Orso’s mother pushed her chin even higher, as though daring them with a bigger target. “Are they throwing things at us?”
He distinctly heard a shout of, “Down with King Orso!” but had no idea where it came from. It could have been commoner or noble. He would hardly have blamed his mother if she had chosen that moment to come out against him.
He definitely heard a scream of, “Fuck the Young Lamb!” Black-clothed Practicals were shoving through the press, laying about them with sticks and fists, dragging struggling figures from the chaos. Orso saw a group of men break through the line of soldiers and go sprawling at the foot of the scaffold, punching and wrestling. Gorst loomed up, shielding Orso and his mother with his armoured body.
“Your Majesties,” he squeaked. “Time to depart.”
Orso wearily nodded. “Damn it, but I hate hangings.”
Old Ways, Proper Ways
Rikke sat with her boots off on her father’s bench as the War Chiefs came in, trimming her toenails. Isern sat on the floor to her left with her spear across her knees, Shivers stood on her right with his thumbs in his sword-belt. By the dead, she was glad they were there. No better pair in the Circle of the World to have on your flanks, and both good and ready for their part in what was coming.
First came Red Hat, then Oxel, then Hardbread. Rikke beckoned ’em forward, friendly as she could. Men used to smile at her a lot. But the old warriors had that nervous air folk tended to have around her since she lost one eye and had the runes pricked around the other. Like if they turned their back on her she might bite their arses.
“Sorry to keep you boys waiting,” she said, though few men had ever looked less like boys, there was scarcely one dark hair on the three.
“Well,” grunted Oxel as their Named Men crowded silent and suspicious into the hall behind, “join the Union or join the North. It’s a big choice to make.”
“And up till now it’s been little choices for me.” Rikke tossed her scissors down and crossed her legs. “What song to sing or how short to trim my toenails or which eye to have pricked out o’ my head.”
Hardbread winced at that. “You’ve made a choice now, though, have you?”
“I was hoping for a vision to show me the way!” And Rikke raised one arm high to point at the rafters. Then she slumped back on her bench. “Trouble with visions, though, they’re like those little goats the hillmen keep. Stubborn shits, they are. There’s just no rushing ’em.”
Oxel frowned over at Red Hat and Red Hat frowned back, and behind them their warriors copied their chiefs, as warriors are prone to do. It was an awful lot of frowns for that one room to hold.
“But then I realised!” Rikke sprang up on her bare feet on the bench, making ’em all jump. “This is the North! Who needs the Long Eye? We’ve got ways of settling questions up here.”
“Proper ways,” croaked Shivers, red stone glinting on his finger as he shifted his thumbs around the worn buckle of his sword-belt.
“Old ways,” sang Isern-i-Phail, and she spat chagga juice and wiped her lip.
“Time-tested traditions!” Rikke wagged a finger at the old men like they’d strayed from the pasture and she was there to play shepherd. “My father always used to say, you want things right, you have to put ’em right yourself. No better way to settle a difference of opinion…” And she made a ring with her finger and thumb and peered at ’em through it with the one eye that still could. “Than in the Circle!”
There was no instant enthusiasm from the three old War Chiefs. Hardbread was light on enthusiasm, instant or otherwise, and for the other two, a fight to the death is a notion that usually takes some working up to.
“The Circle?” Red Hat rested a hand on the pommel of his sword, and the Named Men filled the hall to the rafters with a nervy murmur.
“It’s a bit like a square, but with no corners,” said Rikke. “You can step inside and settle this man to man. Ideas can contend! Then rather’n a war and all our strength wasted, we can march into the future arm in arm. For whatever my say’s worth, I’ll throw it behind the winner. Hardbread? You happy to do the same?”
Hardbread looked the opposite of happy. “I’d rather find some path that don’t need any more blood spilled—”
“So’d we all. But up here in the North, most paths worth taking turn out at least a little bloody.”
No one disagreed with that. How could they? Hardbread wearily sagged. “I reckon. If neither o’ you twain back down.”
Neither of the two old warriors looked like backing down a hair. A grey hair, obviously. Red Hat puffed up his chest and shifted his fist from his sword’s pommel to its grip with a warlike rattle. “Guess we’d better pick a time and a place—”
Isern whipped back a big canvas sheet and sent straw scattering. Underneath was the Circle she’d marked out that morning, five strides across on the floor of the hall.
She showed the gap in her teeth as she grinned. “No time like now, my beauties!”
“No place like here,” croaked Shivers.
“You’re eager to get it settled, and you’re right to be eager.” Rikke turned her left eye towards the old men, who looked less eager than ever, and opened it very wide. “It’s not just me needs to know Uffrith’s future.”
Isern leaned down and flicked the pommel of Oxel’s sword with her fingernail. “You’ve both come armed, so do we need all that pother with the choosing of the weapons? Or can we get straight to the bloodshed?”
Oxel stretched up his chin and scratched at the white beard on his neck. Plain he wasn’t much enjoying this sudden rush into death’s cold embrace but could see no way to stop it, either. A War Chief’s fame is all built on fighting, after all. Backing down from a fight could be the end of him. “We can get straight to it,” he growled, and drew his sword.
Red Hat drew his at about the same moment. “Aye. Let’s settle it here and now.”
“Shields for the rest o’ you, then!” cried Isern, clapping her hands. “And into the Circle with our two grey champions!”
There was none of the usual trading of insults as Oxel’s men and Red Hat’s slid their shields onto their arms and made a wall around the Circle’s edge. All shocked into quiet at how quick this had come about.
Oxel worked his head around with a click of neck bones. Red Hat undid the golden buckle on his cloak and tossed it over his shoulder to one of his men. Both of ’em bristled like they were still as brimming with vinegar at sixty as they’d been at twenty, and both of ’em quite clearly weren’t. Maybe if they had been they wouldn’t have got so easily prodded into fighting each other. But then getting warriors to fight has always been easy. It’s stopping the bastards that’s the tougher trick.
“Well, here is a business the moon can smile upon!” called Isern. “We all know what the matter is and we all know what hangs on the result. Get to it!” She slipped from the Circle giving no one any time for second thoughts, and the shields were locked together behind her, metal rims scraping, painted faces pointing in.
With some reluctance, the two old War Chiefs began to circle, Red Hat with his sword point up, Oxel with his out to the side. They circled closer, Oxel with his teeth bared and Red Hat’s tongue working at his lower lip. They circled, closer yet, then Red Hat stabbed and Oxel parried, chopped back and Red Hat ducked away. Shield-carriers gasped, and shields scraped as the circle flexed and shifted, then the noise mounted, men behind pressing in, and calling out, and shaking their fists, then grunting and shouting and bellowing encouragement till there was a roaring in the hall might’ve waked Rikke’s father, where he lay in the deep dark earth just outside the wooden walls.