‘All honesty, mine too.’
‘Who’d be a soldier?’
‘Hell of a job. But they say old horses can’t jump new fences.’
‘I try not to jump at all these days,’ said Hardbread. ‘Heard you was fighting for Black Dow. You and your dozen.’
‘Trying to keep the fighting to a minimum, but as far as who I’m doing it for, you’re right. Dow buys my porridge.’
‘I love porridge.’ Hardbread’s eyes rolled down to the fire and he poked thoughtfully at it with a twig. ‘The Union pays for mine now.’ His lads were twitchy — tongues licking at lips, fingers tickling at weapons, eyes shining in the firelight. Like the audience at a duel, watching the opening moves, trying to suss who had the upper hand. Hardbread’s eyes came up again. ‘That seems to put us on opposite sides.’
‘We going to let a little thing like sides spoil a polite conversation?’ asked Craw.
As though the very word ‘polite’ was an insult, Redcrow had another rush of blood. ‘Let’s just kill this fucker!’
Hardbread turned slowly to him, face squeezed up with scorn. ‘If the impossible happens and I feel the need for your contribution, I’ll tell you what it is. ’Til then keep it shut, halfhead. Man o’ Curnden Craw’s experience don’t just wander up here to get killed by the likes o’ you.’ His eyes flicked around the stones, then back to Craw. ‘Why’d you come, all by your lone self? Don’t want to fight for that bastard Black Dow no more, and you’ve come over to join the Dogman?’
‘Can’t say I have. Fighting for the Union ain’t really my style, no disrespect to those that do. We all got our reasons.’
‘I try not to damn a man on his choice o’ friends alone.’
‘There’s always good men on both sides of a good question,’ said Craw. ‘Thing is, Black Dow asked me to stroll on down to the Heroes, stand a watch for a while, see if the Union are coming up this way. But maybe you can spare me the bother. Are the Union coming up this way?’
‘Dunno.’
‘You’re here, though.’
‘I wouldn’t pay much mind to that.’ Hardbread glanced at the lads around the fire without great joy. ‘As you can see, they more or less sent me on my own. The Dogman asked me to stroll up to the Heroes, stand a watch, see if Black Dow or any of his lot showed up.’ He raised his brows. ‘You think they will?’
Craw grinned. ‘Dunno.’
‘You’re here, though.’
‘Wouldn’t pay much mind to that. It’s just me and my dozen. ’Cept for Brydian Flood, he broke his leg a few months ago, had to leave him behind to mend.’
Hardbread gave a rueful smile, prodded the fire with his twig and sent up a dusting of sparks. ‘Yours always was a tight crew. I daresay they’re scattered around the Heroes now, bows to hand.’
‘Something like that.’ Hardbread’s lads all twitched to the side, mouths gaping. Shocked at the voice coming from nowhere, shocked on top that it was a woman’s. Wonderful stood with her arms crossed, sword sheathed and bow over her shoulder, leaning up against one of the Heroes as careless as she might lean on a tavern wall. ‘Hey, hey, Hardbread.’
The old warrior winced. ‘Couldn’t you even nock an arrow, make it look like you take us serious?’
She jerked her head into the darkness. ‘There’s some boys back there, ready to put a shaft through your face if one o’ you looks at us wrong. That make you feel better?’
Hardbread winced even more. ‘Yes and no,’ he said, his lads staring into the gaps between the stones, the night suddenly heavy with threat. ‘Still acting Second to this article, are you?’
Wonderful scratched at the long scar through her shaved-stubble hair. ‘No better offers. We’ve got to be like an old married couple who haven’t fucked for years, just argue.’
‘Me and my wife were like that, ’til she died.’ Hardbread’s finger tapped at his drawn sword. ‘Miss her now, though. Thought you’d have company from the first moment I saw you, Craw. But since you’re still jawing and I’m still breathing, I reckon you’re set on giving us a chance to talk this out.’
‘Then you’ve reckoned the shit out o’ me,’ said Craw. ‘That’s exactly the plan.’
‘My sentries alive?’
Wonderful turned her head and gave one of her whistles, and Scorry Tiptoe slid out from behind one of the stones. Had his arm around a man with a big pink birthmark on his cheek. Looked almost like two old mates, ’til you saw Scorry’s hand had a blade in it, edge tickling at Birthmark’s throat.
‘Sorry, Chief,’ said the prisoner to Hardbread. ‘Caught me off guard.’
‘It happens.’
A scrawny lad came stumbling into the firelight like he’d been shoved hard, tripped over his own feet and sprawled in the long grass with a squawk. Jolly Yon stalked from the darkness behind him, axe held loose in one fist, heavy blade gleaming down by his boot, heavy frown on his bearded face.
‘Thank the dead for that.’ Hardbread waved his twig at the lad, just clambering up. ‘My sister’s son. Promised I’d keep an eye out. If you’d killed him I’d never have heard the end of it.’
‘He was asleep,’ growled Yon. ‘Weren’t looking out too careful, were you?’
Hardbread shrugged. ‘Weren’t expecting anyone. If there’s two things we’ve got too much of in the North it’s hills and rocks. Didn’t reckon a hill with rocks on it would be a big draw.’
‘It ain’t to me,’ said Craw, ‘but Black Dow said come down here…’
‘And when Black Dow says a thing …’ Brack-i-Dayn half-sang the words, that way the hillmen tend to. He stepped into the wide circle of grass, tattooed side of his great big face turned towards the firelight, shadows gathered in the hollows of the other.
Redcrow made to jump up but Hardbread weighed him down with a pat on the shoulder. ‘My, my. You lot just keep popping up.’ His eyes slid from Jolly Yon’s axe, to Wonderful’s grin, to Brack’s belly, to Scorry’s knife still at his man’s throat. Judging the odds, no doubt, just the way Craw would’ve done. ‘You got Whirrun of Bligh with you?’
Craw slowly nodded. ‘I don’t know why, but he insists on following me around.’
Right on cue, Whirrun’s strange valley accent floated from the dark. ‘Shoglig said … I would be shown my destiny … by a man choking on a bone.’ It echoed off the stones, seeming to come from everywhere at once. He’d quite the sense of theatre, Whirrun. Every real hero needs one. ‘And Shoglig is old as these stones. Hell won’t take her, some say. Blade won’t cut her. Saw the world born, some say, and will see it die. That’s a woman a man has to listen to, ain’t it? Or so some say.’
Whirrun strolled through the gap one of the missing Heroes had left and into the firelight, tall and lean, face in shadow from his hood, patient as winter. He had the Father of Swords across his shoulders like a milkmaid’s yoke, dull grey metal of the hilt all agleam, arms slung over the sheathed blade and his long hands dangling. ‘Shoglig told me the time, and the place, and the manner of my death. She whispered it, and made me swear to keep it secret, for magic shared is no magic at all. So I cannot tell you where it will be, or when, but it is not here, and it is not now.’ He stopped a few paces from the fire. ‘You boys, on the other hand …’ Whirrun’s hooded head tipped to one side, only the end of his sharp nose, and the line of his sharp jaw, and his thin mouth showing. ‘Shoglig didn’t say when you’d be going.’ He didn’t move. He didn’t have to. Wonderful looked at Craw, and rolled her eyes towards the starry sky.
But Hardbread’s lads hadn’t heard it all a hundred times before. ‘That Whirrun?’ one muttered to his neighbour. ‘Cracknut Whirrun? That’s him?’
His neighbour said nothing, just the lump on the front of his throat moving as he swallowed.
‘Well, my old arse if I’m fighting my way out o’ this,’ said Hardbread, brightly. ‘Any chance you’d let us clear out?’
‘I’ve a mind to insist on it,’ said Craw.
‘We can take our gear?’
‘I’m not looking to embarrass you. I just want your hill.’
‘Or Black Dow does, at any rate.’
‘Same difference.’
‘Then you’re welcome to it.’ Hardbread slowly got to his feet, wincing as he straightened his legs, no doubt
