Joe Abercrombie - The Heroes

‘Who’s the monster?’ he muttered.

‘Stranger-Come-Knocking,’ Flood whispered back. ‘Chief of all the lands east of the Crinna. Bloody savages out there, and I hear he’s the worst.’

It was a savage pack the giant had at his back. Men all wild hair and wild twitching, pierced with bone and prickled with paint, dressed in skulls and tatters. Men who looked like they’d sprung straight from an old song, maybe the one about how Shubal the Wheel stole the crag lord’s daughter. How had it gone?

‘Here they come,’ grunted Yon. A disapproving mutter, a few sharp words, but mostly thick silence. The men on the other side of the circle parted and Shivers came through, dragging Calder under the arm.

He looked a long stretch less smug than when Beck first saw him, riding up to Reachey’s weapontake on his fine horse, but he was still grinning. A wonky, pale-faced, pink-eyed grin, but a grin still. Shivers let go of him, squelched heedless across the seven strides of empty muck leaving a trail of gently filling boot-prints, fell in beside Wonderful and took a shield from a man behind her.

Calder nodded across the circle at each man, like they were a set of old friends. He nodded to Beck. When Beck had first seen that smirk it’d looked full of pride, full of mockery, but maybe they’d both changed since. If Calder was laughing now it looked like he was only laughing at himself. Beck nodded back, solemn. He knew what it was to face your death, and he reckoned it took some bones to smile at a time like that. Some bones.

Calder was so scared the faces across the circle were just a dizzying smear. But he was set on meeting the Great Leveller as his father had, and his brother too. With some pride. He kept that in front of him, and he clung on to his smirk, nodding at faces too blurred to recognise as if they’d turned out for his wedding rather than his burial.

He had to talk. Fill the time with blather. Anything to stop him thinking. Calder grabbed Reachey’s hand, the one without the battered shield on it. ‘You came!’

The old man hardly met his eye. ‘Least I could do.’

‘Most you could do, far as I’m concerned. Tell Seff for me … well, tell her I’m sorry.’

‘I will.’

‘And cheer up. This isn’t a funeral.’ He nudged the old man in the ribs. ‘Yet.’ The scatter of chuckles he got for that made him feel a little less like shitting his trousers. There was a soft, low laugh among them, too. One that came from very high up. Stranger-Come-Knocking, and by all appearances on Calder’s side. ‘You’re holding a shield for me?’

The giant tapped the tiny-looking circle of wood with his club of a forefinger. ‘I am.’

‘What’s your interest?’

‘In the clash of vengeful steel and the blood watering the thirsty earth? In the roar of the victor and the scream of the slaughtered? What could interest me more than seeing men give all and take all, life and death balanced on the edge of a blade?’

Calder swallowed. ‘Why on my side, though?’

‘There was room.’

‘Right.’ That was about all he had to offer now. A good spot to watch his own murder. ‘Did you come for the room?’ he asked Pale-as-Snow.

‘I came for you, and for Scale, and for your father.’

‘And me,’ said White-Eye Hansul.

After all the hate he’d shrugged off, that bit of loyalty almost cracked his smirk wide open. ‘Means a lot,’ he croaked. The really sad thing was that it was true. He thumped White-Eye’s shield with his fist, squeezed Pale-as-Snow’s shoulder. ‘Means a lot.’

But the time for hugs and damp eyes was fading rapidly into the past. There was noise in the crowd across the circle, then movement, then the shield-carriers stood aside. The Protector of the North strolled through the gap, easy as a gambler who’d already won the big bet, his black standard looming behind him like the shadow of death indeed. He’d stripped down to a leather vest, arms and shoulders heavy with branched vein and twisted sinew, the chain Calder’s father used to wear hanging around his neck, diamond winking.

Hands clapped, weapons rattled, metal clanged on metal, everyone straining to get the faintest approving glance from the man who’d seen off the Union. Everyone cheering, even on Calder’s side of the circle. He could hardly blame them. They’d still have to scratch a living when Dow had carved him into weeping chunks.

‘You made it, then.’ Dow jerked his head towards Shivers. ‘I was worried my dog might’ve eaten you in the night.’ There was a good deal more laughter than the joke deserved but Shivers didn’t so much as twitch, his scarred face a dead blank. Dow grinned around at the Heroes, their lichen-spotted tops peering over the heads of the crowd, and opened his arms, fingers spread. ‘Looks like we got a circle custom made for the purpose, don’t it? Quite the venue!’

‘Aye,’ said Calder. That was about all the bravado he could manage.

‘Normally there’s a form to follow.’ Dow turned one finger round and round. ‘Laying out the matter to decide, listing the pedigree of the champions and so on, but I reckon we can skip that. We all know the matter. We all know you got no pedigree.’ Another laugh, and Dow spread his arms again. ‘And if I start naming all the men I’ve put back in the mud we’ll never get started!’

A flood of thigh-slapping manly amusement. Seemed Dow was intent on proving himself the better wit as well as the better fighter, and it was no fairer a contest. Winners always get the louder laughs and, for once, Calder was out of jokes. Dead men aren’t that funny, maybe. So he just stood as the crowd quieted and left only the gentle wind over the muck, the flapping of the black standard, a bird chirruping from the top of one of the stones.

Dow heaved out a sigh. ‘Sorry to say I’ve had to send to Carleon for your wife. She stood hostage for you, didn’t she?’

‘Let her be, you bastard!’ barked Calder, nearly choking on a surge of anger. ‘She’s got no part in this!’

‘You’re in no place to tell me what’s what, you little shit.’ Dow turned his head without taking his eyes off Calder, and spat into the mud. ‘I’ve half a mind to burn her. Give her the bloody cross, just for the fucking lesson. Wasn’t that the way your father liked to do it, back in the old days?’ Dow held up his open palm. ‘But I can afford to be generous. Reckon I’ll let it pass. Out of respect to Caul Reachey, since he’s the one man in the North who still does what he fucking says he will.’

‘I’m right grateful for it,’ grunted Reachey, still not meeting Calder’s eye.

‘’Spite of my reputation, I don’t much care for hanging women. I get any softer they’ll have to call me White Dow!’ Another round of laughter, and Dow let go a flurry of punches at the air, so fast Calder could hardly count how many. ‘Reckon I’ll just have to kill you twice as much to make up for it.’

Something poked him in the ribs. The pommel of his sword, Pale-as-Snow handing it over with a look that said sorry, belt wrapped around the sheath.

‘Oh, right. You got any advice?’ asked Calder, hoping the old warrior would narrow his eyes and spout some razor observations about how Dow led with the point too much, or dipped his shoulder too low, or was awfully vulnerable to a middle cut.

All he did was puff out his cheeks. ‘It’s fucking Black Dow,’ he muttered.

‘Right.’ Calder swallowed sour spit. ‘Thanks for that.’ It was all so disappointing. He drew his sword, held the sheath uncertainly for a moment, then handed it back. Couldn’t see why he’d have any need for it again. There was no talking his way out of this. Sometimes you have to fight. He took a long breath and a step forwards, his worn-out Styrian boot squelching into the muck. Only a little step over a ring of pebbles, but still the hardest he’d ever taken.