you’ve got there. If he wins he’ll be everyone’s hero.’
‘Not mine, I daresay.’ It was Calder’s turn to lean close and whisper. ‘And in the meantime, we’re not on the beach. What if Dow tries to murder me, or gives me some task I can’t but fail at, or puts me in the line somewhere I’m good as dead? Will I have any friends at my back?’
‘You’re my daughter’s husband, better or worse. Me and your father agreed to it when you and Seff weren’t much more’n babies. I was proud to take you when you had the world at your feet. What kind of a man would I be if I turned my back now you’ve got the world on your shoulders? No. You’re family.’ And he showed that missing tooth again, slapping his heavy hand down on Calder’s shoulder. ‘I do things the old way.’
‘Straight edge, eh?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So you’d draw your sword for me?’
‘Shit, no.’ And he gave Calder’s shoulder a parting squeeze and took his hand away. ‘I’m just saying I won’t draw it against you. If I have to burn, I’ll burn, but I ain’t setting myself on fire.’ About what Calder had expected, but still a disappointment. However many life gives you, each new one still stings. ‘Where you going, lad?’
‘I think I’ll meet up with Scale, help him with what’s left of my father’s men.’
‘Good idea. Strong as a bull, your brother, and brave as one with it but, well, might be he’s got a bull’s brain, too.’
‘Might be.’
‘Word’s come from Dow, he’s calling the army together. We’re all marching for Osrung tomorrow morning. Heading for the Heroes.’
‘Guess I’ll catch up with Scale there, then.’
‘And a warming reunion, I don’t doubt.’ Reachey waved a gnarled paw at him. ‘Watch your back, Calder.’
‘That I will,’ he muttered under his breath.
‘And Calder?’
Everyone always had just one more thing to say, and it never seemed to be something nice. ‘Aye?’
‘You get yourself killed, that’s one thing. But my daughter’s stood hostage for you. Done it willingly. I don’t want you doing anything that’s going to bring harm to her or to her child. I won’t stand for that. I’ve told Black Dow and I’m telling you. I won’t stand for it.’
‘You think I will?’ Calder snapped back, with a heat he hadn’t expected. ‘I’m not quite the bastard they say I am.’
‘I know you’re not.’ And Reachey gave him a pointed look from under his craggy brows. ‘Not quite.’
Calder left the fire with worry weighing on his shoulders like a coat of double mail. When the best you can get from your wife’s father is that he won’t help to kill you, it doesn’t take a clever man to see you’re in shit to your chin.
Music was coming from somewhere, old songs badly sung about men long dead and the men they’d killed. Drunken laughter too, figures around the fire-pits, drinking to nothing. A hammer rang from the darkness and Calder caught the shape of the smith, frozen against the sparks of his forge. They’d be working all night arming up Reachey’s new recruits. Blades, axes, arrowheads. The business of destruction. He winced at the shriek of a whetstone. Something about that sound had always set his teeth on edge. He’d never understood what men saw in weapons. Probably a weapontake wasn’t the best place for him, when you thought about it. He stopped, peering into the darkness. Somewhere around here he’d tied his horse…
A boot squelched and he frowned over his shoulder. The shapes of two men, shaggy in the dark, a hint of a stubbly face. Somehow, right away he knew. And right away he took off running.
‘Shit!’
‘Stop him!’
He pounded to nowhere, not thinking about anything, which was a strange relief for a moment, and then, as the first flush of action faded and he realised they were going to kill him … not.
‘Help!’ he screamed at no one. ‘Help me!’
Three men about a fire looked over, part-curious, part-annoyed at being disturbed. None of them so much as reached for weapons. They didn’t care a shit. People don’t, on the whole. They didn’t know who he was, and even if they had he was widely hated, and even if he’d been widely loved, still, on the whole, no one cares a shit.
He left them behind, scared breath starting to burn, slithered down a bank and up another, crashed through a patch of bushes, twigs snatching at him, not caring much about the state of his Styrian boots now as the fear clawed up his throat. He saw a shape looming out of the murk, a pale face, startled.
‘Help!’ he screeched. ‘Help!’
Someone squatting, pinching off a turd. ‘What?’
And Calder was past, thumping through the mud, leaving the fires of Reachey’s camp behind. He snatched a glance over his shoulder, couldn’t see a thing beyond the wobbling black outline of the land. But he could hear them still, too close behind. Far too close. He caught water glimmering at the bottom of a slope, then his lovely Styrian boot toe caught something and he was in the air.
He came down mouth first, crumpled, tumbled, head filled with his own despairing whimpers as the earth battered at him. Slid to what might’ve been a stop though it felt like he was still going. Struggled up, arms clutching at him.
‘Off me, bastards!’ It was his own cloak, heavy with mud. He floundered a half-step, realised he was going up the bank as the killers came down it. He tried to turn and flopped over in the stream, gasping for air, cold water gripping him.
‘Some runner, ain’t he?’ The voice boomed through the surging blood in Calder’s head, a nasty kind of chuckle on the end. Why do they always have to laugh?
‘Oh, aye. Come here.’ That scraping sound as one drew a blade. Calder remembered he had a sword himself, fished numbly for it, trying to struggle up out of the freezing water. He only got as far as his knees. The nearest killer came at him, then fell over sideways.
‘What you doing?’ said the other. Calder wondered if he’d drawn and stabbed him, then realised his sword was still all tangled up with his cloak. He couldn’t have got it free even if he had the strength to move his arm — which, at that moment, he didn’t.
‘What?’ His tongue felt twice its normal size.
A shape flashed from nowhere. Calder gave a kind of squeal, arms jerking pointlessly to cover his face. He felt the wind of something passing, it crashed into the second killer and he went down on his back. The first was trying to crawl away up the bank, making a wet groan. The outline of a man walked down to him, slinging a bow over his shoulder and drawing a sword, and stabbed him through the back without breaking stride. He strolled up close and stood there, a blacker shape in the darkness. Calder stared at him through the spread-out fingers over his face, cold water bubbling at his knees. Thinking of Seff. Waiting for his death.
‘If it ain’t Prince Calder. Wouldn’t expect to chance on you in such surroundings.’
Calder slowly prised his trembling hands away from his face. He knew that voice. ‘Foss Deep?’
‘Yes.’
Relief spouted up in Calder like a fountain, so much he almost wanted to laugh. Laugh or be sick. ‘My brother sent you?’
‘No.’
‘Scale’s busy… busy… busy these days,’ grunted Shallow, still stabbing the second killer, blade squelching in and out.
‘Very busy.’ Deep watched his brother as if he was watching a man dig a ditch. ‘Fighting and so forth. War. The old swords-and-marching game. Loves him some war, Scale, can’t get enough. If that’s not dead yet, by the way, ain’t never going to be.’
‘True.’ Shallow stabbed his man once more then rocked back on his haunches, his blade, and his hand, and his arm to the elbow all sticky black with blood in the moonlight.
Calder made himself not look at it, trying to keep his mind off his rising gorge. ‘Where the hell did you come from?’
Deep offered a hand and Calder took it. ‘We heard you were returned from exile and — aware what a popular boy you are — thought we’d come and stand lookout. Case someone tried something. And whatever do you
