Джо Аберкромби - A Little Hatred - Book One (The Age of Madness)

Then he gave an unhappy grunt. Then a twitch. Then a grimace. Problem was, these students of his were about the most terrible swordsmen he ever saw. The blond one swung, swung, swung, teeth clenched, while the dark one snarled and burbled, more running away than defending, both already out of breath.

‘Stop!’ He sat up, tossing his half-eaten apple away. ‘For the dead’s sake, stop!’

The boys stuttered to a halt, sticks wobbling down.

‘No, lads, no.’ Clover shook his head. ‘Very much no. You’re going at each other like a dog at a bitch. Wild and wayward. You’ve got to put more thought into this moment than any other. All your thought and all your effort, because everything you’ll ever have is apt to be snatched away in the next breath. Your lives are hanging in the balance!’

‘They’re just sticks,’ said the blond one.

Clover rubbed at his temples. ‘But we’re pretending they’re swords, you halfhead. I’m not a bloody stick teacher, am I?’ The dark-haired boy opened his mouth and Clover held up a silencing hand. ‘Don’t answer that. Just take some time. Your dinner ain’t getting cold, is it?’

‘You said strike fast.’

‘Aye, once you strike, like lightning! But think before you strike, eh?’

‘Why don’t you come and show us?’ asked the dark one.

‘Out there in the sun?’ Clover chuckled to himself. ‘I didn’t become a bloody teacher so I could get up and do it my bloody self.’

‘But …’ The blond boy shaded his eyes with his hand. If Clover had been the dark one, he’d have smashed him right then when he wasn’t looking. But the dark boy just stood there picking his nose. No initiative, these little bastards. ‘Aren’t you going to show us some … what do you call it … technique?’

‘Technique.’ Clover laughed. ‘Technique is what we come to last. So far, you two are only just holding the sword by the right end.’

‘It’s a stick,’ said the blond one, frowning at his stick. ‘The ends are the same.’

Clover ignored him. ‘It’s a mindset I’m trying to teach you. A winning way of looking at the world.’

The dark boy was so baffled, he looked almost in pain. ‘It’s about hitting him with a sword, ain’t it?’

Clover took a slow breath in and slowly blew it out. ‘First of all, it’s about deciding when to, and when not to. In the end … the only thing a man can really do … is pick his moment . Watch for the opening, and recognise it when it comes, and seize it.’ And Clover snatched at a handful o’ nothing and shook his fist. ‘Picking your moment. That’s the secret. You understand?’

The dark boy looked doubtful. ‘My da always said it was all in the grip.’

‘Aye. Well. If you had no grip, the sword would just drop out of your hand.’

The boys stared blankly at him again. Clover sighed again.

‘To it once more, lads, and this time pick your moment.’

Clack, clack went the sticks. Tock, tock went a woodpecker in the trees behind. The snap of a stick in the brush and Clover slipped the knife from its sheath at his back and held it down behind his arm.

Another footstep and Clover reached out, without looking around, and tipped the basket of apples towards the newcomer.

‘Apple?’ he asked.

Black Calder was standing there, rubbing at that little scar on his chin as he watched the two boys swinging away and not picking their moment in the least. ‘No,’ he grunted.

‘Hard day, Chief?’

‘You get to my position, they all are.’

Clover looked back to the demonstration of how not to use a sword, knife already put away and his hands clasped across his belly. ‘Reckon that’s why I prefer my position.’

‘Huh.’ Calder worked his mouth, a little sourly in Clover’s opinion, and said in a voice sharp with sarcasm, ‘Don’t get up.’

‘I haven’t.’

Calder worked his mouth even more sourly. He was a sour sort these days, given how much life had given him, or how much he’d managed to claw from it, leastways. Time was he’d had a fine sense of humour, but the more men get, the sourer they tend to turn, and Black Calder had almost the whole North. His brother Scale might wear the king’s chain, but everyone knew Black Calder made the king’s choices.

‘I meant do get up,’ he said.

‘Ah.’

Clover took his time. He considered it a point of principle to always take as much time as he could get away with. Then he shook out his aching legs, then slapped the dirt and dried pine needles from the arse of his trousers, then slapped his palms clean, too.

‘There we go,’ he said. ‘I’m up.’

‘Let ring the bells,’ said Calder. ‘This here is Jonas Clover.’

Clover looked around and got quite the shock to see someone had come up behind him and was leaning against the tree. A black-haired lad maybe twelve or thirteen years old with a cleft top lip and watchful eyes. He looked Clover up and down, and didn’t say a thing.

‘Used to be called Steepfield,’ added Calder, which made Clover scratch unhappily at the back of his head. ‘Maybe you heard of him.’

‘No,’ said the lad, looking over at the two fighting boys with his pale eyes narrowed. ‘Who’re these?’ They’d fallen to wrestling, lurching about with their sticks waggling at the sky.

‘Those …’ Clover considered denying any acquaintance with them, but doubted he’d get away with it. ‘Are my pupils.’

The lad considered ’em a moment, then pronounced his solemn judgement. ‘They’re no good.’

‘You’ve an excellent eye. They’re shit. But that’s how you know what a truly great teacher I am. Any fool can get results from the gifted.’

The lad considered that. ‘So where’s the results?’

‘You have to trust they’ll be along. Patience is a warrior’s most fearsome weapon. Take it from me. I’ve been in a few fights.’

‘Did you win any?’

Clover snorted. ‘Oh, I like him, Calder. Did you come down here just to toss my hard-won reputation in the muck?’

‘Not just that,’ said Calder. ‘I need your help.’

‘Thinking of learning some sword-work?’

‘You ask me, swords are best swung by other men.’

‘Then …?’

Calder took an unhappy, growling breath. ‘My son.’

‘The Great Wolf? Our king-in-waiting? That peerless warrior Stour Nightfall? Thought he knew how to use a sword.’

‘He does. Too well, if anything. He’s proving somewhat … wilful. Set fire to Uffrith, the bloody idiot. All those years I spent planning how to take the city, and the moment I get it, he sets fire to it.’

‘Once you call it a war, folk tend to get overexcited.’

‘My father used to say you point three Northmen the same way they’ll be killing each other before you can order the charge. I’ve got Gregun Hollowhead and his boys from the West Valleys as like to join the Dogman as fight against him. How do I make them take my say-so when my own blood won’t? If Stour weren’t my son, I’d be forced to say the boy’s a fucking prick.’

‘But he is your son, so …?’

Calder wasn’t listening. ‘He cares about nothing but his own fame. His own legend. What’s a bloody name worth at a market? Warriors .’ He spat the word out like it tasted bitter. ‘I swear, the more they win, the worse they get.’

‘Defeat is good for the spirit.’ Clover scratched gently at his own scar with the little fingernail he left long for the purpose. ‘Learned that the hard way.’

‘He thinks he’s bloody invincible. And his name draws fools like a turd draws flies and they give him fool advice. I sent Wonderful over to be his second, try to teach the Great Wolf some caution.’