I’m not sure how much violence and 8 page

‘That it, then?’ asked Yolk, eyes wide.

‘That’s it.’ Tunny was strangely light-headed as he undid the ties and slid the canvas cover from the standard. He felt that old, familiar tightness in his throat as he gently unfurled the precious square of red material. Not fear. Not fear at all. That other, much more dangerous thing. The one Tunny had tried over and over to smother, but always sprouted up again as powerful as ever when he wanted it least.

‘Oh, here we go,’ he whispered. The golden sun of the Union slipped out of hiding as the cloth unrolled. The number one embroidered on it. The standard of Corporal Tunny’s regiment, which he’d served with since a boy. Served with in the desert and the snow. The names of a score of old battles stitched in gold thread, glittering in the shadows. The names of battles fought and won by better men than him.

‘Oh, here we bloody go.’ His nose hurt. He looked up at the branches, at the black leaves and the bright cracks of sky between them, at the glittering beads of water at their edges. His eyelids fluttered, blinking back tears. He stepped forward to the very edge of the trees, trying to swallow the dull pain behind his breastbone as men gathered around him in a long line. His limbs were tingling. Yolk and Worth behind him, the last of his little flock of recruits, both pale as they faced towards the water, and the wall beyond it. As they faced—

‘Charge!’ roared Forest, and Tunny was away. He burst from the trees and down the long slope, threading between old tree stumps, bounding from one to another. He heard men shouting behind him, men running, but he was too busy holding the standard high in both hands, the wind taking the cloth and dragging it out straight above his head, tugging hard at his hands, his arms, his shoulders.

He splashed out into the stream, floundered through the slow water to the middle, no more than thigh deep. He turned, waving the standard back and forth, its golden sun flashing. ‘On, you bastards!’ he roared at the crowd of running men behind him. ‘On, the First! Forward! Forward!’ Something whipped past in the air, just seen out of the corner of his eye.

‘I’m hit!’ shrieked Worth, staggering in the stream, helmet twisted across his stricken face, clutching at his breastplate.

‘By birdshit, idiot!’ Tunny took the standard in one hand and wedged the other under Worth’s armpit, dragged him along a few steps until he had his balance back then plunged on himself, lifting his knees up high, spraying water with every step.

He hauled himself up the mossy bank, free hand clutching at roots, wet boots wrestling at the loose earth, finally clambering onto the overhanging turf. He snatched a look back, all he could hear his own whooping breath echoing in his helmet. The whole regiment, or the few hundred who remained, at any rate, were flooding down the slope and across the stream after him, kicking up sparkling drops.

He shoved the snapping standard high into the air, gave a meaningless roar as he drew his sword and ran on, face locked into a snarling mask, thumping towards the wall, spear-tips showing above it. Two more great strides and he sprang up onto the drystone, screaming like a madman, swinging his sword wildly one way and the other to clatter against the spears and knock them toppling …

There was no one there.

Just old pole-arms leaning loose against the wall, and damp barley shifting in the wind, and the calm, wooded fells rising faint at the north side of the valley very much like they did at the south side.

No one to fight.

No doubt there had been fighting, and plenty of it too. Over to the right the crops were flattened, the ground before the wall trampled to a mass of mud, littered with the bodies of men and horses, the ugly rubbish of victory and defeat.

But the fighting was over now.

Tunny narrowed his eyes. A few hundred strides away, off to the north and east, figures were jogging across the fields, chinks of sunlight through the heavy clouds glinting on armour. The Northmen, presumably. And since no one appeared to be pursuing them, pulling back in their own time, and on their own terms.

‘Yah!’ shrieked Yolk as he ran up, a war cry that could hardly have made a duck nervous. ‘Yah!’ Leaning over the wall to poke away wildly with his sword. ‘Yah?’

‘No one here,’ said Tunny, letting his own blade slowly fall.

‘No one here?’ muttered Worth, trying to straighten his twisted helmet.

Tunny sat down on the wall, the standard between his knees. ‘Only him.’ Not far away a scarecrow had been planted, a spear nailed to each stick arm, a brightly polished helmet on its sack-head. ‘And I reckon the whole regiment can take him.’ It all looked a pathetic ruse now. But then ruses always do, once you’ve seen through them. Tunny ought to have known that. He’d played more than a few himself, though usually on his own officers rather than the enemy.

More soldiers were reaching the wall. Wet through, tired out, mixed up. One clambered over it, walked up to the scarecrow and levelled his sword.

‘Lay down your arms in the name of his Majesty!’ he roared. There was a smattering of laughter, quickly cut off as Colonel Vallimir clambered up onto the drystone with a face like fury, Sergeant Forest beside him.

A horseman was pounding over from the empty gap in the wall on their right. The gap where they’d been sure a furious battle was taking place. A battle they would gloriously turn the tide of. A battle that was already over. He reined in before them, he and his horse breathing hard, dashed with mud from a full gallop.

‘Is General Mitterick here?’ he managed to gasp.

‘Afraid not,’ said Tunny.

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘Afraid not,’ said Tunny.

‘What’s the matter, man?’ snapped Vallimir, getting tangled with his scabbard as he hopped down from the wall and nearly falling on his face.

The messenger snapped out a salute. ‘Sir. Lord Marshal Kroy orders all hostilities to cease at once.’ He smiled, teeth gleaming white in his muddy face. ‘We’ve made peace with the Northmen!’ He turned his horse smartly and rode off, past a pair of stained and tattered flags drooping forgotten from leaning poles and south, towards a line of Union foot advancing across the ruined fields.

‘Peace?’ mumbled Yolk, soaked and shivering.

‘Peace,’ grunted Worth, trying to rub the birdshit from his breastplate.

‘Fuck!’ snarled Vallimir, flinging down his sword.

Tunny raised his brows, and stuck his own blade point-first in the earth. He couldn’t say he felt anywhere near as strongly as Vallimir about it, but he had to admit to feeling a mite disappointed at the way things had turned out.

‘But that’s war, eh, my beauty?’ He started to roll up the standard of his Majesty’s First, smoothing out the kinks with his thumb the way a woman might put away her wedding shawl when the big day was over.

‘That was quite some standard-bearing, Corporal!’ Forest was a stride or two away, foot up on the wall, a grin across his scarred face. ‘Up front, leading the men, in the place of most danger and most glory. ‘‘Forward!’’ cried brave Corporal Tunny, hurling his courage in the teeth of the enemy! I mean, there was no enemy, as it turned out, but still, I always knew you’d come through. You always do. Can’t help yourself, can you? Corporal Tunny, hero of the First!’

‘Fuck yourself, Forest.’

Tunny started to work the standard carefully back into its cover. Looking across the flat land to the north and east, watching the last of the Northmen hurrying away through the sunlit fields.

Luck. Some men have it. Some don’t. Calder could not but conclude, as he bounded through the barley behind his men, exhausted and muddy but very much alive, that he had it. By the dead, he had it.

Mad luck, that Mitterick had done the apparently insane, chosen to charge without checking the ground or waiting for light and doomed his cavalry. Impossible luck, that Brodd Tenways, of all people, would have lent a helping hand, the worst of his many enemies saving his life at the last moment. Even the rain had fought on his side, swept over at just the time to ruin the order of the Union foot and turn their dream ground into a nightmare of mud.

Even then, the men in the woods could still have done for him, but they’d been put off by a bundle of dead men’s spears, a scarecrow and a few boys each slipped a coin to wear a helmet twice too big and stick their heads up once in a while. Deal with them, Dow had said, and somehow bold Prince Calder had found a way.

When he thought of all the luck he’d had that day he felt dizzy. Felt as if the world must’ve chosen him for something. Must have great plans for him. How else could he have lurched through all this with his life? Him, Calder, who deserved it so bloody little?

There was an old ditch running through the fields up ahead with a low hedgerow behind. A boundary his father hadn’t quite managed to tear up, and the perfect place to form a new line. Another little slice of luck. He found himself wishing that Scale had lived to see this. To hug him and thump his back and say how proud he was at last. He’d fought, and what was even more surprising, he’d won. Calder was laughing as he jumped the ditch, slid sideways through a gap in the bushes— And stopped.

A few of his lads were scattered around, most of them sitting or even lying, weapons tossed aside, all the way knackered from a day’s hard fighting and a run across the fields. Pale-as-Snow was with them, but they weren’t alone. A good score of Dow’s Carls stood in a frowning crescent ahead. A grim-looking set of bastards, and the shitty jewel in the midst was Caul Shivers, his one eye fixed on Calder.

There was no reason for them to be there. Unless Curnden Craw had done what he said he would, and told Black Dow the truth. And Curnden Craw was a man famous for always doing what he said he would. Calder licked his lips. Seemed a bit of a foolish decision now, to have gambled against the inevitable. Seemed he was such a good liar he’d managed to trick himself on his chances.

‘Prince Calder,’ whispered Shivers, taking a step forward.

Way too late to run. He’d only be running at the Union anyway. A mad hope tickled the back of his mind that his father’s closest might leap to his defence. But they hadn’t lasted as long as they had by pissing into the wind. He glanced at Pale-as-Snow and the old warrior offered him the tiniest shrug. Calder had given them a day to be proud of, but he’d get no suicidal gestures of loyalty and he deserved none. They weren’t going to set themselves on fire for his benefit any more than Caul Reachey was. You have to be realistic, as the Bloody-Nine had been so bloody fond of saying.

So Calder could only give a hopeless smile, and stand there trying to get his breath as Shivers took another step towards him, then another. That terrible scar loomed close. Close enough almost to kiss. Close enough so all Calder could see was his own distorted, unconvincing grin reflected in that dead metal ball of an eye.

‘Dow wants you.’

Luck. Some men have it. Some don’t.

Spoils

The smell, first. Of a kitchen mishap, perhaps. Then of a bonfire.

Then more. An acrid note that niggled at the back of Gorst’s throat.

The smell of buildings aflame. Adua had smelled that way, during the siege. So had Cardotti’s House of Leisure, as he reeled through the smoke-filled corridors.

Finree rode like a madwoman and, dizzy and aching as he was, she pulled away from him, sending men hopping from the road. Ash started to flutter down as they passed the inn, black snow falling. Rubbish was dotted about as the fence of Osrung loomed from the smoky murk. Scorched wood, broken slates, scraps of cloth raining from the sky.

More wounded here, dotted haphazardly about the town’s south gate, burned as well as hacked, stained with soot as well as blood, but the sounds were the same as they had been on the Heroes. As they always were. Gorst gritted his teeth against it. Help them or kill them, but someone please put an end to their damned bleating.

Finree was already down from her horse and making for the town. He scrambled after, head pounding, face burning, and caught up with her just inside the gate. He thought the sun might be dropping in the sky, but it hardly mattered. In Osrung it was choking twilight. Fires burned among the wooden buildings. Flames rearing up, the heat of them drying the spit in Gorst’s mouth, sucking the sweat out of his face, making the air shimmer. A house hung open like a man gutted, missing one of its walls, floorboards jutting into air, windows from nowhere to nowhere.

Here is war. Here it is, shorn of its fancy trappings. None of the polished buttons, the jaunty bands, the stiff salutes. None of the clenched jaws and clenched buttocks. None of the speeches, the bugles, the lofty ideals. Here it is, stripped bare.

Just ahead someone bent over a man, helping him. He glanced up, sooty-faced. Not helping. He had been trying to get his boots off. As Gorst came close he startled and dashed away into the strange dusk. Gorst looked down at the soldier he left behind, one bare foot pale against the mud. Oh, flower of our manhood! Oh, the brave boys! Oh, send them to war no more until next time we need a fucking distraction.

Where should we look?’ he croaked.

Finree stared at him for a moment, hair tangled across her face, soot stuck under her nose, eyes wild. But still as beautiful as ever. More. More. ‘Over there! Near the bridge. He’d have been at the front.’ Such nobility! Such heroism! Lead on, my love, to the bridge!

They went beneath a row of trees on fire, burning leaves fluttering down around them like confetti. Sing! All sing for the happy couple! People called out, voices muffled in the gloom. People looking for help, or looking for men to help, or men to rob. Figures shambled past, leaning on one another, carrying stretchers between them, casting about as though for something they had mislaid, digging at the wreckage with their hands. How could you find one man in this? Where would you find one man? A whole one, anyway.

There were bodies all about. There were parts of bodies. Strangely robbed of meaning. Bits of meat. Someone scrape them up and pack them in gilt coffins back to Adua so the king can stand to attention as they pass and the queen can leave glistening tear-tracks through her powder and the people can tear their hair and ask why, why, while they wonder what to have for dinner or whether they need a new pair of shoes or whatever the fuck.

‘Over here!’ shouted Finree, and he hurried to her, hauled a broken beam aside, two corpses underneath, neither one an officer. She shook her head, biting her lip, put one hand on his shoulder. He had to stop himself smiling. Could she know the thrill that touch sent through him? He was wanted. Needed. And by her.

Finree picked her way from one ruined shell to another, coughing, eyes watering, tearing at rubbish with her fingernails, turning over bodies, and he followed. Searching every bit as feverishly as she did. More, even. But for different reasons. I will drag aside some fallen trash and there will be his ruined, gaping corpse, not half so fucking handsome now, and she will see it. Oh no! Oh yes. Cruel, vicious, lovely fate. And she will turn to me in her misery, and weep upon my uniform and perhaps thump my chest lightly with her fist, and I will hold her, and whisper insipid consolations, and be the rock for her to founder upon, and we will be together, as we should have been, and would have been had I had the courage to ask her.

Gorst grinned to himself, teeth bared as he rolled over another body. Another dead officer, arm so broken it was wrapped right around his back. Taken too soon with all his young life ahead of him and blah, blah, blah. Where is Brock? Show me Brock.

A few splinters of stone and a great crater, flooded by churning river water, were all that remained to show where Osrung’s bridge once stood. Most of the buildings around it were little more than heaps of rubbish, but one stone-built was largely intact, its roof stripped off and some of the bare rafters aflame. Gorst struggled towards it while Finree picked at some bodies, one arm over her face. A doorway with a heavy lintel, and in the doorway a thick door twisted from its hinges, and just showing beneath the door, a boot. Gorst reached down and heaved the door up like the lid of a coffin.

And there was Brock. He did not seem badly injured at a first glance. His face was streaked with blood, but not smashed to pulp as Gorst might have hoped. One leg was folded underneath him at an unnatural angle, but his limbs were all attached.

Gorst bent over him, placed a hand over his mouth. Breath. Still alive. He felt a surge of disappointment so strong that his knees nearly buckled, closely followed by a sobering rage. Cheated. Gorst, the king’s squeaking clown, why should he have what he wants? What he needs? What he deserves? Dangle it in his fat face and laugh! Cheated. Just as I was in Sipani. Just as I was at the Heroes. Just as I always am.

Gorst raised one brow, and he blew out a long, soft breath, and he shifted his hand down, down to Brock’s neck. He slid his thumb and his middle finger around it, feeling out the narrowest point, then gently, firmly squeezed.

What’s the difference? Fill a hundred pits with dead Northmen, congratulations, have a parade! Kill one man in the same uniform as you? A crime. A murder. Worse than despicable. Are we not all men? All blood and bone and dreams?

He squeezed a little harder, impatient to be done. Brock did not complain. Did not so much as twitch. He was so nearly dead anyway. Nothing more than nudging fate in the right direction.

So much easier than all the others. No steel and screams and mess, just a little pressure and a little time. So much more point than all the others. They had nothing I needed, they simply faced the other way. I should be ashamed of their deaths. But this? This is justice. This is righteous. This is—

‘Have you found anything?’

Gorst’s hand sprang open and he shifted it slightly so two fingers were pressed up under Brock’s jaw, as if feeling for a pulse. ‘He’s alive,’ he croaked.

Finree leaned down beside him, touched Brock’s face with a trembling hand, the other pressed to her mouth, gave a gasp of relief that might as well have been a dagger in Gorst’s face. He slid one arm under Brock’s knees, the other under his back, and scooped him up. I have failed even at killing a man. It seems my only choice is to save him.

A surgeon’s tent stood near the south gate, canvas turned muddy grey by the falling ash. Wounded waited outside for attention, clutching at assorted injuries, moaning, or whimpering, or silent, eyes empty. Gorst stomped through them and up to the tent. We can jump the queue, because I am the king’s observer, and she is the marshal’s daughter, and the wounded man is a colonel of the most noble blood, and so it is only fitting that any number of the rank and file can die before bastards like us are inconvenienced.

Gorst pushed through the flap and set Brock down ever so gently on a stained table, and a tight-faced surgeon listened at his chest and proclaimed him alive. And all my silly, pretty little hopes strangled. Again. Gorst stepped back as the assistants crowded in, Finree bending over her husband, holding his sooty hand, looking eagerly down into his face, her eyes shining with hope, and fear, and love.

Gorst watched. If it was me dying on that table, would anyone care? They would shrug and tip me out with the slops. And why shouldn’t they? It would be better than I deserve. He left them to it, trudged outside and stood there, frowning at the wounded, he did not know how long for.

‘They say he is not too badly hurt.’

He turned to look at her. Forcing the smile onto his face was harder work than climbing the Heroes had been. ‘I am … so glad.’

‘They say it is amazing luck.’

‘Too true.’

They stood there in silence a moment longer. ‘I don’t know how I can ever repay you …’

Easy. Abandon that pretty fool and be mine. That’s all I want. That one little thing. Just kiss me, and hold me, and give yourself to me, utterly and completely. That’s all. ‘It’s nothing,’ he whispered.

But she had already turned and hurried into the tent, leaving him alone. He stood for a moment as the ash gently fluttered down, settled across the ground, settled across his shoulders. Beside him a boy lay on a stretcher. On the way to the tent, or while waiting for the surgeon, he had died.

Gorst frowned down at the body. He is dead and I, self-serving coward that I am, still live. He sucked in air through his sore nose, blew it out through his sore mouth. Life is not fair. There is no pattern. People die at random. Obvious, perhaps. Something that everyone knows. Something that everyone knows, but no one truly believes. They think when it comes to them there will be a lesson, a meaning, a story worth telling. That death will come to them as a dread scholar, a fell knight, a terrible emperor. He poked at the boy’s corpse with a toe, rolled it onto its side, then let it flop back. Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit.

He stepped over the corpse and walked back towards Osrung, past the shambling grey ghosts that clogged the road. He was no more than a dozen steps inside the gate when he heard a voice calling to him.

‘Over here! Help!’ Gorst saw an arm sticking from a heap of charred rubbish. Saw a desperate, ash-smeared face. He clambered carefully up, undid the buckle under the man’s chin, removed his helmet and tossed it away. The lower half of his body was trapped under a splintered beam. Gorst took one end, heaved it up and swung it away, lifted the soldier as gently as a father might a sleeping child and carried him back towards the gate.

‘Thank you,’ he croaked, one hand pawing at Gorst’s soot-stained jacket. ‘You’re a hero.’

Gorst said nothing. But if only you knew, my friend. If only you knew.

Desperate Measures

Time to celebrate.

No doubt the Union would have their own way of looking at it, but Black Dow was calling this a victory and his Carls were minded to agree. So they’d dug new fire-pits, and cracked the kegs, and poured the beer, and every man was looking forward to a double gild, and most of ’em to heading home to plough their fields, or their wives, or both.

They chanted, laughed, staggered about in the gathering darkness, tripping through fires and sending sparks showering, drunker’n shit. All feeling twice as alive for facing death and coming through. They sang old songs, and made up new ones with the names of today’s heroes where yesterday’s used to be. Black Dow, and Caul Reachey, and Ironhead and Tenways and Golden raised up on high while the Bloody-Nine, and Bethod, and Threetrees and Littlebone and even Skarling Hoodless sank into the past like the sun sinking in the west, the midday glory of their deeds dimming just to washed-out memories, a last flare among the stringy clouds before night swallowed ’em. You didn’t hear much about Whirrun of Bligh even. About Shama Heartless, not a peep. Names turned over by time, like the plough turning the soil. Bringing up the new while the old were buried in the mud.

‘Beck.’ Craw lowered himself stiffly down beside the fire, a wooden ale cup in one hand, and gave Beck’s knee an encouraging pat.

‘Chief. How’s your head?’

The old warrior touched a finger to the fresh stitches above his ear. ‘Sore. But I’ve had worse. Very nearly had a lot worse today, in fact, as you might’ve noticed. Scorry told me you saved my life. Most folk wouldn’t place a high value on that particular article but I must admit I’m quite attached to it. So. Thanks, I guess. A lot of thanks.’

‘Just trying to do the right thing. Like you said.’

‘By the dead. Someone was listening. Drink?’ And Craw offered out his wooden mug.

‘Aye.’ Beck took it and a good swallow too. Taste of beer, sour on his tongue.

‘You did good today. Bloody good, far as I’m concerned. Scorry told me it was you put that big bastard down. The one who killed Drofd.’

‘Did I kill him?’

‘No. He’s alive.’

‘Didn’t kill no one today, then.’ Beck wasn’t sure whether he should be disappointed by that or glad. He wasn’t up to feeling much about anything either way. ‘I killed a man yesterday,’ he found he’d said.

‘Flood said you killed four.’

Beck licked his lips. Trying to lick away the sour taste, but it was going nowhere. ‘Flood got it wrong and I was too much the coward to put him right. Lad called Reft killed those men.’ He took another swallow, too fast, made his voice spill out breathless. ‘I hid in a cupboard while they were fighting. Hid in a cupboard and pissed my pants. There’s Red Beck for you.’

‘Huh.’ Craw nodded, his lips pressed thoughtfully together. He didn’t seem all that bothered. He didn’t seem all that surprised. ‘Well, it don’t change what you did today. There’s far worse a man can do in a battle than hide in a cupboard.’

‘I know,’ muttered Beck, and his mouth hung open, ready to let it spill. It was like his body needed to say it, to spit out the rot like a sick man might need to puke. His mouth had to do it, however much he might want to keep it hid. ‘I need to tell you something, Chief,’ his dried-out tongue wrestling with the words.

‘I’m listening,’ said Craw.

He cast about for the best way to put it, like the sick man casting about for the best thing to spew into. As though there were words pretty enough to make it less ugly. ‘The thing is—’

‘Bastard!’ someone shouted, knocked Beck so bad he spilled the dregs of the cup into the fire.

‘Oy!’ growled Craw, wincing as he got up, but whoever it was had already gone. There was a current through the crowd, of a sudden. A new mood, angry, jeering at someone being dragged through their midst. Craw followed on and Beck followed him, more relieved than upset at the distraction, like the sick man realising he don’t have to puke into his wife’s hat after all.

They shouldered through the crowd to the biggest fire-pit, in the centre of the Heroes, where the biggest men were. Black Dow sat in the midst of ’em in Skarling’s Chair, one dangling hand twisting the pommel of his sword round and round. Shivers was there, on the far side of the fire, pushing someone down onto his knees.

‘Shit,’ muttered Craw.

‘Well, well, well.’ And Dow licked his teeth and sat back, grinning. ‘If it ain’t Prince Calder.’

*

Calder tried to look as comfortable as he could on his knees with his hands tied and Shivers looming over him. Which wasn’t all that comfortable. ‘The invitation was hard to refuse,’ he said.

‘I’ll bet,’ answered Dow. ‘Can you guess why I made it?’

Calder took a look around the gathering. All the great men of the North were there. All the bloated fools. Glama Golden, sneering over from the far side of the fire. Cairm Ironhead, watching, one brow raised. Brodd Tenways, a bit less scornful than usual, but a long way from friendly. Caul Reachey, with a ‘my hands are tied’ sort of a wince, and Curnden Craw, with a ‘why didn’t you run?’ sort of a one. Calder gave the pair of them a sheepish nod. ‘I’ve an inkling.’

‘For anyone who hasn’t an inkling, Calder here tried to prevail on my new Second to kill me.’ Some muttering ran through the firelit crowd, but not that much. No one was overly surprised. ‘Ain’t that right, Craw?’

Craw looked at the ground. ‘That’s right.’

‘You going to deny it, even?’ asked Dow.

‘If I did, could we forget the whole thing?’

Dow grinned. ‘Still joking. I like that. Not that the faithlessness surprises me, you’re known for a schemer. The stupidity does, though. Curnden Craw’s a straight edge, everyone knows that.’ Craw winced even harder, and looked away. ‘Stabbing men in the back ain’t his style.’

‘I’ll admit it wasn’t my brightest moment,’ said Calder. ‘How about we notch it up to youthful folly and let it slide?’

‘Don’t see how I can. You’ve pushed my patience too far, and it’s got a spike on the end. Haven’t I treated you like a son?’ A few chuckles ran along both sides of the fire-pit. ‘I mean, not a favourite son. Not a firstborn or nothing. A runty one, down near the end o’ the litter, but still. Didn’t I let you take charge when your brother died, though you haven’t the experience or the name for it? Didn’t I let you have your say around the fire? And when you said too much didn’t I clear you off to Carleon with your wife to cool your head rather than just cut your head off and worry later on the details? Your father weren’t so forgiving to those who disagreed with him, as I recall.’

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 522