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

One officer swallowed. Another stared down into the valley. A third seemed to deflate, like a punctured wineskin.

‘Black Calder was supposed to be a day away,’ breathed Leo’s mother, her eyes wide.

‘He tricked us,’ muttered Leo. They were caught in their own trap, outnumbered and facing destruction. He stared towards the bridge. That was where he belonged, where the names were made and tomorrow’s songs written. He could make the difference. He knew he could.

Strategy had failed. It was time to fight.

‘We have to send in the reserves.’ He stepped close to his mother. No whining now, no wheedling. Just the simple truth. ‘There’s no choice. We’re committed.’

She frowned down into the valley, a muscle on the side of her head constantly working, and said nothing.

‘If we pull back, we leave the Dogman at Black Calder’s mercy. We have to fight .’

She closed her eyes, her mouth a hard, flat line, and said nothing.

‘Mother.’ He put one hand gently on her shoulder. ‘Wars may be won by the clever, but battles have to be fought by the brave. It’s time .’

She opened her eyes, and took a hard breath, and puffed it out. ‘Go,’ she said.

It was as if that one soft word lit a fire in Leo’s belly and set his body tingling, from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes. He felt a great smile spread across his face as he turned. ‘Jurand!’ he barked out, voice quivering with excitement. ‘We’re going in!’

Jurand sprang up. ‘Yes, sir!’ And he hurried for his horse.

‘Leo?’

He turned back. His mother stood there against the grey sky, fists clenched tight.

‘Give those bastards hell,’ she snarled.

‘Come on!’ screamed Stour. He hadn’t bothered with a helmet, which seemed a prime slice of folly to Clover, but if men can’t see your face, how can they tell everyone afterwards who did all the high deeds? ‘I want me that bridge!’ snarled the Great Wolf, wet hair plastered to his forehead and his teeth bared as a wolf’s teeth should properly be. ‘That’s my fucking bridge!’

It was all quite the mess now. Stour’s Carls had only just held the Union at the foot of that red hill, their shield wall twisting back on itself and threatening to burst. But they’d held them, and now there was a mad fight all along the valley, the bridge at one end the fiercest spot, Leo dan Brock’s golden standard fluttering above the carnage. It was a temptation Stour couldn’t ignore

‘Let me at that bastard!’ He was near frothing at the mouth. ‘I’ll slit this Young Lion from his fruits to his throat!’

That bridge really didn’t seem worth all the effort to Clover. If it hadn’t been for all the rain the last week, you could’ve just stepped around the bloody thing without getting your feet wet. He started to slow. Let Stour and his eager young stags charge on ahead. He’d fought enough battles. The fresh lads could claim their share of the action, and the costs, and the lessons.

He stopped, hands on knees, then nearly tripped over his own feet as someone shoved him in the back. He turned with a curse on his lips, but grinned when he saw the culprit.

‘Magweer!’ And with an even stormier look than usual. Like he’d caught Clover fucking his mother rather than just snatching a breather. ‘Thought you’d be up front with the rest o’ the firebrands, pumping your name up with glory.’

‘Seems I’m needed here,’ snarled Magweer, ‘making sure you fight, you fucking old coward!’

‘A coward’s just a man with the proper respect for sharp metal,’ said Clover, waving him down. ‘A battle’s no place for a warrior.’

‘What the fuck ?’ spluttered Magweer, all his weapons rattling with upset.

‘No room to swing. More men killed by bad luck than good sword-work. It’s all just shove and grunt, at the mercy of choices made miles away and hours before by men you’ll never meet. Your trouble is you’ve got yourself an idea about how life should be, but it’s just not how life is .’ Magweer twisted his mouth open to spit some rejoinder, but Clover stopped him by bending down to fish a spent flatbow bolt from the grass. Horrible-looking thing, rain gleaming on its barbed head. ‘Let me show you what I mean. Imagine if one of these bastards fell on you.’

Magweer’s voice had gone shrill with fury. ‘Wouldn’t be a battle without—’ His eyes bulged as Clover caught his shoulder and rammed the bolt through his throat, so hard and so sudden the head punched right out of the back of his neck.

Clover caught him as his knees went, lowering him gently. He glanced both ways, but no one was looking. Man dying on a battlefield is hardly suspicious, after all. Magweer fumbled for one of his many knives but Clover caught his hand and held it tight. ‘I warned you.’ He sadly shook his head as Magweer stared up at him, blood bubbling from his nose. ‘A battle’s a dangerous place.’

Clover grabbed a fistful of bloody mail and hauled Magweer over his shoulder, put on a look of shocked concern, then set off quick as he could for the rear. Wasn’t all that quick, being honest. Been quite a while since he last carried a man. After a few steps, he was puffing hard, specially with all Magweer’s weapons dangling about. Just goes to show, hardly matters how many swords you carry if someone else strikes first.

Up the muddy road he struggled, away from the bridge where the fight was going harder than ever, away from the great shield wall that was stretching up the valley, past frowning Carls flooding the other way. More flatbow bolts flickered down from the high ground, peppered the grass.

Clover gritted his teeth and hefted Magweer up his shoulder, feeling the blood seeping warm through his shirt. He kept on, uphill, past a War Chief urging his men to fight harder. Kept on, past a pair of stretcher-bearers with a wounded Thrall wailing between ’em. Kept on, like there was nothing more important than saving this poor arrow-stuck lad on his back. By the dead, it was hard work, but he kept on, all the way up to that farm and its tree with the four bodies still swinging.

The wounded were laid out beside the house, groaning and mewling and squealing for water, or mercy, or their mothers. All the things wounded folk tend to squeal for, they’re highly predictable in that regard. Songs about the glory of it all were thin on the ground right then and there. Clover wished he could’ve shown this to Magweer while he was still alive. Maybe then he’d have seen. But he doubted it. More often than not, men only see what they want to.

He hefted Magweer off his shoulder and down onto the wet grass where one of the healers was working, bloody to her elbows. She took a quick glance across. ‘He’s dead.’

That was no great revelation to Clover. When he chose to stab a man, he aimed to do it in such a way that he’d never need another stabbing, and practice had made him very good at it. But he put on a show of sad surprise even so.

‘What a shame.’ He planted hands on hips and shook his head at the pointlessness of it all. ‘What a waste.’

But, you know. Nothing he hadn’t seen a hundred times before.

He stretched out his aching back, frowning at the way he’d come. Battle was still going strong, misty through the falling rain, a great seething mass of bloodshed in the valley’s bottom.

‘Shit.’ He wiped his sweaty forehead. ‘Daresay it’d all be over by the time I got back down there.’

The healer didn’t answer. Busy tending to the next man in line, who’d a nasty-looking gash out of his shoulder, blood welling down his limp arm in streaks.

Clover found a rock to sit on and set his sword beside it, still sheathed. ‘Probably best if I just stay up here.’