Sharp Ends

Made A Monster

Carleon, Summer 570

‘What’s peace, Father?’

Bethod blinked down at his older son. Eleven years, and Scale had scarcely seen peace in his lifetime. Moments of it, maybe. Glimpses through a haze of blood. As he struggled to answer, Bethod realised he hardly remembered what peace felt like himself any more.

How long had he been living in fear?

He squatted before Scale and thought of his own father squatting before him, twisted with sickness and old beyond his years. ‘Some men will break a thing just because they can,’ he had whispered. ‘But war must be a leader’s last resort. Fight a war, you’ve lost already.’

In spite of all his victories, all the odds beaten and the enemies put in the mud, all the ransoms claimed and the land taken, Bethod had been losing for years. He saw that now.

‘Peace,’ he said, ‘is when the feuds are all settled, and the blood debts are paid, and everyone is content with how things are. More or less content, anyway. Peace is when … when no one’s fighting any more.’

Scale thought about that, frowning. Bethod loved him, of course he did, but even he had to admit the boy wasn’t the quickest. ‘Then … who wins?’

‘Everyone,’ said Calder.

Bethod raised his brows. His younger son was as quick as his older was slow. ‘That’s right. Peace means everyone wins.’

‘But Rattleneck’s sworn there’ll be no peace ’til you’re dead,’ said Scale.

‘He has. But Rattleneck is one of those men who swears oaths quickly. Given time he may think better of it. Especially since I have his son in chains downstairs.’

‘You have him?’ snapped out Ursi from the corner of the room, stopping brushing her hair long enough to train one eye on him. ‘I thought he was Ninefingers’ prisoner?’

‘Ninefingers will give him to me.’ Bethod tossed that breezily to his wife as if it was a thing done with a snap of his fingers, rather than a trial he was having to scrape together the courage for. What kind of a Chieftain feared to ask a favour of his own champion?

‘Order him to do it.’ The man’s words sounded strange in Calder’s high child’s voice. ‘Make him do it.’

‘I cannot order him in this. Rattleneck’s son is Ninefingers’ prisoner. He was taken in battle, and Named Men have their ways.’ Not to mention that Bethod wasn’t sure Ninefingers would obey, or what to do if he refused, and the thought of putting it to the test sank him in dread. ‘There are rules.’

‘Rules are for those who follow,’ said Calder.

‘Rules must be for all, and for those who lead most of all. Without rules, every man stands alone, owning only what he can tear from the world with one hand and grip with the other. Chaos.’

Calder nodded. ‘I see.’ And Bethod knew he did. So little alike, his two sons. Scale sturdy, blond and bullish. Calder slight, dark and cunning. Each so like their mothers, Bethod sometimes wondered whether there was anything of him in them.

‘What’ll we do with peace?’ asked Scale.

‘Build.’ Bethod smiled as he thought about his plans, turned over so often he could see them like things already done. ‘We’ll send the men back to their land, back to their trades, back to their families in time for the harvest. Then we’ll set them to pay us taxes.’

‘Taxes?’

‘They’re a Southern thing,’ said Calder. ‘Money.’

‘Each man gives his Chieftain some of what he has,’ said Bethod. ‘And we’ll use that money to clear forests, and dig mines, and put walls about our towns. Then we’ll build a great road from Carleon to Uffrith.’

‘A road?’ muttered Scale, not seeing the glamour in packed earth.

‘Men can travel twice as fast on it,’ snapped Calder, starting to lose patience.

‘Fighting men?’ asked Scale, hopefully.

‘If need be,’ said Bethod. ‘But also carts and goods, livestock and messages.’ He pointed towards the window, bright in the darkness, as though they might all glimpse a better future through it. ‘That road will be the spine of the nation we’ll build. That road will knit the North together. I might have won battles, but it’s that road I’ll be remembered for. It’s that road that will change the world.’

‘How can you change the world with a road?’ asked Scale.

‘You’re an idiot,’ said Calder.

Scale hit him on the side of the head and knocked him over, thus demonstrating the limits of cleverness. Bethod heard Ursi gasp, and he hit Scale in much the same way and knocked him over, too, thus demonstrating the limits of brute force. An ugly pattern, often acted out between the four of them.

‘Up, the pair of you,’ Bethod snapped.

Calder glared darkly at his brother as he stood, one hand to his bloody mouth, while Scale glared darkly back, one hand to his. Bethod took them each by one arm and drew them close with a grip not to be resisted.

‘We are family,’ he said. ‘If we’re not always for each other, who will be? Scale, one day you’ll be Chieftain. You must control your temper. Calder, one day you’ll be your brother’s right hand, and first councillor, and most trusted adviser. You must control your tongue. Between the two of you, you have all the best of me and plenty more besides. Between the two of you, you could make our clan the greatest in the North. Alone, you’re nothing. Remember that.’

‘Yes, Father,’ muttered Calder.

‘Yes, Father,’ grunted Scale.

‘Now go, and if I hear of more fighting, let it be of how the two of you beat someone else together.’ He stood with his hands on his hips as they barged each other in the doorway then tumbled out into the corridor, the door swinging shut behind them. ‘I can scarcely keep the peace between my own sons,’ he muttered, shaking his head. ‘How will I do it between the leaders of the North?’

‘One might hope the leaders of the North will act more like grown men’ said Ursi, her dress swishing against the floor as she walked up behind him, her hands slipping gently around his ribs.

Bethod snorted as he held her arms against his heart. ‘I fear that would be a rash hope. They like great warriors in the North, and great warriors rarely make great leaders. Men without fear are men without imagination. Men who use their heads for smashing through things rather than thinking. They celebrate spiteful, prideful, wrathful men here, and pick the most childish of the crowd for leaders.’

‘They’ve found a different kind of leader in you.’

‘I’ve made them listen. And I will make Rattleneck listen. And I will make Ninefingers listen, too.’ Though Bethod wondered whether it was his wife or himself he was trying to convince. ‘He can be a reasonable man.’

‘Perhaps he used to be.’ Ursi’s breath tickled his neck as she spoke softly in his ear. ‘But Ninefingers is blood-drunk. Murder-proud. Every day he is less your friend, less to be trusted, less a man at all and more an animal. Every day he is less Logen and more the Bloody-Nine.’

Bethod winced. He knew she had the right of it. ‘Some days he’s calm enough.’

‘And the others? Last week he killed a whole pen full of sheep, did you know that?’

Bethod’s wince twisted into a grimace. ‘I heard.’

‘Because their bleating bothered him, he said. He killed them with his hands, one by one, so calmly the others didn’t even stir.’

‘I heard.’

‘And when the sheepdog barked he crushed her head, and they found him sound asleep and snoring among the corpses. He is made of death, and he brings death wherever he goes. He scares me.’

Bethod turned in her arms to look down at her, laid one hand gently on her cheek. ‘You need never be scared. Not you.’ Though the dead knew, he was scared enough himself. How long had he been living in fear?

She put her hand on his. ‘I’m not scared of him. I’m scared of the trouble he might bring you. Will bring you.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper as she looked into his eyes. ‘You know I’m right. What if you can stitch a peace together? Ninefingers is not a sword you can hang over the fireplace and tell fond tales of after supper. He is the Bloody-Nine. If you stop finding fights for him, do you think he’ll stop fighting? No. He will find his own, and with whoever’s nearest. That’s what he is. Sooner or later he will find a fight with you.’

‘But I owe him,’ he muttered. ‘Without him, we never-’

‘The Great Leveller pays all debts,’ she said.

‘There are rules.’ But his voice was weak now, so weak he could hardly meet her dark eyes.

‘Tell that to the children, by all means,’ she whispered. ‘But we know otherwise. There are only judgements – what is better, what is worse.’

‘I’ll talk to him,’ he said again, knowing how feeble it sounded even in his own ear. He broke free of her and strode to the window. ‘He’ll give up Rattleneck’s son. He will see the sense of it. He must.’ He planted his fists on the sill and hung his head. ‘By the dead, I’m sick of this. So sick of the blood.’

She came close again, kneading at his shoulder, at the back of his neck, and he heaved a sigh at her touch. ‘You never looked for blood.’

He had to laugh at that, though there was little joy in it. ‘I did. I demanded it. Not this much, I never thought it could be this much, but that’s the trouble with blood. Wounds are so easy to open, so difficult to close. And I opened them eagerly. I needed a man to fight for me. I needed a man who’d stop at nothing. I needed a monster.’

‘And you found one.’

‘No,’ he whispered, shrugging off her hand. ‘I made one.’

It was one of those days at the very start of summer when, like a clever general, the warm sun draws you out then catches you unawares with a downpour of sudden violence. The straw eaves of the buildings dripped with the latest shower, the yard of the holdfast churned to slop and pocked with glistening puddles.

‘A bad day for attacking,’ said Craw, following watchfully at Bethod’s shoulder with one hand slack on his sword’s pommel. ‘A good day for holding a good position.’

‘There are no bad days for holding good positions,’ said Bethod as he squelched across the yard, trying and failing to find firm ground to step on.

‘A good leader holds positions whenever he can, I reckon. Lets less prudent men do the attacking.’

‘So he does,’ said Bethod. ‘How good is my position, do you think?’

Craw scratched at his brown beard. ‘Couldn’t say, Chief.’

A quarter of Bethod’s army was camped outside the gates. Men sat clustered around their tents, cooking and drinking, picking scabs and dicing for trophies from yesterday’s battle, lazing in the sunshine. They took up notched weapons to clash on their battered shields as he passed and roared out praise.

‘The Chief! It’s the Chief!’

‘Bethod!’

‘One more victory!’

He wondered how long the cheers would keep flowing if they went on fighting but the victories dried up. Not long, was his guess. He shook his head at the thought. By the dead, was there no success he couldn’t look at like it was a failure?

Logen’s tent was at a distance from the others. Whether he chose to pitch it away from them, or he pitched it where he pleased and everyone else chose to keep away, it was hard to say. But it was at a distance, anyway. Nothing from the outside said it belonged to the most feared man in the North. A big, shapeless, stained thing, mildewed canvas flapping with the breeze.

The Dogman sat at a dead fire near the stirring flap, trimming flights for arrows. Sitting as faithfully as any dog at his master’s doorway. Bethod had pity in him, whatever men might say, and he felt a touch of pity then. He was bound tight to Ninefingers, surely, but nowhere near as tight as this poor fool.

‘Where’s the rest of the flotsam?’ asked Bethod.

‘Threetrees took ’em out scouting.’ said the Dogman.

‘Took them where they didn’t have to face their shame, you mean.’

The Dogman looked up for a moment, not awed in the least. ‘Maybe, Chief. We all got our shame, I reckon.’

‘Wait here,’ Bethod grunted at Craw, wishing he was staying with him as he stooped towards the tent’s flap.

‘I wouldn’t go in there right now,’ said the Dogman, starting to get up.

‘You don’t have to,’ snapped Bethod, with no intention of working up the courage to squelch all the way over here again later. He was the master, and he would act like it. He ripped back the tent’s flap, shouting, ‘Ninefingers!’

It took a moment for his eyes to get used to the fusty dimness. A moment in which he smelled the sharp stink of unwashed bodies, and heard a scuffling and a grunting and a slapping of skin.

Then he saw Ninefingers, naked on his knees on a heap of bald old furs, muscles knotted in his back, head twisted to glare over his great slab of a shoulder. There was a new scar on his cheek, glistening black in a track of twisted stitches. His eyes were starting wide and his teeth bared in an animal snarl and for a moment Bethod thought he’d come flying at him with murder in mind.

Then his fresh-scarred face broke out in a jaunty smile. ‘Well, either come in or go out, Chief, but don’t loiter, there’s a breeze on my arse.’

Bethod saw the woman then, on her knees beyond Ninefingers, the daylight harsh on her greasy hair and the sweaty side of her face.

For a thousand reasons, Bethod would have very much liked to leave. But Rattleneck was on his way. It had to be done, and done now.

‘Get out,’ said Bethod to the woman. Instead of leaping to obey, she twisted about for Ninefingers’s say.

He shrugged. ‘You heard the Chief.’

Bethod might have been Chieftain of Carleon and Uffrith both, winner of two dozen battles, acknowledged by all the greatest war leader since Skarling Hoodless. But Logen Ninefingers had gathered an aura of fear about him the past few years. An aura of death. Like the one Shama Heartless used to have, but worse, and with every duel won and every man killed, it grew worse yet.

Within reach of his hand, the Bloody-Nine was master.

The woman wriggled up and hurried past Bethod, snatching her clothes on the way and not even bothering to put them on. The dead knew the relief she felt. Bethod only had to talk to Ninefingers and his bowels felt weak. He dreaded to imagine what having to fuck him might be like. He took one last, longing glance into the daylight and let the flap drop, sealing him in the darkness with his old friend. His old enemy.

Ninefingers had rolled onto his back on the greasy furs, fully as careless as if he was alone, legs and arms wide and his half-hard cock flopped over to one side.

‘Nothing like a fuck in the afternoon, is there?’ he asked the tent’s ceiling.

‘What?’ Bethod prided himself on never being taken by surprise. These days Ninefingers’s every utterance seemed to catch him off balance.

‘A fuck.’ He propped himself up on his elbows. ‘You been fucking, Chief?’

‘I’ve been laying plans.’

Ninefingers wrinkled his nose. ‘Well, it smells like fucking.’

‘That’s you.’

‘Uh.’ Ninefingers sniffed at one armpit and raised a scarred brow in acknowledgement. ‘Well, you should fuck. Afternoon. Whenever. You look worried.’

‘I’m worried because half the North wants me dead.’

Logen grinned. ‘All the North wants me dead. Don’t see me frowning, do you? Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he looks on the sunny side o’ the case.’ Bethod ground his teeth. If he never heard that phrase again it would be too damn soon. ‘Your wife looked worried, too, when I saw her t’other day. Was it yesterday? Day before? Marriage won’t come to nothing without fucking, will it? Whole point o’ the exercise.’

Bethod hardly knew what to say. The smell of the place was chasing out his wits. ‘You’re teaching me about marriage now? You?’

‘Wisdom’s wisdom, ain’t it, no matter the source? I mean, if a man’s a fucker or a fighter then I’m more of a fighter. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s a fighter, but a fuck just soothes all those-’

‘Rattleneck’s coming,’ said Bethod.

‘Here?’

‘Yes.’

Ninefingers frowned. ‘Might be I should get dressed.’

‘That’s one idea.’

But, sadly, he didn’t. He brought his knees up to his face and, with snakelike speed, sprang onto his feet in one motion, drew himself to his full height, stretching his arms out wide and wriggling his fingers. His nine fingers and his stump, anyway.

Bethod swallowed. He swore the bastard kept getting bigger. He was no small man but Ninefingers stood half a head taller, a twisted mass of scar and muscle and woody sinew, like a machine made for killing with no thought spared by the engineers on the looks of it. The way he held himself was all pride, and hate, and contempt at the world and everyone in it. Contempt for Bethod, too, who was meant to be his Chief.

Bethod wondered again if he should do what Ursi wanted. Kill Ninefingers. He had been wondering about it ever since Heonan, when Logen climbed the cliffs and spilled the Hillmen’s blood in spite of his orders. While the rash fools cheered his audacity and made up bad songs about his skill, Bethod had been turning over how to kill the bloodthirsty fool. Who he could send to do it, and when. Knives in the night, how hard could it be? Put the mad dog down before he bit his master’s hand. Or perhaps cut off his master’s head.

And yet … and yet … they were friends, were they not? Bethod owed him, did he not? There were rules, were there not? A man should pay his dues, his father had always said.

And then there was the doubt niggling at the back of Bethod’s neck. What if something went wrong? What if the Bloody-Nine survived, and came for him?

‘So Rattleneck’s coming?’ Ninefingers strutted to a table made from an old door, his fruits slapping against his bare thighs with each step. ‘What’s that old bastard after?’

‘I asked him to come.’

Ninefingers paused with his left hand halfway towards the table. ‘You did?’ There was a wine jug there, and some cups. And there was a huge knife, too, only just this side of a sword, buried in the scarred tabletop close to Logen’s three reaching fingertips, its blade glittering cold in the chinks of daylight leaking into the tent.

Bethod realised then the place couldn’t have held more weapons had it been an armoury. A sheathed sword lay on the ground with its belt in a tangle, an unsheathed one on top of it. Nearby was an axe with a heavy head stained brown, Bethod hoped with rust but rather feared it wasn’t. There was a shield so hacked and dented and crossed with scars there was no telling what had once been painted on the face. And knives. Knives everywhere, the telltale glints of their blades and pommels among the furs, stabbed into the tent poles, buried to their crosspieces in the dirt. You can never have too many knives, Ninefingers was always saying.

Bethod wondered how many men he had killed. Wondered if anyone could put a count on it now. Named Men, and champions, and famed warriors, and Thralls, and Shanka, and peasants, and women, and children. Everything that breathed he’d stopped the breath of. For him to kill Bethod would be nothing. Every moment they stood together was a moment in which he chose not to do it. And Bethod felt again, as he did ten times a day, how weak a thing was power. How flimsy an illusion. A lie that everyone, for some unknown reason, agreed to treat as truth. And that blade in the table could, in an instant, be the ending of it, and the ending of Bethod, too, and all he had worked for. All he wanted to pass on to his sons.

Ninefingers grinned, a hungry grin, a wolf grin, as though he brushed aside the tissue of Bethod’s authority and saw into his thoughts. Then he wrapped his three fingers around the handle of the wine jug. ‘You want me to kill him?’

‘Rattleneck?’

‘Aye.’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’ Ninefingers looked a little crestfallen, then started sloshing wine into a cup. ‘Right.’

‘I want to make peace with him.’

‘Peace, you’re saying?’ Ninefingers paused, cup halfway to his mouth. ‘Peace?’ He rolled the word around in his mouth as if it was a strange new dish. As if it was a word in a foreign tongue. ‘Why?’

Bethod blinked. ‘What do you mean, why?’

‘I can take that fucker, Chief, believe me! I can take him like that.’ And the cup burst apart in his hand, spraying wine and bits of pot across the furs on the floor of the tent. Ninefingers blinked at his bleeding fist, as though he’d no idea how that happened. ‘Uh. Shit.’ He looked for something to wipe it on, then gave up and wiped it on his chest.

Bethod stepped towards him. The dead knew he did not want to. The dead knew his heart was pounding. But he stepped towards him anyway, and fixed him with his eye, and said, ‘You can’t kill the whole world, Logen.’

Ninefingers grinned as he reached for another cup. ‘Folk are always telling me who I can’t kill. But strong men, weak men, big names, little names, they all die once you cut ’em enough. Shama Heartless, you remember him? Everyone told me not to fight him.’

‘I told you not to fight him.’

‘Only ’cause you were scared I’d lose. But when I fought him, and when I looked set to win … did you ask me to stop?’

Bethod swallowed, mouth dry. He remembered the day well enough. The snow on the trees, and the smoke of breath as the crowd roared, and the clashing of steel, and both his fists clenched painfully tight as he willed Ninefingers on. Willed him on desperately, every hope hanging on him.

‘No,’ he said.

‘No. And once I spilled his guts with his own sword … did you ask me to stop?’

‘No,’ said Bethod. He remembered the steam from them, remembered the smell of them, remembered the gurgling moan Shama Heartless made as he died, the great roar of triumph that had burst from his own throat. ‘I cheered you on.’

‘Yes. You called for no peace then, if I remember right. You felt …’ Ninefingers’s eyes were fever-bright, his hands clutching at the air as he searched for the word. ‘You felt … the joy of it, didn’t you! Better’n love. Better’n fucking. Better’n anything. Don’t deny it!’

Bethod swallowed. ‘Yes.’ He could still feel the joy of it.

‘You showed me the way.’ And Ninefingers raised his forefinger and touched it gently to Bethod’s chest. So gentle a touch, but his whole body turned cold at it. ‘You. And I’ve walked the path you pointed, haven’t I? Wherever it led. No matter how far or how dark or how long the odds, I’ve walked your path. Now let me show you the way.’

‘And where will you lead us?’

Ninefingers raised his arms and tipped his head back towards the stained canvas above them, flapping gently with the breeze. ‘The whole North! The whole world!’

‘I don’t want the whole North. I want peace.’

‘What does peace mean?’

‘Anything you want it to.’

‘What if what I want is to kill Rattleneck’s son?’

By the dead, it was worse than speaking to Scale. It was like speaking to an infant. A terribly dangerous infant standing four-square in the way of everything Bethod wanted. ‘Listen to me, Logen.’ Carefully. Patiently. ‘If you kill Rattleneck’s son, there’ll be no end to the feuds. No end to the blood. Everyone in the North will be against us.’

‘What do I care to that? Let ’em come! He’s my prisoner. I took him, and I’ll say what’s done with him.’ His voice grew louder, wilder, more cracked. ‘I’ll say! I’ll decide!’ He stabbed at his chest with a finger, spit flecking from his teeth and his eyes popping. ‘Easier to stop the Whiteflow than to stop the Bloody-Nine!’

Bethod stood staring. Blood-drunk and murder-proud, just like Ursi had said. The selfishness of a baby, the savagery of a wolf, the vanity of a hero. Could this truly be the same man he once counted his closest friend? Who he used to ride beside, laughing, for hours at a time? Pointing at the landscape and saying how they’d site an army on it. How they’d make fortresses, or traps, or weapons from the ground. He hardly recognised him any more.

For a moment, he wanted to ask, What happened to you?

But Bethod knew what had happened. He’d been there, hadn’t he? He’d pointed the way, just like Ninefingers said. He’d been a willing companion on the road. He’d swept up the rewards and smiled while he did it. He’d made a monster, and he had to make things right. Had to try, at least. For everyone’s sake. For Logen’s. For his own.

He lowered his voice and spoke softly, calmly. He did not attack, but he did not retreat. He was a rock.

‘He’s your prisoner. Of course he is. You’ll decide. Of course you will. But I’m asking you, Logen. As your Chief. As your friend. Let me use him. Do you know what my father used to say?’

Logen blinked, frowning like a spiteful child now. And like a spiteful child, his curiosity won out. ‘What did he say?’

And Bethod tried to pour all his conviction into the words. The way his father had, each one heavy as a mountain. ‘Before you make a man into mud, make sure he’s no use to you alive. Some men will smash a thing just because they can. They’re too stupid to see that nothing shows more power than mercy.’

Ninefingers frowned. ‘You saying I’m stupid?’

Bethod looked into the black pits of his eyes, the faintest reflection of his own face at the corners, and said, ‘Prove you’re not.’

They stared at each other then, for what felt like an age, close enough that Bethod could feel Ninefingers’s breath on his face. He did not know what would happen. Did not know whether Ninefingers would agree. Did not know whether he would kill him where he stood. Did not know anything.

Then, like a leaf of steel bent and suddenly released, Logen’s mouth snapped into a grin. ‘You’re right. Course you’re right. I’m just funning.’ And he slapped Bethod on the arm with the back of his hand.

Bethod wasn’t sure he’d ever had less fun than in the last few moments.

‘Peace is what we need now.’ Logen capered to the table, all good humour, and sloshed out more wine, spilling some down his leg and barely noticing. ‘I mean, I’ve no use for the bastard’s corpse, have I? What good is he dead? Just meat. Just mud. Give him back to Rattleneck. Send him back to Daddy. Best all round. Let’s get done with this and go home. Breed some fucking pigs or some shit. He’s yours.’

‘Thank the dead,’ muttered Bethod, hardly able to speak for his hammering heart. ‘You’ve made the right choice. Trust me.’ He took a long breath, then walked on wobbly legs to the tent-flap. But he stopped before he got there and turned back.

A man should pay his dues, his father always told him.

‘Thanks, Logen,’ he said. ‘Truly. I couldn’t have got here without you. That much I know.’

Logen laughed. ‘That’s what friends are for, ain’t it?’ And he smiled that easy smile he used to have – the smile of a man who’d never entertained a dark purpose – and the fresh cut on his cheek twisted, and the stitches wept a streak of blood. ‘Now where’d that girl get to?’

It was bright outside, and Bethod closed his eyes and took a steadying breath, wiped his sweating forehead on the back of his hand.

He could do it. He could taste it.

Freedom.

Peace.

The scythes in the fields, the men building instead of breaking, the forest cleared for his great road, and a nation rising from the dust and ashes. A nation that would make all the sacrifices worthwhile …

And all he had to do was make a man who hated him beyond all else see things his way. He took another breath and puffed out his cheeks.

‘He giving up Rattleneck’s son?’ asked Craw, taking a pause from nibbling at his thumbnail to spit out the bitings.

‘He is.’

The Dogman closed his eyes and gave his own sigh of relief. ‘Thank the dead. I tried to tell him. Tried to, but …’

‘He’s not an easy man to talk to, these days.’

‘No, he isn’t.’

‘Just keep him here until Rattleneck’s gone,’ said Bethod. ‘The last thing I need is the Bloody-Nine wandering into my negotiations with his wet cock hanging out. And by the dead, make sure he does nothing stupid!’

‘He’s not stupid.’

Bethod looked back to the shadowy mouth of the tent, Logen’s happy humming floating from it. ‘Then make sure he does nothing mad.’

‘You can stop right there,’ said Craw, putting his shoulder in front of Bethod and drawing a length of steel as a warning.

‘Of course.’ The stranger didn’t look much of a threat, even to Bethod, who was well used to seeing threats everywhere. He was an unassuming little fellow in travel-stained clothes, leaning on a staff. ‘I only want a moment of your time, Lord Bethod.’

‘I’m no lord,’ said Bethod.

The man just smiled. There was something odd about him. A knowing glint in his eyes. Different-coloured eyes, Bethod noticed. ‘Treat every man like an emperor, you’ll offend no one.’

‘Walk with me, then.’ Bethod set off through the tents and the mud towards the holdfast. ‘And I can spare you a moment.’

‘Sulfur is my name.’ And the man bowed humbly, even while hurrying after. A touch of fancy Southern manners, which Bethod quite liked to see. ‘I am an emissary.’

Bethod snorted. Emissaries rarely brought good news. New challenges, new insults, new threats, new feuds, but rarely good news. ‘From what clan?’

‘From no clan, my Lord. I come from Bayaz, the First of the Magi.’

‘Huh,’ grunted Craw, unhappily, sword still halfway drawn.

And Bethod realised what most bothered him about this man. He carried no weapon. As strange as to be travelling without a head in these bloody times.

‘What does a wizard want with me?’ asked Bethod, frowning. He did not care for magic in the least. He liked what could be touched, and predicted, and relied upon.

‘It is not what he wants that he wishes to discuss, but what you want. My master is a most wise and powerful man. The wisest and most powerful who yet lives in these latter days, perhaps. Doubtless he can help you, with your …’ Sulfur waved one long-fingered hand about as he sought the word. ‘Difficulties.’

‘I appreciate all offers of help, of course.’ They squelched between the guards and back through the gate of the holdfast. ‘But my difficulties end today.’

‘My master will be overjoyed to learn it. But, if I may, the trouble with difficulties solved is that, so often, new difficulties present themselves soon after.’

Bethod snorted at that, too, as he took up a place on the steps, frowning towards the gate, Craw at his shoulder. ‘That much is true enough.’

Sulfur continued to talk in his ear, voice soft and subtle. ‘Should your difficulties ever weigh too heavy to bear alone, my master’s door is always open. You may pay him a visit whenever you wish, at the Great Northern Library.’

‘Thank your master for me, but tell him I have no need of-’ Bethod turned, but the man was gone.

‘Rattleneck’s on his way, Chief.’ Pale-as-Snow was hurrying across the yard, cloak spattered with mud from hard riding. ‘You’ve got his son, aye?’

‘I do.’

‘Ninefingers agreed to give him up?’

‘He did.’

Pale-as-Snow raised his white brows. ‘Well done.’

‘Why wouldn’t he? I’m his Chief.’

‘Of course. And mine. But it’s getting how I don’t know what that mad bastard’ll do one day to the next. Sometimes I look at him and …’ He shivered. ‘I think he might kill me out of pure meanness.’

‘Hard times call for hard men,’ said Craw.

‘That they do, Craw,’ said Pale-as-Snow, ‘and no doubt these times qualify. The dead know I’ve faced some hard men. Fought beside ’em, fought against ’em. Big names. Dangerous bastards.’ He leaned forward, white hair stirred in the breeze, and spat. ‘I never met one scared me like the Bloody-Nine, though. Have you?’

Craw swallowed, and said nothing.

‘Do you trust him?’

‘With my life,’ said Bethod. ‘We all have, haven’t we? More than once. And each time he’s come through.’

‘Aye, and I guess he came through again taking Rattleneck’s son.’ Pale-as-Snow gave a grin. ‘Peace, eh, Chief?’

‘Peace,’ said Bethod, rolling the word around his mouth and savouring the taste of it.

‘Peace,’ muttered Craw. ‘Think I’ll go back to carpentry.’

‘Peace,’ said Pale-as-Snow, shaking his head like he could hardly believe such a thing might happen. ‘Shall I tell Littlebone and Whitesides to stand down, then?’

‘Tell them to stand up,’ said Bethod. He thought he could hear the sound of hooves outside the gates. ‘Get their men ready to fight. All their men.’

‘But-’

‘The wise leader hopes he won’t need his sword. But he keeps it sharp even so.’

Pale-as-Snow smiled. ‘So he does, Chief. Ain’t no point in a blunt one.’

Riders came thundering through the gate. Battle-worn men on battle-ready horses. Men with well-used armour and weapons. Men who wore their frowns like swords. Rattleneck was at the front, balding and running to fat but a big man still, with gold links in his chain-mail shirt and gold rings in his hair and gold at the hilt of his heavy sword.

He spattered mud across the yard and everyone in it as he pulled his horse up savagely and glowered down at Bethod, teeth bared.

Bethod only smiled. He held the upper hand after all. He could afford to. ‘Well met, Rattleneck-’

‘I don’t think so,’ he snapped. ‘Shitly met, I’d say. Shitly fucking met! Curnden bloody Craw, is that you?’

‘Aye,’ said Craw, mildly, hands folded over his sword-belt.

Rattleneck shook his head. ‘Never expected a good man like you to stand for the likes of this.’

Craw only shrugged. ‘There’s always good men on both sides of a good fight.’ Bethod was starting to like him more and more. A reassuring presence. A straight edge in a crooked time. If there’d ever been an opposite of the Bloody-Nine, there he stood.

‘I don’t see too many good men here,’ snapped Rattleneck.

Bethod had told his wife they liked spiteful, prideful, wrathful men in the North, and picked the most childish of the crowd for leaders, and here was the best example one could have asked for, or perhaps the worst, booming away with nostrils flaring wider than his blown horse’s.

Bethod amused himself with the thought but filled his tone to the brim with deep respect. ‘You honour my holdfast with your presence, Rattleneck.’

‘Your holdfast?’ he frothed. ‘Last winter it was Hallum Brownstaff’s!’

‘Yes. But Hallum was rash and he lost it to me, along with his life. I’m glad you came to it, anyway.’

‘Only for my son. Where’s my son?’

‘He’s here.’

The old man worked his mouth. ‘I heard he fought the Bloody-Nine.’

‘And lost.’ Bethod saw the flicker of fear across Rattleneck’s lined face. ‘The folly of youth, to think you’ll win where a hundred better men have gone in the mud.’ He let that hang for a moment. ‘But Ninefingers only knocked him on the head and that’s your family’s least vulnerable spot, eh? He hardly got worse than a scratch. We aren’t the blood-mad bastards you may think.’ Not all of them, anyway. ‘He’s safe. He’s well treated. A perfect guest. He’s down below us now, in my cellar.’ And because it would not do to give him things all his own way, Bethod added, ‘In chains.’

‘I want him back,’ said Rattleneck, and his voice was rough, and his cheek trembled.

‘So would I, in your position. I have sons myself. Get down from your horse, and let’s talk about it.’

They stared at each other across the table. Rattleneck and his Named Men on one side, glaring as if they were about to start a battle rather than make a peace. Bethod on the other, with Pale-as-Snow and Curnden Craw beside him.

‘Will you have wine?’ asked Bethod, gesturing to the jug.

‘Fuck your wine!’ shouted Rattleneck, slapping the cup away so it skittered down the table and shattered against the wall. ‘And fuck your maps, and fuck your talk! I want my son!’

Bethod took a long breath and sighed. How much time did he waste sighing? ‘You can have him.’

As he had hoped, that caught Rattleneck and his men well and truly off guard. They blinked at each other, frowned and grumbled, cast him dark glances, trying to work out the ruse.

‘Eh?’ was the best Rattleneck could manage.

‘What use is he to me? Take him, with my blessing.’

‘And what do you want in return?’

‘Nothing.’ Bethod sat forward, staring into Rattleneck’s grizzled face. ‘I want peace, Rattleneck. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.’ That was a lie, he knew, he’d sought more battles than any man alive, but a good lie’s better than a bad truth, his mother always used to tell him.

‘Peace?’ snorted Blacktoe, one of Rattleneck’s Named Men and a fierce one at that. ‘Did you give peace to them five villages you burned up the valley?’

Bethod met his bright eye, calm and even. He was a rock. ‘We’ve had a war, and in a war folk do things they regret. Folk on both sides. I want no more regrets. So yes, Blacktoe, I want peace, whatever you believe. That’s all I want.’

‘Peace,’ murmured Rattleneck. Bethod was watching his scarred face, and caught it. That twitch of need. That softening of his mouth. That misting of his eye. He recognised it from his own face and knew Rattleneck wanted peace, too. After the blood that had been spilled these last few years, what sane man wouldn’t?

Bethod clasped his hands on the table. ‘Peace now, and the Thralls can go back to their farms, the Carls to their halls. Peace now, and their wives and mothers and children need not struggle with the harvest alone. Peace now, and let us build something.’ And Bethod thumped the table. ‘I’ve seen enough waste, how about you?’

‘I never wanted this,’ snapped Rattleneck.

‘Believe it or not, nor did I. So let us end the fighting. Here. Now. We have the power.’

‘You listening to this?’ Blacktoe asked his Chief, voice squealing up high with disbelief. ‘Old Man Yawl won’t have no peace, not ever, and nor will I!’

‘Shut your mouth!’ snarled Rattleneck, glaring Blacktoe into a sullen silence then glancing back to Bethod, combing thoughtfully at his beard. Most of his other men had softened up, too. Thinking it over. Thinking what peace might mean. ‘Blacktoe’s got a point, though,’ said Rattleneck. ‘Old Man Yawl won’t have it, and there’s Black Dow to think on, too, and plenty of others on my side with scores to settle. They might not take to peace.’

‘Most will. For the others, it’s our job to make them take to it.’

‘They won’t let go their hate of you,’ said Blacktoe.

Bethod shrugged. ‘That they can keep. As long as they hate me in peace.’ He leaned forward and put the iron into his voice. ‘But if they fight me, I’ll crush them. Like I did Threetrees, and Beyr, and all the rest.’

‘What about the Bloody-Nine?’ asked Rattleneck. ‘You’ll be making a farmer of that animal, will you?’

Bethod gave away no hint of his doubts in that direction. ‘Maybe I will. My man. My business.’

‘He’ll just do what you tell him, will he?’ sneered Blacktoe.

‘This is bigger than one man,’ said Bethod, holding Rattleneck’s eye. ‘This is bigger than you, or me, or your son, or the Bloody-Nine. This is something we owe our people. Talk to the other clans. Call off your dogs. Tell them the land I’ve taken in battle belongs to me and my sons and their sons. What you still hold is yours. Yours and your sons’. I don’t want it.’ He stood and held out his hand, making sure it was neither palm up nor palm down, but perfectly level. Perfectly fair. A hand that took no liberties and gave no favours. A hand that could be trusted. ‘Take my hand, Rattleneck. Let’s end this.’

Rattleneck’s shoulders slumped. He looked a tired man as he slowly rose. An old man. A man with no fight left in him.

‘All I want is my son,’ he croaked, and he reached out and took Bethod’s hand, and by the dead his grip felt fine. ‘Give me my son, you can have a thousand years of peace, far as I care.’

Bethod walked with a spring in his step and an unfamiliar joy in his heart. As though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and why not? How many enemies made, how much blood spilled, how many times had he beaten impossible odds, just to survive? How long had he been living in fear?

Peace. They had told him he would never have peace.

But it was as his father had always said. Swords are well enough, but the only true victories are won with words. Now he would set to building. Building something to be proud of. Something his father would have been proud of. Something his sons-

And then he saw the Dogman, lurking at the head of the steps with the strangest guilty look on his pointed face, and Bethod felt a horror flood up in him, cold as ice, and freeze all his dreams dead.

‘What are you doing here?’ he managed to whisper.

The Dogman only shook his head, tangle of long hair swaying across his face.

‘Is Ninefingers down there?’

The Dogman’s eyes were wide and wet, and his mouth opened, but he said nothing.

‘I told you not to let him do anything stupid,’ Bethod forced through his gritted teeth.

‘You didn’t tell me how.’

‘You want me to come down there with you?’ But Craw looked far from keen, and Bethod hardly blamed him.

‘Best I go alone,’ he whispered.

Reluctantly as a man digging his own grave, Bethod edged sideways down the steps, one at a time into the buried dark. The tunnel stretched away, torchlight shining on the damp rock at the far end, shadows shifting across the moss-streaked wall as something moved.

He wanted only to run, but he forced himself towards it, step by reluctant step, breath by wheezing breath. He started to hear strange noises over the thudding of his heart. A squelching and a crunching. A humming and a whistling. Growling and grunting and occasionally full-sung phrases, and badly sung at that.

The breath crawled in Bethod’s throat as he forced himself around the corner, and looked through the wide-open door and into the cell, and he went cold from the tips of his toes to the roots of his hair. Cold as the dead.

Ninefingers stood, naked still, lips pursed as he tunelessly whistled, twisted muscles knotting and flexing as he worked, eyes shining with happiness, skin dashed and spattered black from head to toe.

There was something hanging all around the cell, glistening rope in swags and festoons like decorations for some mad festival. Guts, Bethod realised. Guts, unwound and nailed up.

‘By the dead,’ he whispered, putting one hand across his mouth at the stink.

‘That’s got it!’ And Ninefingers buried the big knife in the table and held the head dangling by one ear, blood still trickling from the hacked-off neck and spattering the floor. The head of Rattleneck’s son. He grabbed the slack jaw with his other hand and moved it clumsily up and down while he spoke through his clenched teeth in a piping mockery of a voice.

‘I want to go back to my daddy.’ And Ninefingers laughed. ‘Take me back to Daddy.’ And he chuckled. ‘I’m scared.’ And he sighed, and tossed the head away, and frowned at it as it rolled into the corner.

‘Thought that’d be funnier.’ And he looked around for something to wipe his hands on, blood-slick to the elbows, but couldn’t find anything. ‘You reckon Rattleneck’ll still want him?’

‘What have you done?’ whispered Bethod, staring at the thing on the table that hardly looked like it had ever been a man.

And Logen smiled that easy smile he used to have – the smile of a man who’d never entertained a dark purpose – and shrugged.

‘Changed my mind.’