Instead he took a sharp breath, squeaking slightly in one nostril, and squelched away through the mud, into the gathering dusk.
He had a message to carry, after all. With no heroics.
Black Dow
The stable doors shut with a bang like a headsman’s axe, and it took all of Calder’s famous arrogance not to jump clean in the air. War meetings had never been his favourite style of gathering, especially ones full of his enemies. Three of Dow’s five War Chiefs were in attendance and, as Calder’s ever-worsening luck would have it, they were the three that liked him least.
Glama Golden looked the hero from his scalp to his toes, big-knuckle brawny and heavy-jaw handsome, his long hair, his bristling moustache, his eyelashes to their tips all the colour of pale gold. He wore more yellow metal than a princess on her wedding day – golden torc around his thick neck, bracelets at his thick wrists and fistfuls of rings on his thick fingers, every part of him buffed to a pretty shine with bluster and self-love.
Cairm Ironhead was a very different prospect. His scar-crossed face was a fortress of frown you could’ve blunted an axe on, eyes like nails under a brow like an anvil, cropped hair and beard an uncompromising black. He was shorter than Golden but wider still, a slab of a man, chain mail glinting under a cloak of black bear-fur. The rumour was he’d strangled that bear. Possibly for looking at him wrong. Neither Ironhead nor Golden had much beyond contempt for Calder, but luckily they’d always despised each other like night hates day and their feud left no hatred in the quiver for anyone else.
When it came to hatred, Brodd Tenways had a bottomless supply. He was one of those bastards who can’t even breathe quietly, ugly as incest and always delighted to push it in your face, leering from the shadows like the village pervert at a passing milkmaid. Foul-mouthed, foul-toothed, foul-smelling, and with some kind of hideous rash patching his twisted face he gave every sign of taking great pride in. He’d made a bitter enemy of Calder’s father, lost to him in battle twice, and been forced to kneel and give up everything he had. Getting it back only seemed to have worsened his mood, and he’d easily shifted all his years of bile from Bethod to his sons, and Calder in particular.
Then there was the head of this mismatched family of villains, the self-styled Protector of the North, Black Dow himself. He sat easy in Skarling’s Chair, one leg folded under him while the other boot tapped gently at the ground. He had something like a smile on his deep-lined, hard-scarred face but his eyes were narrowed, sly as a hungry tomcat that just now spied a pigeon. He’d taken to wearing fine clothes, the sparkling chain that Calder’s father used to wear around his shoulders. But he couldn’t hide what he was, and didn’t want to either. A killer to the tips of his ears. Or ear, since the left one was no more than a flap of gristle.
As if Black Dow’s name and his grin weren’t threats enough, he’d made sure they were shored up with plenty of steel. A long, grey sword leaned against Skarling’s Chair on one side, an axe on the other, notched with long use, in easy reach of his dangling fingers. Killer’s fingers – scuffed, and swollen, and scarred at the knuckles from a lifetime of the dead knew what dark work.
Splitfoot stood in the gloom at Dow’s shoulder. His Second, meaning his closest bodyguard and chief arse-licker, stuck to his master tight as his shadow with thumbs hooked in his silver-buckled sword-belt. Two of his Carls lurked behind, armour, and shield-rims, and drawn swords all agleam, others dotted about the walls, flanking the door. There was a smell of old hay and old horses, but far stronger was the reek of ready violence, thick as the stink in a marsh.
And as if all that wasn’t enough to make Calder shit his well-tailored trousers, Shivers still loomed at his shoulder, adding his own chill threat to the recipe.
‘Well, if it ain’t brave Prince Calder.’ Dow looked him up and down like the tomcat at the shrub it was about to piss on. ‘Welcome back to the good fight, lad. You going to do as you’re fucking told this time around?’
Calder swept out a bow. ‘Your most obedient servant.’ He smirked as if the very words didn’t burn his tongue. ‘Golden. Ironhead.’ He gave each a respectful nod. ‘My father always said there weren’t two stouter hearts in all the North.’ His father always said there weren’t two thicker heads in all the North, but his lies were no more use than money down a well in any case. Ironhead and Golden did nothing but glower at each other. Calder felt a burning need for someone who liked him. Or at least didn’t want him dead. ‘Where’s Scale?’
‘Your brother’s out west,’ said Dow. ‘Doing some fighting.’
‘You know what that is, do you, boy?’ Tenways turned his head and spat through the gap in his brown front teeth.
‘Is it … the thing with all the swords?’ Calder took a hopeful look around the stable but no allies had crept in, and he ended up glancing at Shivers’ ruined frown, which was even worse than Dow’s smile. However often he saw that scar, it was always more hideous than he remembered. ‘How about Reachey?’
‘Your wife’s daddy’s a day or so east,’ said Dow. ‘Putting on a weapontake.’
Golden snorted. ‘I’d be surprised if there’s a boy can grip a blade isn’t pressed already.’
‘Well, he’s scraping up what there is. Reckon we’ll need every ready hand when it comes to a battle. Yours too, maybe.’
‘Oh, you’ll have to hold me back!’ Calder slapped the hilt of his sword. ‘Can’t wait to get started!’
‘You ever even drawn the fucking thing?’ sneered Tenways, stretching his neck out to spit again.
‘Just the once. I had to trim your daughter’s hairy cunt before I could get at it.’
Dow burst out laughing. Golden chuckled. Ironhead gave the faintest of grins. Tenways choked on his spit and left a string of glistening drool down his chin, but Calder didn’t much care. He was better off scoring points with those who weren’t quite a lost cause yet. Somehow he needed to win at least one of these unpromising bastards over to his side.
‘Never thought I’d say this.’ Dow sighed and wiped one eye with a finger, ‘but I’ve missed you, Calder.’
‘Likewise. I’d much rather be trading horseshit in a stable than back at Carleon kissing my wife. What’s to do?’
‘You know.’ Dow took the pommel of his sword between finger and thumb, turning it this way and that so the silver mark near the hilt glinted. ‘War. Skirmish here, raid there. We cut off some stragglers, they burn out some villages. War. Your brother’s been hitting fast, giving the Southerners something to think about. Useful man your brother, got some sting in him.’
‘Shame your father didn’t have more’n one son,’ growled Tenways.
‘Keep talking, old man,’ said Calder, ‘I can make you look a prick all day.’
Tenways bristled but Dow waved him down. ‘Enough cock-measuring. We’ve a war to fight.’
‘And how many victories, so far?’
A brief, unhappy pause. ‘No battle,’ grunted Ironhead.
‘This Kroy,’ sneered Golden back across the stable, ‘the one in charge o’ the Union.’
‘Marshal, they call him.’
‘Whatever they call him, he’s a cautious bastard.’
‘Baby-stepping coward fuck,’ growled Tenways.
Dow shrugged. ‘Naught cowardly about stepping careful. Wouldn’t be my style with his numbers, but …’ And he turned his grin on Calder. ‘Your father always used to say, “In war it’s the winning counts. The rest is for fools to sing about.” So Kroy’s going slow, hoping to wear out our patience. We Northmen ain’t known for it, after all. He’s split his army in three parts.’
‘Three big bloody parts,’ said Ironhead.