one could ever have dreamed a commoner’s son would go so far. Himself least of all.
“A long, harsh winter,” Burr was musing. “We need to catch Bethod quickly. Catch him and put a quick end to him, before we all freeze.” He frowned at the trees as they slipped by, frowned up at the flecks of snow eddying around them, frowned over at West. “Bad roads, bad ground, bad weather. Not the best situation, eh, Colonel?”
“No, sir,” said West glumly, but it was his own situation that was worrying him.
“Come now, it could be worse. You’ll be dug in south of the river, nice and warm. Probably won’t see a hair of a Northman all winter. And I hear the Prince and his staff eat pretty well. A damn stretch better than blundering around in the snow with Poulder and Kroy for company.”
“Of course, sir.” But West was less than sure.
Burr glanced over his shoulder at the guards, trotting along at a respectful distance. “You know, when I was a young man, before I was given the dubious honour of commanding the King’s army, I used to love to ride. I’d ride for miles, at the gallop. Made me feel… alive. Seems like there’s no time for it these days. Briefings, and documents, and sitting at tables, that’s all I do. Sometimes, you just want to ride, eh, West?”
“Of course, sir, but now would—”
“Yah!” The Lord Marshal dug his spurs in with a will and his horse bolted down the track, mud flicking up from its hooves. West gaped after him for a moment.
“Damn it,” he whispered. The stubborn old fool would most likely get thrown and break his thick neck. Then where would they be? Prince Ladisla would have to take command. West shivered at the prospect, and kicked his own horse into a gallop. What choice did he have?
The trees flashed past on either side, the road flowed by underneath him. His ears filled with the clattering of hooves, the rattling of harness. The wind rushed in his mouth, stung his eyes. The snow flakes came at him, straight on. West snatched a look over his shoulder. The guards were tangled up with each other, horses jostling, lagging far back down the road.
It was the best he could do to keep up and stay in his saddle at the same time. The last time he’d ridden so hard had been years ago, pounding across a dry plain with a wedge of Gurkish cavalry just behind him. He’d hardly been any more scared then. His hands were gripping the reins painfully tight, his heart was hammering with fear and excitement. He realised that he was smiling. Burr had been right. It did make him feel alive.
The Lord Marshal had slowed, and West reined his own horse in as he drew level. He was laughing now, and he could hear Burr chuckling beside him. He hadn’t laughed like that in months. Years maybe, he couldn’t remember the last time. Then he noticed something out of the corner of his eye.
He felt a sickening jolt, a crushing pain in his chest. His head snapped forward, the reins were ripped from his hands, everything turned upside down. His horse was gone. He was rolling on the ground, over and over.
He tried to get up and the world lurched. Trees and white sky, a horse’s kicking legs, dirt flying. He stumbled and pitched into the road, took a mouthful of mud. Someone helped him up, pulling roughly at his coat, dragging him into the woods.
“No,” he gasped, hardly able to breathe for the pain in his chest. There was no reason to go that way.
A black line between the trees. He staggered forward, bent double, tripping over the tails of his coat, crashing through the undergrowth. A rope across the road, pulled tight as they passed. Someone was half dragging him, half carrying him. His head was spinning, all sense of direction lost. A trap. West fumbled for his sword. It took him a moment to realise that his scabbard was empty.
The Northmen. West felt a stab of terror in his gut. The Northmen had him, and Burr too. Assassins, sent by Bethod to kill them. There was a rushing sound somewhere, out beyond the trees. West struggled to make sense of it. The guards, following down the road. If he could only give them a signal somehow…
“Over here…” he croaked, pitifully hoarse, before a dirty hand clamped itself over his mouth, dragged him down into the wet undergrowth. He struggled as best he could, but there was no strength in him. He could see the guards flashing by through the trees, no more than a dozen strides away, but he was powerless.
He bit the hand, as hard as he could, but it only gripped tighter, squeezing his jaw, crushing his lips. He could taste blood. His own blood maybe, or blood from the hand. The sound of the guards faded into the woods and was gone, and fear pressed in behind it. The hand let go, gave him a parting shove and he tumbled onto his back.
A face swam into view above him. A hard, gaunt, brutish face, black hair hacked short, teeth bared in an animal scowl, cold, flat eyes, brimful of fury. The face turned and spat on the ground. There was no ear on the other side of it. Just a flap of pink scar, and a hole.
Never in his life had West seen such an evil-looking man. The whole set of him was violence itself. He looked strong enough to tear West in half, and more than willing to do it. There was blood running from a wound in his hand. The wound that West’s teeth had made. It dripped from his fingertips onto the forest floor. In his other fist he held a length of smooth wood. West’s eyes followed it, horrified. There was a heavy, curved blade at the end, polished bright. An axe.
So this was a Northman. Not the kind who rolled drunk in the gutters of Adua. Not the kind who had come to his father’s farm to beg for work. The other kind. The kind his mother had scared him with stories of when he was a child. A man whose work, and whose pastime, and whose purpose, was to kill. West looked from that hard blade to those hard eyes and back, numb with horror. He was finished. He would die here in the cold forest, down in the dirt like a dog.
West dragged himself up by one hand, seized by a sudden impulse to run. He looked over his shoulder, but there was no escape that way. A man was moving through the trees towards them. A big man with a thick beard and a sword over his shoulder, carrying a child in his arms. West blinked, trying to get some sense of scale. It was the biggest man he had ever seen, and the child was Lord Marshal Burr. The giant tossed his burden down on the ground like a bundle of sticks. Burr stared up at him, and burped.
West ground his teeth. Riding off like that, the old fool, what had he been thinking? He’d killed them both with his fucking “sometimes you just want to ride”. Makes you feel alive? Neither one of them would live out the hour.
He had to fight. Now might be his last chance. Even if he had nothing to fight with. Better to die that way than on his knees in the mud. He tried to dig the anger out. There was no end to it, when he didn’t want it. Now there was nothing. Just a desperate helplessness that weighed down every limb.
Some hero. Some fighter. It was the most he could do to keep from pissing himself. He could hit a woman alright. He could throttle his sister half to death. The memory of it still made him choke with shame and revulsion, even with his own death staring him in the face. He had thought he would make it right later. Only now there was no later. This was all there was. He felt tears in his eyes.
“Sorry,” he muttered to himself. “I’m sorry.” He closed his eyes and waited for the end.
“No need for sorry, friend, I reckon he’s been bitten harder.”
Another Northman had melted out of the woods, crouching down beside West on his haunches. Lank, matted brown hair hung around his lean face. Quick, dark eyes. Clever eyes. He cracked a wicked grin, anything but reassuring. Two rows of hard, yellow, pointed teeth. “Sit,” he said, accent so thick that West could scarcely understand him. “Sit and be still is best.”
A fourth man was standing over him and Burr. A great, broad-chested man, his wrists as thick as West’s ankles. There were grey hairs in his beard, in his tangled hair. The leader, it seemed, from the way the others made room for him. He looked down at West, slow and thoughtful, as a man might look at an ant, deciding whether or not to squash it under his boot.
“Which of ’em’s Burr, do you think?” he rumbled in Northern.
“I’m Burr,” said West. Had to protect the Lord Marshal. Had to. He clambered up without thinking, but he was still dizzy from the fall, and he had to grab hold of a branch to stop himself falling. “I’m Burr.”
The old warrior looked him up and down, slow and steady. “You?” He burst into a peal of laughter, deep and menacing as a storm in the distance. “I like that! That’s nice!” He turned to the evil-looking one. “See? I thought you said they got no guts, these Southerners?”
“It was brains I said they was short on.” The one-eared man glowered down at West the way a hungry cat looks at a bird. “And I’ve yet to see otherwise.”
“I think it’s this one.” The leader was looking down at Burr. “You Burr?” he asked in the common tongue.
