now! We’re moving out!’
His crew always kept most of their gear stowed and they were busy packing the rest quick sharp, Scorry with a jaunty marching tune on the go. Jolly Yon was stomping the little fire out with one boot while Whirrun watched, already packed since all he owned was the Father of Swords and he had it in one hand.
‘Why put it out?’ asked Whirrun.
‘I ain’t leaving those bastards my fire,’ grunted Yon.
‘Don’t reckon they’ll all be able to fit around it, do you?’
‘Even so.’
‘We can’t even all fit around it.’
‘Still.’
‘Who knows? You leave it, maybe one of those Union fellows burns himself and they all get scared and go home.’
Yon looked up for a moment, then ground the last embers out under his boot. ‘I ain’t leaving those bastards my fire.’
‘That’s it then?’ asked Agrick. Craw found it hard to look in his eye. There was something desperate in it. ‘That’s all the words he gets?’
‘We can say more later, maybe, but for now there’s the living to think on.’
‘We’re giving it up.’ Agrick glared at Shivers, fists clenched, like he was the one killed his brother. ‘He died for nothing. For a fucking hill we ain’t even holding on to! If we hadn’t fought he’d still be alive! You hear that!’ He took a step, might’ve gone for Shivers if Brack hadn’t grabbed him from behind, Craw from in front, holding him tight.
‘I hear it.’ Shivers shrugged, bored. ‘And it ain’t the first time. If I hadn’t gone to Styria I’d still have both my eyes. I went. One eye. We fought. He died. Life only rolls one way and it ain’t always the way we’d like. There it is.’ He turned and strolled off towards the north, axe over his shoulder.
‘Forget about him,’ muttered Craw in Agrick’s ear. He knew what it was to lose a brother. He’d buried all three of his in one morning. ‘You need a man to blame, blame me. I chose to fight.’
‘There was no choice,’ said Brack. ‘It was the right thing to do.’
‘Where’d Drofd get to?’ asked Wonderful, slinging her bow over her shoulder as she walked past. ‘Drofd?’
‘Over here! Just packing up!’ He was down near the wall, where they’d left the bodies of Hardbread’s lot. When Craw got there he was kneeling by one of ’em, going through his pockets. He grinned around, holding out a few coins. ‘Chief, this one had some …’ He trailed off when he saw Craw’s frown. ‘I was going to share it out…’
‘Put it back.’
Drofd blinked at him. ‘But it’s no good to him now…’
‘Ain’t yours is it? Leave it there with Hardbread’s lad and when Hard-bread comes back he’ll decide who gets it.’
‘More’n likely it’ll be Hardbread gets it,’ muttered Yon, coming up behind with his mail draped over his shoulder.
‘Maybe it will be. But it won’t be any of us. There’s a right way of doing things.’
That got a couple of sharp breaths and something close to a groan. ‘No one thinks that way these days, Chief,’ said Scorry, leaning on his spear.
‘Look how rich some no-mark like Sutt Brittle’s made himself,’ said Brack.
‘While we scrape by on a piss-pot staple and the odd gild,’ growled Yon.
‘That’s what you’re due, and I’ll see you get a gild for yesterday’s work. But you’ll leave the bodies be. You want to be Sutt Brittle you can beg a place with Glama Golden’s lot and rob folk all day long.’ Craw wasn’t sure what was making him so prickly. He’d let it pass before. Helped himself more’n once when he was younger. Even Threetrees used to overlook his boys picking a corpse or two. But prickly he was, and now he’d chosen to stand on it he couldn’t back down. ‘What’re we?’ he snapped, ‘Named Men or pickers and thieves?’
‘Poor is what we are, Chief,’ said Yon, ‘and starting to…’
‘What the
‘We ain’t in this for the coin,’ said Whirrun, ambling past with the Father of Swords over his shoulder.
Yon gave him a dark look. ‘You might not be, Cracknut. Some of us wouldn’t mind a little from time to time.’ But he walked off shaking his head, mail jingling, and Brack and Scorry shrugged at each other, then followed.
Wonderful leaned close to Craw. ‘Sometimes I think the more other folk don’t care a shit the more you think you’ve got to.’
‘Your point?’
‘Can’t make the world a certain way all on your own.’
‘There’s a right way of doing things,’ he snapped.
‘You sure the right way isn’t just trying to keep everyone happy and alive?’
The worst thing was that she had a point. ‘Is that where we’ve come to now?’
‘I thought that’s about where we’ve always been.’
Craw raised a brow at her. ‘You know what? That husband o’ yours really should teach you some respect.’
‘That bitch? He’s almost as scared o’ me as you lot. Let’s go!’ She pulled Drofd up by his elbow, and the dozen made their way through the gap in the wall, moving fast. Or as fast as Craw’s knees would go. They headed north down the ragged track the way they’d come and left the Heroes to the Union.
Craw worked his way through the trees, chewing at the fingernails of his sword hand. He’d already gnawed his shield hand down to his knuckles, more or less. Damn things never grew back fast enough. He’d felt less scared on the way up the Heroes at night than he did going to tell Black Dow he’d lost a hill. Can’t be right when you’re less scared of the enemy than your own Chief, can it? He wished he had some friendly company, but if there was going to be blame he wanted to shoulder it alone. He’d made the choices.
The woods were crawling with men thick as ants in the grass. Black Dow’s own Carls — veterans, cold- headed and cold-hearted and with lots of cold steel to share out. Some had plate armour like the Union wore, others strange weapons, beaked, picked and hooked for punching through steel, all manner of savage inventions new to the world that the world was more’n likely better off without. He doubted any of these would be thinking twice before robbing a few coins off the dead, or the living either.
Craw had been most of his life a fighting man, but crowds of ’em still somehow made him nervous, and the older he got the less he felt he fit. Any day now they’d spot him for a fraud. Realise that keeping his threadbare courage stitched together was harder work every morning. He winced as his teeth bit into the quick and jerked his nails away.
‘Can’t be right,’ he muttered to himself, ‘for a Named Man to be scared all the time.’
‘What?’ Craw had almost forgotten Shivers was there, he moved so silent.
‘You get scared, Shivers?’
A pause, that eye of his glinting as the sun peeped through the branches. ‘Used to. All the time.’
‘What changed?’
‘Got my eye burned out o’ my head.’
So much for calming small talk. ‘Reckon that could change your outlook.’
‘Halves it.’
Some sheep were bleating away beside the track, pressed tight into a pen much too small. Foraged, no doubt, meaning stolen, some unlucky shepherd’s livelihood vanished down the gullets and out the arses of Black Dow’s army. Behind a screen of hides, not two strides from the flock, a woman was slaughtering ’em and three more doing the skinning and gutting and hanging the carcasses, all soaked to the armpits in blood and not caring much about it either.
Two lads, probably just reached fighting age, were watching. Laughing at how stupid the sheep were, not to guess what was happening behind those hides. They didn’t see that they were in the pen, and behind a screen of
