them trees.’ Black outlines against the evening sky, branches lit underneath by firelight.
‘Much obliged to you.’ The man nodded to each of them, even Brait and Colving, then clicked his tongue and nudged his horse through the press, smirk still at the corner of his mouth. Like he’d said something funny. Beck didn’t see what.
‘Who was that bastard?’ he snapped, once the rider was well out of earshot.
‘Don’t know,’ whispered Colving.
Beck curled his lip at the lad. ‘’Course you don’t. Weren’t asking you, was I?’
‘Sorry.’ He flinched like he was expecting a slap. ‘Just saying …’
‘Reckon that was the great Prince Calder,’ said Reft.
Beck’s lip curled further. ‘What, Bethod’s son? Ain’t a prince no more, then, is he?’
‘Reckon he thinks he is.’
‘Married to Reachey’s daughter, ain’t he?’ said Brait in his high little voice. ‘Come to pay respects to his wife’s father, maybe.’
‘Come to try and lie his way back into his father’s chair, judging on his reputation,’ said Reft.
Beck snorted. ‘Don’t reckon he’ll get much change out o’ Black Dow.’
‘Get the bloody cross cut in him for the effort, more’n likely,’ grunted Stodder, licking his fingers as he finished eating.
‘Get hung and burned, I reckon,’ piped up Colving. ‘That’s what he does, Black Dow, wi’ cowards and schemers.’
‘Aye,’ said Brait, as though he was the great expert. ‘Puts the flame to ’em himself and watches ’em dance.’
‘Can’t say I’ll weep any.’ Beck threw a dark glance after Calder, still easing through the press, high above everyone else in his saddle. If there was an opposite of a straight edge it was that bastard. ‘He don’t look much of a fighter.’
‘So?’ Reft’s grin dropped down to the hem of Beck’s cloak where the blunt end of the sword’s sheath showed. ‘You do look a fighter. Don’t necessarily make it so.’
Beck weren’t having that. He twitched his mother’s cloak back over his shoulder to give him room, fists clenched. ‘You calling me a fucking coward?’ Stodder slid carefully out of his way. Colving turned his scared eyes to the ground. Brait just had this helpless little smile.
Reft shrugged, not quite rising to it, but not quite backing down either. ‘Don’t know you well enough to say what y’are. Stood in the line, have you, in battle?’
‘Not in the line,’ snapped Beck, hoping they might think he’d fought a few skirmishes when in fact aside from some bare-handed tussles with boys in the village he’d only fought trees.
‘Then you don’t know yourself, do you? Never can tell what a man’ll do once the blades are drawn, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for the charge to come. Maybe you’ll stand and fight like Skarling his self. Or maybe you’ll run. Maybe you only talk a good fight.’
‘I’ll show you a fight, you fucker!’ Beck stepped forwards, one fist going up. Colving gave a whimper, covered his face like he was the one might get hit. Reft took a pace back, pulling his coat open with one hand. Beck saw the handle of a long knife there, and he realised when he pushed the cloak back he’d showed the hilt of his father’s sword, and it was right by his hand, and it came to him of a sudden how high the stakes had climbed all out of nothing. It came to him in a flash this might not end up a tussle between boys in the village, and he saw the fear in Reft’s eyes, and the willingness, and the guts dropped out of him, and he faltered for a moment, not knowing how he got here or what he should do…
‘Oy!’ Flood lurched out of the crowd, dragging his bad leg behind him. ‘Enough o’ that!’ Beck slowly let his fist drop, mightily glad of the interruption if he was honest. ‘Good to see you’ve some fire in you, but there’ll be plenty of fight to go round with the Southerners, don’t you worry about that. We got marching to do on the morrow, and you’ll march better without smashed mouths.’ Flood held his big fist up between Beck and Reft, grey hairs on the back, knuckles scuffed from a hundred old scrapes. ‘And that’s what you’ll be getting ’less you behave yourselves, understand?’
‘Aye, Chief,’ growled Beck, giving Reft the eye though his heart was going so hard in his ears he thought it might pop ’em right off.
‘Aye, ’course,’ said Reft, letting his coat fall closed.
‘First thing a fighter has to learn is when not to fight. Now get up there, the pair o’ you.’
Beck realised the row of lads had melted away in front of him and there was just a stretch of trampled mud between him and a table, an awning of dripping canvas over it to keep the rain off. An old greybeard sat there waiting for him, and looking somewhat sour about it. He’d lost an arm, coat-sleeve folded up and stitched across his chest. In the other hand he’d got a pen. Seemed they were taking each man’s name and marking it down in a big book. New ways of doing things, with writing and what have you. Beck didn’t reckon his father would’ve cared much for that, and neither did he. What was the purpose to fighting the Southerners if you took their ways yourselves? He trudged up through the slop, frowning.
‘Name?’
‘My name?’
‘Who the bloody hell else’s?’
‘Beck.’
The greybeard scratched it on his paper. ‘From?’
‘A farm just up the valley there.’
‘Age?’
‘Seventeen year.’
The man frowned up at him. ‘And a big one too. You’re a few summers late, lad. Where you been at?’
‘Helping my mother on the farm.’ Someone behind snorted and Beck whipped around to give him a proper
