Stour glared at him. Seemed he found that a touch too philosophical when he was still licking his wounds in the shadow of disappointment.
Clover gave it another try. “Aye, the Young Lion’s done, and you had a good deal in common with him, a sympathetic ear in Angland and so on. No doubt his loss is a terrible shame, but… did you really like him all that much?”
Stour frowned as Sholla slipped around him. “Sorry, my king, just have to get to the prow…”
She nodded at Clover, and he pulled Stour’s attention back by stepping close, speaking soft, everyone’s friend. “Maybe he can’t help you take Uffrith now, but, well… he can’t stop you taking it, either.” Clover stepped closer yet, closer than men usually dared step to the Great Wolf. “Aye, we lost good men back there. But we lost good men before. In your father’s wars, and your grandfather’s wars. There’ll be more men. There’ll be more wars. You got to think of any battle you come out of alive as a victory and look ahead to what comes next.”
Stour considered him. A salt wind swept chill across the deck and stirred his hair, ruffled the fine wolf’s pelt about his shoulders. Ollensand was slipping from the grey up ahead, ghosts of tall masts in the harbour and low houses on the hillside, the beacon-fire burning brighter, joined by some firefly dots of torches held by a little welcoming party on the longest wharf.
The oars creaked and rattled, somewhere on the high air a gull gave a lonely call, and Clover swallowed as the King of the Northmen turned that wet-eyed stare on him. Always an uncomfortable moment.
Then, quick as the weather shifts in autumn, he grinned. “You’ve been loyal to me, Clover. I know I’m not always the easiest. No, no, don’t deny it.” No one had thought about denying it. “But if any man can talk me into looking on the sunny side, it’s you.” He reached out and gave Clover a slap on the shoulder. “You’ll get your reward, don’t worry about that.”
Clover matched him, grin for grin. “I know I will. And sooner’n you think.”
And Sholla slipped up from behind Stour, took the hilt of his sword and whipped it from the scabbard.
Instant later, Clover had him around the throat, butted him full in the mouth and snapped his head back. Clover snarled as he butted him again and felt Stour’s cheekbone crunch under his forehead. Stour gave a shocked little hoot as Clover butted him a third time. He’d had few sweeter feelings in his life than when he watched the King of the Northmen go sprawling on his back beside the mast.
Greenway’s jaw hung open. “What—” And Downside’s axe split his head in half, spraying blood. Seemed Rikke had been right about him dying on the water, and not just him. All over the boat, Clover’s boys stabbed the men beside them, cut throats, smashed skulls, stuck blades in backs and fronts and sides. All done too close and too quiet and too sudden for swords. Just the way Clover always said it should be done. Far faster than when Stour killed Scale and his men. Far neater.
By the time the Great Wolf shook his head, spitting blood, Clover’s boys were already rooting through the corpses of his bastards for anything worth the taking. Stour blinked, like he hadn’t quite caught up yet, and found Greenway staring back at him. Well, one side of his head was, the other it was hard to tell. Stour’s bloody lip twisted as he tried to sit up, but Clover put a boot on his chest and shoved him back down.
“Best stay there, I reckon.”
“You futhing traithor!” He spluttered red through his broken mouth, the chain Bethod once wore all tangled up around his neck.
“Traitor, did he say?” Clover raised a brow at Downside. Downside shrugged and set to wiping Greenway’s brains off his axe. “Traitor, did you say?” Clover shoved Stour down again and smiled. After so long under this little shit’s boot, felt awfully nice to have their positions swapped about.
“You got some bones, calling me traitor,” he said. “You, who murdered your own uncle. All I’ve done is what I always told you to do. Wait for your moment. Then go all the way.” He leaned down closer. “It’s just you weren’t fucking listening.”
There were raised voices up near the prow. One of Stour’s men left alive. Couple of the boys were arguing ’cause it seemed he was someone’s cousin and a good enough fellow by all accounts and letting him live would be a fine thing for his old mother.
Clover gave Downside an impatient flick of the head, and Downside stepped up and ended the argument with his axe in much the same way he’d ended Greenway. Once you’ve chosen your moment, holding back is folly. Holding back is cowardice.
Stour opened his mouth again but Sholla shut him up by brushing his cheek with the point of his own sword, and Clover leaned down and undid the buckle on his cloak, and dragged it free of him, and swept it around his own shoulders.
“Always liked this,” he said, rubbing his cheek against that fine fur.
“Suits you,” said Sholla.
The men finished up their robbing of the dead and set to the oars. A skeleton crew, maybe, but enough to bring the ship in. One grey Northern city on the grey Northern coast looks much like another, but as the oars kept dipping, they could all see it wasn’t Ollensand coming up out of the mist at all, but Uffrith. The light they’d seen wasn’t a beacon on a hill, but a bonfire in a cage up on a high pole beside the wharf.
“Quite a piece of navigating,” said Clover.
Sholla allowed herself a grin rare as the Northern sun. “Nothing to comment on.”
There were men waiting in the light of the fake beacon, just as they’d arranged. Hard-bitten men with weapons, scars and scowls in abundance. Clover knew a few faces. Named Men of Uffrith and the West Valleys, the Nail standing among ’em in that crookback slouch of his with thumbs in his sword-belt. At their front, arms folded, metal eye glinting through his long hair, stood Caul Shivers.
“You brought him, then,” he said as Clover clambered somewhat ungainly from the ship, wood of the wharf feeling unsteady under his sea legs.
“I said I would. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I gave you about a one in three. You know the Nail?”
“By reputation,” said Clover.
The Nail grinned, all teeth and menace. “It’s a good one, ain’t it?”
“It’s a peach. Must say I’m sorry about your father.”
“Not as sorry as he’s going to be.” The Nail grinned even wider as Downside hauled Stour from the boat, hands trussed tight behind him. “Well, well, well!” And he gave a flourishing bow fine as any Union courtier might have managed. “The King o’ the Northmen comes home!”
“Rikke wi’ the Long Eye sends her regards,” said Shivers.
“Fuck her!” snarled Stour. “And fuck you, too, Caul Shivers!”
Stour’s threats had lost a lot of their menace in the last few moments, though, and most of the men laughed, if they did anything.
“She was gutted she couldn’t greet you in person.” The Nail leaned forward to poke Stour in the chest with one great big finger. “Gutted.”
“But she’s arranged a greeting that’ll make it all up to you,” said Shivers.
“She’s got that cage ready for you. You remember? The one in Skarling’s Hall? The one you kept my da in?”