Sharp Ends: Stories from the World of The First Law (18 page)

‘Looks good, Chief,’ whispered Ripjack.

Pale-as-Snow glanced sideways at his Second, narrow-eyed. ‘Don’t put the curse on it, eh?’ Plenty were the times he’d come more’n a little unstuck in a good-looking situation. There was no such thing as too careful, even when it was the Union you were trying to creep up on.

Pale-as-Snow long ago lost count of the raids he’d had charge of. A lifetime of ’em, and he was still waiting for one that went exactly as he’d hoped. Still waiting for that perfect raid. However careful his planning, there was always some little splinter of bad luck. Some overeager fool on his side, or some over-watchful stickler on the other, a loose strap, or testy horse, or some wrinkle of the weather or the light, or a bloody dry twig in the wrong place. But that’s war, Pale-as-Snow supposed. You get luck of all kinds, and the winner’s the one who makes the best of his share.

But who knew? As he took in that flat field full of trampled crops with its one little house and its one little shed, and the great mass of unready, unruly men and supplies at the end of it, he started to get the tickly, eager feeling in the palms of his hands that this could be the day, and the corner of his mouth slowly twitched up.

Then he could go back and tell Scale that it had been a real beauty of a raid. A peach. His men all laughing and showing off their booty and telling ever less believable lies about their high deeds on the day. Scale clapping him on the back instead of giving him another rage to wince his way through. Honestly, Pale-as-Snow was getting a little sick of being raged at. He was a leader you could respect, was Scale. Just as long as he didn’t open his mouth.

Pale-as-Snow gave his chagga a long, slow chew as he scanned the field again, then he nodded. A good fighter has to be careful, but sooner or later he has to fight. The moment comes up smiling and offers its hand, you got to grab it.

‘All right. Let’s get the boys ready.’ He turned and started giving signals to the others, open hand pointing left and right through the trees to start ’em moving to where he wanted ’em, quicker at talking with his hands than he was with his mouth. Bows close to the treeline, Carls in two wedges to deal with the guards, Thralls in the centre, ready to rush the column and do as much damage as men could in the time it took for more guards to arrive. You’d be surprised how much damage men could do in that time, if they were good and ready for it. Just a little more of the right kind of luck and this might be the raid they measured all future raids against. A real beauty. A real—

‘Chief,’ hissed Ripjack.

‘Uh?’

The Named Man held a finger over his mouth for quiet, his eyes all big and round, then shifted that finger to point off through the undergrowth.

Pale-as-Snow felt his heart sinking. There was someone coming across the field towards ’em. A Union man, his polished helmet gleaming, a shovel over his shoulder, not a care in the world. Pale-as-Snow twisted around, hissing hard between his teeth to get the lads’ attention, then waving ’em frantically down. All together they dropped into the bushes, behind trees, found boulders, and like a trick of sorcery in a moment left the woods peaceful quiet and empty-looking.

The Southerner hadn’t stopped, though. He ducked under the branches and crashed through the undergrowth a few steps, coming straight at them, whistling tunelessly to himself like he was on his way to market rather’n wrapped up in a war. They were bloody idiots, these Union men. Bloody idiots, but if he kept on walking he’d see ’em sure, and soon, however much of an idiot he was.

‘Always something,’ mouthed Pale-as-Snow, putting his hand on his sword, the other one flat out behind him, palm up, to keep the rest of the lads quiet. Beside him he felt Ripjack very slowly slide out his knife, the blade of it gleaming murder in the shadows. Pale-as-Snow watched the Southerner come closer, a little itch making his eyelid twitch, his muscles tensing up all tight and ready to sweep his sword out and set to—

The Southerner stopped no more’n four strides away, dug his shovel down in the earth, took his helmet off and tossed it on the ground beside him, wiped his forehead on the back of his arm, turned around, then started undoing his belt.

Pale-as-Snow felt himself smile. He looked at Ripjack, took his hand gently from his sword, put his forefinger gently to his lips to say quiet, pointed it at the squatting Southerner busy getting his trousers down, then drew it gently across his throat.

Ripjack winced and pointed at his chest.

Pale-as-Snow grinned wider and nodded.

Ripjack winced more, then shrugged, then started to ease ever so very gently forward through the brush, twisting himself around the plants, eyes darting over the ground for anything might give him away. Pale-as-Snow settled back, watching. They’d sort this little piece of business, then they’d get the lads in place and everything ready, then they’d make a raid about which songs would be sung for a hundred years. Or they’d have a stab at it, anyway.

You get luck of all kinds in a war. The winner’s the one who makes the best of his share.

Pendel wriggled down into his heels, trying to get comfortable, one hand on the shovel and the other on his knee. He grunted, gritted his teeth. That was the bloody army life for you, always too hard or too runny, never a happy medium. There was no happy medium in war. He sighed and was shifting his weight for another effort when he felt a sharp pain across his backside.

‘Ah!’ He twisted around, cursing. One of those monstrous bloody nettles they had up here had leaned in, as if on purpose, and stung his left buttock, damn it.

‘Bloody North,’ he hissed, rubbing furiously at the affected area and making it sting all the worse. ‘Damn this fucking country.’ They’d been marching for what felt like months and he’d yet to see an acre of the place that was worth one man’s snot, let alone hundreds of lives, and he very much doubted—

Beyond the nettle, no more than a couple of strides away, a man was kneeling in the brush, staring at him.

A Northman.

A Northman with a knife in his hand.

Not a big knife. No more than average-sized.

But certainly big enough.

They stared at each other for what felt like a very long moment, Pendel squatting with his trousers around his ankles, the Northman squatting with trousers up but jaw down.

They moved together, as if on a signal firmly agreed and long prepared for. The Northman leaped forward, knife going up. Without conscious thought Pendel spun around, swinging the shovel, and its flat caught the Northman crisply on the side of the head with a metallic ping and sent blood, Northman and shovel all flying through the air.

With a girlish whoop, Pendel staggered away in the direction he’d come from, tripped, heard what he thought might be an arrow swish through the air beside him, rolled through a great patch of nettles and lurched to his feet, struggling to run, scream and pull his trousers up all at once with death breathing on his bare arse.

My darling wife Silyne,
I was overjoyed to receive your letter and the news of our son, though it took three weeks to reach me. Damn army post, you know. Glad to hear your mother is better. I wanted to tell you

Kerns leaned back, staring wistfully off across the field. Wanted to tell her what? It was ever this way. Desperate to write, but when he sat down, no words. None worth a damn, anyway. He was not really even sure he wanted to write, just felt that he
should
want to. His wife would be left with the most bland and uninteresting collection of waste paper if he was ever to die in battle, that was certain. No poetic professions of his deep love, no sage advice to his infant son on how to be a man, no secrets of his innermost self. He was, in all honestly, unsure that he had an innermost self. Certainly not one with any profound revelations to make.

It was hardly as though anything of the faintest interest ever happened here, anyway. They barely moved, let alone fought. Kerns did not want to be a hero, just to do his part. To test his mettle against an enemy rather than fighting mud, horses and Pendel’s incompetence every day. He had volunteered for
action
, not tedium. To distinguish himself. To win honour on the battlefield. To be celebrated, rewarded, toasted, admired. All right, he wanted to be a hero. And here he was, among the baggage, where the bravest deed done was greasing an axle.

He gave a long, tired sigh, frowned at his empty page and then over at Colonel Gorst, perhaps hoping to find inspiration there. But the colonel had put his pen down and was staring towards the trees with the most striking intensity. Kerns thought he heard a faint cry, high with a note of panic. It came again, louder, and Gorst shot to his feet, cup tumbling from his hand, milk spilling. Kerns looked towards the trees, his mouth dropping open. Pendel was there, bounding back through the crops towards them, trying to run and hold his open trousers up and shout all at the same time.

He managed to yell one audible word, voice shrill with terror.

‘Northmen!’

As if to add drama to his exclamation, an arrow looped over from behind him, narrowly missing his shoulder and vanishing into the crops. Kerns felt his face go hot. Time seemed perceptibly to slow. He stood as if in a dream, his limbs heavy, his mind sluggishly struggling to catch up with reality. He gawped at Pendel. He gawped at the column. He gawped at Gorst, who was already rushing forwards, drawing his heavy steels. He gawped at the treeline, from which men had now started to appear, running, shrill cries echoing over the silent field.

‘Bloody hell,’ Kerns whispered, flinging his pen away and tearing at his sword hilt. Bloody thing wouldn’t come free. He realised the securing thong was looped over the grip, started fumbling with it, failed, ripped his gloves off in a fury, fumbled again, finally loosening the hilt. He looked up. Northmen, undoubtedly Northmen, some of them with painted shields on their arms, bright weapons in their fists, whooping and shouting as they bounded towards the largely unguarded wagons.

He cast about for his helmet, knocking his ink bottle over and sending a spray of black across his banal fragment of a letter. Probably should’ve had his helmet on all the time but his men had mocked him mercilessly, and when he found it filled with dung that morning it had been the final straw. If he ever discovered who—

As he finally got his sword drawn and looked up, he realised it hardly mattered now. There were things moving in the air. Arrows. Arrows from kneeling Northmen, before the trees, bows raised. His wide eyes darted over the dark background of the woods, drawn by flickers of movement. He ducked uselessly, the arrows whispering past him and dropping among the carts. He saw one thud into wood and lodge there, quivering. Another stuck into a horse’s flank and it reared up, screaming.

‘With me!’ he bellowed, no idea who he was bellowing at, not bothering to check if anyone was with him or not, doing his best to lift his feet over the barley as he floundered on, all the silly frustrations of being assigned supply duty suddenly banished. Action! Here was action!

Gorst was up ahead in combat with two Northmen. His long steel hit a shield with a loud crack and sent one stumbling back. Gorst dodged a two-handed axe-blow, the heavy blade missing him by a terrifying whisker. Even as it thudded into the earth Gorst was spinning around, swift as lightning in spite of his bulk, long steel feathering the crops. It took the axeman’s right leg off cleanly at the knee and snatched the other out from under him, sending the unfortunate man cartwheeling in a spray of blood. His friend was just struggling to get up when Gorst’s long steel left a great dent in the front of his helmet and knocked him back, mouth silently gaping, arms spread, sword tumbling from one nerveless hand.

Kerns felt a shock run through him as he realised that he had seen two men killed before his eyes. Shock, and disbelief, and breathless excitement. Here was most definitely action! To stand alongside Colonel Gorst, a man who had been the king’s First Guard! To be smilingly acknowledged by him after the engagement, to be clapped on the shoulder and greeted as a brother! It was everything Kerns had dreamed of when he first tried on the uniform. Three more Northmen were jumping through the crops towards Gorst now, and Kerns hurried up to his side, raising his sword.

‘Colonel Gorst!’

He saw a flash of movement at the corner of his eye, jerked his head away on an instinct, and—

Gorst felt his long steel crunch into something at the very end of his swing, twisting the grip in his fist as the Northman before him toppled back, blood squirting from his neatly slit throat. But he had no time to think on it.
I have other business.

Namely a short man in tarnished chain mail, ageing and running somewhat to fat, roaring as lustily as he could after a charge through the crops, ruddy cheeks full of broken veins.
Those cheeks.
They surprised Gorst with a stray memory of his father, shortly before his death when he had been confined to his bed, unable to speak properly and eternally surprised by the animal noises that emerged from his twisted mouth. Fussing with the tassels on his nightgown, shrivelled to a ghostly prune of his former self.
A ghostly prune with prune-coloured cheeks.

How many years did I put up with that old fool’s disappointment, and his rebukes, and his jokes about ladies’ voices, and smile and nod like a dutiful son?
Gorst’s lips curled back in an animal snarl. A passing resemblance to a close relative was not about to break his stride. Rather it urged him on.
After all, Father, I never could shut you up in life …

The Northman swung his sword in an overhead arc as Gorst came close, a clumsy motion, easily anticipated.
One would think these fools had never drawn a sword before. Not really my job to show them how it’s done, but …
Gorst deflected it effortlessly with his long steel, blades scraping, closed and stabbed once with his short, getting it tangled with the rim of the painted shield. There was enough force behind it to twist its prune-faced owner sideways, though. Gorst stabbed again and felt the blade slide through mail and into flesh, the man’s mouth opening wide to scream.
Quiet, now, Father.
Gorst stabbed once more and cut that scream off in a last twisted gurgle. He shouldered the Northman away and chopped one ruddy cheek wide open with a swing of the long steel, showering blood and making another man check in his charge, check enough that Gorst could split his head, too, on the backswing and snatch him off his feet before he had time to remind Gorst of any other dead relatives.