“Where’s Dirty-Nose?”
There was a pause. “Dead, I reckon.”
“Dead? How?”
“They had someone with ’em, Crow. Some big fucker.” Crow. Logen knew the name. Knew the voice too, now that he heard it. A Named Man who’d fought for Littlebone. You couldn’t have called them friends, him and Logen, but they’d known each other. They’d been close together in the line at Carleon, fighting side by side. And now here they were again with no more than a few strides between them, more than willing to kill each other. Strange, the turns fate can take. Fighting with a man and fighting against him are only a whisker apart. Far closer together than not fighting at all.
“Northman, was he?” came Crow’s voice.
“Might’ve been. Whoever it was he knew his business. Came up real quick. I didn’t have time to get a shaft away.”
“Bastard! We ain’t letting that pass. We’ll camp out here and follow ’em tomorrow. Might be we’ll get him then, this big one.”
“Oh aye, we’ll fucking get him. Don’t you worry about that none. I’ll cut his neck for him, the bastard.”
“Good for you. ’Til then you can keep an eye open for him while the rest of us catch some sleep. Might be the anger’ll keep you awake this time, eh?”
“Aye, chief. Right y’are.”
Logen sat and watched, catching glimpses through the trees as four of them spread out their blankets and rolled up to sleep. The fifth took his place, back to the others, and looked out the way they’d come, sitting guard. Logen waited, and he heard one begin to snore. Some rain started up, and it tapped and trickled on the branches of the pines. After a while it spattered into his hair, into his clothes, ran down his face and fell to the wet earth, drip, drip, drip. Logen sat, still and silent as a stone.
It can be a fearsome weapon, patience. One that few men ever learn to use. A hard thing, to keep your mind on killing once you’re out of danger and your blood’s cooled off. But Logen had always had the trick of it. So he sat and let the slow time sneak by, and thought about long ago, until the moon was high, and there was pale light washing down between the trees with the tickling rain. Pale light enough for him to see his tasks by.
He uncurled his legs and started moving, working his way between the tree trunks, planting his feet nice and gentle in the brush. The rain was his ally, patter and trickle masking the soft sounds his boots made as he circled round behind the guard.
He slid out a knife, wet blade glinting once in the patchy moonlight, and he padded out from the trees and through their camp. Between the sleeping men, close enough to touch them. Close as a brother. The guard sniffed and shifted unhappily, dragging his wet blanket round his shoulders, all beaded up with twinkling rain drops. Logen stopped and waited, looked down at the pale face of one of the sleepers, turned sideways, eyes closed and mouth wide open, breath making faint smoke in the clammy night.
The guard was still now, and Logen slipped up close behind him, holding his breath. He reached out with his left hand, fingers working in the misty air, feeling for the moment. He reached out with his right hand, fist clenched tight round the hard grip of his knife. He felt his lips curling back from his gritted teeth. Now was the time, and when the time comes, you strike with no backward glances.
Logen reached round and clamped his hand tight over the guard’s mouth, cut his throat quick and hard, deep enough that he felt the blade scraping on his neck bones. He jerked and struggled for a moment, but Logen held him tight, tight as a lover, and he made no more than a quiet gurgle. Logen felt blood over his hands, hot and sticky. He didn’t worry yet about the others. If one of them woke all they’d see would be the outline of one man in the darkness, and that was all they were expecting.
It wasn’t long before the guard went limp, and Logen laid him down gently on his side, head flopping. Four shapes lay there under their wet blankets, helpless. Maybe there’d been a time when Logen would’ve had to work himself up to a job like this. When he’d have had to think about why it was the right thing to do. But if there had been, it was long gone. Up in the North, the time you spend thinking will be the time you get killed in. All they were now were four tasks to get done.
He crept up to the first, lifted his bloody knife, overhand, and stabbed him clean in the heart right through his coat, hand pressed over his mouth. He died quieter than he slept. Logen came up on the second one, ready to do the same. His boot clattered into something metal. Water flask, maybe. Whatever it was, it made quite the racket. The sleeping man’s eyes worked open, he started to lift himself up. Logen rammed the knife in his gut and dragged at it, slitting his belly open. He made a kind of a wheeze, mouth and eyes wide, clutching at Logen’s arm.
“Eh?” The third one sat straight up and staring. Logen tore his hand free and heaved his sword out. “Wha’ the—” The man lifted his arm up, on an instinct, and the dull blade took his hand off at the wrist and chopped deep into his skull, sending black spots of blood showering into the wet air and knocking him down on his back.
But that gave the last of them time enough to roll out of his blanket and grab up an axe. Now he stood hunched over, hands spread out, fighting ready like a man who’d had plenty of practice at it. Crow. Logen could hear his breath hissing, see it smoking in the rain.
“You should’ve started wi’ me!” he hissed.
Logen couldn’t deny it. He’d been concentrating on getting them all killed, and hadn’t paid much mind to the order. Still, it was a bit late to worry now. He shrugged. “Start or finish, ain’t too much difference.”
“We’ll see.” Crow weighed his axe in the misty air, shifting around, looking for an opening. Logen stood still and caught his breath, the sword hanging down by his side, the grip cold and wet in his clenched fist. He’d never been much of a one for moving until it was time. “Best tell me your name, while you still got breath in you. I like to know who I’ve killed.”
“You already know me, Crow.” Logen held his other hand up, and he let the fingers spread out, and the moonlight glinted black on his bloody hand, and on the bloody stump of his missing finger. “We were side by side in the line at Carleon. Never thought you’d all forget me so soon. But things don’t often turn out the way we expect, eh?”
He’d stopped moving now, had Crow. Logen couldn’t see more than a gleam of his eyes in the dark, but he could tell the doubt and the fear in the way he stood. “No,” he whispered, shaking his head in the darkness. “Can’t be! Ninefingers is dead!”
“That so?” Logen took a deep breath and pushed it out, slow, into the wet night. “Reckon I must be his ghost.”
They’d dug some sort of a hole to squat in, the Union lads, sacks and boxes up on the sides as a rampart. Logen could see the odd face moving over the top, staring off into the trees, the dull light from the guttering fire glinting on an arrow head or a spear tip. Dug in, watching for another ambush. If they’d been nervy before, they were most likely shitting themselves now. Probably one of them would get scared and shoot him as soon as he made himself known. Damn Union bows had a trigger that went off at a touch, once they were drawn. Would have been just about his luck, to get killed over nothing in the middle of nowhere, and by his own side too, but he didn’t have much of a choice. Not unless he wanted to walk up to the front.