‘Oh no,’ said Craw. ‘Self-defeating would be if she was the one who ended up way out past the Crinna with her throat cut, on account of some blurry details on the minor point of the actual job we’re bloody here to do.’ And he gave Raubin a hard glare as he strode out of the trees and into the clearing.
Scorry was sitting sharpening his knives, eight blades neatly laid out on the patchy grass in front of his crossed legs, from a little pricker no longer’n Craw’s thumb to a hefty carver just this side of a short-sword. The ninth he had in his hands, whetstone working at steel, squick, scrick, marking the rhythm to his soft, high singing. He had a wonder of a singing voice, did Scorry Tiptoe. No doubt he would’ve been a bard in a happier age, but there was a steadier living in sneaking up and knifing folk these days. A sad fact, Craw reckoned, but those were the times.
Brack-i-Dayn was sat beside Scorry, lips curled back, nibbling at a stripped rabbit bone like a sheep nibbling at grass. A huge, very dangerous sheep. The little thing looked like a toothpick in his great tattooed blue lump of a fist. Jolly Yon frowned down at him as if he was a great heap of shit, which Brack might’ve been upset by if it hadn’t been Yon’s confirmed habit to look at everything and everyone that way. He properly looked like the least jolly man in all the North at that moment. It was how he’d come by the name, after all.
Whirrun of Bligh was kneeling on his own on the other side of the clearing, in front of his great long sword, leaned up against a tree for the purpose. He had his hands clasped in front of his chin, hood drawn down over his head, just the sharp end of his nose showing. Praying, by the look of him. Craw had always been a bit worried by men who prayed to gods, let alone swords. But those were the times, he guessed. In bloody days, swords were worth more than gods. They certainly had ’em outnumbered. Besides, Whirrun was a valley-man, from way out north and west, across the mountains near the White Sea, where it snowed in summer and no one with the slightest sense would ever choose to live. Who knew how he thought?
‘Told you it was a real piss-stain of a village, didn’t I?’ Never was in the midst of stringing his bow. He had that grin he tended to have, like he’d made a joke on everyone else and no one but him had got it. Craw would’ve liked to know what it was, he could’ve done with a laugh. The joke was on all of ’em, far as he could see.
‘Reckon you had the right of it,’ said Wonderful as she strutted past into the clearing. ‘Piss. Stain.’
‘Well, we didn’t come to settle down,’ said Craw, ‘we came to get a thing.’
Jolly Yon achieved what many might’ve thought impossible by frowning deeper, black eyes grim as graves, dragging his thick fingers through his thick tangle of a beard. ‘What sort of a thing, exactly?’
Craw gave Raubin another look. ‘You want to dig that one over?’ The fixer only spread his hands, helpless. ‘I hear we’ll know it when we see it.’
‘Know it when we see it? What kind of a-’
‘Tell it to the trees, Yon, the task is the task.’
‘And we’re here now, aren’t we?’ said Raubin.
Craw sucked his teeth at him. ‘Brilliant fucking observation. Like all the best ones, it’s true whenever you say it. Yes, we’re here.’
‘We’re here,’ sang Brack-i-Dayn in his up-and-down Hillman accent, sucking the last shred o’ grease from his bone and flicking it into the bushes. ‘East of the Crinna where the moon don’t shine, a hundred miles from a clean place to shit and with wild, crazy bastards dancing all around think it’s a good idea to put bones through their own faces.’ Which was a little rich, considering he was so covered in tattoos he was more blue than white. There’s no style of contempt like the stuff one kind of savage has for another, Craw guessed.
‘Can’t deny they’ve got some funny ideas east of the Crinna.’ Raubin shrugged. ‘But here’s where the thing is, and here’s where we are, so why don’t we just get the fucking thing and back fucking home?’
‘Why don’t you get the fucking thing, Raubin?’ growled Jolly Yon.
‘’Cause it’s my fucking job to fucking tell you to get the fucking thing is why, Yon fucking Cumber.’
There was a long, ugly pause. Uglier than the child of a man and a sheep, as the Hillmen have it. Then Yon talked in his quiet voice, the one that still gave Craw prickles up his arms, even after all these years. ‘I hope I’m wrong. By the dead, I hope I’m wrong. But I’m getting this feeling …’ He shifted forward, and it was awfully clear all of a sudden just how many axes he was carrying, ‘like I’m being disrespected.’
‘No, no, not at all, I didn’t mean-’
‘Respect, Raubin. That shit costs nothing, but it can spare a man from trying to hold his brains in all the way back home. Am I clear enough?’
‘Course you are, Yon, course you are. I’m over the line. I’m all over it on both sides of it, and I’m sorry. Didn’t mean no disrespect. Lot o’ pressure, is all. Lot o’ pressure for everyone. It’s my neck on the block, just like yours. Not down there, maybe, but back home, you can be sure o’ that, if she don’t get her way …’ Raubin shuddered again, worse’n ever.
‘A touch of respect don’t seem too much to ask-’
‘Enough.’ Craw waved the pair of ’em down. ‘We’re all sinking on the same leaky bloody skiff, there’s no help arguing about it. We need every man to a bucket, and every woman, too.’
‘I’m always helpful,’ said Wonderful, all innocence.
‘If only.’ Craw squatted, pulling out a blade and starting to scratch a map of the village in the dirt. The way Threetrees used to do a long, low time ago. ‘We might not know exactly what this thing is, but we know where it is, at least.’ Knife scraped through earth as the others gathered, kneeling, sitting, squatting, looking on. ‘A big hall in the middle, with uprights on it carved like foxes’ heads. They’re dragons, you ask me, but, you know, that’s another story. There’s a fence around the outside, two gates, north and south. Houses and huts over here. A pigpen there, I think. That’s a forge, maybe.’
‘How many do we reckon might be down there?’ asked Yon.
Wonderful rubbed at the scar on her scalp, face twisted as she glanced up towards the pale sky. ‘Could be fifty, sixty fighting men? A few elders, few dozen women and children, too. Some o’ those might hold a blade.’
‘Women fighting.’ Never grinned. ‘A disgrace, is that.’
Wonderful bared her teeth back at him. ‘Get those bitches to the cook-fire, eh?’
‘Oh, the cook-fire …’ Brack stared up into the cloudy sky like it was packed with happy memories.
‘Sixty warriors? And we’re but seven – plus the baggage.’ Jolly Yon curled his tongue and blew spit over Raubin’s boots in a neat arc. ‘Shit on that. We need more men.’
‘Wouldn’t be enough food then.’ Brack-i-Dayn laid a sad hand on his belly. ‘There’s hardly enough as it-’
Craw cut him off. ‘Maybe we should stick to plans using the number we’ve got, eh? Plain as plain, sixty’s way too many to fight fair.’ Not that anyone had joined his crew for a fair fight, of course. ‘We need to draw some off.’
Never winced. ‘Any point asking why you’re looking at me?’
‘Because ugly men hate nothing worse than handsome men, pretty boy.’
‘It’s a fact I can’t deny.’ Never sighed, flicking his long hair back. ‘I’m cursed with a fine face.’
‘Your curse my blessing.’ Craw jabbed at the north end of his dirt-plan, where a wooden bridge crossed a stream. ‘You’ll take your unmatched beauty in towards the bridge. They’ll have guards posted, no doubt. Mount a diversion.’
‘Shoot one of ’em, you mean?’