The Northmen glanced at each other as though this was the source of some friction between them.
‘There’s a war on,’ grunted one with shitty teeth. ‘Not that many horses about.’
Shev snorted. ‘Don’t I know it. You think I’d be walking if I didn’t have to?’
‘It’s my horse,’ said Flood. ‘But Kerric’s got a bad leg so I said he could borrow it.’
‘We’ve all got bad legs,’ grunted a big one with an entirely excessive beard and an axe even more so.
‘Now is probably not the time to reopen discussion of who gets the horse,’ snapped Flood. ‘The dead know we’ve argued over that particular issue enough, don’t you bloody think?’ With a gesture, he started the men spreading out to the right and left. ‘Who the hell are the women anyway, Whirrun?’
Shev rolled her eyes as Javre did her own puffing up. ‘I am Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp.’
Flood raised one brow. ‘And your servant?’
Shev gave a weary groan. ‘Oh, for-’
‘She’s not a servant, she’s a henchman,’ said Whirrun. ‘Or … henchwoman? Is that a word?’
‘Partner!’ snapped Shev.
‘No, no.’ Javre shook her head. ‘Partner? No.’
‘It really doesn’t matter,’ said Flood, starting to become impatient. ‘The point is Bethod wants to talk to you, Whirrun, and you’ll be coming with us even if we have to hurt you-’
‘One moment.’ Javre held up her big hand. ‘This man and I are in the midst of resolving a previous disagreement. You can hurt whatever is left of him when I am done.’
‘By the dead.’ Flood pressed thumb and forefinger into his eyes and rubbed them fiercely. ‘Nothing’s ever easy. Why is nothing ever easy?’
‘Believe me,’ said Shev, tightening her grip on her knife, ‘I feel your pain. You were going to fight him for nothing, now you’re going to fight for him for nothing?’
‘We stand where the Goddess puts us,’ growled Javre, knuckles whitening where she gripped her sword.
Flood gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Whirrun, there’s no call for bloodshed here-’
‘I’m with him,’ said Shev, holding up a finger.
‘-but you’re really not giving me much of a choice. Bethod wants you in front of Skarling’s chair, alive or dead.’
Whirrun grinned. ‘Shoglig told me the time of my death, and it is not here, and it is not-’
A bowstring went. It was that boy with the wobbly hands, looking as surprised he’d let fly as anyone. Whirrun caught the arrow. Just snatched it from the air, neat as you like.
‘Wait!’ roared Flood, but it was too late. The man with the big beard rushed at Whirrun, roaring, spraying spit, swinging his axe. At the last moment, Whirrun calmly stepped around the Father of Swords so the axe-haft clanged into its sheathed blade and stabbed the bearded man in the neck with the arrow. He dropped spluttering.
By then everyone was shouting.
For someone who hated fights, Shev surely ended up in a lot of the bastards, and if she’d learned one thing it was that you’ve got to commit. Try your damndest to negotiate, to compromise, to put it off, but when the time comes to fight, you’ve got to commit. So she flung her knife.
If she’d thought about it, Shev might have figured that she didn’t want to weigh down her conscience any more than she had to, and killing a horse wasn’t as bad as killing a man. If she’d thought about it more, she might have considered that the man had chosen to be there while the horse hadn’t, so probably deserved it more. But if she’d thought about it even more, she might have considered that the man probably hadn’t chosen to be there in any meaningful sense any more than Shev had herself, but had been rolled along through life like a stone on the riverbed according to his situation, acquaintances, character and bad luck without too much chance of changing anything.
But folk who spend a lot of time thinking in fights don’t tend to live through them, so Shev left the thinking for later and threw at the easiest target to hit.
The knife stuck into the horse’s hindquarters and its eyes bulged. It reared, stumbled, bucked and tottered, and Shev had to scramble out of the way while the rider tore desperately at the reins. The horse plunged and kicked, the saddle-girth tore and the saddle slid from the horse’s back as it toppled sideways, rolled over its rider, bringing his despairing wail to a sharp end, then slipped thrashing over the rocky verge of the canyon and out of sight.
So Shev ended up with horse and rider on her conscience. But the sad fact was, only the winners got to regret what they did in a fight, and right now Shev had other worries. Namely, a man with the shittiest teeth she ever saw and a hell of an intimidating mace. Why was he grinning? God, if she had those teeth, you’d have needed a crowbar to get her lips apart.
‘Come here,’ he snarled at her.
‘I’d rather not,’ Shev hissed back.
She scrambled out of the way, damp stones scattering from her heels, the screech, crash and clatter of combat almost forgotten in the background. Scrambling, always scrambling, from one disaster to another. Often at the edge of an unknowable canyon, at least a metaphorical one. And, as always, she could never quite get away.
The shitty-toothed maceman caught her collar with his free hand, jerking it so half the buttons ripped off and driving her back so her head cracked on rock. She stabbed at him with her other knife but the blade only scraped his mail and twisted out of her hand. A moment later, his fist sank into her gut and drove her breath out in a shuddering wheeze.
‘Got yer,’ he growled in her face, his breath alone almost enough to make her lose consciousness. He lifted his mace.
She raised one finger to point over his shoulder. ‘Behind you …’
‘You think I’m falling for-’
There was a loud thudding sound and the Father of Swords split him from his shoulder down to his guts, gore spraying in Shev’s face as if it had been flung from a bucket.
‘Urrgh!’ She slithered from under the man’s carcass, desperately trying to kick free of the slaughterhouse slops that had been suddenly dumped in her lap. ‘God,’ she whimpered, struggling up, trembling and spitting, clothes soaked with blood, hair dripping with blood, mouth, eyes, nose full of blood. ‘Oh, God.’
‘Look on the sunny side,’ said Whirrun. ‘At least it’s not your own.’
Bethod’s men were scattered about the muddy grass, hacked, twisted, leaking. The only one still standing was Flood.
‘Now, look,’ he said, licking his lips, spear levelled as Javre stalked towards him. ‘I didn’t want things to go this way-’
She whipped her sword from its scabbard and Shev flinched, two blinding smears left across her sight. The top part of Flood’s spear dropped off, then the bottom, leaving him holding a stick about the length of Shev’s foot. He swallowed, then tossed it on the ground and held up his hands.
‘Get you gone back to your master, Flood,’ said Whirrun, ‘and thank the dead for your good luck with every step. Tell him Whirrun of Bligh dances to his own tune.’
With wide eyes Flood nodded, and began to back away.
‘And if you see Curnden Craw over there, tell him I haven’t forgotten he owes me three chickens!’
‘Chickens?’ muttered Javre.
‘A debt is a debt,’ said Whirrun, leaning nonchalantly on the Father of Swords, his bare white body now spattered with blood as well as mud. ‘Talking of which, we still have business between us.’
‘We do.’ She looked Whirrun slowly up and down with lips thoughtfully pursed. It was a look Shev had seen before, and she felt her heart sink even lower, if that was possible. ‘But another way of settling it now occurs to me.’
‘Uh … uh … uh …’
Shev knelt shivering beside a puddle of muddy rainwater, muttering every curse she knew, which was many, struggling to mop the gore from between her tits with a rag torn from a dead man’s shirt, and trying desperately not to notice Javre’s throaty grunting coming from behind the rock. It was like trying not to notice someone hammering nails into your head.