Craw nodded back. ‘Good. Great.’ No task he wanted less. As Yon walked off, he muttered to himself. ‘Always the fool jobs …’
It went pretty much just like Craw planned. He wouldn’t have called it the first time ever, but it was a pleasant surprise, that was sure. The six of them lay still and silent on the rise, followed the little movements of leaf and branch that marked Never creeping towards that crap-arse of a village. It looked no better the closer you got to it. Things rarely did, in Craw’s experience. He chewed at his nails some more, saw Never kneel in the bushes across the stream from the north gate, nocking an arrow and drawing the string. It was hard to tell from this range, but it looked like he still had that knowing little grin even now.
He loosed his shaft and Craw thought it clicked into one of the logs that made the fence. Faint shouting drifted on the wind. A couple of arrows wobbled back the other way, vanished into the trees as Never turned and scuttled off, lost in the brush. Craw heard some kind of a drum beating, more shouting, then men started to hurry out across that bridge, weapons of rough iron clutched in their hands, some dragging furs or boots on still. Perhaps three dozen, all told. A neat piece of work. Provided Never got away, of course.
Yon shook his head as he watched a good chunk of the Fox Clan shambling over their bridge and into the trees. ‘Amazing, ain’t it? I never quite get used to just how fucking stupid people are.’
‘Always a mistake to overestimate the bastards,’ whispered Craw. ‘Good thing we’re the cleverest crew in the Circle of the World, eh? So could we have no fuck-ups today, if you please?’
‘I won’t if you won’t, Chief,’ muttered Wonderful.
‘Huh.’ If only he could make that promise. Craw tapped Scorry on his shoulder and pointed down into the village. The little man winked back, then slid over the rise on his belly and down through the undergrowth, nimble as a tadpole through a pond.
Craw worked his dry tongue around his dry mouth. Always ran out of spit at a time like this, and however often he did it, it never got any better. He glanced out the corner of his eye at the others, none of ’em showing much sign of a weak nerve. He wondered if they were bubbling up with worry on the inside, just like he was, and putting a stern face on the wreckage, just like he was. Or if it was only him scared. But in the end it didn’t make much difference. The best you could do with fear was act like you had none.
He held his fist up, pleased to see his hand didn’t shake, then pointed after Scorry, and they all set off. Down towards the south gate – if you could use the phrase about a gap in a rotten fence under a kind of arch made from crooked branches, skull of some animal unlucky enough to have a fearsome pair of horns mounted in the middle of it. Made Craw wonder if they had a straight piece of wood within a hundred bloody miles.
The one guard left stood under that skull, leaning on his spear, staring at nothing, tangle-haired and fur-clad. He picked his nose and held one finger up to look at the results. He flicked it away. He stretched and reached around to scratch his arse. Scorry’s knife thudded into the side of his neck and chopped his throat out, quick and simple as a fisher gutting a salmon. Craw winced, just for a moment, but he knew there’d been no dodging it. They’d be lucky if that was the only man lost his life so they could get this fool job done. Scorry held him a moment while blood showered from his slit neck, caught him as he fell, guided his twitching body soundless to the side of the gate, out of sight of any curious eyes inside.
No more noise than the breeze in the brush, Craw and the rest hurried up the bank, bent double, weapons in hand. Scorry was waiting, knife already wiped, peering around the side of the gatepost with one palm up behind him to say wait. Craw frowned down at the dead man’s bloody face, mouth a bit open as though he was about to ask a question. A potter makes pots. A baker makes bread. And this is what Craw made. All he’d made his whole life, pretty much.
It was hard to feel much pride at the sight, however neatly the work had been done. It was still a man murdered just for guarding his own village. Because they were men, these, with hopes and sorrows and all the rest, even if they lived out here past the Crinna and didn’t wash too often. But what could one man do? Craw took a long breath in and let it out slow. Just get the task done without any of his own people killed. In hard times, soft thoughts can kill you quicker than the plague.
He looked at Wonderful and jerked his head into the village, and she slid around the gatepost and in, slipping across to the right-hand track, shaved head swivelling carefully left and right. Scorry followed at her heels and Brack crept after, silent for all his great bulk.
Craw took a long breath, then crept across to the left-hand track, wincing as he tried to find the hardest, quietest bits of the rutted muck to plant his feet on. He heard the hissing of Yon’s careful breath behind him, knew Whirrun was there, too, though he moved quiet as a cat. Craw could hear something clicking. A spinning wheel, maybe. He heard someone laugh, not sure if he was imagining it. His head was jerked this way and that by every trace of a sound, like he had a hook through his nose. The whole thing seemed horribly bright and obvious, right then. Maybe they should’ve waited for darkness, but Craw had never liked working at night. Not since that fucking disaster at Gurndrift where Pale-as-Snow’s boys ended up fighting Littlebone’s on an accident and more’n fifty men dead without an enemy within ten miles. Too much to go wrong at night.
But then Craw had seen plenty of men die in the day, too.
He slid along beside a wattle wall, and he had that sweat of fear on him. That prickling sweat that comes with death right at your shoulder. Everything was picked out sharper than sharp. Every stick in the wattle, every pebble in the dirt. The way the leather binding the grip of his sword dug at his palm when he shifted his fingers. The way each in-breath gave the tiniest whistle when it got three-quarters into his aching lungs. The way the sole of his foot stuck to the inside of his boot through the hole in his sock with every careful step. Stuck to it and peeled away.
He needed to get him some new socks, is what he needed. Well, first he needed to live out the day, then socks. Maybe even those ones he’d seen in Uffrith last time he was there, dyed red. They’d all laughed at that. Him, and Yon, and Wonderful, and poor dead Jutlan. Laughed at the madness of it. But afterwards he’d thought to himself – there’s luxury, that a man could afford to have his socks dyed, and cast a wistful glance over his shoulder at that fine cloth. Maybe he’d go back after this fool job was done with and get himself a pair of red socks. Maybe he’d get himself two pairs. Wear ’em on the outside of his boots just to show folk what a big man he was. Maybe they’d take to calling him Curnden Red Socks. He felt a smile in spite of himself. Red socks, that was the first step on the road to ruin if ever he’d-
The door to a hovel on their left wobbled open and three men walked out of it, all laughing. The one at the front turned his shaggy head, big smile still plastered across his face, yellow teeth sticking out of it. He looked straight at Craw, and Yon, and Whirrun, stuck frozen against the side of a longhouse with their mouths open like three children caught nicking biscuits. Everyone stared at each other.
Craw felt time slow to a weird crawl, that way it did before blood spilled. Enough time to take in silly things. To wonder whether it was a chicken bone in one of their ears. To count the nails through one of their clubs. Eight and a half. Enough time to think it was funny he wasn’t thinking something more useful. It was like he stood outside himself, wondering what he’d do but feeling it probably weren’t up to him. And the oddest thing of all was that it had happened so often to him now, that feeling, he could recognise it when it came. That frozen, baffled moment before the world comes apart.