One by one they took their turn at the head of the fresh-turned earth, shuffling up to speak their piece till the whole plot was boot-mashed. Till the whole plot looked like a grave. Everyone had a story. Some kindness done. Some wisdom offered. Some little piece of courage that’d given them courage. Soft words spoke with smoking breath. Tears lost in the drizzle.
They said he’d been the best of his kind. The last straight edge. Closest friend to the Bloody-Nine, worst enemy to Black Dow, who’d fought for Bethod and fought against him, across the North and back. Red Hat shouted out a story about the fight in the High Places. Oxel barked one about the Siege of Adua. Hardbread talked of the Battle of Osrung, folk murmuring with every famous name—Curnden Craw and Whirrun of Bligh and Cairm Ironhead and Glama Golden. He started at a creaky murmur, white hair plastered to his liver-spotted pate, but by the end he was glaring lightning and bellowing thunder as he told of the high deeds done in the valleys of the past. Old men made young again in the fire of those memories, just for a moment.
Then Shivers stepped up, one hand on the grey pommel of his grey sword, and with the other he pushed the hair back from his scarred face, and spoke in that broken whisper. “Some o’ you have had the misfortune o’ knowing me a long time. I used to be…” He ran out of words a moment, stood there silent with teeth clenched. “I was everyone’s enemy, and my own most of all. A man who’d used up all his chances and didn’t deserve another. But the Dogman gave me one. In hard times, it’s easy to become hard. But here was a man who always looked for the best in folk. Didn’t always find it, but never gave up looking. Wasted no time polishing his own name. Singing his own songs. Didn’t have to. Every man and woman in the North knew his quality. Back to the mud, Dogman.” And he gave the earth a slow nod. “Feels like the best of us goes in the ground with you.”
Quiet, then. That heavy quiet, and Isern set a hand on Rikke’s shoulder. A gentle hand, for once, soft as the rain. “You want to speak? You don’t have to.”
“Aye,” said Rikke. “I do.” And she slipped through the damp-eyed crowd to the head of the grave. It was a good spot for him. In the garden he wished he’d tended better. Looking down over the city he’d fought for so many years. Looking down towards the sea. He’d have liked friends beside him, she reckoned. But their lonely graves were scattered across the North, wherever they’d died. That’s a warrior’s life. A warrior’s death.
She looked up, saw all those sad faces turned towards her, all waiting for her to say something worth hearing.
“Shit,” she croaked, shaking her head at that heap of ground. She’d helped to pile it on him. There it was, dark in the grain of her hands, black under her fingernails. Still she couldn’t believe he was under there, and wouldn’t step smiling from the crowd to give the last, best word. “Fucking shit.” She took a long, salty sniff, and rubbed the wet from the blind side of her face.
“Been a fine thing listening to you all.” She tried to smile but it came out all quivery and brittle. “So many stories. So many burdens he took a little piece of onto his own shoulders. No wonder he was crooked at the end. No wonder. Guess we’ll have to carry our own burdens now. Or maybe all share a little o’ the load between us.”
Folk held each other. Squeezed each other’s hands. She wondered how long that good fellowship would last. Not long, was her guess.
“All them battles.” Her voice had faded to a croak, she had to clear her throat to get it going again. “All those great names he stood beside. Fought against. His story was the story of the North, for sixty years and more. You’d think he was the last o’ some race of giants to hear talk of his victories but…” And she grinned, despite herself. “He was a small giant, my da. He’d rather have been growing things than killing ’em. Didn’t get much of a chance at it, as this garden’ll testify. He was always going to tend to it tomorrow. But he loved to sit here, with the sun on his face. He could spend hours here, looking to the sea. Hoping better times might roll in on the tide.”
She wished she had better words. Ones that somehow bound up all he’d been to her. All the things felt but never said. All the holes he’d leave behind. But how can you fit all that in a bit of breath?
“By the dead, I was proud to be his daughter,” she said. “Folk can talk a lot of shit at a funeral, but even his enemies thought he was the best man in the North.” She took a damp breath and blew it out hard, her lip trembling. “That’s all I got.”
Shivers put a hand on her shoulder. “Good words, Rikke.”
Bit by bit, with shuffling feet and hanging heads, folk started to drift back to their lives. Bit by bit, the garden emptied. Rikke stood looking at the ground, wishing she could see through it. Wishing she could force the Long Eye open and see her father’s face again. But her eye stayed cold as the rain, and the sea, and the cold ground.
“You really see their deaths?” Hardbread’s brow was creased with worry. “The Great Wolf and his arseholes. You really see all that…” And he waved nervously towards her tattooed face. “With the Long Eye.”
“I saw enough,” she said.
“You surely made ’em run, all right. You made ’em scamper.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Caurib had been right. The power of the Long Eye wasn’t so much in what you saw, but in what you made folk believe. Rikke had never felt powerful in her life till she made Stour and his men turn tail with just her eye and her words. “But they’ll be back,” she said. “Like wolves prowling just beyond the firelight.”
“Aye.” Hardbread scrubbed unhappily at his wet wisps of hair. “Do you see what we should do now, then?”
“Don’t take the Long Eye to see that.” Red Hat had come from the ebbing crowd to stand frowning on one side of the grave. “Stour fucking Nightfall ain’t fit to rule a shit-pit.”
“He’s a bastard to his enemies.” Oxel had turned up, too, not to be outdone, glowering across the dug-over earth from the other side. “But at least he’s a Northman. At least he’s a warrior.”
“You don’t know who his enemies’ll be from one moment to the next. Not even he does! And you want us to go lick his arse?”
“Better his than some Union fool who’s never drawn a sword, a thousand miles away across the sea.”
“Can’t say I like the taste of anyone’s arse too much,” muttered Rikke, squeezing at the bridge of her nose with finger and thumb.
“You’re a woman,” said Oxel, with a sneer.
“True,” said Rikke. “I realised that the first time I tried to piss standing up. Most disappointing day of my life.”
“My point is, you can’t lead. But there’s some who’ll listen to you, still. Out o’ respect for your father—”
“And my pretty smile? What about my pretty smile? I’ve a pretty smile, haven’t I, Isern?”
“Like the sun peeping from behind a stormcloud.” And Isern picked at that hole in her teeth with a fingernail, rooted some scrap of food out of it, held it thoughtfully to the light, then ate it.