Seff stiffen and, since she was a long stretch braver than he was, her fear did nothing for his own. Caul Shivers was about the worst omen a man could see. Folk called him Black Dow’s dog, but never to his burned-out face. The man the Protector of the North sent to do his blackest work.
‘Dow wants you.’ If the sight of Shivers’ face had only got some hero half way horrified, his voice would have done the rest of the job. A broken whisper that made every word sound like it hurt.
‘Why?’ asked Calder, keeping his own voice sunny as a summer morning in spite of his hammering heart. ‘Can’t he beat the Union without me?’
Shivers didn’t laugh. He didn’t frown. He stood there, in the doorway, a silent slab of menace.
Calder tried his best at a carefree shrug. ‘Well, I suppose everyone serves someone. What about my wife?’
Shivers’ good eye flicked across to Seff. If he’d looked with leering lust, or sneering disgust, Calder would’ve been happier. But Shivers looked at a pregnant woman like a butcher at a carcass, only a job to be done. ‘Dow wants her to stay and stand hostage. Make sure everyone behaves. She’ll be safe.’
‘As long as everyone behaves.’ Calder found he’d stepped in front of her, as if to shield her with his body. Not much of a shield against a man like Shivers.
‘That’s it.’
‘And if Black Dow misbehaves? Where’s my hostage?’
Shivers’ eye slid back to Calder, and stuck. ‘I’ll be your hostage.’
‘And if Dow breaks his word I can kill you, can I?’
‘You can try.’
‘Huh.’ Caul Shivers had one of the hardest names in the North. Calder, it hardly needed to be said, didn’t. ‘Can you give us a moment to say our goodbyes?’
‘Why not?’ Shivers slid back until only the glint of his metal eye showed in the shadows. ‘I’m no monster.’
‘Back to the snake pit,’ muttered Calder.
Seff caught his hand, eyes wide as she looked up at him, fearful and eager at once. Almost as fearful and eager as he was. ‘Be patient, Calder. Tread carefully.’
‘I’ll tiptoe all the way there.’ If he even made it. He reckoned there was about a one in four Shivers had been told to cut his throat on the way and toss his corpse in a bog.
She took his chin between her finger and thumb and shook it, hard. ‘I mean it. Dow fears you. My father says he’ll take any excuse to kill you.’
‘Dow should fear me. Whatever else I am, I’m my father’s son.’
She squeezed his chin even harder, looking him right in the eye. ‘I love you.’
He looked down at the floor, feeling the sudden pressure of tears at the back of his throat. ‘Why? Don’t you realise what an evil shit I am?’
‘You’re better than you think.’
When she said it he could almost believe it. ‘I love you too.’ And he didn’t even have to lie. How he’d raged when his father announced the match. Marry that pig-nosed, dagger-tongued little bitch? Now she looked more beautiful every time he saw her. He loved her nose, and her tongue even more. It was almost enough to make him swear off other women. He drew her close, blinking back the wet, and kissed her once more. ‘Don’t worry. No one’s less keen to attend my hanging than I am. I’ll be back in your bed before you know it.’
‘With your armour on?’
‘If you like,’ as he backed away.
‘And no lying while you’re gone.’
‘I never lie.’
‘Liar,’ she mouthed at him before the guards closed the door and slid the bolt, leaving Calder in the shadowy hallway with only the sappy-sad thought that he might never see his wife again. That gave him a rare touch of bravery and he hurried after Shivers, catching up with him as he trudged away and slapping a hand down on his shoulder. He was more than a little unnerved by the wood-like solidity of it, but plunged on regardless.
‘If anything happens to her, I promise you…’
‘I hear your promises ain’t up to much.’ Shivers’ eye went to the offending hand and Calder carefully removed it. He might only rarely be brave, but he was never brave past the point of good sense.
‘Who says so? Black Dow? If there’s anyone in the North whose promises are worth less than mine it’s that bastard’s.’ Shivers stayed silent, but Calder wasn’t a man to be easily put off. Good treachery takes effort. ‘Dow won’t ever give you more than you can rip from him with both hands, you know. There’ll be nothing for you, however loyal you are. In fact, the more loyal you are, the less there’ll be. You’ll see. Not enough meat and too many hungry dogs to feed.’
Shivers’ one eye narrowed just the slightest fraction. ‘I’m no dog.’
That chink of anger would have been enough to scare most men silent, but to Calder it was only a crack to chisel at. ‘I see that,’ he whispered, as low and urgent as Seff had whispered to him. ‘Most men don’t see past their fear of you, but I do. I see what you are. A fighter, of course, but a thinker too. An ambitious man. A proud man, and why not?’ Calder brought them to a halt in a shadowy stretch of the hallway, leaned in to a conspiratorial distance, smothering his instinct to cringe away as that awful scar turned towards him. ‘If I had a man like you working for me I’d make better use of him than Black Dow does, that much I promise.’
Shivers raised one beckoning hand, a big ruby on his little finger gleaming the colour of blood in the gloom. Giving Calder no choice but to come closer, closer, far too close for comfort. Close enough to feel Shivers’ warm breath. Close enough almost to kiss. Close enough so all Calder could see was his own distorted, unconvincing grin reflected in that dead metal ball of an eye.
‘Dow wants you.’
The Best of Us
The column was in chaos. The rain poured down. The army was mired in the filth and the men were in the most rotten spirits.
Bremer dan Gorst forced his way through a mud-spattered crush of soldiers, all wriggling like maggots, their armour running with wet, their shouldered pikes poking lethally in all directions. They were stopped as solid as milk turned rank in a bottle but men still squelched up from behind, adding their own burdens of ill temper to the jostling mass, choking the thread of muck that passed for a road and forcing men cursing into the trees. Gorst was already late and had to assert himself as the press tightened, brushing men aside. Sometimes they would turn to argue as
