Sharp Ends

The Fool Jobs

East of the Crinna, Autumn 574

Craw chewed the hard skin around his nails, just like he always did. They hurt, just like they always did. He thought to himself that he really had to stop doing that. Just like he always did.

‘Why is it,’ he muttered under his breath, and with some bitterness too, ‘I always get stuck with the fool jobs?’

The village squatted in the fork of the river, a clutch of damp thatch roofs, scratty as an idiot’s hair, a man-high fence of rough-cut logs ringing it. Round wattle huts and three long halls dumped in the muck, ends of the curving wooden uprights on the biggest badly carved like dragons’ heads, or wolves’ heads, or something that was meant to make men scared but only made Craw nostalgic for decent carpentry. Smoke limped up from chimneys in muddy smears. Half-bare trees still shook browning leaves. In the distance the reedy sunlight glimmered on the rotten fens, like a thousand mirrors stretching off to the horizon. But without the romance.

Wonderful stopped scratching at the long scar through her shaved-stubble hair long enough to make a contribution. ‘Looks to me,’ she said, ‘like a confirmed shit-hole.’

‘We’re way out east of the Crinna, no?’ Craw worked a speck of skin between teeth and tongue and spat it out, wincing at the pink mark left beside his nail, way more painful than it had any right to be. ‘Nothing but hundreds of miles of shit-hole in every direction. You sure this is the place, Raubin?’

‘I’m sure. She was most specifical.’

Craw frowned. He weren’t sure if he’d taken such a pronounced dislike to Raubin ’cause he was the one that brought the jobs and the jobs were usually cracked, or if he’d taken such a pronounced dislike to Raubin ’cause the man was a weasel-faced arsehole. Bit of both, maybe. ‘The word is “specific”, half-head.’

‘Got my meaning, no? Village in a fork in the river, she said, south o’ the fens, three halls, biggest one with uprights carved like fox heads.’

‘Aaaah.’ Craw snapped his fingers. ‘They’re meant to be foxes.’

‘Fox Clan, these crowd.’

‘Are they?’

‘So she said.’

‘And this thing we’ve got to bring her. What sort of a thing is it, exactly?’

‘Well, it’s a thing,’ said Raubin.

‘That much we know.’

‘Sort of … this long, I guess. She didn’t say, precisely.’

‘Unspecifical, was she?’ asked Wonderful, grinning with every tooth.

‘She said it’d have a kind of a light about it.’

‘A light?’ asked Craw. ‘What? Like a magic bloody candle?’

All Raubin could do was shrug, which weren’t a scrap of use to no one. ‘I don’t know. She said you’d know it when you saw it.’

‘Oh, nice.’ Craw hadn’t thought his mood could drop much lower. Now he knew better. ‘That’s real nice. So you want me to bet my life, and the lives o’ my crew, on knowing it when I see it?’ He shoved himself back off the rocks on his belly, out of sight of the village, clambered up and brushed the dirt from his coat, muttering darkly to himself since it was a new one and he’d been taking some trouble to keep it clean. Should’ve known that’d be a waste of effort, what with the shitty jobs he always ended up in to his neck. He started back down the slope, shaking his head, striding through the trees towards the others. A good, confident stride. A leader’s stride. It was important, Craw reckoned, for a chief to walk like he knew where he was going.

Especially when he didn’t.

Raubin hurried after him, whiny voice picking at his back. ‘She didn’t precisely say. About the thing, you know. I mean, she don’t, always. She just looks at you, with those eyes …’ He gave a shudder. ‘And says, fetch me this thing, and where from. And what with the paint, and that voice o’ hers, and that sweat o’ bloody fear you get when she looks at you …’ Another shudder, hard enough to rattle his rotten teeth. ‘I ain’t asking no questions, I can tell you that. I’m just looking to run out fast so I don’t piss myself on the spot. Run out fast, and fetch whatever thing she’s after-’

‘Well, that’s real sweet for you,’ said Craw, ‘except insofar as actually getting this thing goes.’

‘As far as getting the thing goes,’ mused Wonderful, splashes of light and shadow swimming across her bony face as she looked up into the branches, ‘the lack of detail presents serious difficulties. All manner of things in a village that size. Which one, though? Which thing, is the question.’ Seemed she was in a thoughtful mood. ‘One might say the voice, and the paint, and the aura of fear are, in the present case … self-defeating.’

‘Oh no,’ said Craw. ‘Self-defeating would be if she was the one who ended up way out past the Crinna with her throat cut, on account of some blurry details on the minor point of the actual job we’re bloody here to do.’ And he gave Raubin a hard glare as he strode out of the trees and into the clearing.

Scorry was sitting sharpening his knives, eight blades neatly laid out on the patchy grass in front of his crossed legs, from a little pricker no longer’n Craw’s thumb to a hefty carver just this side of a short-sword. The ninth he had in his hands, whetstone working at steel, squick, scrick, marking the rhythm to his soft, high singing. He had a wonder of a singing voice, did Scorry Tiptoe. No doubt he would’ve been a bard in a happier age, but there was a steadier living in sneaking up and knifing folk these days. A sad fact, Craw reckoned, but those were the times.

Brack-i-Dayn was sat beside Scorry, lips curled back, nibbling at a stripped rabbit bone like a sheep nibbling at grass. A huge, very dangerous sheep. The little thing looked like a toothpick in his great tattooed blue lump of a fist. Jolly Yon frowned down at him as if he was a great heap of shit, which Brack might’ve been upset by if it hadn’t been Yon’s confirmed habit to look at everything and everyone that way. He properly looked like the least jolly man in all the North at that moment. It was how he’d come by the name, after all.

Whirrun of Bligh was kneeling on his own on the other side of the clearing, in front of his great long sword, leaned up against a tree for the purpose. He had his hands clasped in front of his chin, hood drawn down over his head, just the sharp end of his nose showing. Praying, by the look of him. Craw had always been a bit worried by men who prayed to gods, let alone swords. But those were the times, he guessed. In bloody days, swords were worth more than gods. They certainly had ’em outnumbered. Besides, Whirrun was a valley-man, from way out north and west, across the mountains near the White Sea, where it snowed in summer and no one with the slightest sense would ever choose to live. Who knew how he thought?

‘Told you it was a real piss-stain of a village, didn’t I?’ Never was in the midst of stringing his bow. He had that grin he tended to have, like he’d made a joke on everyone else and no one but him had got it. Craw would’ve liked to know what it was, he could’ve done with a laugh. The joke was on all of ’em, far as he could see.

‘Reckon you had the right of it,’ said Wonderful as she strutted past into the clearing. ‘Piss. Stain.’

‘Well, we didn’t come to settle down,’ said Craw, ‘we came to get a thing.’

Jolly Yon achieved what many might’ve thought impossible by frowning deeper, black eyes grim as graves, dragging his thick fingers through his thick tangle of a beard. ‘What sort of a thing, exactly?’

Craw gave Raubin another look. ‘You want to dig that one over?’ The fixer only spread his hands, helpless. ‘I hear we’ll know it when we see it.’

‘Know it when we see it? What kind of a-’

‘Tell it to the trees, Yon, the task is the task.’

‘And we’re here now, aren’t we?’ said Raubin.

Craw sucked his teeth at him. ‘Brilliant fucking observation. Like all the best ones, it’s true whenever you say it. Yes, we’re here.’

‘We’re here,’ sang Brack-i-Dayn in his up-and-down Hillman accent, sucking the last shred o’ grease from his bone and flicking it into the bushes. ‘East of the Crinna where the moon don’t shine, a hundred miles from a clean place to shit and with wild, crazy bastards dancing all around think it’s a good idea to put bones through their own faces.’ Which was a little rich, considering he was so covered in tattoos he was more blue than white. There’s no style of contempt like the stuff one kind of savage has for another, Craw guessed.

‘Can’t deny they’ve got some funny ideas east of the Crinna.’ Raubin shrugged. ‘But here’s where the thing is, and here’s where we are, so why don’t we just get the fucking thing and back fucking home?’

‘Why don’t you get the fucking thing, Raubin?’ growled Jolly Yon.

‘’Cause it’s my fucking job to fucking tell you to get the fucking thing is why, Yon fucking Cumber.’

There was a long, ugly pause. Uglier than the child of a man and a sheep, as the Hillmen have it. Then Yon talked in his quiet voice, the one that still gave Craw prickles up his arms, even after all these years. ‘I hope I’m wrong. By the dead, I hope I’m wrong. But I’m getting this feeling …’ He shifted forward, and it was awfully clear all of a sudden just how many axes he was carrying, ‘like I’m being disrespected.’

‘No, no, not at all, I didn’t mean-’

‘Respect, Raubin. That shit costs nothing, but it can spare a man from trying to hold his brains in all the way back home. Am I clear enough?’

‘Course you are, Yon, course you are. I’m over the line. I’m all over it on both sides of it, and I’m sorry. Didn’t mean no disrespect. Lot o’ pressure, is all. Lot o’ pressure for everyone. It’s my neck on the block, just like yours. Not down there, maybe, but back home, you can be sure o’ that, if she don’t get her way …’ Raubin shuddered again, worse’n ever.

‘A touch of respect don’t seem too much to ask-’

‘Enough.’ Craw waved the pair of ’em down. ‘We’re all sinking on the same leaky bloody skiff, there’s no help arguing about it. We need every man to a bucket, and every woman, too.’

‘I’m always helpful,’ said Wonderful, all innocence.

‘If only.’ Craw squatted, pulling out a blade and starting to scratch a map of the village in the dirt. The way Threetrees used to do a long, low time ago. ‘We might not know exactly what this thing is, but we know where it is, at least.’ Knife scraped through earth as the others gathered, kneeling, sitting, squatting, looking on. ‘A big hall in the middle, with uprights on it carved like foxes’ heads. They’re dragons, you ask me, but, you know, that’s another story. There’s a fence around the outside, two gates, north and south. Houses and huts over here. A pigpen there, I think. That’s a forge, maybe.’

‘How many do we reckon might be down there?’ asked Yon.

Wonderful rubbed at the scar on her scalp, face twisted as she glanced up towards the pale sky. ‘Could be fifty, sixty fighting men? A few elders, few dozen women and children, too. Some o’ those might hold a blade.’

‘Women fighting.’ Never grinned. ‘A disgrace, is that.’

Wonderful bared her teeth back at him. ‘Get those bitches to the cook-fire, eh?’

‘Oh, the cook-fire …’ Brack stared up into the cloudy sky like it was packed with happy memories.

‘Sixty warriors? And we’re but seven – plus the baggage.’ Jolly Yon curled his tongue and blew spit over Raubin’s boots in a neat arc. ‘Shit on that. We need more men.’

‘Wouldn’t be enough food then.’ Brack-i-Dayn laid a sad hand on his belly. ‘There’s hardly enough as it-’

Craw cut him off. ‘Maybe we should stick to plans using the number we’ve got, eh? Plain as plain, sixty’s way too many to fight fair.’ Not that anyone had joined his crew for a fair fight, of course. ‘We need to draw some off.’

Never winced. ‘Any point asking why you’re looking at me?’

‘Because ugly men hate nothing worse than handsome men, pretty boy.’

‘It’s a fact I can’t deny.’ Never sighed, flicking his long hair back. ‘I’m cursed with a fine face.’

‘Your curse my blessing.’ Craw jabbed at the north end of his dirt-plan, where a wooden bridge crossed a stream. ‘You’ll take your unmatched beauty in towards the bridge. They’ll have guards posted, no doubt. Mount a diversion.’

‘Shoot one of ’em, you mean?’

‘Shoot near ’em, maybe. Let’s not kill anyone we don’t have to, eh? They might be nice enough folks under different circumstances.’

Never sent up a dubious eyebrow. ‘You reckon?’

Craw didn’t, particularly, but he’d no desire to weight his conscience down any further. It didn’t float too well as it was. ‘Just lead ’em a little dance, that’s all.’

Wonderful clapped a hand to her chest. ‘I’m so sorry I’ll miss it. No one dances prettier than our Never when the music gets going.’

Never grinned at her. ‘Don’t worry, sweetness, I’ll dance for you later.’

‘Promises, promises.’

‘Yes, yes.’ Craw shut the pair of ’em up with another wave. ‘You can make us all laugh when this fool job’s done with, if we’re still breathing.’

‘Maybe we’ll make you laugh, too, eh, Whirrun?’ said Wonderful.

The valley-man sat cross-legged, sword across his knees, and shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘We’re a tight little group, us lot, we like things friendly.’

Whirrun’s eyes slid across to Jolly Yon’s black frown, and back. ‘I see that.’

‘We’re like brothers,’ said Brack, grinning all over his tattooed face. ‘We share the risks, we share the food, we share the rewards, and from time to time we even share a laugh.’

‘Never got on too well with my brothers,’ said Whirrun.

Wonderful snorted. ‘Well, aren’t you blessed, boy? You’ve been given a second chance at a loving family. You last long enough, you’ll learn how it works.’

The shadow of Whirrun’s hood crept up and down his face as he slowly nodded. ‘Every day should be a new lesson.’

‘Good advice,’ said Craw. ‘Ears open, then, one and all. Soon as Never’s drawn a few off, we creep in at the south gate.’ And he put a cross in the dirt to show where it was. ‘Two groups, one each side o’ the main hall there, where the thing is. Where the thing’s meant to be, leastways. Me, Yon and Whirrun on the left.’ Yon spat again, Whirrun gave the slightest nod. ‘Wonderful, take Brack and Scorry down the right.’

‘Right y’are, Chief,’ said Wonderful.

‘Right for us,’ sang Brack.

‘So, so, so,’ said Scorry, which Craw took for a yes.

He stabbed at each of ’em with one chewed-to-bugger fingernail. ‘And all on your best behaviour, you hear? Quiet as a spring breeze. No tripping over the pots this time, eh, Brack?’

‘I’ll mind my boots, Chief.’

‘Good enough.’

‘We got a backup plan?’ asked Wonderful. ‘In case the impossible happens and things don’t work out quite according to the scheme?’

‘The usual. Grab the thing if we can, then run like fuck. You,’ and Craw gave Raubin a look.

His eyes went wide as two cook-pots. ‘What, me?’

‘Stay here and mind the gear.’ Raubin gave a long sigh of relief and Craw felt his lip curl. He didn’t blame the man for being a hell of a coward, most men were. Craw was one himself. But he blamed him for letting it show. ‘Don’t get too comfortable, though, eh? If the rest of us come to grief these Fox fuckers’ll track you down before our blood’s dry and more’n likely cut your fruits off.’

Raubin’s sigh rattled to a quick stop.

‘Cut your head off,’ whispered Never, eyes all scary-wide.

‘Pull your guts out and cook ’em,’ growled Jolly Yon.

‘Skin your face off and wear it as a mask,’ rumbled Brack.

‘Use your cock for a spoon,’ said Wonderful.

They all thought about that for a moment.

‘Right, then,’ said Craw. ‘Nice and careful, and let’s get in that hall without no one noticing and find us that thing. Above all …’ And he swept the lot of ’em with his sternest look, a half-circle of dirt-smeared, scar-pocked, bright-eyed, beard-fuzzed faces. His crew. His family. ‘Nobody die, eh? Weapons.’

Quick sharp, and with no grumbling now the work was at their feet, Craw’s crew got ready for action, each one smooth and practised with their gear as a weaver with his loom, weapons neat as their clothes were ragged, bright and clean as their faces were dirty. Belts, straps and bootlaces hissed tight, metal scraped, rattled and rang, and all the while Scorry’s song floated out soft and high.

Craw’s hands moved by themselves through the old routines, mind wandering across the years to other times he’d done it, other places, other faces around him, a lot of ’em gone back to the mud long ago. A few he’d buried with his own hands. He hoped none of these folk died today, and became nothing but dirt and worn-out memories. He checked his shield, grip bound in leather all tight and sturdy, straps firm. He checked his knife, his backup knife, and his backup backup knife, all tight in their sheaths. You can never have too many knives, someone once told him, and it was solid advice, provided you were careful how you stowed ’em and didn’t fall over and get your own blade in your fruits.

Everyone had their work to be about. Except Whirrun. He just bowed his head as he lifted his sword gently from the tree-trunk, holding it under the crosspiece by its stained leather scabbard, sheathed blade longer’n one of his own long legs. Then he pushed his hood back, scrubbed his dirty fingernails through his flattened hair and stood watching the others, head on one side.

‘That the only blade you carry?’ asked Craw as he stowed his own sword at his hip, hoping to draw the tall man in, start to build some trust with him. Tight crew like this was, a bit of trust might save your life. Might save everyone’s.

Whirrun’s eyes swivelled to him. ‘This is the Father of Swords, and men have a hundred names for it. Dawn Razor. Grave-Maker. Blood Harvest. Highest and Lowest. Scac-ang-Gaioc in the valley tongue, which means the Splitting of the World, the Battle that was fought at the start of time and will be fought again at its end.’ For a moment he had Craw wondering if he’d list the whole bloody hundred but thankfully he stopped there, frowning at the hilt, wound with dull grey wire. ‘This is my reward and my punishment both. This is the only blade I need.’

‘Bit long for eating with, no?’ asked Wonderful, strutting up from the other side.

Whirrun bared his teeth at her. ‘That’s what these are for.’

‘Don’t you ever sharpen it?’ asked Craw.

‘It sharpens me.’

‘Right. Right y’are.’ He hoped Whirrun was as good with that great big blade as he was supposed to be, ’cause he surely brought nothing to the table as a conversationalist.

‘Besides, to sharpen it you’d have to draw it,’ said Wonderful, winking at Craw with the eye Whirrun couldn’t see.

‘True.’ Whirrun’s eyes slid up to her face. ‘And once the Father of Swords is drawn, it cannot be sheathed without-’

‘Being blooded?’ she finished for him. Didn’t take skill with the runes to see that coming, Whirrun must’ve said the same words a dozen times since they left Carleon. Enough for everyone to get somewhat tired of it.

‘Blooded,’ echoed Whirrun, voice full of portent.

Wonderful gave Craw a look. ‘You ever think, Whirrun of Bligh, you might take yourself a touch too serious?’

He tipped his head back and stared up into the sky. ‘I’ll laugh when I hear something funny.’

Craw felt Yon’s hand on his shoulder. ‘A word, Chief?’

‘Course,’ with a grin that took some effort.

He guided Craw away from the others a few steps and spoke soft, the same words he always did before a fight. ‘If I die down there-’

‘No one’s dying today,’ snapped Craw, the same words he always used in reply.

‘So you said last time, ’fore we buried Jutlan.’ That drove Craw’s mood another rung down the ladder into the bog. ‘No one’s fault, we do a dangerous style o’ work and all know it. Chances are good I’ll live through, but all I’m saying is, if I don’t-’

‘I’ll stop by your children, and take ’em your share, and tell them what you were.’

‘That’s right. And?’

‘And I won’t dress it up any.’

‘Right, then.’ Jolly Yon didn’t smile, of course. Craw had known him years and hadn’t seen him smile more’n a dozen times, and even then when it was least expected. But he nodded, satisfied. ‘Right. No man I’d rather give the task to.’

Craw nodded back. ‘Good. Great.’ No task he wanted less. As Yon walked off, he muttered to himself. ‘Always the fool jobs …’

It went pretty much just like Craw planned. He wouldn’t have called it the first time ever, but it was a pleasant surprise, that was sure. The six of them lay still and silent on the rise, followed the little movements of leaf and branch that marked Never creeping towards that crap-arse of a village. It looked no better the closer you got to it. Things rarely did, in Craw’s experience. He chewed at his nails some more, saw Never kneel in the bushes across the stream from the north gate, nocking an arrow and drawing the string. It was hard to tell from this range, but it looked like he still had that knowing little grin even now.

He loosed his shaft and Craw thought it clicked into one of the logs that made the fence. Faint shouting drifted on the wind. A couple of arrows wobbled back the other way, vanished into the trees as Never turned and scuttled off, lost in the brush. Craw heard some kind of a drum beating, more shouting, then men started to hurry out across that bridge, weapons of rough iron clutched in their hands, some dragging furs or boots on still. Perhaps three dozen, all told. A neat piece of work. Provided Never got away, of course.

Yon shook his head as he watched a good chunk of the Fox Clan shambling over their bridge and into the trees. ‘Amazing, ain’t it? I never quite get used to just how fucking stupid people are.’

‘Always a mistake to overestimate the bastards,’ whispered Craw. ‘Good thing we’re the cleverest crew in the Circle of the World, eh? So could we have no fuck-ups today, if you please?’

‘I won’t if you won’t, Chief,’ muttered Wonderful.

‘Huh.’ If only he could make that promise. Craw tapped Scorry on his shoulder and pointed down into the village. The little man winked back, then slid over the rise on his belly and down through the undergrowth, nimble as a tadpole through a pond.

Craw worked his dry tongue around his dry mouth. Always ran out of spit at a time like this, and however often he did it, it never got any better. He glanced out the corner of his eye at the others, none of ’em showing much sign of a weak nerve. He wondered if they were bubbling up with worry on the inside, just like he was, and putting a stern face on the wreckage, just like he was. Or if it was only him scared. But in the end it didn’t make much difference. The best you could do with fear was act like you had none.

He held his fist up, pleased to see his hand didn’t shake, then pointed after Scorry, and they all set off. Down towards the south gate – if you could use the phrase about a gap in a rotten fence under a kind of arch made from crooked branches, skull of some animal unlucky enough to have a fearsome pair of horns mounted in the middle of it. Made Craw wonder if they had a straight piece of wood within a hundred bloody miles.

The one guard left stood under that skull, leaning on his spear, staring at nothing, tangle-haired and fur-clad. He picked his nose and held one finger up to look at the results. He flicked it away. He stretched and reached around to scratch his arse. Scorry’s knife thudded into the side of his neck and chopped his throat out, quick and simple as a fisher gutting a salmon. Craw winced, just for a moment, but he knew there’d been no dodging it. They’d be lucky if that was the only man lost his life so they could get this fool job done. Scorry held him a moment while blood showered from his slit neck, caught him as he fell, guided his twitching body soundless to the side of the gate, out of sight of any curious eyes inside.

No more noise than the breeze in the brush, Craw and the rest hurried up the bank, bent double, weapons in hand. Scorry was waiting, knife already wiped, peering around the side of the gatepost with one palm up behind him to say wait. Craw frowned down at the dead man’s bloody face, mouth a bit open as though he was about to ask a question. A potter makes pots. A baker makes bread. And this is what Craw made. All he’d made his whole life, pretty much.

It was hard to feel much pride at the sight, however neatly the work had been done. It was still a man murdered just for guarding his own village. Because they were men, these, with hopes and sorrows and all the rest, even if they lived out here past the Crinna and didn’t wash too often. But what could one man do? Craw took a long breath in and let it out slow. Just get the task done without any of his own people killed. In hard times, soft thoughts can kill you quicker than the plague.

He looked at Wonderful and jerked his head into the village, and she slid around the gatepost and in, slipping across to the right-hand track, shaved head swivelling carefully left and right. Scorry followed at her heels and Brack crept after, silent for all his great bulk.

Craw took a long breath, then crept across to the left-hand track, wincing as he tried to find the hardest, quietest bits of the rutted muck to plant his feet on. He heard the hissing of Yon’s careful breath behind him, knew Whirrun was there, too, though he moved quiet as a cat. Craw could hear something clicking. A spinning wheel, maybe. He heard someone laugh, not sure if he was imagining it. His head was jerked this way and that by every trace of a sound, like he had a hook through his nose. The whole thing seemed horribly bright and obvious, right then. Maybe they should’ve waited for darkness, but Craw had never liked working at night. Not since that fucking disaster at Gurndrift where Pale-as-Snow’s boys ended up fighting Littlebone’s on an accident and more’n fifty men dead without an enemy within ten miles. Too much to go wrong at night.

But then Craw had seen plenty of men die in the day, too.

He slid along beside a wattle wall, and he had that sweat of fear on him. That prickling sweat that comes with death right at your shoulder. Everything was picked out sharper than sharp. Every stick in the wattle, every pebble in the dirt. The way the leather binding the grip of his sword dug at his palm when he shifted his fingers. The way each in-breath gave the tiniest whistle when it got three-quarters into his aching lungs. The way the sole of his foot stuck to the inside of his boot through the hole in his sock with every careful step. Stuck to it and peeled away.

He needed to get him some new socks, is what he needed. Well, first he needed to live out the day, then socks. Maybe even those ones he’d seen in Uffrith last time he was there, dyed red. They’d all laughed at that. Him, and Yon, and Wonderful, and poor dead Jutlan. Laughed at the madness of it. But afterwards he’d thought to himself – there’s luxury, that a man could afford to have his socks dyed, and cast a wistful glance over his shoulder at that fine cloth. Maybe he’d go back after this fool job was done with and get himself a pair of red socks. Maybe he’d get himself two pairs. Wear ’em on the outside of his boots just to show folk what a big man he was. Maybe they’d take to calling him Curnden Red Socks. He felt a smile in spite of himself. Red socks, that was the first step on the road to ruin if ever he’d-

The door to a hovel on their left wobbled open and three men walked out of it, all laughing. The one at the front turned his shaggy head, big smile still plastered across his face, yellow teeth sticking out of it. He looked straight at Craw, and Yon, and Whirrun, stuck frozen against the side of a longhouse with their mouths open like three children caught nicking biscuits. Everyone stared at each other.

Craw felt time slow to a weird crawl, that way it did before blood spilled. Enough time to take in silly things. To wonder whether it was a chicken bone in one of their ears. To count the nails through one of their clubs. Eight and a half. Enough time to think it was funny he wasn’t thinking something more useful. It was like he stood outside himself, wondering what he’d do but feeling it probably weren’t up to him. And the oddest thing of all was that it had happened so often to him now, that feeling, he could recognise it when it came. That frozen, baffled moment before the world comes apart.

Shit. Here I am again-

He felt the cold wind kiss the side of his face as Whirrun swung his sword in a great reaping circle. The man at the front didn’t even have time to duck. The flat of the sheathed blade hit him on the side of the head, whipped him off his feet, turned him head over heels in the air and sent him crashing into the wall of the shack beside them upside down. Craw’s hand lifted his sword without being told. Whirrun darted forward, arm lancing out, smashing the pommel of his sword into the second man’s mouth, sending teeth and bits of teeth flying.

While he was toppling back like a felled tree, arms spread wide, the third tried to raise a club. Craw hacked him in the side, steel biting through fur and flesh with a wet thud, spots of blood showering out of him. The man opened his mouth and gave a great high shriek, tottering forward, bent over, eyes bulging. Craw split his skull wide open, sword-grip jolting in his hand, the scream choked off in a surprised yip. The body sprawled, blood pouring from broken head and all over Craw’s boots. Looked like he’d come out of this with red socks after all. So much for no more dead, and so much for quiet as a spring breeze, too.

‘Fuck,’ said Craw.

By then time was moving way too fast for comfort. The world jerked and wobbled, full of flying dirt as he ran. Screams rang and metal clashed, his own breath and his own heart roaring and surging in his ears. He snatched a glance over his shoulder, saw Yon barge a mace away with his shield and roar as he hacked a man down. As Craw turned back, an arrow came from the dead knew where and clicked into the mud wall just in front of him, almost made him fall over backwards with shock. Whirrun went into his arse and knocked him sprawling, gave him a mouthful of mud. When he struggled up, a man was charging right at him, a flash of screaming face and wild hair smeared across his sight. Craw was twisting around behind his shield when Scorry slid out from nowhere and knifed the running bastard in the side, made him shriek and stumble. Craw took the side of his head off, blade pinging as it chopped through bone then thumped into the ground, nearly jerking from his raw fist.

‘Move!’ he shouted, not sure who at, trying to wrench his blade free of the earth. Jolly Yon rushed past, head of his axe dashed with red, teeth bared in a mad snarl. Craw followed, Whirrun behind him, face slack, eyes darting from one hut to another, sword still sheathed in one hand. Around the corner of a hovel and into a wide stretch of muck scattered with ground-up straw. Pigs were honking and squirming in a pen at one side. The hall with the carved uprights stood at the other, steps up to a wide doorway, only darkness inside.

A red-haired man pounded across the ground in front of them, a wood-axe in his fist. Wonderful calmly put an arrow through his cheek at six strides distant and he came up short, clapping a hand to his face, still stumbling towards her. She stepped to meet him with a fighting scream, swept her sword out and around and took his head right off. It spun into the air, showering blood, and dropped in the pigpen. Craw wondered for a moment if the poor bastard still knew what was going on.

Then he saw the heavy door of the hall being swung shut, a pale face at the edge. ‘Door!’ he bellowed and ran for it, pounding across squelching mud and up the wooden steps, making the boards rattle. He shoved one bloody, muddy boot in the gap just as the door was slammed and gave a howl, eyes bulging, pain lancing up his leg. ‘My foot! Fuck!’

There were a dozen Fox Clan or more crowded around the end of the yard now, growling and grunting louder and uglier than the hogs. They waved jagged swords, axes, rough clubs in their fists, a few with shields, too, one at the front with a rusted chain hauberk on, tattered at the hem, straggling hair tangled with rings of rough-forged silver.

‘Back.’ Whirrun stood tall in front of them, holding out his sword at long arm’s length, hilt up, like it was some magic charm to ward off evil. ‘Back, and you needn’t die today.’

The one in mail spat, then snarled at him in broken Northern. ‘Show us your iron, thief!’

‘Then I will. Look upon the Father of Swords, and look your last.’ And Whirrun drew it from the sheath.

Men might’ve had a hundred names for it – Dawn Razor, Grave-Maker, Blood Harvest, Highest and Lowest, Scac-ang-Gaioc in the valley tongue which means the Splitting of the World, and so on, and so on – but Craw had to admit it was a disappointing length of metal. There was no flame, no golden light, no distant trumpets or mirrored steel. Just the gentle scrape as long blade came free of stained leather, the flat grey of damp slate, no shine or ornament about it except for the gleam of something engraved down near the plain, dull crosspiece.

But Craw had other worries than that Whirrun’s sword weren’t worth all the songs. ‘Door!’ he squealed at Yon, scrabbling at the edge of it with his left hand, all tangled up with his shield, shoving his sword through the gap and waving it about to no effect. ‘My fucking foot!’

Yon roared as he pounded up the steps and rammed into the door with his shoulder. It gave all of a sudden, tearing from its hinges and crushing some fool underneath. Him and Craw burst stumbling into the room beyond, dim as twilight, hazy with scratchy-sweet smoke. A shape came at Craw and he whipped his shield up on an instinct, felt something thud into it, splinters flying in his face. He reeled off balance, crashed into something else, metal clattering, pottery shattering. Someone loomed up, a ghostly face, a necklace of rattling teeth. Craw lashed at him with his sword, and again, and again, and he went down, white-painted face spattered with red.

Craw coughed, retched, coughed, blinking into the reeking gloom, sword ready to swing. He heard Yon roaring, heard the thud of an axe in flesh and someone squeal. The smoke was clearing now, enough for Craw to get some sense of the hall. Coals glowed in a fire-pit, lighting a spider’s web of carved rafters in sooty red and orange, casting shifting shadows on each other, tricking his eyes. The place was hot as hell and smelled like hell besides. Old hangings around the walls, tattered canvas daubed with painted marks. A block of black stone at the far end, a rough statue standing over it, and at its feet the glint of gold. A cup, Craw thought. A goblet. He took a step towards it, trying to waft the murk away from his face with his shield.

‘Yon?’ he shouted.

‘Craw, where you at?’

Some strange kind of song was coming from somewhere, words Craw didn’t know but didn’t like the sound of. Not one bit. ‘Yon?’ And a figure sprang up suddenly from behind that block of stone. Craw’s eyes went wide and he almost fell in the fire-pit as he stumbled back.

He wore a tattered red robe, long, sinewy arms sticking from it, spread wide, smeared with paint and beaded up with sweat, the skull of some animal drawn down over his face, black horns curling from it so he looked in the shifting light like a devil bursting straight up from hell. Craw knew it was a mask, but looming up like that out of the smoke, strange song echoing from that skull, he felt suddenly rooted to the spot with fear. So much he couldn’t even lift his sword. Just stood there trembling, every muscle turned to water. He’d never been a hero, that was true, but he’d never felt fear like this. Not even at Ineward when he’d seen the Bloody-Nine coming for him, snarling madman’s face all dashed with other men’s blood. He stood helpless.

‘Fuh … fuh … fuh …’

The priest came forward, lifting one long arm. He had a thing gripped in painted fingers. A twisted piece of wood, the faintest pale glow about it.

The thing. The thing they’d come for.

Light flared from it brighter and brighter, so bright it burned its twisted shape fizzing into Craw’s eyes, the sound of the song filling his ears until he couldn’t hear anything else, couldn’t think anything else, couldn’t see nothing but that thing, searing bright as the sun, stealing his breath, crushing his will, stopping his breath, cutting his-

Crack. Jolly Yon’s axe split the animal skull in half and chopped into the face underneath it. Blood sprayed, hissed in the coals of the fire-pit. Craw felt spots on his face, blinked and shook his head, loosed all of a sudden from the freezing grip of fear. The priest lurched sideways, song turned to a guttering gurgle, mask split in half and blood squirting from under it. Craw snarled as he swung his sword, chopped into the sorcerer’s chest and knocked him over on his back. The thing bounced from his hand and spun away across the rough plank floor, the blinding light faded to the faintest glimmer.

‘Fucking sorcerers,’ snarled Yon, curling his tongue and blowing spit onto the corpse. ‘Why do they bother? How long does it take to learn all that jabber and it never does you half the good a decent knife …’ He frowned. ‘Uh-oh.’

The priest had fallen in the fire-pit, scattering glowing coals across the floor. A couple had skittered as far as the ragged hem of one of the hangings.

‘Shit.’ Craw took a step on shaky legs to kick it away. Before he got there, flame sputtered around the old cloth. ‘Shit.’ He tried to stamp it out, but his head was still a touch spinny and he only got embers scattered against his trouser leg, had to hop around, slapping them off. The flames spread, licking up faster’n the plague. Too much flame to put out, spurting higher than a man. ‘Shit!’ Craw stumbled back, feeling the heat on his face, red shadows dancing among the rafters. ‘Get the thing and let’s go!’

Yon was already fumbling with the straps on his leather pack. ‘Right y’are, Chief, right y’are! Backup plan!’

Craw left him and hurried to the doorway, not sure who’d be alive still on the other side. He burst out into the day, light stabbing at his eyes after the gloom.

Wonderful was standing there, mouth hanging wide open. She’d an arrow nocked to her half-drawn bow, but it was pointed at the ground, hands slack. Craw couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her surprised.

‘What is it?’ he snapped, getting his sword tangled up on the doorframe then snarling as he wrenched it free. ‘You hurt?’ He squinted into the sun, shading his eyes with his shield. ‘What’s the …’ And he stopped on the steps and stared. ‘By the dead.’

Whirrun had hardly moved, the Father of Swords still gripped in his fist, long, dull blade pointing to the ground. Only now he was spotted and spattered head to toe in blood, and the twisted and hacked, split and ruined corpses of the dozen Fox Clan who’d faced him were scattered around his boots in a wide half-circle, a few bits that used to be attached to them scattered wider still.

‘He killed the whole lot.’ Brack’s face was all crinkled up with confusion. ‘Just like that. I never even lifted my hammer.’

‘Damndest thing,’ muttered Wonderful. ‘Damndest thing.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Can I smell smoke?’

Yon burst from the hall, stumbled into Craw’s back and nearly sent the pair of them tumbling down the steps. ‘Did you get the thing?’ snapped Craw.

‘I think I …’ Yon blinked at Whirrun, standing tall in his circle of slaughter. ‘By the dead, though.’

Whirrun started to back towards them, twisted himself sideways as an arrow looped over and stuck wobbling into the side of the hall. He waved his free hand. ‘Maybe we better-’

‘Run!’ roared Craw. Perhaps a good leader should wait until everyone else gets clear. First man to arrive in a fight and the last to leave. That was how Threetrees used to do it. But Craw weren’t Threetrees, it hardly needed to be said, and he was off like a rabbit with its tail on fire. Leading by example, he’d have called it. He heard bowstrings behind him. An arrow zipped past, just wide of his flailing arm, stuck wobbling into one of the hovels. Then another. His squashed foot was aching like fury but he limped on, waving his shield-arm. Pounding towards the jerking, wobbling archway with the animal’s skull above it. ‘Go! Go!’

Wonderful tore past, feet flying, flicking mud in Craw’s face. He saw Scorry flit between two huts up ahead, then swift as a lizard around one of the gateposts and out of the village. He hurled himself after, under the arch of branches. Jumped down the bank, caught his hurt foot, body jolting, teeth snapping together and catching his tongue. He took one more wobbling step then went flying, crashed into the boggy bracken, rolled over his shield with just enough thought left to keep his sword from cutting his own nose off. He struggled to his feet, laboured on up the slope, legs burning, lungs burning, through the trees, trousers soaked to the knee with marsh-water. He could hear Brack lumbering along at his shoulder, grunting with the effort, and behind him Yon’s growl, ‘Bloody … shit … bloody … running … bloody … shit …’

He tore through the brush and wobbled into the clearing where they’d made their plans. Plans that hadn’t flown too smoothly, as it went. Raubin was standing by the gear. Wonderful near him with her hands on her hips. Never was kneeling on the far side of the clearing, arrow nocked to his bow. He grinned as he saw Craw. ‘You made it, then, Chief?’

‘Shit.’ Craw stood bent over, head spinning, dragging in air. ‘Shit.’ He straightened, staring at the sky, face on fire, not able to think of another word, and without the breath to say one if he could have.

Brack looked even more shot than Craw, if it was possible, crouched over, hands on knees and knees wobbling, big chest heaving, big face red as a slapped arse around his tattoos. Yon tottered up and leaned against a tree, cheeks puffed out, skin shining with sweat.

Wonderful was hardly out of breath. ‘By the dead, the state o’ you fat old men.’ She slapped Never on the arm. ‘That was some nice work down there at the village. Thought they’d catch you and skin you sure.’

‘You hoped, you mean,’ said Never, ‘but you should’ve known better. I’m the best damn runner-away in the North.’

‘That is a fact.’

‘Where’s Scorry?’ gasped Craw, enough breath in him now to worry.

Never jerked his thumb. ‘Circled around to check no one’s coming for us.’

Whirrun ambled back into the clearing, hood drawn up again and the Father of Swords sheathed across his shoulders like a milkmaid’s yoke, one hand on the grip, the other dangling over the blade.

‘I take it they’re not following?’ asked Wonderful, one eyebrow raised.

Whirrun shook his head. ‘Nope.’

‘Can’t say I blame the poor bastards. I take back what I said about you taking yourself too serious. You’re one serious fucker with that sword.’

‘You get the thing?’ asked Raubin, face all pale with worry.

‘That’s right, Raubin, we saved your skin.’ Craw wiped his mouth, blood on the back of his hand from his bitten tongue. They’d done it, and his sense of humour was starting to leak back in. ‘Hah. Could you imagine if we’d left the bastard thing behind?’

‘Never fear,’ said Yon, flipping open his pack. ‘Jolly Yon Cumber, once more the fucking hero.’ And he delved his hand inside and pulled it out.

Craw blinked. Then he frowned. Then he stared. Gold glinted in the fading light and he felt his heart sink lower than it had all day. ‘That ain’t fucking it, Yon!’

‘It’s not?’

‘That’s a cup! It was the thing we wanted!’ He stuck his sword point-down in the ground and waved one hand about. ‘The bloody thing with the kind of bloody light about it!’

Yon stared back at him. ‘No one told me it had a bloody light!’

There was silence for a moment then, while they all thought about it. No sound but the wind rustling the old leaves, making the black branches creak. Then Whirrun tipped his head back and roared with laughter. A couple of crows took off startled from a branch, it was that loud, flapping up sluggish into the grey sky.

‘Why the hell are you laughing?’ snapped Wonderful.

Inside his hood, Whirrun’s twisted face was glistening with happy tears. ‘I told you I’d laugh when I heard something funny!’ And he was off again, spine arching like a full-drawn bow, whole body shaking.

‘You’ll have to go back,’ said Raubin.

‘Back?’ muttered Wonderful, her dirt-streaked face a picture of disbelief. ‘Back, you mad fucker?’

‘You know the hall caught fire, don’t you?’ snapped Brack, one big, trembling arm pointed down towards the thickening column of smoke wafting up from the village.

‘It what?’ asked Raubin as Whirrun blasted a fresh shriek at the sky, hacking, gurgling, only just keeping on his feet.

‘Oh, aye, burned down, more’n likely with the damn thing in it.’

‘Well … I don’t know … you’ll just have to pick through the ashes!’

‘How about we pick through your fucking ashes?’ snarled Yon, throwing the cup down on the ground.

Craw gave a long sigh, rubbed at his eyes, then winced down towards that shit-hole of a village. Behind him, Whirrun’s laughter sawed throaty at the dusk. ‘Always,’ he muttered, under his breath. ‘Why do I always get stuck with the fool jobs?’