The Heroes

you’d … come knocking. Didn’t think you’d come all this way your own self, though.’
    ‘An alliance should be sealed face to face, man to man, iron to iron and blood to blood.’ Calder had been expecting the giant to roar every word like the monsters in children’s stories, but he had a soft sort of voice. Slow, as if he was puzzling out every word.
    ‘The personal touch,’ said Dow. ‘I’m all for it. We’ve a deal, then?’
    ‘We have.’ Stranger-Come-Knocking spread one massive hand, put the web between thumb and forefinger in his mouth and bit into it, held it up, blood starting to seep from the marks.
    Dow slid his palm down his sword, leaving the edge gleaming red. Then he was out of Skarling’s Chair in a flash and caught the giant’s hand with his own. The two men stood there as blood streaked their forearms and started to drip from their elbows. Calder felt a little fear and a lot of contempt at the level of manliness on display.
    ‘Right y’are.’ Dow let go of the giant’s hand and slowly sat back in Skarling’s Chair, leaving a bloody palm-print on one arm. ‘Reckon you can bring your men over the Crinna.’
    ‘I already did.’
    Golden and Ironhead exchanged a glance, not much caring for the idea of a lot of savages crossing the Crinna and, presumably, their land. Dow narrowed his eyes. ‘Did you, indeed?’
    ‘On this side of the water they can fight the Southerners.’ Stranger-Come-Knocking looked slowly about the stable, fixing each man with his black eyes. ‘I came to
fight
!’ He roared the last word, echoes ringing from the roof. A ripple of fury passed through him from his feet to his head, making his fists clench, and his chest swell, and his monstrous shoulders rise, seeming in that moment more outsize than ever.
    Calder found himself wondering what fighting this bastard would feellike. How the hell would you stop him, once he was moving? Just the sheer weight of meat. What weapon would put him down? He reckoned everyone else in the room was thinking the same thing, and not much enjoying the experience.
    Except Black Dow. ‘Good! That’s what I want you for.’
    ‘I want to fight the Union.’
    ‘There’s plenty to go round.’
    ‘I want to fight Whirrun of Bligh.’
    ‘Can’t promise you that, he’s on our side and has some odd notions. But I can ask if he’ll give you a bout.’
    ‘I want to fight the Bloody-Nine.’
    The hairs on the back of Calder’s neck prickled. Strange, how that name still weighed heavy, even in company like this, even if the man was eight years dead. Dow wasn’t grinning any more.
    ‘You missed your chance. Ninefingers is back in the mud.’
    ‘I hear he is alive, and standing with the Union.’
    ‘You hear wrong.’
    ‘I hear he is alive, and I will kill him.’
    ‘Will you now?’
    ‘I am the greatest warrior in the Circle of the World.’ Stranger-Come-Knocking didn’t boast it, puffed up and pouting as Glama Golden might have. He didn’t threaten it, fists clenched and glowering as Cairm Ironhead might have. He stated the fact.
    Dow scratched absently at the scar where his ear used to be. ‘This is the North. Lot of hard men about. Couple of ’em in this room. So that’s quite a claim you’re making.’
    Stranger-Come-Knocking unhooked his great fur cloak and shrugged it off, stood there stripped to the waist like a man ready to wrestle. Scars had always been almost as popular in the North as blades. Every man who reckoned himself a man had to have a couple of both. But Stranger-Come-Knocking’s great expanse of body, sinew-knotted like an ancient tree, was almost more scar than skin. He was ripped, pocked, gouged with wounds, enough to make a score of champions proud.
    ‘At Yeweald I fought the Dog Tribe and was pierced with seven arrows.’ He pointed out some pink blobs scattered across his ribs with his club of a forefinger. ‘But I fought on, and made a hill of their dead, and made their land my land, and their women and children my people.’
    Dow sighed, as if he had a half-naked giant at most of his war meetings and was getting tired of it. ‘Maybe it’s time to think about a shield.’
    ‘They are for cowards to hide behind. My wounds tell the story of my strength.’ The giant jerked his thumb at a star-shaped mass that covered one shoulder, and his back, and half his left arm with flesh lumped and mottled as oak-bark. ‘The dreaded witch Vanian sprayed me with a liquid fire, and I carried