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

Rikke never saw a battle before, and she hoped she never saw another.

Black Calder’s men pressed in on every side. The tumbledown wall had become a mass of straining men, a great tangle of shields and clattering, sliding, stabbing spears. One had a flag on it that had got all wrapped around a Carl’s arm, and he was shrieking with fury as he tried to drag it free and only got himself more tangled. Rikke saw a spear blade poking into his cheek and he twisted and shouted but couldn’t be heard, couldn’t be moved, was eased onto that spear by the weight of men behind, the trickle of blood becoming a bubbling rush and Rikke looked away, the breath crawling in her throat.

She saw her father on the steps of the tower, veins standing from his neck as he roared words she couldn’t hear over the screams of pain and screams of rage. How could anyone bring order to this chaos? Might as well command a storm to stop blowing.

She saw a boy with curly hair just staring, taking a step one way, then the other way, face white and pale and his jaw hanging open, not knowing what to do. Rikke wondered if he was going to die here. Wondered if she was going to die here.

The rain was coming heavier now, on a chill wind, beading weapons and armour, sticking hair to snarling faces, turning ground churned by boots and bodies to sticky mud.

‘Heave!’ The shield wall was no more than ten strides from her, buckling and twisting, shields shrieking and scraping, boots sliding as men tried desperately to shove the attackers back. One stood tall to lash over the top of the wall with his axe. Stood again and squealed as a spear caught him under the rim of his helmet. He fell back, shrieking, thrashing, blood leaking between the fingers clapped to his face. ‘My eye! My eye!’

Arrows flitted down, clicked from the ground, bounced from a dead campfire. A man sank to his knees, leaning on his mace, face all crumpled, drooling, wheezing, a shaft in his back.

‘Careful,’ said Isern, easing Rikke behind a broken pillar, mossy old devil faces carved around the head. ‘Careful,’ and Rikke felt something cold brush her palm, and saw that Isern had slipped a knife into her hand, and she stared at it as if she’d never seen such a thing before.

She saw a man sitting on the ground, cursing as he fiddled with his bloody sleeve, blood in his beard, axe dangling from one wrist. She saw a man stomping on someone’s head, spots of blood across his mad snarl as he lifted his boot and rammed it down, lifted it and rammed it down. ‘Can you save my leg?’ A lad with yellow hair turned dark by the drizzle and the rags of his trousers all oozing black. Another man gibbered, mail pulled up to show a little slit that welled blood and when the healer wiped it welled again and she wiped it again but the blood came too fast to stop, too fast.

There was a kind of groan, and at the crumbling wall where that pretty weed had grown the shields buckled, gave, and Rikke stared as Black Calder’s men surged into the fortress.

A knot of them, mail rain-glinting and mud-spattered. A wedge of them, bristling with sharpened steel. A dagger-thrust of them, screaming their war cries, and at their very front a man with gold on his helmet and a green tree on a shield all scored and dented. He rushed right at Rikke with an axe held high.

That would’ve been a good moment to run, but maybe she’d run enough. Maybe the madness was catching. Without thinking, she dropped into a crouch, and bared her teeth, and raised her knife to meet him.

He twisted at a mad screech and Isern sprang from the crumbling steps on one leg, point of her spear darting over his shield-rim, catching him under the jaw and ripping his throat wide. He wobbled another step or two, blood showering down that green tree and turning it red, then his knees went and he fell on his face, gold-chased helmet bouncing off and rolling right between Rikke’s boots.

She saw Shivers snarling, hacking, snarling, metal eye shining. She saw Red Hat shooting arrows into the midst. She saw other men she knew, some of her father’s closest, good men, gentle men, screeching hate, shoving with shields, chopping with swords and axes.

That wedge of Black Calder’s men was choked off, and hemmed in, and cut down one by one, stabbed with spears, shoved over with shields, stomped on the ground. One huge warrior was left, wearing battered plates of armour, swinging a great axe around in heedless circles, rattling and clattering against the spears that stabbed at him.

Then a snarling Thrall sprang onto his back, caught him around the throat, hacking at him with a knife. Another darted in and chopped at his leg, brought him lurching onto one knee. Then they were all around him, Oxel using his sword like a pick in both hands to chisel his helmet off, chisel his skull open.

She saw Isern, tongue pressed into the hole in her teeth as she stabbed one stricken warrior after another with her spear. One crawled towards Rikke, crying through a faceful of mud, and Shivers stepped on his neck and took the top of his head off with a swing of his sword.

That assault was made into a heap of dead, their bravery all come to nothing, but Black Calder’s men still pressed in all around. Through waving spears she saw the Nail, up on the wall, shaking his axe, blood-dotted face twisted with fury and laughter at once, screaming, ‘Kill the fuckers! Kill the fuckers!’

Arrows flickered over, the noise of fighting like hail on a tin roof. Rikke saw ghosts now, among the fighting, among the killing, among the dead. Ghosts of men fighting, killing, dying. Battles long done, maybe, and battles yet to come, and she slid down the pillar until her backside hit mud, knife dropping from her hand into the dirt, and sat there trembling with her smarting eyes squeezed shut.

Leo stood at the top of the hill, hands helplessly clenching and unclenching.

It was the greatest battle he’d ever seen. The greatest the North had seen since the Battle of Osrung, where his mother loved to say he’d been conceived.

Nightfall’s shield wall had bent back when the Anglanders first charged. It had buckled, looked ready to give under the strain, but it had held. More Northmen had filtered down the road to shore it up and pushed the Anglanders back to the base of the red hill. Now there was a boiling engagement all the way along the valley bottom, the mad clamour echoing from the fells, the carnage at the bridge at one end.

If the Dogman swept down from the other side of the valley now, it would all be over. Nightfall would be surrounded, shattered, they could take every one of his men prisoner. Perhaps they could even capture the Great Wolf himself and make the bastard kneel.

But the Dogman didn’t appear, and the glee of the officers on the hilltop turned to concern, then grim worry.

‘Where the hell is the Dogman?’ muttered Leo’s mother. The ruin on the far side of the valley was just a ghost through the thickening rain. ‘He should be attacking.’

‘Yes,’ said Leo. He couldn’t say more. His mouth was too dry.

‘Can’t see a thing in this damn rain,’ she fretted.

‘No,’ said Leo. He’d always been a doer. Sitting idle while other men fought was torture.

‘If he doesn’t come soon …’

They could all see it. Some of Nightfall’s Thralls were still dribbling onto the battlefield. If the Dogman didn’t come soon, they might get around the flank and the Union line would crumble.

A rider came lurching up the back of the hill, pushing his mount hard. A Northman, rattled and dirt-spattered.

Leo’s mother strode up as he slithered from the saddle. ‘What’s become of the Dogman?’

‘Black Calder came out o’ the woods,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘We’re only just hanging on at the ruin. No way we can help with the attack.’