It didn’t help that he’d struggled into his chain mail shirt, hoping to at least look like a warrior prince for the occasion. It had been a gift from his father, years ago, made from Styrian steel, lighter than most Northern mixtures but still heavy as an anvil and hot as a sheepskin. Calder had no notion how men could wear these damn things for days at a time. Run in them. Sleep in them. Fight in them. Mad business, fighting in this. Mad business, fighting. He’d never understood what men saw in it.
And few men saw more in it than his own brother, Scale.
He was squatting in a clearing with a map spread out in front of him. Pale-as-Snow was at his left elbow and White-Eye Hansul at his right, old comrades of Calder’s father from the time when he ruled the best part of the North. Men who’d fallen a long way when the Bloody-Nine threw Calder’s father from his battlements. Almost as far as Calder had fallen himself.
Him and Scale were born to different mothers, and the joke always was that Scale’s must’ve been a bull. He looked like a bull, and a particularly mean and muscular one at that. He was Calder’s opposite in almost every way – blond where Calder was dark, blunt-featured where Calder was sharp, quick to anger and slow to think. Nothing like their father. Calder was the one who’d taken after Bethod, and everyone knew it. One reason why they hated him. That and he’d spent so much of his life acting like a prick.
Scale looked up when he heard the hooves of Calder’s horse, gave a great smile as he strode over, still carrying that trace of a limp the Bloody-Nine had given him. He wore his chain mail lightly as a maiden wears a shift even so, a heavy black-forged double coat of it, plates of black steel strapped on top, all scratched and dented. ‘Always be armed,’ their father had told them, and Scale had taken it literally. He was criss-crossed with belting and bristling with weapons, two swords and a great mace at his belt, three knives in plain sight and probably others out of it. He had a bandage around his head stained brown on one side, and a new nick through his eyebrow to add to a rapidly growing collection of scars. It looked as if Calder’s frequent attempts to persuade Scale to stay out of battle had been as wasted as Scale’s frequent attempts to persuade Calder to charge into it.
Calder swung from his saddle, finding it a straining effort in his mail and trying to make it look like he was only stiff from a hard ride. ‘Scale, you thick bastard, how’ve you—’
Scale caught him in a crushing hug, lifted his feet clear of the ground and gave him a slobbery kiss on the forehead. Calder hugged him back the best he could with all the breath squeezed out of his body and a sword hilt poking him in the gut, so suddenly, pathetically happy to have someone on his side he wanted to cry.
‘Get off!’ he wheezed, hammering at Scale’s back with the heel of his hand like a wrestler submitting. ‘Off!’
‘Just good to see you back!’ And Scale spun him helplessly around like a husband with his new bride, gave him a fleeting view of Pale-as-Snow and White-Eye Hansul. Neither of them looked like hugging Calder any time soon. The eyes on him from the Named Men scattered about the clearing were no more enthusiastic. Men he recognised from way back, kneeling to his father or sitting at the long table or cheering victory in the good old days. No doubt they were wondering whether they’d have to take Calder’s orders now, and not much caring for the idea. Why would they? Scale was all those things warriors admire – loyal, strong and brave beyond the point of stupidity. Calder was none of them, and everyone knew it.
‘What happened to your head?’ he asked, once Scale had let his feet touch earth again.
‘This? Bah. Nothing.’ Scale tore the bandage off and tossed it away. It didn’t look like nothing, his yellow hair matted brown with dry blood on one side. ‘Seems you’ve a wound of your own though.’ Patting Calder’s bruised lip none too gently. ‘Some woman bite you?’
‘If only. Brodd Tenways tried to have me killed.’
‘What?’
‘Really. He sent three men after me to Caul Reachey’s camp. Luckily Deep and Shallow were looking out and … you know …’
Scale was moving fast from bafflement to fury, his two favourite emotions and never much of a gap between the two, little eyes opening wider and wider until the whites showed all the way around. ‘I’ll kill the rotten old bastard!’ He started to draw a sword, as if he was going to charge off through the woods to the ruin where Black Dow had their father’s chair and slaughter Brodd Tenways on the spot.
‘No, no, no!’ Calder grabbed his wrist with both hands, managed to stop him getting his sword from the sheath and was nearly dragged off his feet doing it.
‘Fuck him!’ Scale shrugged Calder off, punched the nearest tree trunk with one gauntleted fist and tore a chunk of bark off it. ‘Fuck the shit out of him! Let’s kill him! Let’s just kill him!’ He punched it again and brought a shower of seeds fluttering down. White-Eye Hansul looked on warily, Pale-as-Snow looked on wearily, both giving the strong impression this wasn’t the first rage they’d had to deal with.
‘We can’t run around killing important people,’ coaxed Calder, palms up.
‘He tried to kill you, didn’t he?’
‘I’m a special case. Half the North wants me dead.’ That was a lie, it was closer to three-quarters. ‘And we’ve no proof.’ Calder put his hand on Scale’s shoulder and spoke softly, the way their father used to. ‘It’s politics, brother. Remember? It’s a delicate balance.’
‘Fuck politics and shit on the balance!’ But the rage had flickered down now. Far enough that there was no danger of Scale’s eyes popping out of his head. He rammed his sword back, hilt snapping against the scabbard. ‘Can’t we just fight?’
Calder took a long breath. How could this unreasoning thug be his father’s son? And his father’s heir, besides? ‘There’ll be a time to fight, but for now we need to tread carefully. We’re short on allies, Scale. I spoke to Reachey, and he won’t move against me but he won’t move for.’
‘Creeping bloody coward!’ Scale raised his fist to punch the tree again and Calder pushed it gently down with one finger.
‘Just worried for his daughter.’ And he wasn’t the only one. ‘Then there’s Ironhead and Golden, neither too well disposed to us. If it weren’t for their feud with each other I daresay they’d have been begging Dow for the chance to kill me.’
Scale frowned. ‘You think Dow was behind it?’
‘How could he not be?’ Calder had to squeeze down his frustration and his voice with it. He’d forgotten how much talking to his brother could be like talking to a tree stump. ‘And anyway, Reachey had it from Dow’s own mouth that he wants me dead.’
Scale shook his head, worried. ‘I hadn’t heard that.’
‘He’s not likely to tell you, is he?’
‘But he had you hostage.’ Scale’s brow was wrinkled with the effort of thinking it out. ‘Why let you come back?’
‘Because he’s hoping I’ll start plotting, and then he’ll be able to bring it all out and hang me nice and fair.’
‘Don’t plot, then, you should be right enough with everyone.’
‘Don’t be an idiot.’ A couple of Carls looked up from their water cups, and he pushed his voice back down. Scale could afford to lose his temper, Calder couldn’t. ‘We need to protect ourselves. We have enemies everywhere.’
‘True, and there’s one you haven’t talked about at all. Most dangerous of the lot, far as I can tell.’ Calder froze for a moment, wondering who he might have left out of his calculations. ‘The fucking Union!’ Scale pointed through the trees towards the south with one thick finger. ‘Kroy, and the Dogman, and their forty thousand soldiers! The ones we’ve been fighting a war against! I’ve been, anyway.’