‘The Union have magic, that’s a fact, and they’re happy to use it. We need to match fire with fire.’
‘What if we all get burned?’
‘I daresay we will.’ Dow shrugged. ‘That’s war.’
‘Can you trust her, though?’
‘No.’ Ishri was leaning against the wall by the door, one foot crossed over the other and a look like she knew what Craw was thinking and wasn’t much impressed. He wondered if she knew he’d been thinking about Calder and tried not to, which only brought him more to mind.
Dow, meanwhile, didn’t even turn around. Just slid his torch into a rusted bracket on the wall, watching the flames crackle.
‘Seems our little gesture of peace fell on stony ground,’ he tossed over his shoulder.
Ishri nodded.
Dow stuck his bottom lip out. ‘Nobody wants to be my friend.’
Ishri made one thin eyebrow arch impossibly high.
‘Well, who wants to shake hands with a man whose hands are bloody as mine?’
Ishri shrugged.
Dow looked down at his hand, made a fist of it and sighed. ‘Reckon I’ll just have to get ’em bloodier. Any idea where they’re coming from today?’
‘Everywhere.’
‘Knew you’d say that.’
‘Why ask, then?’
‘Least I got you to speak.’ There was a long silence, then Dow finally turned around, settling back with elbows on the narrow windowsill. ‘Go on, go for some more.’
Ishri stepped away from the wall, letting her head drop back and roll in a slow circle. For some reason every movement of hers made Craw feel a little disgusted, like watching a snake slither. ‘In the east, a man called Brock has taken charge, and prepares to attack the bridge in Osrung.’
‘And what kind of man is he? Like Meed?’
‘The opposite. He is young, pretty and brave.’
‘I love those young brave pretty men!’ Dow glanced over at Craw. ‘It’s why I picked one out for my Second.’
‘None out of three ain’t bad.’ Craw realised he was chewing at his nail yet again, and whipped his hand away.
‘In the centre,’ said Ishri, ‘Jalenhorm has a great number of foot ready to cross the shallows.’
Dow gave his hungry grin. ‘Gives me something to look forward to today. I quite enjoy watching men try to climb hills I’m sat on top of.’ Craw couldn’t say he was looking forward to it, however much the ground might have taken their side.
‘In the west Mitterick strains at the leash, keen to make use of his pretty horses. He has men across the little river too, in the woods on your western flank.’
Dow raised his brows. ‘Huh. Calder was right.’
‘Calder has been hard at work all night.’
‘Damned if it ain’t the first hard work that bastard’s ever done.’
‘He stole two standards from the Union in the darkness. Now he taunts them.’
Black Dow chuckled to himself. ‘You’ll not find a better hand at taunting. I’ve always liked that lad.’
Craw frowned over at him. ‘You have?’
‘Why else would I keep giving him chances? I got no shortage of men can kick a door down. I can use a couple who’ll think to try the handle once in a while.’
‘Fair enough.’ Though Craw had to wonder what Dow would say if he knew Calder was trying the handle on his murder. When he knew. It was a case of when. Wasn’t it?
‘This new weapon they’ve got.’ Dow narrowed his eyes to lethal slits. ‘What is it?’
‘Bayaz.’ Ishri did some fairly deadly eye-narrowing of her own. Craw wondered if there was a harder pair of eye-narrowers in the world than these two. ‘The First of the Magi. He is with them. And he has something new.’
‘That’s the best you can do?’
She tipped her head back, looking down her nose. ‘Bayaz is not the only one who can produce surprises. I have one for him, later today.’
‘I knew there had to be a reason why I took you under my wing,’ said Dow.
‘Your wing shelters all the North, oh mighty Protector.’ Ishri’s eyes rolled slowly to the ceiling. ‘The Prophet shelters under the wing of God. I shelter under the wing of the Prophet. That thing that keeps the rain from your head?’ And she held her arm up, long fingers wriggling, boneless as a jar of bait. Her face broke out in a grin too white and too wide. ‘Great or small, we all must find some shelter.’ Dow’s torch popped, its light flickered for a moment, and she wasn’t there.
‘Think on it,’ came her voice, right in Craw’s ear.
Names
Beck hunched his shoulders and stared at the fire. Not much more’n a tangle of blackened sticks, a few embers in the centre still with a glow to ’em and a little tongue of flame, whipped, and snatched, and torn about, helpless in the wind. Burned out. Almost as burned out as he was. He’d clutched at that dream of being a hero so long that now it was naught but ashes he didn’t know what he wanted. He sat there under fading stars named for great men, great battles and great deeds, and didn’t know who he was.
‘Hard to sleep, eh?’ Drofd shuffled up into the firelight cross-legged, blanket around his shoulders.
Beck gave the smallest grunt he could. Last thing he wanted to do was talk.
Drofd held out a piece of yesterday’s meat to him, glistening with grease. ‘Hungry?’
Beck shook his head. He weren’t sure when he last ate. Just before he last slept, most likely, but the smell alone was making him sick.
‘Might keep it for later, then.’ Drofd stuck the meat into a pocket on the front of his jerkin, bone sticking out, rubbed his hands together and held ’em to the smear of fire, so dirty the lines on his palms were picked out black. He looked about of an age with Beck, but smaller and darker, some spare stubble on his jaw. Right then, in the darkness, he looked a little bit like Reft. Beck swallowed, and looked away. ‘So you got yourself a name, then, eh?’
A little nod.
‘Red Beck.’ Drofd gave a chuckle. ‘It’s a good ’un. Fierce-sounding. You must be pleased.’
‘Pleased?’ Beck felt a stinging urge to say, ‘I hid in a cupboard and killed one o’ my own,’ but instead he said, ‘I reckon.’
‘Wish I had a name. Guess it’ll come in time.’
Beck kept staring into the fire, hoping to head off any more chatter. Seemed Drofd was the chattering sort, though.
‘You got family?’
All the most ordinary, obvious, lame bloody talk a lad could’ve thought of. Dragging the words out felt like a painful effort to begin with. ‘A mother. Two little brothers. One’s ’prenticed to the smith in the valley.’ Lame, maybe, but once he’d started talking, thoughts drifting homewards, he found he couldn’t stop. ‘More’n likely my mother’s making ready to bring the harvest in. Was getting ripe when I left. She’ll be sharpening the scythe and that. And Festen’ll be gathering up after her …’ And by the dead, how he wished he was with ’em. He wanted to smile and cry at once, didn’t dare say more for fear of doing it.
‘I got seven sisters,’ said Drofd, ‘and I’m the youngest. Like having eight mothers fussing over me, and putting me right all day long, and each with a tongue sharper’n the last. No man in the house, and no man’s business ever talked of. Home was a special kind of hell, I can tell you that.’
A warm house with eight women and no swords didn’t sound so awful right then. Beck had thought his home
