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

The Battle of Red Hill

‘How’s your leg?’ asked Rikke.

‘Sore,’ said Isern, wrinkling her nose as she picked at the stitches with a fingernail, ‘and somewhat crusty.’ She straightened with a sigh. ‘But sore and crusty is about as good as one could hope for from an arrow wound.’

She stuck two fingers in a pouch and started smearing something on the pink and puckered skin. It was Rikke’s turn to wrinkle her nose. The smell of it was quite impossible to describe. ‘By the dead,’ trying to hold her breath, ‘what is that?’

Isern started to wind a fresh bandage around her thigh. ‘Better you don’t know. I might have to spread some on you if you get arrow-pricked, and I wouldn’t want you arguing.’ She slipped a pin through the bandage and stood, wincing as she rubbed at her thigh with her thumb, flexing her knee, testing her weight on it. ‘Knowledge isn’t always a gift, d’you see? Sometimes it’s better we be swaddled in the comforting darkness of ignorance.’

She pushed a pellet of chagga up behind her lip, then rolled another between finger and thumb and handed it over. Rikke chomped on it, savoured that sour, earthy taste which she’d found so vile when she started chewing it but that now she could never get enough of, and pushed it down behind her lip.

It was cold. No fires in case Stour’s scouts saw them and spoiled the trap, and she’d hardly slept and she was aching and hungry but sick at the same time and bloody hell she felt nervous. Kept fussing with her fingers, fussing at the chagga pellet with her tongue, fussing at the runes around her neck, fussing at the ring through her nose—

‘Stop fussing,’ said Isern. ‘Neither of us’ll be fighting.’

‘I can feel worried for those who will, can’t I?’

‘Meaning your Young Lion?’ Isern grinned, tip of her tongue showing through that hole in her teeth. ‘Can’t spend your whole life fucking, you know.’

‘No.’ Rikke gave a smoky sigh. ‘Something to aim for, though.’

‘I’ve heard less noble goals, ’tis true.’

The silence stretched. The silence, and the nerves, and somewhere someone started up a song in a deep bass. That one about the Battle in the High Places, where her father laid Bethod low. Old battles. Old victories. She wondered whether some time in the future, folk would sing songs about the Battle of Red Hill, and if they did, who’d be the winners and who the losers.

‘When will they get here?’ she asked for the hundredth time.

Isern leaned on her spear and frowned off to the east. The sun was rising there, a brilliant crescent over the hills that set the edges of the clouds on fire. The valley bellow was dark still, here or there a glitter on the stream, mist hanging over the trees that marched off to the North. ‘Could be soon,’ mused Isern. ‘Could be later. Might be they change their mind and don’t come at all.’

‘In other words, you’ve no notion.’

Isern glanced sideways. ‘If only someone could just look into the future and tell us how it’ll all unfold. That’d be handy.’

‘Aye.’ Rikke planted her chin in her palms and sagged. ‘It would.’

‘Bravery,’ said Glaward, staring gloomily at the fire, ‘audacity, loyalty … yes. But I never guessed patience would be the soldier’s most important virtue.’

Barniva rubbed at his scar with a thumbtip. ‘Fighting and soldiering are two very different things.’

They were starting to seem like opposite things to Leo. He frowned at the sun, the slightest pink smudge in the east. He could’ve sworn the damn thing was rising at a tenth the normal speed. No doubt it was somehow in league with his mother.

‘Patience is the parent of success,’ murmured Jurand, with so gentle a touch on Leo’s shoulder he only just felt it. ‘Stolicus.’

‘Huh.’ Normally, as the sun rose, Leo would’ve been training. He’d heard Bremer dan Gorst, well into his fifties, still trained for three hours every day, so he’d determined to do the same. But what’s the point of training if you end up stuck on your arse in a village miles from the fight? He took a hard breath and let it smoke away. His thousandth of the morning so far.

‘Nothing to do but wait.’ Whitewater Jin carefully pushed his sausages around the pan and made them sizzle. The fork looked tiny in his paw of a hand. ‘Wait, and eat.’

The smell was making Leo’s stomach rumble, but there was no way he could think of eating. He was too nervous. Too impatient. Too frustrated.

‘By the dead !’ He flung an arm towards the men scattered about the village, already in their armour. Angland’s cavalry. The best and the brightest, sitting idle. ‘She should be letting us fight! What’s she thinking?’

‘I saw an army mishandled in Styria,’ said Barniva. ‘This is not what it looks like.’

If you ask me,’ said Jurand, ‘the lady governor’s a hell of a general.’

‘No one did ask you,’ snapped Leo, even though he just had.

Jurand heaved out a sigh, and Barniva drew his blanket tight about his shoulders, and they went back to watching the sausages sizzle.

Leo frowned up at the sound of hooves. One rider trotting down the rutted track that led from the bridge. Antaup, loose in his saddle.

‘Morning!’ he called, scraping that lock of dark hair back with his fingers.

‘Any news?’ Leo couldn’t keep the eager little warble out of his voice, though it was perfectly clear there was no news at all. He was needy as a jilted lover, unable to stop pining no matter how often he was turned down.

‘No news,’ said Antaup, swinging from his saddle. He peered over Jin’s big shoulder at the pan. ‘Don’t suppose you lads have a sausage spare?’

Barniva grinned up. ‘For a boy with a smile as pretty as yours? I think we can find a sausage.’

‘Do you have to?’ snapped Leo, curling his lip with disgust. ‘What did mother say?’ He right away regretted his choice of words, but how does a man make taking orders from his mother sound good?

‘She said sit tight.’ Antaup leaned on Jin’s shoulder, made him turn, then reached around his blind side and nimbly stole the fork from his plate. ‘She said she’d let you know if anything changed.’ And he stretched over to fork one of the sausages from the pan.

‘Oy!’ snapped Jin, elbowing him away.

Leo frowned up towards the red-topped hill, a black lump against the pinking sky, here and there the telltale glint of metal where the men were getting ready for battle. Or for just another day of waiting.

The waiting, the waiting, the endless bloody waiting. He really was the worst man in the world at doing nothing.

‘I’m going up there!’ And he grabbed his helmet and strode for his horse.

‘And she said don’t go up there!’ called Antaup with his mouth full.

Leo froze for a moment, angrily clenching his jaw. Then he strode on. ‘I’m bloody going anyway!’

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Jurand. ‘Keep a sausage for me!’

‘For a boy with such delicate features as yours,’ said Barniva, laughter in his voice, ‘I’ll always have a sausage.’

‘By the dead,’ grumbled Leo, hunching his shoulders.

‘I’ve got a feeling about today,’ said Wonderful.

Clover was fully occupied trimming a blister on his big toe. ‘Good feeling or bad?’

‘Just a feeling. Something’s going to happen.’

‘Well, something happens every day.’

‘Something big, you fool.’

‘Ah,’ said Clover. ‘Well, I hope I’m left out of it. I like little things, mostly.’

‘You must be pleased wi’ your cock, then.’ Magweer, sneering down from his horse with the sun behind.

Clover saw no pressing need to look away from his feet. ‘A cock’s not for pleasing yourself, boy, it’s for pleasing others. Maybe that’s where you’re going wrong.’