The great Shanka took a step forward, lifting its club, then squawked and dropped wobbling on one knee. Sholla had slipped up behind, now set her knife between two of the plates on its head and smashed the pommel with the back of her hatchet calm as hammering a nail. Made this hollow bonk and drove the knife into the Shanka’s skull to the grip, popped one of its eyes right out of its metal-cased head.
“Fuck,” said Clover as it crashed down at his feet with a sound like a chest full of cooking pots.
“Told you I could fight,” said Sholla.
Looked like that was the end of it. The last few flatheads were running. Clover saw one cut down in a shower of blood, another fall with an arrow in its back, a couple bounding away down the gully even quicker than they came.
“Let ’em go!” Clover roared up at the archers. “They can take the message back. They stay north of the mountains, we’ll have no quarrel. They come south, the Great Leveller’s waiting.”
Downside watched ’em run, eyes wide and wild, spit in his beard and blood streaking his face. No one wanted to tell him to stop and honestly Clover didn’t much, either. But that’s the thing about being chief. You can’t just throw your hands up at everything and say it’s someone else’s problem.
So Clover stepped towards him, one palm raised, the other just tickling the grip of the knife in the back of his belt. There’s no bad time to have one hand on a knife, after all.
“Easy, now,” like he was trying to calm a mean-tempered dog. “Calm.”
Downside stared at him, quite mildly, if anything. “I am calm, Chief,” he said, and wiped blood out of his eyes. “Bleeding, though.”
“Well, your own face is a poor choice of weapon.” Clover let go his knife and surveyed the axe-hacked, spear-stuck, arrow-pricked corpses clogging the gully. Fight won, and he hadn’t even needed to swing in anger.
“By the dead,” muttered Flick. There was a flathead spitted on the end of his spear, still twitching.
“You got one,” said Downside, putting a boot on its neck and hacking its skull open.
“By the dead,” muttered Flick again, then he dropped his spear and was sick.
“Some things don’t change,” said Sholla, busy trying to prise her dagger out o’ the big Shanka’s skull.
“Worked out just the way you said, Chief.” Downside rolled a dead flathead over with his boot and left it goggling at the sky.
“You should never have doubted me,” said Clover. “The first weapon you bring to any fight ain’t a spear or an arrow or an axe.”
Flick blinked at him. “Sword?”
“Surprise,” said Clover. “Surprise makes brave men cowards, strong men weak, wise men fools.”
“Ugly fuckers, ain’t they?” said Sholla, tugging, tugging, then nearly falling over backwards as her dagger suddenly came free.
“I find myself on shaky ground when it comes to criticising others’ looks. Weren’t you a butcher’s boy once, Downside?”
“I was.”
“Reckon you can take the lead on carving these bastards, then.”
“What d’you want from ’em, sausages?”
Some of the others laughed at that, ready to laugh at anything now the fight was done and they likely had a fat gild coming.
“Trouble with sausages is you can’t tell what’s in ’em,” said Clover. “I want no one to be in any doubt. Make us a display like they did with those folk at the village. We might not speak the same tongue as Shanka, but heads in trees gets the point across in every language. Toss a few in that sack for Stour while you’re at it.”
“You want to impress a girl, take a bunch o’ flowers.” Flick gave a sad sigh. “You want to impress a King o’ the Northmen, bring a sack o’ heads.”
“’Tis a sorry observation,” said Clover, “but only the truer for that.”
“Don’t think much o’ flowers myself,” said Sholla.
“No?”
“Never saw the point of ’em.”
“They’ve got no point. That’s the point.”
She tipped her head to the side, thinking that one through.
Downside was frowning at the Shanka corpses, weighing his axe and wondering where to start. “Never thought o’ myself as a man who fills sacks with heads.”
“No one sets off in that direction,” said Clover, puffing out his cheeks one more time. “But before you know it, there you bloody are.”
Visions
“She’s coming back.”
“Thank the dead,” Rikke heard her father say in the fizzing blackness, and she groaned as she pushed the spit-wet dowel out of her mouth. “But that’s four times this week.”
“Fits are getting worse,” croaked Rikke. Her teeth ached. Her head was splitting. She prised one eye open, then the other, saw Isern and her father looking down at her. “Least I didn’t shit this time.”
“To shit you have to eat,” said Isern, hard-faced as ever. “What did you see?”
“I saw a river full of corpses.” Bobbing and turning, face up and face down. “I saw two old men fight a duel in the Circle, and two young women hold hands under a golden dome.” Applause echoing in the gilded spaces. “I saw a flag with an eye upon it, standing behind a high chair.” And someone sitting in the chair… who had it been? “I saw an old woman…” Rikke winced and pressed her hand against her left eye, burning hot, and shuddered at the memory, still faint on the inside of her lids. “And her face was stitched together with golden wire. She spoke to me…”
Isern sagged back on her haunches. “I know this woman.”
“You sure?” asked Rikke’s father.
“’Tis a distinctive look, d’you not think? She is a witch.” Isern took up the dangling necklace of runes and fingerbones she wore, tattooed knuckles whitening as she squeezed it tight. “She is a woman much loved by the moon, or perhaps much hated.” Rikke never saw Isern-i-Phail look anywhere near scared before, and it made her feel scared. Even more scared than usual. “She is a sorceress who returned from the land of the dead.”
“None escape the Great Leveller,” muttered Rikke’s father.
“None escape. But they say some few…” Isern’s voice faded to a scratchy whisper. “Are sent back.” She leaned close, hard hands gripping Rikke’s shoulders. “What did she tell you?”
“That I had to choose,” whispered Rikke, feeling cold all over.
“Choose what?”
“I don’t know.”
Isern bared her teeth, tongue stuck in the hole where one was missing. “Then we must pick a path up into the High Places. There is a forbidden cave there, beside a forbidden lake. That’s where she lives. If you can use the word about a dead woman.”
Rikke’s father stared. “Do we really want help from a corpse stitched together with golden wire?”
“Help with strange problems comes from strange people.”
“I guess.” Rikke’s father helped her up, the horribly familiar pain pulsing away behind her eyes. “You should eat something.”