“Didn’t look that way.”
“Aye, well.” Clover took a long breath through his nose. “You’ve got to blow with the wind. Let go of the past. Dwelling on your mistakes does no one any good.”
“You really think that?”
Clover opened his mouth to speak, then shrugged. “It’s the sort of shit I always say. Keep talking and I’ll more than likely crack out the one about choosing your moment.”
“Habit, eh?”
“I’m like a wife who’s served the same stew every night for years, and hates it more each time, but can’t cook aught else.”
Downside looked up from checking his axe to grunt, “Who wants to marry that bitch?”
Clover puffed out his cheeks again. “Who indeed?”
That was when Sholla came bounding up the gully, springing from rock to rock, making no effort to stay quiet this time. She flung herself into the bushes and slid to a stop in the undergrowth beside Clover, breathing hard and her face shining with sweat but otherwise not looking much bothered by a deadly chase through the woods.
“They coming?” asked Flick, voice shrill with fear.
“Aye.”
“All of ’em?” asked Downside, voice growly with excitement.
“Pretty much.”
“You sure?” asked Clover.
She glanced at him through her hair, which had a couple of bits of twig stuck in it. “I am irresistible.”
“No doubt,” he said, with the ghost of a grin. It was the sort of thing Wonderful might’ve said.
Then Clover heard ’em, and the grin faded fast. A howling first, like a pack of wolves far off, making the hairs on his neck prickle. Then a clattering and clanking, like armoured men coming on the rush, making his mouth turn dry. Then a mad snuffling and gibbering and hooting somewhere between a crowd of hungry hogs and a gaggle of angry geese, setting his palms to itch.
“Ready!” he hissed, men shifting in the undergrowth all around him, gripping their weapons tight. “And as Rudd Threetrees used to say, let’s us get them killed, not the other way around!” He gave Sholla a nudge with the rim of his shield. “To the back, now.”
“I can fight,” she whispered. He saw she’d pulled out a hatchet and a wicked-looking knife with a long, thin blade. “I can fight better than your champion puker here.”
Flick looked a little hurt, but he looked a little green, too.
“I’ve got plenty o’ folk can fight,” said Clover, “but just the one who can sneak up on a squirrel. Get to the back.”
He saw a flicker of movement in the trees, then another, then they burst from the branches and into the open, swarming up the gulley, funnelled between the steep rocks and straight towards Clover. Exactly the way he’d planned. Though the plan didn’t seem such a clever one right then.
A vile mass they were, whooping and warbling, skittering and scuttling, limping on legs of different lengths, all teeth and claws and mad fury. All twisted and misshapen, mockeries of men, squashed from clay by children with no knack for sculpting.
“Fuck,” whimpered Flick.
Clover caught his shoulder and gripped it hard. “Steady.” At a moment like that, everyone’s thinking about running, at least a bit, and it only takes one doing it to convince ’em all it’s the best idea. Before you know it, you’re being hunted through the woods instead of celebrating a victory. And Clover’s knees were getting far too stiff for doing the hunting, let alone for being the prey.
“Steady,” he hissed again as the Shanka scrambled closer, sun glinting on the jagged edges of their crude weapons and the plates and rivets they’d bolted into their lumpen bodies.
“Steady,” he mouthed, watching, waiting, feeling out the moment. He could see their faces now, if you could call ’em faces. One at the front wore a bloodstained woman’s bonnet and another waved a man’s rusted sword and a third had a horse’s skull over its own face and a fourth a helmet made of spoons bent in a fire or maybe they were nailed into its skull, the rough flesh swollen around the strips of metal.
Grab the moment, ’fore it slips through your fingers.
“Spears!” roared Clover, and men popped from the undergrowth, long spears all pointed down the gully so there was nowhere for the flatheads to run to. They checked and clawed and skittered, surprised by that thicket of bright blades. One couldn’t stop and went tumbling onto the spears, took a point right through the throat and hung there, spitting dark blood and trying to turn around and looking somewhat surprised that it couldn’t.
Clover almost felt sorry for it. But feeling sorry’s always a waste of time, and specially in a battle.
“Arrows!” he roared, and men leaned out over the rocks at the sides of the gully. Bows sang and shafts fluttered down among the Shanka, bounced, rattled, stuck into flesh. He saw one flathead flailing, trying to reach with one twisted arm to where an arrow was sticking from its neck. The archers drew and strung and shot, easy as shooting lambs in a slaughter-pen. A spear went flying up the other way but bounced from a rock, harmless.
The flatheads were shook up, now. Seems Shanka and men don’t behave all that differently when they’re bottled in a gully with shafts showering down on ’em. One tried to climb the rocks and caught three arrows, dropped off on top of another. A third charged at the spears and got stuck through the guts, ripped open all up its side and a metal plate torn from its shoulder, bloody bolts showing underneath.
Clover saw one flathead dragging another that had an arrow in its chest, trying to get it to the back. Almost like something a person might do. A better person than he was, anyway. Made him wonder if flatheads had feelings like people, as well as blood and screams much the same. Then an arrow stuck into the head of the one doing the dragging and it fell with the other one on top and that was that for the demonstration of human feelings. On either side.
Clover got the sense they were ready to break.
“Axes!” he bellowed, and the spearmen split apart, pretty neat. Not too far from what they’d practised, which was quite the wonder under the circumstances. The best fighters Stour had given him came pouring through the gap, mail and shields and good axes smashing into the flatheads from uphill with a sound like hail on a tin roof.
Downside was right at the front, of course. He was a bad bastard. Mad bastard. Fought with that total lack of concern for his own safety that men usually grow out of fast or die of even faster. Hell of a fighter, but no one wanted him ’cause he’d a habit of getting carried away and not really caring who he smashed on the backswing. Or even the frontswing.
Still, when you’re sent to fight monsters, it’s a good idea to have a monster or two of your own. That, and the way he was never happier’n when he was charging at the Great Leveller reminded Clover of himself twenty years past, when they still called him Jonas Steepfield and misfortunes hadn’t taught him to tread lightly. He was just congratulating himself on staying well clear of the action when a spearman gave a screech, dropped clutching at his shoulder, and a giant flathead came roaring out of the pack, a great studded club in its fists.
Clover never saw a Shanka so big nor so covered in iron. They liked to rivet any metal they could find into their skin, but this one was covered all over with hammered plates. A mist sprayed from its mouth as it bellowed, and it sent a man reeling with its club. Others scrambled back, and Clover was not ashamed to say he was with them, jaw well lowered and shield well raised.