The Heroes

‘Aye?’ Dow’s grin faded as he looked into Craw’s face. ‘What’s to frown about?’

‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

The Moment of Truth

The deluge had finally come to an end but the leaves were still dripping relentlessly on the soaked, sore, unhappy soldiers of his Majesty’s First. Corporal Tunny was the most soaked, sore and unhappy of the lot. Still crouching in the bushes. Still staring towards that same stretch of wall he’d been staring at all day and much of the day before. His eye chafed raw from the brass end of his eyeglass, his neck chafed raw from his constant scratching, his arse and armpits chafed raw from his wet clothes. He’d had some shitty duties in his chequered career, but this was down there among the worst, somehow combining the two awful constants of the army life – terror and tedium. For some time the wall had been lost in the hammering rain but now had taken shape again. The same mossy pile slanting down towards the water. And the same spears bristling above it.

‘Can we see yet?’ hissed Colonel Vallimir.

‘Yes, sir. They’re still there.’

‘Give me that!’ Vallimir snatched the eyeglass, peered towards the wall for a moment, then sulkily let it fall. ‘Damn it!’ Tunny had mild sympathy. About as much as he could ever have for an officer. Going meant disobeying the letter of Mitterick’s order. Staying meant disobeying the tone of it. Either way there was a good chance he’d suffer. Here, if one was needed, was a compelling argument against ever rising beyond corporal.

‘We go anyway!’ snapped Vallimir, desire for glory evidently having tipped the scales. ‘Get the men ready to charge!’

Forest saluted. ‘Sir.’

So there it was. No stratagems for delay, no routes to light duty, no feigning of illness or injuries. It was time to fight, and Tunny had to admit he was almost relieved as he did up the buckle on his helmet. Anything but crouching in the bloody bushes any longer. There was a whispering as the order was passed down the line, a rattling and scraping as men stood, adjusted their armour, drew their weapons.

‘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.’

‘True,’ said Calder. ‘You’ve been generosity itself. Oh. Apart from trying to kill me, of course.’

Dow’s forehead wrinkled. ‘Eh?’

‘Four nights past, at Caul Reachey’s weapontake? Bringing anything back? No? Three men tried to murder me, and when I put one to the question he dropped Brodd Tenways’ name. And everyone knows Brodd Tenways wouldn’t do a thing without your say-so. You denying it?’

‘I am, in fact.’ Dow looked over at Tenways and he gave a little shake of his rashy head. ‘And Tenways too. Might be he’s lying, and has his own reasons, but I can tell you one thing for a fact – any man here can tell I had no part in it.’

‘How’s that?’

Dow leaned forwards. ‘You’re still fucking breathing, boy. You think if I’d a mind to kill you there’s a man could stop me?’ Calder narrowed his eyes. He had to admit there was something to that argument. He looked for Reachey, but the old warrior was steadfastly looking elsewhere.

‘But it don’t much matter who didn’t die yesterday,’ said Dow. ‘I can tell you who’ll die tomorrow.’ Silence stretched out, and never had the word to end it been so horribly clear. ‘You.’ Seemed like everyone was smiling. Everyone except Calder, and Craw, and maybe Caul Shivers, but that was probably just because his face was so scarred he couldn’t get his mouth to curl. ‘Anyone got any objections to this?’ Aside from the crackling of the fire, there wasn’t a sound. Dow stood up on his seat and shouted it. ‘Anyone want to speak up for Calder?’ None spoke.

How silly his whispers in the dark seemed now. All his seeds had fallen on stony ground all right. Dow was firmer set in Skarling’s Chair than ever and Calder hadn’t a friend to his name. His brother was dead and he’d somehow found a way to make Curnden Craw his enemy. Some spinner of webs he was.

‘No one? No?’ Slowly, Dow sat back down. ‘Anyone here not happy about this?’

‘I’m not fucking delighted,’ said Calder.

Dow burst out laughing. ‘You got bones, lad, whatever they say. Bones of a rare kind. I’ll miss you. You got a preference when it comes to method? We could hang you, or cut your head off, or your father was partial to the bloody cross though I couldn’t advise it—’

Maybe the fighting today had gone to Calder’s head, or maybe he was sick of treading softly, or maybe it was the cleverest thing to do right then. ‘Fuck yourself!’ he snarled, and spat into the fire. ‘I’d sooner die with a sword in my hand! You and me, Black Dow, in the circle. A challenge.’

Slow, scornful silence. ‘Challenge?’ sneered Dow. ‘Over what? You make a challenge to decide an issue, boy. There’s no issue here. Just you turning on your Chief and trying to talk his Second into stabbing him in the back. Would your father have taken a challenge?’

‘You’re not my father. You’re not a fucking shadow of him! He made that chain you’re wearing. Forged it link by link, like he forged the North new. You stole it from the Bloody-Nine, and you had to stab him in the back to get it.’ Calder smirked like his life depended on it. Which it did. ‘All you are is a thief, Black Dow, and a coward, and an oath-breaker, and a fucking idiot besides.’

‘That a fact?’ Dow tried to smile himself, but it looked more like a scowl. Calder might be a beaten man, but that was just the point. Having a beaten man fling shit at him was souring his day of victory.

‘Haven’t you got the bones to face me, man to man?’

‘Show me a man and we’ll see.’

‘I was man enough for Tenways’ daughter.’ Calder got a flutter of laughter of his own. ‘But what?’ And he nodded up to Shivers. ‘You get harder men to do your black work now, do you, Black Dow? Lost your taste for it? Come on! Fight me! The circle!’

Dow had no real reason to say yes. He’d nothing to win. But sometimes it’s more about how it looks than how it is. Calder was famous as the biggest coward and piss-poorest fighter in any given company. Dow’s name was all built on being the very opposite. This was a challenge to everything he was, in front of all the great men of the North. He couldn’t turn it down. Dow saw it, and he slouched back in Skarling’s Chair like a man who’d argued with his wife over whose turn it was to muck out the pigpen, and lost.

‘All right. You want it the hard way you can have it the fucking hard way. Tomorrow at dawn. And no pissing about spinning the shield and choosing weapons. Me and you. A sword each. To the death.’ He angrily waved his hand. ‘Take this bastard somewhere I don’t have to look at him smirk.’

Calder gasped as Shivers jerked him to his feet, twisted him around and marched him off. The crowd closed in behind them. Songs started up again, and laughter, and bragging, and all the business of victory and success. His imminent doom was a distraction hardly worth stopping the party for.

‘I thought I told you to run.’ Craw’s familiar voice in his ear, the old man pushing through the press beside him.

Calder snorted. ‘I thought I told you not to say anything. Seems neither of us can do as we’re told.’

‘I’m sorry it had to be this way.’

‘It didn’t have to be this way.’

He saw Craw’s grimace etched by firelight. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry this is what I chose, then.’

‘Don’t be. You’re a straight edge, everyone knows it. And let’s face the facts, I’ve been hurtling towards the grave ever since my father died. Just a surprise it’s taken me this long to hit mud. Who knows, though?’ he called as Shivers dragged him between two of the Heroes, giving Craw one last smirk over his shoulder. ‘Maybe I’ll beat Dow in the circle!’

He could tell from Craw’s sorry face he didn’t think it likely. Neither did Calder, if he was honest for once. The very reasons for the success of his little plan were also its awful shortcomings. Calder was the biggest coward and piss-poorest fighter in any given company. Black Dow was the very opposite. They hadn’t earned their reputations by accident.

He’d about as much chance in the circle as a side of ham, and everyone knew it.

Stuff Happens

‘I’ve a letter for General Mitterick,’ said Tunny, hooding his lantern as he walked up out of the dusk to the general’s tent.

Even in the limited light, it was plain the guard was a man who nature had favoured better below the neck than above it. ‘He’s with the lord marshal. You’ll have to wait.’

Tunny displayed his sleeve. ‘I’m a full corporal, you know. Don’t I get precedence?’

The guard did not take the joke. ‘Press-a-what?’

‘Never mind.’ Tunny sighed, and stood beside him, and waited. Voices burbled from the tent, gaining in volume.

‘I demand the right to attack!’ one boomed out. Mitterick. There weren’t many soldiers in the army who had the good fortune not to recognise that voice. The guard frowned across at Tunny as though to say, you shouldn’t be listening to this. Tunny held up the letter and shrugged. ‘We’ve forced them back! They’re teetering, exhausted! They’ve no stomach left for it.’ Shadows moved on the side of the tent, perhaps a shaken fist. ‘The slightest push now … I have them just where I want them!’

‘You thought you had them there yesterday and it turned out they had you.’ Marshal Kroy’s more measured tones. ‘And the Northmen aren’t the only ones who’ve run out of stomach.’

‘My men deserve the chance to finish what they’ve started! Lord Marshal, I deserve the—’

‘No!’ Harsh as a whip cracking.

‘Then, sir, I demand the right to resign—’

‘No to that too. No even more to that.’ Mitterick tried to say something but Kroy spoke over him. ‘No! Must you argue every point? You will swallow your damn pride and do your damn duty! You will stand down, you will bring your men back across the bridge and you will prepare your division for the journey south to Uffrith as soon as we have completed negotiations. Do you understand me, General?’

There was a long pause and then, very quietly, ‘We lost.’ Mitterick’s voice, but hardly recognisable. Suddenly shrunk very small, and weak, sounding almost as if there were tears in it. As if some cord held vibrating taut had suddenly snapped, and all Mitterick’s bluster had snapped with it. ‘We lost.’

‘We drew.’ Kroy’s voice was quiet now, but the night was quiet, and few men could drop eaves like Tunny when there was something worth hearing. ‘Sometimes that’s the most one can hope for. The irony of the soldier’s profession. War can only ever pave the way for peace. And it should be no other way. I used to be like you, Mitterick. I thought there was but one right thing to do. One day, probably very soon, you will replace me, and you will learn the world is otherwise.’

Another pause. ‘Replace you?’

‘I suspect the great architect has tired of this particular mason. General Jalenhorm died at the Heroes. You are the only reasonable choice. One that I support in any case.’

‘I am speechless.’

‘If I had known I could achieve that simply by resigning I would have done it years ago.’

A pause. ‘I would like Opker promoted to lead my division.’

‘I see no objection.’

‘And for General Jalenhorm’s I thought—’

‘Colonel Felnigg has been given the command,’ said Kroy. ‘General Felnigg, I should say.’

‘Felnigg?’ came Mitterick’s voice, with a tinge of horror.

‘He has the seniority, and my recommendation to the king is already sent.’

‘I simply cannot work with that man—’

‘You can and you will. Felnigg is sharp, and cautious, and he will balance you out, as you have balanced me. Though you were often, frankly, a pain in my arse, by and large it has been an honour.’ There was a sharp crack, as of polished boot heels snapping together.

Then another. ‘Lord Marshal Kroy, the honour has been entirely mine.’

Tunny and the guard both flung themselves to the most rigid attention as the two biggest hats in the army suddenly strode from the tent. Kroy made sharply off into the gathering gloom. Mitterick stayed there, looking after him, one hand opening and closing by his side.

Tunny had a pressing appointment with a bottle and a bedroll. He cleared his throat. ‘General Mitterick, sir!’

Mitterick turned, very obviously wiping away a tear while pretending to be clearing dust from his eye. ‘Yes?’

‘Corporal Tunny, sir, standard-bearer of his Majesty’s First Regiment.’

Mitterick frowned. ‘The same Tunny who was made colour sergeant after Ulrioch?’

Tunny puffed out his chest. ‘The same, sir.’

‘The same Tunny who was demoted after Dunbrec?’

Tunny’s shoulders slumped. ‘The same, sir.’

‘The same Tunny who was court-martialled after that business at Shricta?’

And further yet. The same, sir, though I hasten to point out that the tribunal found no evidence of wrongdoing, sir.’

Mitterick snorted. ‘So much for tribunals. ‘What brings you here, Tunny?’

He held out the letter. ‘I have come in my official capacity as standard-bearer, sir, with a letter from my commanding officer, Colonel Vallimir.’

Mitterick looked down at it. What does it say?’

‘I wouldn’t—’

‘I do not believe a soldier with your experience of tribunals would carry a letter without a good idea of the contents. What does it say?’

Tunny conceded the point. ‘Sir, I believe the colonel lays out at some length the reasons behind his failure to attack today.’

‘Does he.’

‘He does, sir, and he furthermore apologises most profusely to you, sir, to Marshal Kroy, to his Majesty, and in fact to the people of the Union in general, and he offers his immediate resignation, sir, but also demands the right to explain himself before a court martial – he was rather vague on that point, sir – he goes on to praise the men and to shoulder the blame entirely himself, and—’

Mitterick took the letter from Tunny’s hand, crumpled it up in his fist and tossed it into a puddle.

‘Tell Colonel Vallimir not to worry.’ He watched the letter for a moment, drifting in the broken reflection of the evening sky, then shrugged. ‘It’s a battle. We all made mistakes. Would it be pointless, Corporal Tunny, to tell you to stay out of trouble?’

‘All advice gratefully considered, sir.’

‘What if I make it an order?’

‘All orders considered too, sir.’

‘Huh. Dismissed.’

Tunny snapped out his most sycophantic salute, turned and quick-marched off into the night before anyone decided to court martial him.

The moments after a battle are a profiteer’s dream. Corpses to be picked over, or dug up and picked over, trophies to be traded, booze, and chagga, and husk to be sold to the celebrating or the commiserating at equally outrageous mark-ups. He’d seen men without a bit to their names in the year leading up to an engagement make their fortunes in the hour after. But most of Tunny’s stock was still on his horse, which was who knew where, and, besides, his heart just wasn’t in it.

So he kept his distance from the fires and the men around them, strolling along behind the lines, heading north across the trampled battlefield. He passed a pair of clerks booking the dead by lamplight, one making notes in a ledger while the other twitched up shrouds to look for corpses worth noting and shipping back to Midderland, men too noble to go in the Northern dirt. As though one dead man’s any different from another. He clambered over the wall he’d spent all day watching, become again the unremarkable farmer’s folly it had been before the battle, and picked his way through the dusk towards the far left of the line where the remains of the First were stationed.

‘I didn’t know, I just didn’t know, I just didn’t see him!’

Two men stood in barley patched with little white flowers, maybe thirty strides from the nearest fire, staring down at something. One was a nervous-looking young lad Tunny didn’t recognise, holding an empty flatbow. A new recruit, maybe. The other was Yolk, a torch in one hand, stabbing at the lad with a pointed finger.

‘What’s to do?’ growled Tunny as he walked up, already developing a bad feeling. It got worse when he saw what they were looking at. ‘Oh, no, no.’ Worth lay in a bald patch of earth, his eyes open and his tongue hanging out, a flatbow bolt right through his breastbone.

‘I thought it was Northmen!’ said the lad.

‘The Northmen are on the north side of the lines, you fucking idiot!’ snapped Yolk at him.

‘I thought he had an axe!’

‘A shovel.’ Tunny dug it out of the barley, just beyond the limp fingers of Worth’s left hand. ‘Reckon he’d been off doing what he did best.’

‘I should fucking kill you!’ snarled Yolk, reaching for his sword. The lad gave a helpless squeak, holding his flatbow up in front of him.

‘Leave it.’ Tunny stepped between them, put a restraining palm on Yolk’s chest and gave a long, painful sigh. ‘It’s a battle. We all made mistakes. I’ll go to Sergeant Forest, see what’s to be done.’ He pulled the flatbow from the lad’s limp hands and pushed the shovel into them. ‘In the meantime, you’d better get digging.’ For Worth, the Northern dirt would have to do.

‘You never have to wait long, or look far,

to be reminded of how thin the line is

between being a hero or a goat’

Mickey Mantle

End of the Road

‘He in there?’

Shivers gave one slow nod. ‘He’s there.’

‘Alone?’ asked Craw, putting his hand on the rotten handle.

‘He went in alone.’

Meaning, more’n likely, he was with the witch. Craw wasn’t keen to renew his acquaintance with her, especially after seeing her surprise yesterday, but dawn was on the way, and it was past time he was too. About ten years past time. He had to tell his Chief first. That was the right thing to do. He blew out through his puffed cheeks, grimaced at his stitched face, then turned the handle and went in.

Ishri stood in the middle of the dirt floor, hands on her hips, head hanging over on one side. Her long coat was scorched about the hem and up one sleeve, part of the collar burned away, the bandages underneath blackened. But her skin was still so perfect the torch flames were almost reflected in her cheek, like a black mirror.

‘Why fight this fool?’ she was sneering, one long finger pointing up towards the Heroes. ‘There is nothing you can win from him. If you step into the circle I cannot protect you.’

‘Protect me?’ Dow slouched by the dark window, hard face all in shadow, his axe held loose just under the blade. ‘I’ve handled men ten times harder’n Prince bloody Calder in the circle.’ And he gave it a long, screeching lick with a whetstone.

‘Calder.’ Ishri snorted. ‘There are other forces at work here. Ones beyond your understanding—’

‘Ain’t really beyond my understanding. You’re in a feud with this First of the Magi, so you’re using my feud with the Union as a way to fight each other. Am I close to it? Feuds I understand, believe me. You witches and whatever think you live in a world apart, but you’ve got both feet in this one, far as I can tell.’

She lifted her chin. ‘Where there is sharp metal there are risks.’

‘’Course. It’s the appeal o’ the stuff.’ And the whetstone ground down the blade again.

Ishri narrowed her eyes, lip curling. ‘What is it with you damn pink men, and your damn fighting, and your damn pride?’

Dow only grinned, teeth shining as his face tipped out of the darkness. ‘Oh, you’re a clever woman, no doubt, you know all kinds o’ useful things.’ One more lick of the stone, and he held the axe up to the light, edge glittering. ‘But you know less’n naught about the North. I gave my pride up years ago. Didn’t fit me. Chafed all over. This is about my name.’ He tested the edge, sliding his thumb-tip down it gently as you might down a lover’s neck, then shrugged. ‘I’m Black Dow. I can’t get out o’ this any more’n I can fly to the moon.’

Ishri shook her head in disgust. ‘After all the effort I have gone to—’

‘If I get killed your wasted effort will be my great fucking regret, how’s that?’

She scowled at Craw, and then at Dow as he set his axe down by the wall, and gave an angry hiss. ‘I will not miss your weather.’ And she took hold of her singed coat-tail and jerked it savagely in front of her face. There was a snapping of cloth and Ishri was gone, only a shred of blackened bandage fluttering down where she’d stood.

Dow caught it between finger and thumb. ‘She could just use the door, I guess, but it wouldn’t have quite the … drama.’ He blew the scrap of cloth away and watched it twist through the air. ‘Ever wish you could just disappear, Craw?’

Only every day for the last twenty years. ‘Maybe she’s got a point,’ he grunted. ‘You know. About the circle.’

‘You too?’

‘There’s naught to gain. Bethod always used to say there’s nothing shows more power than—’

‘Fuck mercy,’ growled Dow, sliding his sword from its sheath, fast enough to make it hiss. Craw swallowed, had to stop himself taking a step back. ‘I’ve given that boy all kinds o’ chances and he’s made me look a prick and a half. You know I’ve got to kill him.’ Dow started polishing the dull, grey blade with a rag, muscles working on the side of his head. ‘I got to kill him bad. I got to kill him so much no one’ll think to make me look a prick for a hundred years. Got to teach a lesson. That’s how this works.’ He looked up and Craw found he couldn’t meet his eye. Found he was looking down at the dirt floor, and saying nothing. ‘Take it you won’t be sticking about to hold a shield for me?’

‘Said I’d stick ’til the battle’s done.’

‘You did.’

‘The battle’s done.’

‘The battle ain’t ever done, Craw, you know that.’ Dow watched him, half his face in the light, the other eye just a gleam in the dark, and Craw started spilling reasons even though he hadn’t been asked.

‘There are better men for the task. Younger men. Men with better knees, and stronger arms, and harder names.’ Dow just kept watching. ‘Lost a lot o’ my friends the last few days. Too many. Whirrun’s dead. Brack’s gone.’ Desperate not to say he’d no stomach for seeing Dow butcher Calder in the circle. Desperate not to say his loyalty might not stand it. ‘Times have changed. Men the likes o’ Golden and Ironhead, they got no respect for me in particular, and I got less for them. All that, and … and …’

‘And you’ve had enough,’ said Dow.

Craw’s shoulders sagged. Hurt him to admit, but that summed it all up pretty well. ‘I’ve had enough.’ Had to clench his teeth and curl back his lips to stop the tears. As if saying it made it all catch up with him at once. Whirrun, and Drofd, and Brack, and Athroc and Agrick and all those others. An accusing queue of the dead, stretching back into the gloom of memory. A queue of battles fought, and won, and lost. Of choices made, right and wrong, each one a weight to carry.

Dow just nodded as he slid his sword carefully back into its sheath. ‘We all got a limit. Man o’ your experience needn’t ever be shamed. Not ever.’

Craw just gritted his teeth, and swallowed his tears, and managed to find some dry words to say. ‘Daresay you’ll soon find someone else to do the job—’

‘Already have.’ And Dow jerked his head towards the door. ‘Waiting outside.’

‘Good.’ Craw reckoned Shivers could handle it, probably better’n he had. He reckoned the man weren’t as far past redemption as folk made out.

‘Here.’ Dow tossed something across the room and Craw caught it, coins snapping inside. ‘A double gild and then some. Get you started, out there.’

‘Thanks, Chief,’ said Craw, and meant it. He’d expected a knife in his back before a purse in his hand.

Dow stood his sword up on its end. ‘What you going to do?’

‘I was a carpenter. A thousand bloody years ago. Thought I might go back to it. Work some wood. You might shape a coffin or two, but you don’t bury many friends in that trade.’

‘Huh.’ Dow twisted the pommel gently between finger and thumb, the end of the sheath twisting into the dirt. ‘Already buried all mine. Except the ones I made my enemies. Maybe that’s where every fighter’s road leads, eh?’

‘If you follow it far enough.’ Craw stood there a moment longer but Dow didn’t answer. So he took a breath, and he turned to go.

‘It was pots for me.’

Craw stopped, hand on the doorknob, hairs prickling all the way up his neck. But Black Dow was just stood there, looking down at his hand. His scarred, and scabbed, and calloused hand.

‘I was apprentice to a potter.’ Dow snorted. ‘A thousand bloody years ago. Then the wars came, and I took up a sword instead. Always thought I’d go back to it, but … things happen.’ He narrowed his eyes, gently rubbing the tip of his thumb against the tips of his fingers. ‘The clay … used to make my hands … so soft. Imagine that.’ And he looked up, and he smiled. ‘Good luck, Craw.’

‘Aye,’ said Craw, and went outside, and shut the door behind him, and breathed out a long breath of relief. A few words and it was done. Sometimes a thing can seem an impossible leap, then when you do it you find it’s just been a little step all along. Shivers was standing where he had been, arms folded, and Craw clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Reckon it’s up to you, now.’

‘Is it?’ Someone else came forward into the torchlight, a long scar through shaved-stubble hair.

‘Wonderful,’ muttered Craw.

‘Hey, hey,’ she said. Somewhat of a surprise to see her here, but it saved him some time. It was her he had to tell next.

‘How’s the dozen?’ he asked.

‘All four of ’em are great.’

Craw winced. ‘Aye. Well. I need to tell you something.’ She raised one brow at him. Nothing for it but just to jump. ‘I’m done. I’m quitting.’

‘I know.’

‘You do?’

‘How else would I be taking your place?’

‘My place?’

‘Dow’s Second.’

Craw’s eyes opened up wide. He looked at Wonderful, then at Shivers, then back to her. ‘You?’

‘Why not me?’

‘Well, I just thought—’

‘When you quit the sun would stop rising for the rest of us? Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘What about your husband, though? Your sons? Thought you were going to—’

‘Last time I went to the farm was four years past.’ She tipped her head back, and there was a hardness in her eye Craw wasn’t used to seeing. ‘They were gone. No sign o’ where.’

‘But you went back not a month ago.’

‘Walked a day, sat by the river and fished. Then I came back to the dozen. Couldn’t face telling you. Couldn’t face the pity. This is all there is for the likes of us. You’ll see.’ She took his hand, and squeezed it, but his stayed limp. ‘Been an honour fighting with you, Craw. Look after yourself.’ And she pushed her way through the door, and shut it with a clatter, and left him behind, blinking at the silent wood.

‘You reckon you know someone, and then …’ Shivers clicked his tongue. ‘No one knows anyone. Not really.’

Craw swallowed. ‘Life’s riddled with surprises all right.’ And he turned his back on the old shack and was off into the gloom.

He’d daydreamed often enough about the grand farewell. Walking down an aisle of well-wishing Named Men and off to his bright future, back sore from all the clapping on it. Striding through a passageway of drawn swords, twinkling in the sunlight. Riding away, fist held high in salute as Carls cheered for him and women wept over his leaving, though where the women might have sprung from was anyone’s guess.

Sneaking away in the chill gloom as dawn crept up, unremarked and unremembered, not so much. But it’s ’cause real life is what it is that a man needs daydreams.

Most anyone with a name worth knowing was up at the Heroes, waiting to see Calder get slaughtered. Only Jolly Yon, Scorry Tiptoe and Flood were left to see him off. The remains of Craw’s dozen. And Beck, dark shadows under his eyes, the Father of Swords held in one pale fist. Craw could see the hurt in their faces, however they tried to plaster smiles over it. Like he was letting ’em down. Maybe he was.

He’d always prided himself on being well liked. Straight edge and that. Even so, his dead friends long ago got his living ones outnumbered, and they’d worked the advantage a good way further the last few days. Three of those that might’ve given him the warmest send-off were back to the mud at the top of the hill, and two more in the back of his cart.

He tried to drag the old blanket straight, but no tugging at the corners was going to make this square. Whirrun’s chin, and Drofd’s, and their noses, and their feet making sorry little tents of the threadbare old cloth. Some hero’s shroud. But the living could use the good blankets. The dead there was no warming.

‘Can’t believe you’re going,’ said Scorry.

‘Been saying for years I would.’

‘Exactly. You never did.’

Craw could only shrug. ‘Now I am.’

In his head saying goodbye to his own crew had always been like pressing hands before a battle. That same fierce tide of comradeship. Only more, because they all knew it was the last time, rather than just fearing it might be. But aside from the feeling of squeezing flesh, it was nothing like that. They seemed strangers, almost. Maybe he was like the corpse of a dead comrade, now. They just wanted him buried, so they could get on. For him there wouldn’t even be the worn-down ritual of heads bowed about the fresh-turned earth. There’d just be a goodbye that felt like a betrayal on both sides.

‘Ain’t staying for the show, then?’ asked Flood.

‘The duel?’ Or the murder, as it might be better put. ‘I seen enough blood, I reckon. The dozen’s yours, Yon.’

Yon raised an eyebrow at Scorry, and at Flood, and at Beck. ‘All of ’em?’

‘You’ll find more. We always have. Few days time you won’t even notice there’s aught missing.’ Sad fact was it was more’n likely true. That’s how it had always been, when they lost one man or another. Hard to imagine it’d be the same with yourself. That you’d be forgotten the way a pond forgets a stone tossed in. A few ripples and you’re gone. It’s in the nature of men to forget.

Yon was frowning at the blanket, and what was underneath. ‘If I die,’ he muttered, ‘who’ll find my sons for me—’

‘Maybe you should find ’em yourself, you thought o’ that? Find ’em yourself, Yon, and tell ’em what you are, and make amends, while you’ve got breath still to do it.’

Yon looked down at his boots. ‘Aye. Maybe.’ A silence comfortable as a spike up the arse. ‘Well, then. We got shields to hold, I reckon, up there with Wonderful.’

‘Right y’are,’ said Craw. Yon turned and walked off up the hill, shaking his head. Scorry gave a last nod then followed him.

‘So long, Chief,’ said Flood.

‘I guess I’m no one’s Chief no more.’

‘You’ll always be mine.’ And he limped off after the other two, leaving just Craw and Beck beside the cart. A lad he hadn’t even known two days before to say the last goodbye.

Craw sighed, and he hauled himself up into the seat, wincing at all the bruises he’d gained the last few days. Beck stood below, Father of Swords in both hands, sheathed point on the dirt. ‘I’ve got to hold a shield for Black Dow,’ he said. ‘Me. You ever done that?’

‘More’n once. There’s nothing to it. Just hold the circle, make sure no one leaves it. Stand by your Chief. Do the right thing, like you did yesterday.’

‘Yesterday,’ muttered Beck, staring down at the wheel of the cart, like he was staring right through the ground and didn’t like what he saw on the other side. ‘I didn’t tell you everything, yesterday. I wanted to, but …’

Craw frowned over his shoulder at the two shapes under the blanket. He could’ve done without hearing anyone’s confessions. He was carting enough weight around with his own mistakes. But Beck was already talking. Droning, flat, like a bee trapped in a hot room. ‘I killed a man, in Osrung. Not a Union one, though. One of ours. Lad called Reft. He stood, and fought, and I ran, and hid, and I killed him.’ Beck was still staring at the cartwheel, wet glistening in his eyes. ‘Stabbed him right through with my father’s sword. Took him for a Union man.’

Craw wanted just to snap those reins and go. But maybe he could help, and all his years wasted might be some use to someone. So he gritted his teeth, and leaned down, and put his hand on Beck’s shoulder. ‘I know it burns at you. Probably it always will. But the sad fact is, I’ve heard a dozen stories just like it in my time. A score. Wouldn’t raise much of an eyebrow from any man who’s seen a battle. This is the black business. Bakers make bread, and carpenters make houses, and we make dead men. All you can do is take each day as it comes. Try and do the best you can with what you’re given. You won’t always do the right thing, but you can try. And you can try to do the right thing next time. That, and stay alive.’

Beck shook his head. ‘I killed a man. Shouldn’t I pay?’

‘You killed a man?’ Craw raised his arms, helplessly let them drop. ‘It’s a battle. Everyone’s at it. Some live, some die, some pay, some don’t. If you’ve come through all right, be thankful. Try to earn it.’

‘I’m a fucking coward.’

‘Maybe.’ Craw jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Whirrun’s corpse. ‘There’s a hero. Tell me who’s better off.’

Beck took a shuddering breath. ‘Aye. I guess.’ He held up the Father of Swords and Craw took it under the crosspiece, hefted the great length of metal up and slid it carefully down in the back, next to Whirrun’s body. ‘You taking it now, then? He left it to you?’

‘He left it to the ground.’ Craw twitched the blanket across so it was out of sight. ‘Wanted it buried with him.’

‘Why?’ asked Beck. ‘Ain’t it God’s sword, fell from the sky? I thought it had to be passed on. Is it cursed?’

Craw took up the reins and turned back to the north. ‘Every sword’s a curse, boy.’ And he gave ’em a snap, and the wagon trundled off.

Away up the road.

Away from the Heroes.

By the Sword

Calder sat, and watched the guttering flames.

It was looking very much as if he’d used up all his cunning for the sake of another few hours alive. And cold, hungry, itchy, increasingly terrified hours at that. Sitting, staring across a fire at Shivers, bound wrists chafed and crossed legs aching and the damp working up through the seat of his trousers and making his arse clammy-cold.

But when a few hours is all you can get, you’ll do anything for them. Probably he would’ve done anything for a few more. Had anyone been offering. They weren’t. Like his brilliant ambitions the diamond-bright stars had slowly faded to nothing, crushed out as the first merciless signs of day slunk from the east, behind the Heroes. His last day.

‘How long ’til dawn?’

‘It’ll come when it comes,’ said Shivers.

Calder stretched out his neck and wriggled his shoulders, sore from slumping into twisted half-sleep with his hands tied, twitching through nightmares which, when he jerked awake, he felt faintly nostalgic for. ‘Don’t suppose you could see your way to untying my hands, at least?’

‘When it comes.’

How bloody disappointing it all was. What lofty hopes his father had held. ‘All for you,’ he used to say, a hand on Calder’s shoulder and a hand on Scale’s, ‘you’ll rule the North.’ What an ending, for a man who’d spent his life dreaming of being king. He’d be remembered, all right. For dying the bloodiest death in the North’s bloody history.

Calder sighed, ragged. ‘Things don’t tend to work out the way we imagine, do they?’

With a faint clink, clink, Shivers tapped his ring against his metal eye. ‘Not often.’

‘Life is, basically, fucking shit.’

‘Best to keep your expectations low. Maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.’

Calder’s expectations had plunged into an abyss but a pleasant surprise still didn’t seem likely. He flinched at the memory of the duels the Bloody-Nine had fought for his father. The blood-mad shriek of the crowd. The ring of shields about the edge of the circle. The ring of grim Named Men holding them. Making sure no one could leave until enough blood was spilled. He’d never dreamed he’d end up fighting in one. Dying in one.

‘Who’s holding the shields for me?’ he muttered, as much to fill the silence as anything.

‘I heard Pale-as-Snow offered, and old White-Eye Hansul. Caul Reachey too.’

‘He can hardly get out of it, can he, since I’m married to his daughter?’

‘He can hardly get out of it.’

‘Probably they’ve only asked for a shield so they don’t get sprayed with too much of my gore.’

‘Probably.’

‘Funny thing, gore. A sour annoyance to those it goes on and a bitter loss to those it comes out of. Where’s the upside, eh? Tell me that.’

Shivers shrugged. Calder worked his wrists against the rope, trying to keep the blood flowing to his fingers. It would be nice if he could hold on to his sword long enough to get killed with it in his hand, at least. ‘Got any advice for me?’

‘Advice?’

‘Aye, you’re some fighter.’

‘If you get a chance, don’t hesitate.’ Shivers frowned down at the ruby on his little finger. ‘Mercy and cowardice are the same.’

‘My father always used to say that nothing shows greater power than mercy.’

‘Not in the circle.’ And Shivers stood.

Calder held up his wrists. ‘It’s time?’

The knife glimmered pink with the dawn as it darted out and neatly slit the cord. ‘It’s time.’

‘We just wait?’ grunted Beck.

Wonderful turned her frown on him. ‘Unless you fancy doing a little dance out there. Get everyone warmed up.’

Beck didn’t fancy it. The circle of raked-over mud in the very centre of the Heroes looked a lonely place to be right then. Very bare, and very empty, while all about its pebble-marked edge folk were packed in tight. It was in a circle like this one his father had fought the Bloody-Nine. Fought, and died, and bad.

A lot of the great names of the North were holding shields for this one. Beside the leftovers of Craw’s dozen there was Brodd Tenways, Cairm Ironhead and Glama Golden on Dow’s half of the circle, and plenty of their Named Men around ’em.

Caul Reachey stood on the opposite side of the case, a couple of other old boys, none of ’em looking happy to be there. Would’ve been a sorry lot compared to Dow’s side if it hadn’t been for the biggest bastard Beck had ever seen, towering over the rest like a mountain peak above the foothills.

‘Who’s the monster?’ he muttered.

‘Stranger-Come-Knocking,’ Flood whispered back. ‘Chief of all the lands east of the Crinna. Bloody savages out there, and I hear he’s the worst.’

It was a savage pack the giant had at his back. Men all wild hair and wild twitching, pierced with bone and prickled with paint, dressed in skulls and tatters. Men who looked like they’d sprung straight from an old song, maybe the one about how Shubal the Wheel stole the crag lord’s daughter. How had it gone?

‘Here they come,’ grunted Yon. A disapproving mutter, a few sharp words, but mostly thick silence. The men on the other side of the circle parted and Shivers came through, dragging Calder under the arm.

He looked a long stretch less smug than when Beck first saw him, riding up to Reachey’s weapontake on his fine horse, but he was still grinning. A wonky, pale-faced, pink-eyed grin, but a grin still. Shivers let go of him, squelched heedless across the seven strides of empty muck leaving a trail of gently filling boot-prints, fell in beside Wonderful and took a shield from a man behind her.

Calder nodded across the circle at each man, like they were a set of old friends. He nodded to Beck. When Beck had first seen that smirk it’d looked full of pride, full of mockery, but maybe they’d both changed since. If Calder was laughing now it looked like he was only laughing at himself. Beck nodded back, solemn. He knew what it was to face your death, and he reckoned it took some bones to smile at a time like that. Some bones.

Calder was so scared the faces across the circle were just a dizzying smear. But he was set on meeting the Great Leveller as his father had, and his brother too. With some pride. He kept that in front of him, and he clung on to his smirk, nodding at faces too blurred to recognise as if they’d turned out for his wedding rather than his burial.

He had to talk. Fill the time with blather. Anything to stop him thinking. Calder grabbed Reachey’s hand, the one without the battered shield on it. ‘You came!’

The old man hardly met his eye. ‘Least I could do.’

‘Most you could do, far as I’m concerned. Tell Seff for me … well, tell her I’m sorry.’

‘I will.’

‘And cheer up. This isn’t a funeral.’ He nudged the old man in the ribs. ‘Yet.’ The scatter of chuckles he got for that made him feel a little less like shitting his trousers. There was a soft, low laugh among them, too. One that came from very high up. Stranger-Come-Knocking, and by all appearances on Calder’s side. ‘You’re holding a shield for me?’

The giant tapped the tiny-looking circle of wood with his club of a forefinger. ‘I am.’

‘What’s your interest?’

‘In the clash of vengeful steel and the blood watering the thirsty earth? In the roar of the victor and the scream of the slaughtered? What could interest me more than seeing men give all and take all, life and death balanced on the edge of a blade?’

Calder swallowed. ‘Why on my side, though?’

‘There was room.’

‘Right.’ That was about all he had to offer now. A good spot to watch his own murder. ‘Did you come for the room?’ he asked Pale-as-Snow.

‘I came for you, and for Scale, and for your father.’

‘And me,’ said White-Eye Hansul.

After all the hate he’d shrugged off, that bit of loyalty almost cracked his smirk wide open. ‘Means a lot,’ he croaked. The really sad thing was that it was true. He thumped White-Eye’s shield with his fist, squeezed Pale-as-Snow’s shoulder. ‘Means a lot.’

But the time for hugs and damp eyes was fading rapidly into the past. There was noise in the crowd across the circle, then movement, then the shield-carriers stood aside. The Protector of the North strolled through the gap, easy as a gambler who’d already won the big bet, his black standard looming behind him like the shadow of death indeed. He’d stripped down to a leather vest, arms and shoulders heavy with branched vein and twisted sinew, the chain Calder’s father used to wear hanging around his neck, diamond winking.

Hands clapped, weapons rattled, metal clanged on metal, everyone straining to get the faintest approving glance from the man who’d seen off the Union. Everyone cheering, even on Calder’s side of the circle. He could hardly blame them. They’d still have to scratch a living when Dow had carved him into weeping chunks.

‘You made it, then.’ Dow jerked his head towards Shivers. ‘I was worried my dog might’ve eaten you in the night.’ There was a good deal more laughter than the joke deserved but Shivers didn’t so much as twitch, his scarred face a dead blank. Dow grinned around at the Heroes, their lichen-spotted tops peering over the heads of the crowd, and opened his arms, fingers spread. ‘Looks like we got a circle custom made for the purpose, don’t it? Quite the venue!’

‘Aye,’ said Calder. That was about all the bravado he could manage.

‘Normally there’s a form to follow.’ Dow turned one finger round and round. ‘Laying out the matter to decide, listing the pedigree of the champions and so on, but I reckon we can skip that. We all know the matter. We all know you got no pedigree.’ Another laugh, and Dow spread his arms again. ‘And if I start naming all the men I’ve put back in the mud we’ll never get started!’

A flood of thigh-slapping manly amusement. Seemed Dow was intent on proving himself the better wit as well as the better fighter, and it was no fairer a contest. Winners always get the louder laughs and, for once, Calder was out of jokes. Dead men aren’t that funny, maybe. So he just stood as the crowd quieted and left only the gentle wind over the muck, the flapping of the black standard, a bird chirruping from the top of one of the stones.

Dow heaved out a sigh. ‘Sorry to say I’ve had to send to Carleon for your wife. She stood hostage for you, didn’t she?’

‘Let her be, you bastard!’ barked Calder, nearly choking on a surge of anger. ‘She’s got no part in this!’

‘You’re in no place to tell me what’s what, you little shit.’ Dow turned his head without taking his eyes off Calder, and spat into the mud. ‘I’ve half a mind to burn her. Give her the bloody cross, just for the fucking lesson. Wasn’t that the way your father liked to do it, back in the old days?’ Dow held up his open palm. ‘But I can afford to be generous. Reckon I’ll let it pass. Out of respect to Caul Reachey, since he’s the one man in the North who still does what he fucking says he will.’

‘I’m right grateful for it,’ grunted Reachey, still not meeting Calder’s eye.

‘’Spite of my reputation, I don’t much care for hanging women. I get any softer they’ll have to call me White Dow!’ Another round of laughter, and Dow let go a flurry of punches at the air, so fast Calder could hardly count how many. ‘Reckon I’ll just have to kill you twice as much to make up for it.’

Something poked him in the ribs. The pommel of his sword, Pale-as-Snow handing it over with a look that said sorry, belt wrapped around the sheath.

‘Oh, right. You got any advice?’ asked Calder, hoping the old warrior would narrow his eyes and spout some razor observations about how Dow led with the point too much, or dipped his shoulder too low, or was awfully vulnerable to a middle cut.

All he did was puff out his cheeks. ‘It’s fucking Black Dow,’ he muttered.

‘Right.’ Calder swallowed sour spit. ‘Thanks for that.’ It was all so disappointing. He drew his sword, held the sheath uncertainly for a moment, then handed it back. Couldn’t see why he’d have any need for it again. There was no talking his way out of this. Sometimes you have to fight. He took a long breath and a step forwards, his worn-out Styrian boot squelching into the muck. Only a little step over a ring of pebbles, but still the hardest he’d ever taken.

Dow stretched his head one way, then the other, then drew his own blade, taking his time about it, metal hissing softly. ‘This was the Bloody-Nine’s sword. I beat him, man against man. You know. You were there. So what do you reckon your fucking chances are?’ Looking at that long grey blade, Calder didn’t reckon his chances were very good at all. ‘Didn’t I warn you? If you tried to play your own games things’d get ugly.’ Dow swept the faces around the circle with his scowl. It was true, there were few pretty ones among them. ‘But you had to preach peace. Had to spread your little lies around. You had to—’

‘Shut your fucking hole and get on with it!’ screamed Calder. ‘You boring old cunt!’

A mutter went up, then some laughter, then another, bowel-loosening round of clattering metal. Dow shrugged, and took his own step forwards.

There was a rattle as men eased inwards, rims of their shields scraping, locking together. Locking them in. A round wall of bright painted wood. Green trees, dragon heads, rivers running, eagles flying, some scarred and beaten from the work of the last few days. A ring of hungry faces, teeth bared in snarls and grins, eyes bright with expectation. Just Calder, and Black Dow, and no way out but blood.

Calder probably should’ve been thinking about how he might beat the long, long odds, and get out of this alive. Opening gambits, thrust or feint, footwork, all the rest. Because he had a chance, didn’t he? Two men fight, there’s always a chance. But all he could think about was Seff’s face, and how beautiful it was. He wished he’d been able to see it one more time. Tell her that he loved her, or not to worry, or to forget him and live her life or some other useless shit. His father always told him, ‘You find out what a man really is, when he’s facing death.’ It seemed, after all, he was a sentimental little prick. Maybe we all are at the end.

Calder raised his sword, open hand out in front, the way he thought he remembered being taught. Had to attack. That’s what Scale would’ve said. If you’re not attacking you’re losing. He realised too late his hand was trembling.

Dow looked him up and down, his own blade hanging carelessly at his side, and snorted a joyless chuckle. ‘I guess not every duel’s worth singing about.’ And he darted forwards, lashing out underhand with a flick of his wrist.

Calder really shouldn’t have been surprised to see a sword coming at him. That was what a duel was all about, after all. But even so he was pitifully unprepared. He lurched a pace back and Dow’s sword crashed into his with numbing force, near ripping it from his hand, sending the blade flapping sideways and him stumbling, spare arm flailing for balance, all thought of attacking barged away by the overwhelming need to survive just one more moment.

Fortunately White-Eye Hansul’s shield caught his back and spared him the indignity of sprawling in the mud, pushed him up straight in time to reel sideways as Dow sprang again, sword catching Calder’s with a clang and wrenching his wrist the other way, a hearty cheer going up. Calder floundered back, cold with terror, trying to put as much space between them as he could, but the ring of shields was only so big. That was the point of it.

They slowly circled each other, Dow strutting with easy grace, sword swinging loose, as cocky and comfortable in a duel to the death as Calder might’ve been in his own bedchamber. Calder took the doddery, uncertain steps of a child just learning to walk, mouth hanging open, already breathing hard, cringing and stumbling at Dow’s every tiniest taunting movement. The noise was deafening, breath going up in smoky puffs as the onlookers roared and hissed and hooted their support and their hatred and their—

Calder blinked, blinded for a moment. Dow had worked him around so the rising sun stabbed past the ragged edge of the standard and right in Calder’s eyes. He saw metal glint, waved his sword helplessly, felt something thud into his left shoulder and spin him sideways, making a breathless squeal, waiting for the agony. He slid, righted himself, was shocked to see none of his own blood spraying. Dow had only slapped him with the flat. Toying with him. Making a show of it.

Laughter swept through the crowd, enough to sting some anger up in Calder. He gritted his teeth, hefting his sword. If he wasn’t attacking he was losing. He lunged at Dow but it was so slippery underfoot he couldn’t get any snap in it. Dow just turned sideways and caught Calder’s wobbling sword as he laboured past, blades scraping together, hilts locking.

‘Fucking weak,’ hissed Dow, and flung Calder away like a man might swat away a fly, heels kicking hopelessly at the slop as he reeled across the circle.

The men on Dow’s side were less helpful than Hansul had been. A shield cracked Calder in the back of the skull and sent him sprawling. For a moment he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, skin fizzing all over. Then he was dragging himself up, limbs feeling like they weighed a ton a piece, the circle of mud tipping wildly about, jeering voices all booming and burbling.

He didn’t have his sword. Reached for it. A boot came down and squashed his hand into the cold mud, spraying flecks of it in his face. He gave a gasp, more shock than pain. Then another, definitely pain as Dow twisted his heel, crushing Calder’s fingers deeper.

‘Prince of the North?’ The point of Dow’s sword pricked into Calder’s neck, twisting his head towards the bright sky, making him slither helplessly up onto all fours. ‘You’re a fucking embarrassment, boy.’ And Calder gasped as the point flicked his head back and left a burning cut up the middle of his chin.

Dow was trotting away, arms up, dragging out the show, a half-circle of leering, gurning, sneering faces showing above the shields behind him, all shouting. ‘Black … Dow … Black … Dow …’ Tenways chanting gleefully along, and Golden, and Shivers just frowning, weapons thrusting at the air behind them in time.

Calder worked his hand trembling out of the mud. From what he could tell as red-black spots pattered onto it from his chin, not all of his finger-joints were where they used to be.

‘Get up!’ An urgent voice behind him. Pale-as-Snow, maybe. ‘Get up!’

‘Why?’ he whispered at the ground. The shame of it. Butchered by an old thug for the amusement of baying morons. He couldn’t say it was undeserved, but that made it no more appealing, and no less painful either. His eyes flickered around the circle, desperately seeking a way out. But there was no way through the thicket of stomping boots, punching fists, twisted mouths, rattling shields. No way out but blood.

He took a few breaths until the world stopped spinning, then fished his sword from the mud with his left hand and got ever so slowly to his feet. Probably he should’ve been feigning weakness, but he didn’t know how he could look any weaker than he felt. He tried to shake the fuzz from his head. He had a chance, didn’t he? Had to attack. But by the dead, he was tired. Already. By the dead, his broken hand hurt, cold all the way to his shoulder.

Dow flicked his sword spinning into the air with a flourish. Left himself open for a moment in a show of warrior’s arrogance. The moment for Calder to strike, and save himself, and earn a place in the songs besides. He tensed his leaden legs to spring, but by then Dow had already snatched the sword from the air with his left hand and was standing ready, his warrior’s arrogance well deserved. They faced each other as the crowd slowly quieted, and the blood ran from Calder’s slit chin and worked its way tickling down his neck.

‘Your father died badly, as I remember,’ Dow called to him. ‘Head smashed to pulp in the circle.’ Calder stood in silence, saving his breath for another lunge, trying to judge the space between them. ‘Hardly had a face at all once the Bloody-Nine was done with him.’ A big step and a swing. Now, while Dow was busy boasting. Two men fight, there’s always a chance. Dow grinned. ‘A bad death. Don’t worry, though—’

Calder sprang, teeth rattling as his left boot thumped down and sprayed wet dirt, his sword going high and slicing hard towards Dow’s skull. There was a slapping of skin as Dow caught Calder’s left hand in his right, crushing Calder’s fist around the hilt of his sword, blade wrenched up to waggle harmlessly at the sky.

‘—I’ll make sure yours is worse,’ Dow finished.

Calder pawed at Dow’s shoulder with his broken hand, fingers flopping uselessly at his father’s chain. The thumb still worked, though, and he scraped at Dow’s pitted cheek with the nail, drawing a little bead of blood, growling as he tried to force it into the hole where Dow’s ear used to be along with all his disappointment, and his desperation, and his anger, finding that flap of scar with the tip, baring his teeth as—

The pommel of Dow’s sword drove into his ribs with a hollow thud and pain flashed through him to the roots of his hair. He probably would’ve screamed if he’d had any breath in him, but it was all gone in one ripping, vomiting wheeze. He tottered, bent over, bile washing into his frozen mouth and dangling in a string from his bloody lip.

‘Thought you were the big thinker.’ Dow dragged him up by his left hand so he could hiss it right in his face. ‘Thought you could get the better o’ me? In the circle? Don’t look too clever now, do you?’ The pommel crunched into Calder’s ribs just as he was taking a shuddering breath and drove it whimpering out again, left him limp as a wet sheepskin. ‘Does he?’ The crowd heckled and cackled and spat, rattled their shields and shrieked for blood. ‘Hold this.’ Dow tossed his sword through the air and Shivers caught it by the hilt.

‘Stand up, fucker.’ Dow’s hand thumped shut around Calder’s throat, quick and final as a bear trap. ‘For once in your life, stand up.’ And Dow hauled Calder straight, not able to stand by himself, not able to move his one good hand or the sword still uselessly stuck in it, not able even to breathe. Singularly unpleasant, having your windpipe squeezed shut. Calder squirmed helplessly. His mouth tasted of sick. His face was burning, burning. It always catches people by surprise, the moment of their death, even when they should see it coming. They always think they’re special, somehow expect a reprieve. But no one’s special. Dow squeezed harder, making the bones in Calder’s neck click. His eyes felt like they were going to pop. Everything was getting bright.

‘You think this is the end?’ Dow grinned as he lifted Calder higher, feet almost leaving the mud. ‘I’m just getting started, you fu—’

There was a sharp crack and blood sprayed up, dark streaks against the sky. Calder lurched back clumsily, gasping as his throat and his sword hand came free, near slipping over as Dow fell against him then flopped face down in the filth.

Blood gushed from his split skull, spattering Calder’s ruined boots.

Time stopped.

Every voice sputtered out, coughed off, leaving the circle in sudden, breathless silence. Every eye fixed on the bubbling wound in the back of Black Dow’s head. Caul Shivers stood glowering down in the midst of those gaping faces, the sword that had been the Bloody-Nine’s in his fist, the grey blade dashed and speckled with Black Dow’s blood.

‘I’m no dog,’ he said.

Calder’s eyes flicked to Tenways’, just as his flicked to Calder’s. Both their mouths open, both doing the sums. Tenways was Black Dow’s man. But Black Dow was dead, and everything was changed. Tenways’ left eye twitched, just a fraction.

You get a chance, don’t hesitate. Calder flung himself forward, not much more than falling, his sword coming down as Tenways reached for the hilt of his, eyes going wide. He tried to bring his shield up, got it tangled with the man beside him, and Calder’s blade split his rashy face open right down to his nose, blood showering out across the men beside him.

Just goes to show, a poor fighter can beat a great one easily, even with his left hand. As long as he’s the one with the drawn sword.

Beck looked around as he felt Shivers move. Saw the blade flash over and stared, skin prickling, as Dow hit the muck. Then he went for his sword. Wonderful caught his wrist before it got there.

‘No.’

Beck flinched as Calder lurched at him, blade swinging. There was a hollow click and blood spattered around them, a spot on Beck’s face. He tried to shake Wonderful off, get at his sword, but Scorry’s hand was on his shield arm, dragging him back. ‘The right thing’s a different thing for every man,’ hissed in his ear.

Calder stood swaying, his mouth wide open, his heart pounding so hard it was on the point of blowing his head apart, his eyes flickering from one stricken face to another. Tenways’ blood-speckled Carls. Golden, and Ironhead, and their Named Men. Dow’s own guards, Shivers in the midst of them, the sword that had split Dow’s head still in his hand. Any moment now the circle would erupt into an orgy of carnage and it was anyone’s guess who’d come out of it alive. Only certain thing seemed to be that he wouldn’t.

‘Come on!’ he croaked, taking a wobbling step towards Tenways’ men. Just to get it over with. Just to get it done.

But they stumbled back as if Calder was Skarling himself. He couldn’t understand why. Until he felt a shadow fall across him, then a great weight on his shoulder. So heavy it almost made his knees buckle.

The huge hand of Stranger-Come-Knocking. ‘This was well done,’ said the giant, ‘and fairly done too, for anything that wins is fair in war, and the greatest victory is the one that takes the fewest blows. Bethod was King of the Northmen. So should his son be. I, Stranger-Come-Knocking, Chief of a Hundred Tribes, stand with Black Calder.’

Whether the giant thought whoever was in charge stuck Black before his name, or whether he thought Calder claimed it having won, or whether he just thought it suited, who could say? Either way it stuck.

‘And I.’ Reachey’s hand slapped down on Calder’s other shoulder, his grinning, grizzled face beside it. ‘I stand with my son. With Black Calder.’ Now the proud father, nothing but support. Dow was dead, and everything was changed.

‘And I.’ Pale-as-Snow stepped up on the other side, and suddenly all those words Calder had thought wasted breath, all those seeds he’d thought dead and forgotten, sprouted forth and bore amazing blooms.

‘And I.’ Ironhead was next, and as he stepped from his men he gave Calder the faintest nod.

‘And I.’ Golden, desperate not to let his rival get ahead of him. ‘I’m for Black Calder!’

‘Black Calder!’ men were shouting all around, urged on by their Chiefs. ‘Black Calder!’ All competing to shout it loudest, as though loyalty to this sudden new way of doing things could be proved through volume. ‘Black Calder!’ As though this had been what everyone wanted all along. What they’d expected.

Shivers squatted down and dragged the tangled chain over Dow’s ruined head. He offered it to Calder, dangling from one finger, the diamond his father had worn swinging gently, made half a ruby by blood.

‘Looks like you win,’ said Shivers.

In spite of the very great pain, Calder found it in himself to smirk.

‘Doesn’t it, though?’

What was left of Craw’s dozen slipped unnoticed back through the press even as most of the crowd were straining forwards.

Wonderful still had Beck’s arm, Scorry at his shoulder. They bundled him away from the circle, past a set of wild-eyed men already busy tearing Dow’s standard down and ripping it up between ’em, Yon and Flood behind. They weren’t the only ones sloping off. Even as Black Dow’s War Chiefs were stumbling over his corpse to kiss Black Calder’s arse, other men were drifting away. Men who could feel which way the wind was blowing, and thought if they stuck about it might blow ’em right into the mud. Men who’d stood tight with Dow, or had scores with Bethod and didn’t fancy testing his son’s mercy.

They stopped in the long shadow of one of the stones, and Wonderful set her shield down against it and took a careful look around. Folk had their own worries though, and no one was paying ’em any mind.

She reached into her coat, pulled something out and slapped it into Yon’s hand. ‘There’s yours.’ Yon even had something like a grin as he closed his big fist around it, metal clicking inside. She slipped another into Scorry’s hand, a third for Flood. Then she offered one to Beck. A purse. And with plenty in it too, by the way it was bulging. He stood, staring at it, until Wonderful shoved it under his nose. ‘You get a half-share.’

‘No,’ said Beck.

‘You’re new, boy. A half-share is more’n fair—’

‘I don’t want it.’

They were all frowning at him now. ‘He don’t want it,’ muttered Scorry.

‘We should’ve done …’ Beck weren’t at all sure what they should’ve done. ‘The right thing,’ he finished, lamely.

‘The what?’ Yon’s face screwed up with scorn. ‘I hoped to have heard the last of that shit! Spend twenty years in the black business and have naught to show for it but scars, then you can preach to me about the right fucking thing, you little bastard!’ He took a step at Beck but Wonderful held her arm out to stop him.

‘What kind of right ends up with more men dead than less?’ Her voice was soft, no anger in it. ‘Well? D’you know how many friends I lost the last few days? What’s right about that? Dow was done. One way or another, Dow was done. So we should’ve fought for him? Why? He’s nothing to me. No better’n Calder or anyone else. You saying we should’ve died for that, Red Beck?’

Beck paused for a moment, mouth open. ‘I don’t know. But I don’t want the money. Whose is it, even?’

‘Ours,’ she said, looking him right in the eye.

‘This ain’t right.’

‘Straight edge, eh?’ She slowly nodded, and her eyes looked tired. ‘Well. Good luck with that. You’ll need it.’

Flood looked a patch guilty, but he wasn’t giving aught back. Scorry had a little smile as he dropped his shield on the grass and sank cross-legged onto it, humming some tune in which noble deeds were done. Yon was frowning as he rooted through the purse, working out how much he’d got.

‘What would Craw have made o’ this?’ muttered Beck.

Wonderful shrugged. ‘Who cares? Craw’s gone. We got to make our own choices.’

‘Aye.’ Beck looked from one face to another. ‘Aye.’ And he walked off.

‘Where you going?’ Flood called after him.

He didn’t answer.

He passed by one of the Heroes, shoulder brushing the ancient rock, and kept moving. He hopped over the drystone wall, heading north down the hillside, shook the shield off his arm and left it in the long grass. Men stood about, talking fast. Arguing. One pulled a knife, another backing off, hands up. Panic spreading along with the news. Panic and anger, fear and delight.

‘What happened?’ someone asked him, grabbing at his cloak. ‘Did Dow win?’

Beck shook his hand off. ‘I don’t know.’ He strode on, almost breaking into a run, down the hill and away. He only knew one thing. This life weren’t for him. The songs might be full of heroes, but the only ones here were stones.

The Currents of History

Finree had gone where the wounded lay, to do what women were supposed to do when a battle ended. To soothe parched throats with water tipped to desperate lips. To bind wounds with bandages torn from the hems of their dresses. To calm the dying with soft singing that reminded them of Mother.

Instead of which she stood staring. Appalled by the mindless chorus of weeping, whining, desperate slobbering. By the flies, and the shit, and the blood-soaked sheets. By the calmness of the nurses, floating among the human wreckage as serene as white ghosts. Appalled more than anything else by the numbers. Laid out in ranks on pallets or sheets or cold ground. Companies of them. Battalions.

‘There are more than a dozen,’ a young surgeon told her.

‘There are scores,’ she croaked back, struggling not to cover her mouth at the stink.

‘No. More than a dozen of these tents. Do you know how to change a dressing?’

If there was such a thing as a romantic wound there was no room for them here. Every peeled-back bandage a grotesque striptease with some fresh oozing nightmare beneath. A hacked-open arse, a caved-in jaw with most of the teeth and half the tongue gone, a hand neatly split leaving only thumb and forefinger, a punctured belly leaking piss. One man had been cut across the back of the neck and could not move, only lie on his face, breath softly wheezing. His eyes followed her as she passed and the look in them made her cold all over. Bodies skinned, burned, ripped open at strange angles, their secret insides laid open to the world in awful violation. Wounds that would ruin men as long as they lived. Ruin those who loved them.

She tried to keep her eyes on her work, such as it was, chewing her tongue, trembling fingers fumbling with knots and pins. Trying not to listen to the whispers for help that she did not know how to give. That no one could give. Red spots appearing on the new bandages even before she finished, and growing, and growing, and she was forcing down tears, and forcing down sick, and on to the next, who was missing his left arm above the elbow, the left side of his face covered by bandages, and—

‘Finree.’

She looked up and realised, to her cold horror, that it was Colonel Brint. They stared at each other for what felt like for ever, in awful silence, in that awful place.

‘I didn’t know …’ There was so much she did not know she hardly knew how to continue.

‘Yesterday,’ he said, simply.

‘Are you …’ She almost asked him if he was all right, but managed to bite the words off. The answer was horribly obvious. ‘Do you need—’

‘Have you heard anything? About Aliz?’ The name alone was enough to make her guts cramp up even further. She shook her head. ‘You were with her. Where were you held?’

‘I don’t know. I was hooded. They took me away and sent me back.’ And oh, how glad she was that Aliz had been left behind in the dark, and not her. ‘I don’t know where she’ll be now …’ Though she could guess. Perhaps Brint could too. Perhaps he was spending all his time guessing.

‘Did she say anything?’

‘She was … very brave.’ Finree managed to force her face into the sickly semblance of a smile. That was what you were supposed to do, wasn’t it? Lie? ‘She said she loved you.’ She put a halting hand on his arm. The one he still had. ‘She said … not to worry.’

‘Not to worry,’ he muttered, staring at her with one bloodshot eye. Whether he was comforted, or outraged, or simply did not believe a word of her blame-shirking platitudes she could not tell. ‘If I could just know.’

Finree did not think it would help him to know. It was not helping her. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, unable even to look at him any longer. ‘I tried … I did everything I could, but …’ That, at least, was true. Wasn’t it? She gave Brint’s limp arm one last squeeze. ‘I have to … get some more bandages—’

‘Will you come back?’

‘Yes,’ she said, lurching up, not sure if she was still lying, ‘of course I will.’ And she almost tripped over her feet in her haste to escape that nightmare, thanking the Fates over and over and over that they had chosen her for saving.

Sick of penance, she wandered up the hillside path towards her father’s headquarters. Past a pair of corporals dancing a drunken jig to the music of a squeaky fiddle. Past a row of women washing shirts in a brook. Past a row of soldiers queuing eagerly for the king’s gold, gleaming metal in the paymaster’s fingers glimpsed through the press of bodies. A small crowd of yammering salesmen, conmen and pimps had already gathered about the far end of the line like gulls about a patch of crumbs, realising, no doubt, that peace would soon put them out of business and give honest men the chance to thrive.

Not far from the barn she passed General Mitterick, chaperoned by a few of his staff, and he gave her a solemn nod. Right away she felt something was wrong. Usually his intolerable smugness was reliable as the dawn. Then she saw Bayaz step from the low doorway, and the feeling grew worse. He stood aside to let her pass with all the smugness Mitterick had been missing.

‘Fin.’ Her father stood alone in the middle of the dim room. He gave her a puzzled smile. ‘Well, there it is.’ Then he sat down in a chair, gave a shuddering sigh and undid his top button. She had not seen him do that during the day in twenty years.

She strode back into the open air. Bayaz had made it no more than a few dozen strides, speaking softly to his curly-headed henchman.

‘You! I want to speak to you!’

‘And I to you, in fact. What a happy chance.’ The Magus turned to his servant. ‘Take him the money, then, as we agreed, and … send for the plumbers.’ The servant bowed and backed respectfully away. ‘Now, what can I—’

‘You cannot replace him.’

‘And we are speaking of?’

‘My father!’ she snapped. ‘As you well know!’

‘I did not replace him.’ Bayaz looked almost amused. ‘Your father had the good grace, and the good sense, to resign.’

‘He is the best man for the task!’ It was an effort to stop herself from grabbing the Magus’ bald head and biting it. ‘The one man who did a thing to limit this pointless bloody slaughter! That puffed-up fool Mitterick? He charged half his division to their deaths yesterday! The king needs men who—’

‘The king needs men who obey.’

‘You do not have the authority!’ Her voice was cracking. ‘My father is a lord marshal with a chair on the Closed Council, only the king himself can remove him!’

‘Oh, the shame! Undone by the very rules of government I myself drafted!’ Bayaz stuck out his bottom lip as he reached into his coat pocket and slid out a scroll with a heavy red seal. ‘Then I suppose this carries no weight either.’ He gently unrolled it, thick parchment crackling faintly. Finree found herself suddenly breathless as the Magus cleared his throat.

‘By royal decree, Harod dan Brock is to be restored to his father’s seat on the Open Council. Some of the family estates near Keln will be returned, along with lands near Ostenhorm from which, it will be hoped, your husband will attend to his new responsibilities as lord governor of Angland.’ Bayaz turned the paper around and brought it closer, her eyes darting over the blocks of masterful calligraphy like a miser’s over a chest of jewels.

‘How could the king not be moved by such loyalty, such bravery, such sacrifice as the young Lord Brock displayed?’ Bayaz leaned close. ‘Not to mention the courage and tenacity of his wife who, captured by the Northmen, mark you, poked Black Dow in the eye and demanded the release of sixty prisoners! Why, his August Majesty would have to be made of stone. He is not, in case you were wondering. Few men less so, indeed. He wept when he read the despatch that described your husband’s heroic assault upon the bridge. Wept. Then he ordered this paper drawn up, and signed it within the hour.’ The Magus leaned closer yet, so she could almost feel his breath upon her face. ‘I daresay … if one were closely to inspect this document … one could see the marks of his Majesty’s earnest tears … staining the vellum.’

For the first time since it had been produced, Finree shifted her eyes from the scroll. She was close enough to see each grey hair of Bayaz’ beard, each brown liver spot on his bald pate, each deep, hard crease in his skin. ‘It would take a week for the despatch to reach him and another week for the edict to return. It has only been a day since—’

‘Call it magic. His Majesty’s carcass may be a week away in Adua, but his right hand?’ Bayaz held his own up between them. ‘His right hand is a little closer by. But none of that matters now.’ He stepped back, sighing, and started to roll the parchment up. ‘Since you say I have not the authority. I shall burn this worthless paper, shall I?’

‘No!’ She had to stop herself snatching it from his hand. ‘No.’

‘You no longer object to your father’s replacement?’

She bit her lip for a moment. War is hell, and all that, but it presents opportunities. ‘He resigned.’

‘Did he?’ Bayaz smiled wide, but his green eyes stayed glittering hard. ‘You impress me once again. My earnest congratulations on your husband’s meteoric rise to power. And your own, of course … Lady Governess.’ He held out the scroll by one handle. She took it by the other. He did not let go.

‘Remember this, though. People love heroes, but new ones can always be found. With one finger of one hand I make you. With one finger of one hand …’ He put his finger under her chin and pushed it up, sending a stab of pain through her stiff neck. ‘I can unmake you.’

She swallowed. ‘I understand.’

‘Then I wish you good day!’ And Bayaz released her and the scroll, all smiles again. ‘Please convey the happy news to your husband, though I must ask that you keep it between yourselves for the time being. People might not appreciate, as you do, quite how the magic works. I shall convey your husband’s acceptance to his Majesty along with the news that he made the offer. Shall I?’

Finree cleared her throat. ‘By all means.’

‘My colleagues on the Closed Council will be delighted that the matter has been put to rest so swiftly. You must visit Adua when your husband is recovered. The formalities of his appointment. A parade, or some such. Hours of pomp in the Lords’ Round. Breakfast with the queen.’ Bayaz raised one eyebrow as he turned away. ‘You really should procure some better clothes. Something with a heroic air.’

The room was clean and bright, light streaming in through a window and across the bed. No sobbing. No blood. No missing limbs. No awful not knowing. The luck of it. One arm was bound under the covers, the other lying pale on the sheet, knuckles scabbed over, gently rising and falling with his breath.

‘Hal.’ He grunted, eyelids flickering open. ‘Hal, it’s me.’

‘Fin.’ He reached up and touched her cheek with his fingertips. ‘You came.’

‘Of course.’ She folded his hand in hers. ‘How are you?’

He shifted, winced, then gave a weak smile. ‘Bit stiff, honestly, but lucky. Damn lucky to have you. I heard you dragged me out of the rubble. Shouldn’t I be the one rushing to your rescue?’

‘If it helps it was Bremer dan Gorst who found you and carried you back. I just ran around crying, really.’

‘You’ve always cried easily, it’s one thing I love about you.’ His eyes started to drift shut. ‘I suppose I can live with Gorst … doing the saving …’

She squeezed his hand tighter. ‘Hal, listen to me, something has happened. Something wonderful.’

‘I heard.’ His eyelids moved lazily. ‘Peace.’

She shrugged it off. ‘Not that. Well, yes, that, but …’ She leaned over him, wrapping her other hand around his. ‘Hal, listen to me. You’re getting your father’s seat in the Open Council.’

‘What?’

‘Some of his lands, too. They want us … you … the king wants you to take Meed’s place.’

Hal blinked. ‘As general of his division?’

‘As lord governor of Angland.’

For a moment he looked simply stunned then, as he studied her face, worried. ‘Why me?’

‘Because you’re a good man.’ And a good compromise. ‘A hero, apparently. Your deeds have come to the notice of the king.’

‘Hero?’ He snorted. ‘How did you do it?’ He tried to get up onto his elbows but she put a hand on his chest and held him gently down.

Now was the opportunity to tell him the truth. The idea barely crossed her mind. ‘You did it. You were right after all. Hard work and loyalty and all those things. Leading from the front. That’s how you get on.’

‘But—’

‘Shhhh.’ And she kissed him on one side of the lips, and on the other, and in the middle. His breath was foul, but she did not care. She was not about to let him ruin this. ‘We can talk about it later. You rest, now.’

‘I love you,’ he whispered.

‘I love you too.’ Gently stroking his face as he slipped back into sleep. It was true. He was a good man. One of the best. Honest, brave, loyal to a fault. They were well matched. Optimist and pessimist, dreamer and cynic. And what is love anyway, but finding someone who suits you? Someone who makes up for your shortcomings?

Someone you can work with. Work on.

Terms

‘They’re late,’ grumbled Mitterick.

The table had six chairs around it. His Majesty’s new lord marshal occupied one, stuffed into a dress uniform swaddled with braid and too tight about his neck. Bayaz occupied another, drumming his thick fingers upon the tabletop. The Dogman slumped in the third, frowning up towards the Heroes, a muscle on the side of his head occasionally twitching.

Gorst stood a pace behind Mitterick’s chair, arms folded. Beside him was Bayaz’ servant, a map of the north rolled up in his hands. Behind them, posed stiffly within the ring of stones but out of earshot, were a handful of the most senior remaining officers of the army. A sadly denuded complement. Meed, and Wetterlant, and Vinkler, and plenty more beside could not be with us. Jalenhorm too. Gorst frowned up towards the Heroes. Standing on first name terms with me is as good as a death sentence, it seems. His Majesty’s Twelfth Regiment were all in attendance, though, arrayed in parade ground order just outside the Children on the south side, their forest of shouldered halberds glittering in the chilly sun. A little reminder that we seek peace today, but are more than prepared for the alternative.

In spite of his battered head, burning cheek, a score of other cuts and scrapes and the countless bruises outside and in, Gorst was more than prepared for the alternative as well. Itching for it, in fact. What employment would I find in peacetime, after all? Teach swordsmanship to sneering young officers? Lurk about the court like a lame dog, hoping for scraps? Sent as royal observer to the sewers of Keln? Or give up training, and run to fat, and become an embarrassing drunk trading on old stories of almost-glory. You know that’s Bremer dan Gorst, who was once the king’s First Guard? Let’s buy the squeaking joke a drink! Let’s buy him ten so we can watch him piss himself!

Gorst felt his frown grow deeper. Or … should I take up Black Dow’s offer? Should I go where they sing songs about men like me instead of sniggering at their disgrace? Where peace need never come at all? Bremer dan Gorst, hero, champion, the most feared man in the North—

‘Finally,’ grunted Bayaz, bringing a sharp end to the fantasy.

There was the unmistakable sound of soldiers on the move and a body of Northmen began to tramp down the long slope from the Heroes, the rims of their painted shields catching the light. It seems the enemy are prepared for the alternative, too. Gorst gently loosened his spare long steel in its sheath, watchful for any sign of an ambush. Itching for it, in fact. A single Northern toe too close and he would draw. And peace would simply be one more thing in my life that failed to happen.

But to his disappointment the great majority halted on the gently sloping ground outside the Children, no nearer to the centre than the soldiers of the Twelfth. Several more stopped just inside the stones, balancing out the officers on the Union side. A truly vast man, black hair shifting in the breeze, was conspicuous among them. So was the one in gilded armour whose face Gorst had so enthusiastically beaten on the first day of the battle. He clenched his fist at the memory, fervently hoping for the chance to do it again.

Four men approached the table, but of Black Dow there was no sign. The foremost among them had a fine cloak, a very handsome face and the slightest mocking smile. In spite of a bandaged hand and a fresh scar down the middle of his chin, no one had ever looked more carelessly, confidently in charge. And I hate him already.

‘Who is that?’ muttered Mitterick.

‘Calder.’ The Dogman’s frown had grown deeper than ever. ‘Bethod’s youngest son. And a snake.’

‘More of a worm,’ said Bayaz, ‘but it is Calder.’

Two old warriors flanked him, one pale-skinned, pale-haired, a pale fur around his shoulders, the other heavyset with a broad, weathered face. A fourth followed, axe at his belt, terribly scarred on one cheek. His eye gleamed as if made of metal, but that was not what made Gorst blink. He felt a creeping sense of recognition. Did I see him in the battle yesterday? Or the day before? Or was it somewhere before that…

‘You must be Marshal Kroy.’ Calder spoke the common tongue with only a trace of the North.

‘Marshal Mitterick.’

‘Ah!’ Calder’s smile widened. ‘How nice to finally meet you! We faced each other yesterday, across the barley on the right of the battlefield.’ He waved his bandaged hand to the west. ‘Your left, I should say, I really am no soldier. That charge of yours was … magnificent.’

Mitterick swallowed, his pink neck bulging over his stiff collar.

‘In fact, do you know, I think…’ Calder rooted through an inside pocket, then positively beamed as he produced a scrap of crumpled, muddied paper. ‘I have something of yours!’ He tossed it across the table. Gorst saw writing over Mitterick’s shoulder as he opened it up. An order, perhaps. Then Mitterick crumpled it again, so tightly his knuckles went white.

‘And the First of the Magi! The last time we spoke was a humbling experience for me. Don’t worry, though, I’ve had many others since. You won’t find a more humbled man anywhere.’ Calder’s smirk said otherwise, though, as he pointed out the grizzled old men at his back. ‘This is Caul Reachey, my wife’s father. And Pale-as-Snow, my Second. Not forgetting my respected champion—’

‘Caul Shivers.’ The Dogman gave the man with the metal eye a solemn nod. ‘It’s been a while.’

‘Aye,’ he whispered back, simply.

‘The Dogman, we all know, of course!’ said Calder. ‘The Bloody-Nine’s bosom companion, in all those songs along with him! Are you well?’

The Dogman ignored the question with a masterpiece of slouching disdain. ‘Where’s Dow?’

‘Ah.’ Calder grimaced, though it looked feigned. Everything about him looks feigned. ‘I’m sorry to say he won’t be coming. Black Dow is … back to the mud.’

There was a silence that Calder gave every indication of greatly enjoying. ‘Dead?’ The Dogman slumped back in his chair. As if he had been informed of the loss of a dear friend rather than a bitter enemy. Truly, the two can sometimes be hard to separate.

‘The Protector of the North and I had … a disagreement. We settled it in the traditional way. With a duel.’

‘And you won?’ asked the Dogman.

Calder raised his brows and rubbed gently at the stitches on his chin with a fingertip, as if he could not quite believe it either. ‘Well, I’m alive and Dow’s dead so … yes. It’s been a strange morning. They’ve taken to calling me Black Calder.’

‘Is that a fucking fact?’

‘Don’t worry, it’s just a name. I’m all for peace.’ Though Gorst fancied the Carls ranged on the long slope had different feelings. ‘This was Dow’s battle, and a waste of everyone’s time, money and lives as far as I’m concerned. Peace is the best part of any war, if you’re asking me.’

‘I heartily concur.’ Mitterick might have had the new uniform, but it was Bayaz who did the talking now. ‘The settlement I propose is simple.’

‘My father always said that simple things stick best. You remember my father?’

The Magus hesitated for the slightest moment. ‘Of course.’ He snapped his fingers and his servant slipped forward, unrolling the map across the table with faultless dexterity. Bayaz pointed out the curl of a river. ‘The Whiteflow shall remain the northern boundary of Angland. The northern frontier of the Union, as it has for hundreds of years.’

‘Things change,’ said Calder.

‘This one will not.’ The Magus’ thick finger sketched another river, north of the first. ‘The land between the Whiteflow and the Cusk, including the city of Uffrith, shall come under the governorship of the Dogman. It shall become a protectorate of the Union, with six representatives on the Open Council.’

‘All the way to the Cusk?’ Calder gave a sharp little in-breath. ‘Some of the best land in the North.’ He gave the Dogman a pointed look. ‘Sitting on the Open Council? Protected by the Union? What would Skarling Hoodless have said to that? What would my father have said?’

‘Who cares a shit what dead men might have said?’ The Dogman stared evenly back. ‘Things change.’

‘Stabbed with my own knife!’ Calder clutched at his chest, then gave a resigned shrug. ‘But the North needs peace. I am content.’

‘Good.’ Bayaz beckoned to his servant. ‘Then we can sign the articles—’

‘You misunderstand me.’ There was an uneasy pause as Calder shuffled forwards in his chair, as if they at the table were all friends together and the real enemy was at his back, and straining to hear their plans. ‘I am content, but I am not alone in this. Dow’s War Chiefs are … a jealous set.’ Calder gave a helpless laugh. ‘And they have all the swords. I can’t just agree to anything or …’ He drew a finger across his bruised throat with a squelching of his tongue. ‘Next time you want to talk you might find some stubborn blowhard like Cairm Ironhead, or some tower of vanity like Glama Golden in this chair. Good luck finding terms then.’ He tapped the map with a fingertip. ‘I’m all for this myself. All for it. But let me take it away and convince my surly brood, then we can meet again to sign the whatevers.’

Bayaz frowned, ever so sourly, at the Northmen standing just inside the Children. ‘Tomorrow, then.’

‘The day after would be better.’

‘Don’t push me, Calder.’

Calder was the picture of injured helplessness. ‘I don’t want to push at all! But I’m not Black Dow. I’m more … spokesman than tyrant.’

‘Spokesman,’ muttered the Dogman, as though the word tasted of piss.

‘That will not be good enough.’

But Calder’s smirk was made of steel. Bayaz’ every effort bounced right off. ‘If only you knew how hard I’ve worked for peace, all this time. The risks I’ve taken for it.’ Calder pressed his injured hand against his heart. ‘Help me! Help me to help us all.’ Help you to help yourself, more likely.

As Calder stood he reached across the map and offered his good hand to the Dogman. ‘I know we’ve been on different sides for a long time, one way or another, but if we’re to be neighbours there should be no chill between us.’

‘Different sides. That happens. Time comes you got to bury it.’ The Dogman stood, looking Calder in the eye all the way. ‘But you killed Forley the Weakest. Never did no harm to no one, that lad. Came to give you a warning, and you killed him for it.’

Calder’s smile had turned, for the first time, slightly lopsided. ‘There isn’t a morning comes I don’t regret it.’

‘Then here’s another.’ The Dogman leaned forward, extended his forefinger, pressed one nostril closed with it and blew snot out of the other straight into Calder’s open palm. ‘Set foot south o’ the Cusk, I’ll cut the bloody cross in you. Then there’ll be no chill.’ And he gave a scornful sniff, and stalked past Gorst and away.

Mitterick nervously cleared his throat. ‘We will reconvene soon, then?’ Looking to Bayaz for support that did not arrive.

‘Absolutely.’ Calder regained most of his grin as he wiped the Dogman’s snot off on the edge of the table. ‘In three days.’ And he turned his back and went to talk to the man with the metal eye. The one called Shivers.

‘This Calder seems a slippery bastard,’ Mitterick muttered to Bayaz as they left the table. ‘I’d rather have dealt with Black Dow. At least with him you knew what you were getting.’ Gorst was hardly listening. He was too busy staring at Calder and his scarred henchman. I know him. I know that face. But from where … ?

‘Dow was a fighter,’ Bayaz was murmuring. ‘Calder is a politician. He realises we are keen to leave, and that when the troops go home we will have nothing to bargain with. He knows he can win far more by sitting still and smirking than Dow ever did with all the steel and fury in the North…’

Shivers turned the ruined side of his face away as he spoke to Calder, the unburned side moving into the sun … and Gorst’s skin prickled with recognition, and his mouth came open.

Sipani.

That face, in the smoke, before he was sent tumbling down the stairs. That face. How could it be the same man? And yet he was almost sure.

Bayaz’ voice faded behind him as Gorst strode around the table, jaw clenched, and onto the Northmen’s side of the Children. One of Calder’s old retainers grunted as Gorst shouldered him out of the way. Probably this was extremely poor, if not potentially fatal, etiquette for peace negotiations. And I could not care less. Calder glanced up, and took a worried step back. Shivers turned to look. Not angry. Not afraid.

‘Colonel Gorst!’ someone shouted, but Gorst ignored it, his hand closing around Shivers’ arm and pulling him close. The War Chiefs about the edge of the Children were all frowning. The giant took a huge step forwards. The man with the golden armour was calling out to the body of Carls. Another had put his hand to the hilt of his sword.

‘Calm, everyone!’ Calder shouted in Northern, one restraining palm up behind him. ‘Calm!’ But he looked nervous. As well he should. All our lives are balanced on a razor’s edge. And I could not care less.

Shivers did not look as if he cared overmuch himself. He glanced down at Gorst’s gripping hand, then back up at his face, and raised the brow over his good eye.

‘Can I help you?’ His voice was the very opposite of Gorst’s. A gravelly whisper, harsh as millstones grinding. Gorst looked at him. Really looked. As though he could drill into his head with his eyes. That face, in the smoke. He had glimpsed it only for a moment, and masked, and without the scar. But still. He had seen it every night since, in his dreams, and in his waking, and in the twisted space between, every detail stamped into his memory. And I am almost sure.

He could hear movement behind him. Excited voices. The officers and men of his Majesty’s Twelfth. Probably upset to have missed out on the battle. Probably almost as keen to become involved in a new chapter of it as I am myself.

‘Colonel Gorst!’ came Bayaz’ warning growl.

Gorst ignored him. ‘Have you ever been …’ he hissed, ‘to Styria?’ Every part of him tingling with the desire to do violence.

‘Styria?’

‘Yes,’ snarled Gorst, gripping even harder. Calder’s two old men were creeping back in fighting crouches. ‘To Sipani.’

‘Sipani?’

‘Yes.’ The giant had taken another immense step, looming taller than the tallest of the Children. And I could not care less. ‘To Cardotti’s House of Leisure.’

‘Cardotti’s?’ Shivers’ good eye narrowed as he studied Gorst’s face. Time stretched out. All around them tongues licked nervously at lips, hands hovered ready to give their fatal signals, fingertips tickled at the grips of weapons. Then Shivers leaned close. Close enough almost for Gorst to kiss. Closer even than they had been to each other four years ago, in the smoke.

If they had been.

‘Never heard of it.’ And he slipped his arm out of Gorst’s slack grip and strode out of the Children without a backward glance. Calder swiftly followed, and the two old men, and the War Chiefs. All letting their hands drop from their weapons with some relief or, in the case of the giant, great reluctance.

They left Gorst standing there, in front of the table, alone. Frowning up towards the Heroes.

Almost sure.

Family

In many ways the Heroes hadn’t changed since the previous night. The old stones were just as they had been, and the lichen crusted to them, and the trampled, muddied, bloodied grass inside their circle. The fires weren’t much different, nor the darkness beyond them, nor the men who sat about them. But as far as Calder was concerned, there’d been some big-arsed changes.

Rather than dragging him in shame to his doom, Caul Shivers followed at a respectful distance, watching over his life. There was no scornful laughter as he strolled between the fires, no heckling and no hate. All changed the moment Black Dow’s face hit the dirt. The great War Chiefs, and their fearsome Named Men, and their hard-handed, hard-hearted, hard-headed Carls all smiled upon him as if he was the sun rising after a bastard of a winter. How soon they’d adjusted. His father always said men rarely change, except in their loyalties. Those they’ll shrug off like an old coat when it suits them.

In spite of his splinted hand and his stitched chin, Calder didn’t have to work too hard to get the smirk onto his face now. He didn’t have to work at all. He might not have been the tallest man about, but still he was the biggest in the valley. He was the next King of the Northmen, and anyone he told to eat his shit would be doing it with a smile. He’d already decided who’d be getting the first serving.

Caul Reachey’s laughter echoed out of the night. He sat on a log beside a fire, pipe in his hand, spluttering smoke at something some woman beside him had said. She looked around as Calder walked up and he nearly tripped over his own feet.

‘Husband.’ She stood, awkward from the weight of her belly, and held out one hand.

He took it in his and it felt small, and soft, and strong. He guided it over his shoulder, and slid his arms around her, hardly feeling the pain in his battered ribs as they held each other tight, tight. For a moment it seemed as if there was no one in the Heroes but them. ‘You’re safe,’ he whispered.

‘No thanks to you,’ rubbing her cheek against his.

His eyelids were stinging. ‘I … made some mistakes.’

‘Of course. I make all your good decisions.’

‘Don’t leave me alone again, then.’

‘I think I can say it’ll be the last time I stand hostage for you.’

‘So can I. That’s a promise.’ He couldn’t stop the tears coming. Some biggest man in the valley, stood weeping in front of Reachey and his Named Men. He would’ve felt a fool if he hadn’t been so glad to see her he couldn’t feel anything else. He broke away long enough to look at her face, light on one side, dark on the other, eyes with a gleam of firelight to them. Smiling at him, two little moles near the corner of her mouth he’d never noticed before. All he could think was that he didn’t deserve this.

‘Something wrong?’ she asked.

‘No. Just … wasn’t long ago I thought I’d never see your face again.’

‘And are you disappointed?’

‘I never saw anything so beautiful.’

She bared her teeth at him. ‘Oh, they were right about you. You are a liar.’

‘A good liar tells as much truth as he can. That way you never know what you’re getting.’

She took his bandaged hand in hers, turning it over, stroking it with her fingertips. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Nothing to a famous champion like me.’

She pressed his hand tighter. ‘I mean it. Are you hurt?’

Calder winced. ‘Doubt I’ll be fighting any more duels for a while, but I’ll heal. Scale’s dead.’

‘I heard.’

‘You’re all my family, now.’ And he laid his good hand on her swollen belly. ‘Still—’

‘Like a sack of oats on my bladder all the way from Carleon in a lurching bloody cart? Yes.’

He smiled through his tears. ‘The three of us.’

‘And my father too.’

He looked over at Reachey, grinning at them from his log. ‘Aye. And him.’

‘You haven’t put it on, then?’

‘What?’

‘Your father’s chain.’

He slid it from his inside pocket, warm from being pressed close to his heart, and the diamond dropped to one side, full of the colours of fire. ‘Waiting for the right moment, maybe. Once you put it on … you can’t take it off.’ He remembered his father telling him what a weight it was. Near the end.

‘Why would you take it off? You’re king, now.’

‘Then you’re queen.’ He slipped the chain over her head. ‘And it looks better on you.’ He let the diamond drop against her chest while she dragged her hair free.

‘My husband goes away for a week and all he brings me is the North and everything in it?’

‘That’s just half your gift.’ He moved as if to kiss her and held back at the last moment, clicking his teeth together just short of her mouth. ‘I’ll give you the rest later.’

‘Promises, promises.’

‘I need to talk to your father, just for a moment.’

‘Talk, then.’

‘Alone.’

‘Men and their bloody chatter. Don’t keep me waiting too long.’ She leaned close, her lip tickling at his ear, her knee rubbing up against the inside of his leg, his father’s chain brushing against his shoulder. ‘I’ve a mind to kneel before the King of the Northmen.’ One fingertip brushed the scab on his chin as she stepped away, keeping his face towards her, watching him over her shoulder, waddling just a little with the weight of her belly but none the worse for that. None the worse at all. All he could think was that he didn’t deserve this.

He shook himself and clambered to the fire, somewhat bent over since his prick was pressing up hard against the inside of his trousers, and poking a tent in Reachey’s face was no way to start a conversation. His wife’s father had shooed his grey-bearded henchmen away and was sitting alone, pressing a fresh lump of chagga down into his pipe with one thick thumb. A private little chat. Just like the one they’d had a few nights before. Only now Dow was dead, and everything was changed.

Calder wiped the wet from his eyes as he sat beside the fire-pit. ‘She’s one of a kind, your daughter.’

‘I’ve heard you called a liar, but there was never a truer word said than that.’

‘One of a kind.’ As Calder watched her disappear into the darkness.

‘You’re a lucky man to have her. Remember what I told you? Wait long enough by the sea, everything you want’ll just wash up on the beach.’ Reachey tapped at the side of his head. ‘I’ve been around a while. You ought to listen to me.’

‘I’m listening now, aren’t I?’

Reachey wriggled down the log, a little closer to him. ‘All right, then. A lot of my boys are restless. Had their swords drawn a long time. I could do with letting some of ’em get home to their own wives. You got a mind to take this wizard’s offer?’

‘Bayaz?’ Calder snorted. ‘I’ve a mind to let the lying bastard simmer. He had a deal with my father, a long time ago, and betrayed him.’

‘So it’s a question of revenge?’

‘A little, but mostly it’s good sense. If the Union had pushed on yesterday they might’ve finished us.’

‘Maybe. So?’

‘So the only reason I can see for stopping is if they had to. The Union’s a big place. Lots of borders. I reckon they’ve got other worries. I reckon every day I let that bald old fuck sit his terms’ll get better.’

‘Huh.’ Reachey fished a burning stick from the fire, pressed it to the bowl of his pipe, starting to grin as he got it lit. ‘You’re a clever one, Calder. A thinker. Like your father. Always said you’d make quite a leader.’

Calder had never heard him say it. ‘Didn’t help me get here, did you?’

‘I told you I’d burn if I had to, but I wouldn’t set myself on fire. What was it the Bloody-Nine used to say?’

‘You have to be realistic.’

‘That’s right. Realistic. Thought you’d know that better’n most.’ Reachey’s cheeks went hollow as he sucked at his pipe, let the brown smoke curl from his mouth. ‘But now Dow’s dead, and you’ve got the North at your feet.’

‘You must be almost as pleased as I am with how it’s all come out.’

‘’Course,’ as Reachey handed the pipe over.

‘Your grandchildren can rule the North,’ as Calder took it.

‘Once you’re finished with it.’

‘I plan not to finish for a while.’ Calder sucked, bruised ribs aching as he breathed deep and felt the smoke bite.

‘Doubt I’ll live to see it.’

‘Hope not.’ Calder grinned as he blew out, and they both chuckled, though there might’ve been the slightest edge on their laughter. ‘You know, I’ve been thinking about something Dow said. How if he’d wanted me dead I’d have been dead. The more I think on it, the more sense it makes.’

Reachey shrugged. ‘Maybe Tenways tried it on his own.’

Calder frowned at the bowl of the pipe as if thinking it over, though he’d already thought it over and decided it didn’t add. ‘Tenways saved my life in the battle yesterday. If he hated me that much he could’ve let the Union kill me and no one would’ve grumbled.’

‘Who knows why anyone does anything? The world’s a complicated bloody place.’

‘Everyone has their reasons, my father used to tell me. It’s just a question of knowing what they are. Then the world’s simple.’

‘Well, Black Dow’s back to the mud. And from the look o’ your sword in his head, Tenways too. I guess we’ll never know now.’

‘Oh, I reckon I’ve worked it out.’ Calder handed the pipe back and the old man leaned to take it. ‘It was you said Dow wanted me dead.’ Reachey’s eyes flicked up to his, just for an instant, but long enough for Calder to be sure. ‘That wasn’t altogether true, was it? It was what you might call a lie.’

Reachey slowly sat back, puffing out smoke rings. ‘Aye, a little bit, I’ll admit. My daughter has a loving nature, Calder, and she loves you. I’ve tried explaining what a pain in the arse you are but she just ain’t hearing it. There’s naught she wouldn’t do for you. But it was getting so you and Dow weren’t seeing things at all the same way. All your talk of bloody peace making things hard for everyone. Then my daughter up and stands hostage for you? Just couldn’t have my only child at risk like that. Out of you and Dow, one had to go.’ He looked evenly at Calder, through the smoke of his pipe. ‘I’m sorry, but there it is. If it was you, well, that’s a shame, but Seff would’ve found a new man. Better still, there was always the chance you’d come out on top o’ Dow. And I’m happy to say that’s how it happened. All I wanted was the best for my blood. So I’m ashamed to admit it, but I stirred the pot between the two o’ you.’

‘Hoping all along I’d get the better of Dow.’

‘Of course.’

‘So it wasn’t you at all who sent those boys to kill me at your weapon-take?’

The pipe froze half way to Reachey’s mouth. ‘Why would I do a thing like that?’

‘Because Seff was standing hostage, and I was talking big about dealing with Dow, and you decided to stir the pot a bit harder.’

Reachey pressed the end of his tongue between his teeth, lifted the pipe the rest of the way, sucked at it again, but it was dead. He tapped the ashes out on the stones by the fire. ‘If you’re going to stir the pot, I’ve always believed in doing it … firmly.’

Calder slowly shook his head. ‘Why not just get your old pricks to kill me when we were sat around the fire? Make sure of it?’

‘I got a reputation to think on. When it comes to knives in the dark I hire out, keep my name free of it.’ Reachey didn’t look guilty. He looked annoyed. Offended, even. ‘Don’t sit there like you’re disappointed. Don’t pretend you haven’t done worse. What about Forley the Weakest, eh? Killed him for nothing, didn’t you?’

‘I’m me!’ said Calder. ‘Everyone knows me for a liar! I guess I just …’ Sounded stupid now he said it. ‘Expected better from you. I thought you were a straight edge. Thought you did things the old way.’

Reachey gave a scornful grunt. ‘The old way? Hah! People are apt to get all misty-eyed over how things used to be. Age o’ Heroes, and all. Well, I remember the old way. I was there, and it was no different from the new.’ He leaned forward, stabbing at Calder with the stem of his pipe. ‘Grab what you can, however you can! Folk might like to harp on how your father changed everything. They like someone to blame. But he was just better at it than the rest. It’s the winners sing the songs. And they can pick what tune they please.’

‘I’m just picking out what tune they’ll play on you!’ hissed Calder, the anger flaring up for a moment. But, ‘Anger’s a luxury the man in the big chair can’t afford.’ That’s what his father used to say. Mercy, mercy, always think about mercy. Calder took in a long, sore breath, and heaved out resignation. ‘But maybe I’d have done no different, wearing your coat, and I’ve too few friends by far. The fact is I need your support.’

Reachey grinned. ‘You’ll have it. To the death, don’t worry about that. You’re family, lad. Family don’t always get on but, in the end, they’re the only ones you can trust.’

‘So my father used to tell me.’ Calder slowly stood and gave another aching sigh, right from his gut. ‘Family.’ And he made his way off through the fires, towards the tent that had been Black Dow’s.

‘And?’ croaked Shivers, falling into step beside him.

‘You were right. The old fuck tried to kill me.’

‘Shall I return the favour?’

‘By the dead, no!’ He forced his voice softer as they headed away. ‘Not until my child’s born. I don’t want my wife upset. Let things settle then do it quietly. Some way that’ll point the finger at someone else. Glama Golden, maybe. Can you do that?’

‘When it comes to killing, I can do it any way you want it.’

‘I always said Dow should’ve made better use of you. Now my wife’s waiting. Go and have some fun.’

‘I just might.’

‘What do you do for fun, anyway?’

There was a glint in Shivers’ eye as he turned away, but then there always was. ‘I sharpen my knives.’

Calder wasn’t quite sure if he was joking.

New Hands

Dear Mistress Worth,

With the greatest regret, I must inform you of the death of your son in action on the battlefield near Osrung. It is usual for the commanding officer to write such letters, but I requested the honour as I knew your son personally, and have but rarely in a long career served with so willing, pleasant, able, and courageous a comrade. He embodied all those virtues that one looks for in a soldier. I do not know if it can provide you with any satisfaction in the face of a loss so great, but it is not stretching the truth to say that your son died a hero. I feel honoured to have known him.

With the deepest condolences, Your obedient servant,

Corporal Tunny, Standard-Bearer of His Majesty’s First Regiment.

Tunny gave a sigh, folded the letter ever so carefully and pressed two neat creases into it with his thumbnail. Might be the worst letter the poor woman ever got, he owed it to her to put a decent crease in the damn thing. He tucked it inside his jacket next to Mistress Klige’s, unscrewed the cap from Yolk’s flask and took a nip, then dipped the pen in the ink bottle and started on the next.

Dear Mistress Lederlingen,

With the greatest regret, I must inform you of the death of your son in—

‘Corporal Tunny!’ Yolk was approaching with a cocky strut somewhere between a pimp and a labourer. His boots were caked with dirt, his stained jacket was hanging open showing a strip of sweaty chest, his sunburned face sported several days’ worth of patchy stubble and instead of a spear over his shoulder he had a worn shovel. He looked, in short, like a proud veteran of his August Majesty’s army. He came to a stop not far from Tunny’s hammock, looking down at the papers. ‘Working out all the debts you’re owed?’

‘The ones I owe, as it goes.’ Tunny seriously doubted Yolk could read, but he pushed a sheet of paper over the unfinished letter even so. If this got out it could ruin his reputation. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Everything’s well enough,’ said Yolk as he set down his shovel, though under his good humour he looked, in fact, a little pensive. ‘The colonel’s had us doing some burying.’

‘Uh.’ Tunny worked the stopper back into the ink bottle. He’d done a fair amount of burying himself and it was never a desirable duty. ‘Always some cleaning up to do after a battle. A lot to put right, here and at home. Might take years to clean up what takes a day or three to dirty.’ He cleaned off his pen on a bit of rag. ‘Might never happen.’

‘Why do it, then?’ asked Yolk, frowning off across the sunlit barley towards the hazy hills. ‘I mean to say, all the effort, and all the men dead, and what’ve we got done here?’

Tunny scratched his head. Never had Yolk down as a philosopher, but he guessed every man has his thoughtful moments. ‘Wars don’t often change much, in my considerable experience. Bit here, bit there, but overall there have to be better ways for men to settle their differences.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘Kings, and nobles, and Closed Councils, and so forth, I never have quite understood why they keep at it, given how the lessons of history do seem to stack up powerfully against. War is damned uncomfortable work, for minimal rewards, and it’s the soldiers who always bear the worst.’

‘Why be a soldier, then?’

Tunny found himself temporarily at a loss for words. Then he shrugged. ‘Best job in the world, isn’t it.’

A group of horses were being led without urgency up the track nearby, hooves clopping at the mud, a few soldiers trudging along with them. One detached himself and strolled over, chewing at an apple. Sergeant Forest, and grinning broadly.

‘Oh, bloody hell,’ muttered Tunny under his breath, quickly clearing the last evidence of letter writing and tossing the shield he’d been leaning on under his hammock.

‘What is it?’ whispered Yolk.

‘When First Sergeant Forest smiles there’s rarely good news on the way.’

‘When is there good news on the way?’

Tunny had to admit Yolk had a point.

‘Corporal Tunny!’ Forest stripped his apple and flicked away the core. ‘You’re awake.’

‘Sadly, Sergeant, yes. Any news from our esteemed commanders?’

‘Some.’ Forest jerked a thumb towards the horses. ‘You’ll be delighted to learn we’re getting our mounts back.’

‘Marvellous,’ grunted Tunny. ‘Just in time to ride them back the way we came.’

‘Let it never be said that his August Majesty does not provide his loyal soldiers with everything needful. We’re pulling out in the morning. Or the following morning, at the latest. Heading for Uffrith, and a nice warm boat.’

Tunny found a smile of his own. He’d had about enough of the North. ‘Homewards, eh? My favourite direction.’

Forest saw Tunny’s grin and raised him a tooth on each side. ‘Sorry to disappoint you. We’re shipping for Styria.’

‘Styria?’ muttered Yolk, hands on hips.

‘For beautiful Westport!’ Forest flung an arm around Yolk’s shoulders and pushed his other hand out in front of them, as if showing off a magnificent civic vista where there was, in fact, a stand of rotting trees. ‘Crossroads of the world! We’re to stand alongside our bold allies in Sipani, and take righteous arms against that notorious she-devil Monzcarro Murcatto, the Snake of Talins. She is, by all reports, a fiend in human form, an enemy to freedom and the greatest threat ever to face the Union!’

‘Since Black Dow.’ Tunny rubbed at the bridge of his nose, his smile a memory. ‘Who we made peace with yesterday.’

Forest slapped Yolk on the shoulder. ‘The beauty of the soldier’s profession, trooper. The world never runs out of villains. And Marshal Mitterick’s just the man to make ’em quake!’

‘Marshal… Mitterick?’ Yolk looked baffled. ‘What happened to Kroy?’

‘He’s done,’ grunted Tunny.

‘How many have you outlasted now?’ asked Forest.

‘I’m thinking … eight, at a quick guess.’ Tunny counted them off on his fingers. ‘Frengen, then Altmoyer, then that short one …’

‘Krepsky.’

‘Krepsky. Then the other Frengen.’

‘The other Frengen,’ snorted Forest.

‘A notable fool even for a commander-in-chief. Then there was Varuz, then Burr, then West—’

‘He was a good man, West.’

‘Gone too early, like most good men. Then we had Kroy …’

‘Lord marshals are temporary in nature,’ explained Forest, gesturing at Tunny, ‘but corporals? Corporals are eternal.’

‘Sipani, you say?’ Tunny slid slowly back in his hammock, putting one boot up and rocking himself gently back and forth with the other. ‘Never been there myself.’ Now that he was thinking about it, he was starting to see the advantages. A good soldier always keeps an eye on the advantages. ‘Fine weather, I expect?’

‘Excellent weather,’ said Forest.

‘And I hear they have the best bloody whores in the world.’

‘The ladies of the city have been mentioned once or twice since the orders came down.’

‘Two things to look forward to.’

‘Which is two more than you get in the North.’ Forest was smiling bigger than ever. Bigger than seemed necessary. ‘And in the meantime, since your detail stands so sadly reduced, here’s another.’

‘Oh, no,’ groaned Tunny, all hopes of whores and sunshine quickly wilting.

‘Oh, yes! Up you come, lads!’

And up they came indeed. Four of them. New recruits, fresh off the boat from Midderland by their looks. Seen off at the docks with kisses from Mummy or sweetheart or both. New uniforms pressed, buckles gleaming, and ready for the noble soldiering life, indeed. They stared open-mouthed at Yolk, who could hardly have presented a greater contrast, his face pinched and rat-like, his jacket frayed and mud-smeared from grave-digging, one strap on his pack broken and repaired with string. Forest gestured towards Tunny like a showman towards his freak, and trotted out that same little speech he always gave.

‘Boys, this here is the famous Corporal Tunny, one of the longest serving non-commissioned officers in General Felnigg’s division.’ Tunny gave a long, hard sigh, right from his stomach. ‘A veteran of the Starikland Rebellion, the Gurkish War, the last Northern War, the Siege of Adua, the recent climactic Battle of Osrung and a quantity of peacetime soldiering that would have bored a keener mind to death.’ Tunny unscrewed the cap of Yolk’s flask, took a pull, then handed it over to its original owner, who shrugged and had a swig of his own. ‘He has survived the runs, the rot, the grip, the autumn shudders, the caresses of Northern winds, the buffets of Southern women, thousands of miles of marching, many years of his Majesty’s rations and even a tiny bit of actual fighting to stand – or sit – before you now …’

Tunny crossed one ruined boot over the other, sank slowly back into his hammock and closed his eyes, the sun glowing pink through his lids.

Old Hands

It was near sunset when he made it back. Midges swirling in clouds over the marshy little brook, yellowing leaves casting dappled shadows onto the path, boughs stirring in the breeze, low enough he had to duck.

The house looked smaller’n he remembered. It looked small, but it looked beautiful. Looked so beautiful it made him want to cry. The door creaked as he pushed it wide, almost as scared for some reason as he had been in Osrung. There was no one inside. Just the same old smoke-smelling dimness. His cot was packed away to make more space, slashes of pale sunlight across the boards where it had been.

No one here, and his mouth went sour. What if they were packed up and left? Or what if men had come when he was away, deserters turned bandit—

He heard the soft clock of an axe splitting logs. He ducked back out into the evening, hurrying past the pen and the staring goats and the five big tree stumps all hacked and scarred from years of his blade practice. Practice that hadn’t helped much, as it went. He knew now stabbing a stump ain’t much preparation for stabbing a man.

His mother was just over the rise, leaning on the axe by the old chopping block, arching her back while Festen gathered up the split halves and tossed ’em onto the pile. Beck stood there for a moment, watching ’em. Watching his mother’s hair stirring in the breeze. Watching the boy struggling with the chunks of wood.

‘Ma,’ he croaked.

She looked around, blinked at him for a moment. ‘You’re back.’

‘I’m back.’

He walked over to her, and she stuck one corner of the axe in the block for safe keeping and met him half way. Even though she was so much smaller than him she still held his head against her shoulder. Held it with one hand and pressed it to her, wrapped her other arm tight around him, strong enough to make it hard to breathe.

‘My son,’ she whispered.

He broke away from her, sniffing back his tears, looking down. Saw his cloak, or her cloak, and how muddied, and bloodied, and torn it was. ‘I’m sorry. Reckon I got your cloak ruined.’

She touched his face. ‘It’s a bit of cloth.’

‘Guess it is at that.’ He squatted down, and ruffled Festen’s hair. ‘You all right?’ He could hardly keep his voice from cracking.

‘I’m fine!’ Slapping Beck’s hand away from his head. ‘Did you get yourself a name?’

Beck paused. ‘I did.’

‘What is it?’

Beck shook his head. ‘Don’t matter. How’s Wenden?’

‘Same,’ said Beck’s mother. ‘You weren’t gone more’n a few days.’

He hadn’t expected that. Felt like years since he was last here. ‘I guess I was gone long enough.’

‘What happened?’

‘Can we … not talk about it?’

‘Your father talked about nothing else.’

He looked up at her. ‘If there’s one thing I learned it’s that I’m not my father.’

‘Good. That’s good.’ She patted him gently on the side of the face, wet glimmering in her eyes. ‘I’m glad you’re here. Don’t have the words to tell you how glad I am. You hungry?’

He stood, straightening his legs feeling like quite the effort, and wiped away more tears on the back of his wrist. Realised he hadn’t eaten since he left the Heroes, yesterday morning. ‘I could eat.’

‘I’ll get the fire lit!’ And Festen trotted off towards the house.

‘You coming in?’ asked Beck’s mother.

Beck blinked out towards the valley. ‘Reckon I might stay out here a minute. Split a log or two.’

‘All right.’

‘Oh.’ And he slid his father’s sword from his belt, held it for a moment, then offered it out to her. ‘Can you put this away?’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere I don’t have to look at it.’

She took it from him, and it felt like a weight he didn’t have to carry no more. ‘Seems like good things can come back from the wars,’ she said.

‘Coming back’s the only good thing I could see.’ He leaned down and set a log on the block, spat on one palm and took up the wood axe. The haft felt good in his hands. Familiar. It fitted ’em better than the sword ever had, that was sure. He swung it down and two neat halves went tumbling. He was no hero, and never would be.

He was made to chop logs, not to fight.

And that made him lucky. Luckier’n Reft, or Stodder, or Brait. Luckier’n Drofd or Whirrun of Bligh. Luckier’n Black Dow, even. He worked the axe clear of the block and stood back. They don’t sing many songs about log-splitters, maybe, but the lambs were bleating, up on the fells out of sight, and that sounded like music. Sounded a sweeter song to him then than all the hero’s lays he knew.

He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of grass and woodsmoke. Then he opened ’em, and looked across the valley. Skin all tingling with the peace of that moment. Couldn’t believe he used to hate this place.

Didn’t seem so bad, now. Didn’t seem so bad at all.

Everyone Serves

‘So you’re standing with me?’ asked Calder, breezy as a spring morning.

‘If there’s still room.’

‘Loyal as Rudd Threetrees, eh?’

Ironhead shrugged. ‘I won’t take you for a fool and say yes. But I know where my best interest lies and it’s at your heels. I’d also point out loyalty’s a dangerous foundation. Tends to wash away in a storm. Self-interest stands in any weather.’

Calder had to nod at that. ‘A sound principle.’ He glanced up at Foss Deep, lately returned to his service following the end of hostilities and an apt display of the power of self-interest in the flesh. Despite his stated distaste for battles he’d somehow acquired, gleaming beneath his shabby coat, a splendid Union breastplate engraved with a golden sun. ‘A man should have some, eh, Deep?’

‘Some what?’

‘Principles.’

‘Oh, I’m a big, big, big believer in ’em. My brother too.’

Shallow took a quick break from furiously picking his fingernails with the point of his knife. ‘I like ’em with milk.’

A slightly uncomfortable silence. Then Calder turned back to Ironhead. ‘Last time we spoke you told me you’d stick with Dow. Then you pissed on my boots.’ He lifted one up, even more battered, gouged and stained from the events of the past few days than Calder was himself. ‘Best bloody boots in the North a week ago. Styrian leather. Now look.’

‘I’ll be more’n happy to buy you a new pair.’

Calder winced at his aching ribs as he stood. ‘Make it two.’

‘Whatever you say. Maybe I’ll get a pair myself and all.’

‘You sure something in steel wouldn’t be more your style?’

Ironhead shrugged. ‘No call for steel boots in peacetime. Anything else?’

‘Just keep your men handy, for now. We need to put a good show on ’til the Union get bored of waiting and slink off. Shouldn’t be long.’

‘Right y’are.’

Calder took a couple of steps away, then turned back. ‘Get a gift for my wife, too. Something beautiful, since my child’s due soon.’

‘Chief.’

‘And don’t feel too bad about it. Everyone serves someone.’

‘Very true.’ Ironhead didn’t so much as twitch. A little disappointing, in fact – Calder had hoped to watch him sweat. But there’d be time for that later, once the Union were gone. There’d be time for all kinds of things. So he gave a lordly nod and smirked off, his two shadows trailing after.

He had Reachey on-side, and Pale-as-Snow. He’d had a little word with Wonderful, and she’d had the same little word with Dow’s Carls, and their loyalty had washed with the rainwater, all right. Most of Tenways’ men had drifted off, and White-Eye Hansul had made his own appeal to self-interest and argued the rest around. Ironhead and Golden still hated each other too much to pose a threat and Stranger-Come-Knocking, for reasons beyond Calder’s ken, was treating him like an old and honoured friend.

Laughing stock to king of the world in the swing of a sword. Luck. Some men have it, some don’t.

‘Time to plumb the depth of Glama Golden’s loyalty,’ said Calder happily. ‘Or his self-interest, anyway.’

They walked down the hillside in the gathering darkness, stars starting to peep out from the inky skies, Calder smirking at the thought of how he’d make Golden squirm. How he’d have that puffed-up bastard tripping over his own tongue trying to ingratiate himself. How much he’d enjoy twisting the screw. They reached a fork in the path and Deep strolled off to the left, around the foot of the Heroes.

‘Golden’s camp is on the right,’ grunted Calder.

‘True,’ said Deep, still walking. ‘You’ve an unchallenged grasp on your rights and lefts, which puts you a firm rung above my brother on the ladder of learning.’

‘They look the bloody same,’ snapped Shallow, and Calder felt something prick at his back. A cold and surprising something, not quite painful but certainly not pleasant. It took him a moment to realise what it was, but when he did all his smugness drained away as though that jabbing point had already made a hole.

How flimsy is arrogance. It only takes a bit of sharp metal to bring it all crashing down.

‘We’re going left.’ Shallow’s point prodded again and Calder set off, hands up, his smirk abandoned in the gloom.

There were plenty of people about. Fires surrounded by half-lit faces. One set playing at dice, another making up ever more bloated lies about their high deeds in the battle, another slapping out stray embers on someone’s cloak. A drunken group of Thralls lurched past but they barely even looked over. No one rushed to Calder’s rescue. They saw nothing to comment on and even if they had, they didn’t care a shit. People don’t, on the whole.

‘Where are we going?’ Though the only real question was whether they’d dug his grave already, or were planning to argue over it after.

‘You’ll find out.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we’ll get there.’

‘No. Why are you doing this?’

They burst out laughing together, as though that was quite the joke. ‘Do you think we were watching you by accident, over at Caul Reachey’s camp?’

‘No, no, no,’ hummed Shallow. ‘No.’

They were moving away from the Heroes, now. Fewer people, fewer fires. Hardly any light but the circle of crops picked out by Deep’s torch. Any hope of help fading into the black behind them along with the bragging and the songs. If Calder was going to be saved he’d have to do it himself. They hadn’t even bothered to take his sword away from him. But who was he fooling? Even if his right hand hadn’t been useless, Shallow could’ve cut his throat a dozen times before he got it drawn. Across the darkened fields he could pick out the line of trees far to the north. Maybe if he ran—

‘No.’ Shallow’s knife pricked at Calder’s side again. ‘No nee no no no.’

‘Really no,’ said Deep.

‘Look, maybe we can come to an arrangement. I’ve got money—’

‘There’s no pockets deep enough to outbid our employer. Your best bet is just to follow along like a good boy.’ Calder rather doubted that but, clever as he liked to think he was, he had no better ideas. ‘We’re sorry about this, you know. We’ve naught but respect for you just as we’d naught but respect for your father.’

‘What good is your sorry going to do me?’

Deep’s shoulders shrugged. ‘A little less than none, but we always make a point of saying it.’

‘He thinks that lends us class,’ said Shallow.

‘A noble air.’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Calder. ‘You’re a right pair of fucking heroes.’

‘It’s a pitiable fellow who ain’t a hero to someone,’ said Deep. ‘Even if it’s only himself.’

‘Or Mummy,’ said Shallow.

‘Or his brother.’ Deep grinned over his shoulder. ‘How did your brother feel about you, my lordling?’

Calder thought about Scale, fighting against the odds on that bridge, waiting for help that never came. ‘I’m guessing he went off me at the end.’

‘Wouldn’t cry too many tears about it. It’s a rare fine fellow who ain’t a villain to someone. Even if it’s only himself.’

‘Or his brother,’ whispered Shallow.

‘And here we are.’

A ramshackle farmhouse had risen out of the darkness. Large and silent, stone covered with rustling creeper, flaking shutters slanting in the windows. Calder realised it was the same one he’d slept in for two nights, but it looked a lot more sinister now. Everything does with a knife at your back.

‘This way, if you please.’ To the porch on the side of the house, lean-to roof missing slates, a rotten table under it, chairs lying on their sides. A lamp swung gently from a hook on one of the flaking columns, its light shifting across a yard scattered with weeds, a slumping fence beyond separating the farm from its fields.

There were a lot of tools leaning against the fence. Shovels, axes, pickaxes, caked in mud, as though they’d been hard used that day by a team of workmen and left there to be used again tomorrow. Tools for digging. Calder felt his fear, faded slightly on the walk, shoot up cold again. Through a gap in the fence and the light of Deep’s torch flared out across trampled crops and fell on fresh-turned earth. A knee-high heap of it, big as the foundations of a barn. Calder opened his mouth, maybe to make some desperate plea, strike some last bargain, but he had no words any more.

‘They been working hard,’ said Deep, as another mound crept from the night beside the first.

‘Slaving away,’ said Shallow, as the torchlight fell on a third.

‘They say war’s an awful affliction, but you’ll have a hard time finding a gravedigger to agree.’

The last one hadn’t been filled in yet. Calder’s skin crawled as the torch found its edges, five strides across, maybe, its far end lost in the sliding shadows. Deep made it to the corner and peered over the edge. ‘Phew.’ He wedged his torch in the earth, turned and beckoned. ‘Up you come, then. Walking slow ain’t going to make the difference.’

Shallow gave him a nudge and Calder plodded on, throat tightening with each drawn-out breath, more and more of the sides of the pit crawling into view with each unsteady step.

Earth, and pebbles, and barley roots. Then a pale hand. Then a bare arm. Then corpses. Then more. The pit was full of them, heaped up in a grisly tangle. The refuse of battle.

Most were naked. Stripped of everything. Would some gravedigger end up with Calder’s good cloak? The dirt and the blood looked the same in the torchlight. Black smears on dead white skin. Hard to say which twisted legs and arms belonged to which bodies.

Had these been men a couple of days before? Men with ambitions, and hopes, and things they cared for? A mass of stories, cut off in the midst, no ending. The hero’s reward.

He felt a warmth down his leg and realised he’d pissed himself.

‘Don’t worry.’ Deep’s voice was soft, like a father to a scared child. ‘That happens a lot.’

‘We’ve seen it all.’

‘And then a little more.’

‘You stand here.’ Shallow took him by the shoulders and turned him to face the pit, limp and helpless. You never think you’ll just meekly do what you’re told when you’re facing your death. But everyone does. ‘A little to the left.’ Guiding him a step to the right. ‘That’s left, right?’

‘That’s right, fool.’

‘Fuck!’ Shallow gave him a harder yank and Calder slipped at the edge, boot heel sending a few lumps of earth down onto the bodies. Shallow pulled him back straight. There?’

‘There,’ said Deep. ‘All right, then.’

Calder stood, looking down, silently starting to cry. Dignity no longer seemed to matter much. He’d have even less soon enough. He wondered how deep the pit was. How many bodies he’d share it with when they picked those tools up in the morning and heaped the earth on top. Five score? Ten score? More?

He stared at the nearest of them, right beneath him, a great black wound in the back of its head. His head, Calder supposed, though it was hard to think of it as a man. It was a thing, robbed of all identity. Robbed of all … unless …

The face had been Black Dow’s. His mouth was open, half-full of dirt, but it was the Protector of the North, no doubt. He looked almost as if he was smiling, one arm flung out to welcome Calder, like an old friend, to the land of the dead. Back to the mud indeed. So quickly it can happen. Lord of all to meat in a hole.

Tears crept down Calder’s hot face, glistened in the torchlight as they pattered into the pit, making fresh streaks through the grime on Black Dow’s cold cheek. Death in the circle would’ve been a disappointment. How much worse was this? Tossed in a nameless hole, unmarked by those that loved or even those that hated him.

He was blubbing like a baby, sore ribs heaving, the pit and the corpses glistening through the salt water.

When would they do it? Surely, now, here it came. A breeze wafted up, chilling the tears on his face. He let his head drop back, squeezing his eyes shut, wincing, grunting, as if he could feel the knife sliding into his back. As if the metal was already in him. When would they do it? Surely now …

The wind dropped away, and he thought he heard clinking. Voices from behind him, from the direction of the house. He stood for a while longer, making a racking sob with every breath.

‘Fish to start,’ someone said.

‘Excellent.’

Trembling, cringing, every movement a terrifying effort, Calder slowly turned.

Deep and Shallow had vanished, their torch flickering abandoned at the edge of the pit. Beyond the ramshackle fence, under the ramshackle porch, the old table had been covered with a cloth and set for dinner. A man was unpacking dishes from a large basket. Another sat in one of the chairs. Calder wiped his eyes on the back of his wildly trembling hand, not sure whether to believe the evidence of his senses. The man in the chair was the First of the Magi.

Bayaz smiled over. ‘Why, Prince Calder!’ As if they’d run into each other by accident in the market. ‘Pray join me!’

Calder wiped snot from his top lip, still expecting a knife to dart from the darkness. Then ever so slowly, his knees wobbling so much he could hear them flapping against the inside of his wet trousers, he picked his way back through the gap in the fence and over to the porch.

The servant righted the fallen chair, dusted it off and held his open palm towards it. Calder sagged into it, numb, eyes still gently leaking by themselves, and watched Bayaz fork a piece of fish into his mouth and slowly, deliberately, thoroughly chew, and swallow.

‘So. The Whiteflow shall remain the northern boundary of Angland.’

Calder sat for a moment, aware of a faint snorting at the back of his nose with every quick breath but unable to stop it. Then he blinked, and finally nodded.

‘The land between the Whiteflow and the Cusk, including the city of Uffrith, shall come under the governorship of the Dogman. It shall become a protectorate of the Union, with six representatives on the Open Council.’

Calder nodded again.

‘The rest of the North as far as the Crinna is yours.’ Bayaz popped the last piece of fish into his mouth and waved his fork around. ‘Beyond the Crinna it belongs to Stranger-Come-Knocking.’

Yesterday’s Calder might’ve snapped out some defiant jibe, but all he could think of now was how very lucky he felt not to be gushing blood into the mud, and how very much he wanted to carry on not gushing blood. ‘Yes,’ he croaked.

‘You don’t need time to … chew it over?’

Eternity in a pit full of corpses, perhaps? ‘No,’ whispered Calder.

‘Pardon me?’

Calder took a shuddering breath. ‘No.’

‘Well.’ Bayaz dabbed his mouth with a cloth, and looked up. ‘This is much better.’

‘A very great improvement.’ The curly-headed servant had a pouty smile as he whisked Bayaz’ plate away and replaced it with a clean one. Probably much the same as Calder’s habitual smirk, but he enjoyed seeing it on another man about as much as he might have enjoyed seeing another man fuck his wife. The servant whipped the cover from a dish with a flourish.

‘Ah, the meat, the meat!’ Bayaz watched the knife flash and flicker as wafer slices were carved with blinding skill. ‘Fish is all very well, but dinner hasn’t really started until you’re served something that bleeds.’ The servant added vegetables with the dexterity of a conjuror, then turned his smirk on Calder.

There was something oddly, irritatingly familiar about him. Like a name at the tip of Calder’s tongue. Had he seen him visit his father once, in a fine cloak? Or at Ironhead’s fire with a Carl’s helmet on? Or at the shoulder of Stranger-Come-Knocking, with paint on his face and splinters of bone through his ear? ‘Meat, sir?’

‘No,’ whispered Calder. All he could think of was all the meat in the pits just a few strides away.

‘You really should try it!’ said Bayaz. ‘Go on, give him some! And help the prince, Yoru, he has an injured right hand.’

The servant doled meat onto Calder’s plate, bloody gravy gleaming in the gloom, then began to cut it up at frightening speed, making Calder flinch with each sweep of the knife.

Across the table, the Magus was already happily chewing. ‘I must admit, I did not entirely enjoy the tenor of our last conversation. It reminded me somewhat of your father.’ Bayaz paused as if expecting a response, but Calder had none to give. ‘That is meant as a very small compliment and a very large warning. For many years your father and I had … an understanding.’

‘Some good it did him.’

The wizard’s brows went up. ‘How short your family’s memory! Indeed it did! Gifts he had of me, and all manner of help and wise counsel and oh, how he thrived! From piss-pot chieftain to King of the Northmen! Forged a nation where there were only squabbling peasants and pigshit before!’ The edge of Bayaz’ knife screeched against the plate and his voice sharpened with it. ‘But he became arrogant in his glory, and forgot the debts he owed, and sent his puffed-up sons to make demands of me. Demands,’ hissed the Magus, eyes glittering in the shadows of their sockets. ‘Of me.’

Calder’s throat felt uncomfortably tight as Bayaz sat back. ‘Bethod turned his back on our friendship, and his allies fell away, and all his great achievements withered, and he died in blood and was buried in an unmarked grave. There is a lesson there. Had your father paid his debts, perhaps he would be King of the Northmen still. I have high hopes you will learn from his mistake, and remember what you owe.’

‘I’ve taken nothing from you.’

‘Have … you … not?’ Bayaz bit off each word with a curl of his lip. ‘You will never know, nor could you even understand, the many ways in which I have interceded on your behalf.’

The servant arched one brow. ‘The account is lengthy.’

‘Do you suppose things run your way because you think yourself charming? Or cunning? Or uncommonly lucky?’

Calder had, in fact, thought exactly that.

‘Was it charm that saved you from Reachey’s assassins at his weapon-take, or the two colourful Northmen I sent to watch over you?’

Calder had no answer.

‘Was it cunning that saved you in the battle, or my instructions to Brodd Tenways that he should keep you from harm?’

Even less to that. ‘Tenways?’ he whispered.

‘Friends and enemies can sometimes be difficult to tell apart. I asked him to act like Black Dow’s man. Perhaps he was too good an actor. I heard he died.’

‘It happens,’ croaked Calder.

‘Not to you.’ The ‘yet’ was unsaid, but still deafening. ‘Even though you faced Black Dow in a duel to the death! And was it luck that tipped the balance towards you when the Protector of the North lay dead at your feet, or was it my old friend Stranger-Come-Knocking?’

Calder felt as if he was up to his chest in quicksand, and had only just realised. ‘He’s your man?’

Bayaz did not gloat or cackle. He looked almost bored. ‘I knew him when he was still called Pip. But big men need big names, eh, Black Calder?’

‘Pip,’ he muttered, trying to square the giant with the name.

‘I wouldn’t use it to his face.’

‘I don’t reach his face.’

‘Few do. He wants to bring civilisation to the fens.’

‘I wish him luck.’

‘Keep it for yourself. I gave it to you.’

Calder was too busy trying to think his way through it. ‘But … Stranger-Come-Knocking fought for Dow. Why not have him fight for the Union? You could have won on the second morning and saved us all a—’

‘He was not content with my first offer.’ Bayaz sourly speared some greens with his fork. ‘He demonstrated his value, and so I made a better one.’

‘This was all a disagreement over prices?’

The Magus let his head tip to one side. ‘Just what do you think a war is?’ That sank slowly into the silence between them like a ship with all hands. ‘There are many others who have debts.’

‘Caul Shivers.’

‘No,’ said the servant. ‘His intervention was a happy accident.’

Calder blinked. ‘Without him … Dow would’ve torn me apart.’

‘Good planning does not prevent accidents,’ said Bayaz, ‘it allows for them. It makes sure every accident is a happy one. I am not so careless a gambler as to make only one bet. But the North has ever been short of good material, and I admit you are my preference. You are no hero, Calder. I like that. You see what men are. You have your father’s cunning, and ambition, and ruthlessness, but not his pride.’

‘Pride always struck me as a waste of effort,’ murmured Calder. ‘Everyone serves.’

‘Keep that in mind and you will prosper. Forget it, well …’ Bayaz forked a slice of meat into his mouth and noisily chewed. ‘My advice would be to keep that pit of corpses always at your feet. The feeling as you stared down into it, waiting for death. The awful helplessness. Skin tickling with the expectation of the knife. The regret for everything left undone. The fear for those you leave behind.’ He gave a bright smile. ‘Start every morning and end every day at the brink of that pit. Remember, because forgetfulness is the curse of power. And you may find yourself once again staring into your own grave, this time with less happy results. You need only defy me.’

‘I’ve spent the last ten years kneeling to one man or another.’ Calder didn’t have to lie. Black Dow had let him live, then demanded obedience, then made threats. Look how that turned out. ‘My knees bend very easily.’

The Magus smacked his lips as he swallowed the last piece of carrot and tossed his cutlery on the plate. ‘That gladdens me. You cannot imagine how many similar conversations I have had with stiff-kneed men. I no longer have the slightest patience for them. But I can be generous to those who see reason. It may be that at some point I will send someone to you requesting … favours. When that day comes, I hope you will not disappoint me.’

‘What sort of favours?’

‘The sort that will prevent you from ever again being taken down the wrong path by men with knives.’

Calder cleared his throat. ‘Those kinds of favours I will always be willing to grant.’

‘Good. In return you will have gold from me.’

‘That’s the generosity of Magi? Gold?’

‘What were you expecting, a magic codpiece? This is no children’s storybook. Gold is everything and anything. Power, love, safety. Sword and shield together. There is no greater gift. But I do, as it happens, have another.’ Bayaz paused like a jester about to deliver the joke. ‘Your brother’s life.’

Calder felt his face twitch. Hope? Or disappointment? ‘Scale’s dead.’

‘No. He lost his right hand at the Old Bridge but he lives. The Union are releasing all prisoners. A gesture of goodwill, as part of the historic peace accord that you have so gratefully agreed to. You can collect the pinhead at midday tomorrow.’

‘What should I do with him?’

‘Far be it from me to tell you what to do with your gift, but you do not get to be a king without making some sacrifices. You do want to be king, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Things had changed a great deal since the evening began, but of that Calder was more sure than ever.

The First of the Magi stood, taking up his staff as his servant began nimbly to clear away the dishes. ‘Then an elder brother is a dreadful encumbrance.’

Calder watched him for a moment, looking calmly off across the darkened fields as though they were full of flowers rather than corpses. ‘Have you eaten here, within a long piss of a mass grave … just to show me how ruthless you are?’

‘Must everything have some sinister motive? I have eaten here because I was hungry.’ Bayaz tipped his head to one side as he looked down at Calder. Like the bird looks at the worm. ‘Graves mean nothing to me either way.’

‘Knives,’ muttered Calder, ‘and threats, and bribes, and war?’

Bayaz’ eyes shone with the lamplight. ‘Yes?’

‘What kind of a fucking wizard are you?’

‘The kind you obey.’

The servant reached for his plate but Calder caught him by the wrist before he got there. ‘Leave it. I might get hungry later.’

The Magus smiled at that. ‘What did I say, Yoru? He has a stronger stomach than you’d think.’ He waved over his shoulder as he walked away. ‘I believe, for now, the North is in safe hands.’

Bayaz’ servant took up the basket, took down the lamp, and followed his master.

‘Where’s dessert?’ Calder shouted after them.

The servant gave him one last smirk. ‘Black Dow has it.’

The glimmer of the lamp followed them around the side of the house and they were gone, leaving Calder to sink into his rickety chair in the darkness, eyes closed, breathing hard, with a mixture of crushing disappointment and even more crushing relief.

Just Deserts

My dear and trusted friend,

It gives me great pleasure to tell you that the circumstances have arisen in which I can invite you back to Adua, to once again take up your position among the Knights of the Body, and your rightful place as my First Guard.

You have been greatly missed. During your absence your letters have been a constant comfort and delight. For any wrong on your part, I long ago forgave you. For any wrong on mine, I earnestly hope that you can do the same. Please, let me know that we can continue as we were before Sipani.

Your sovereign,

The High King of Angland, Starikland, and Midderland, Protector of Westport and Dagoska, His August Majesty …

Gorst could read no further. He closed his eyes, tears stinging at the inside of the lids, and pressed the crumpled paper against his chest as one might embrace a lover. How often had poor, scorned, exiled Bremer dan Gorst dreamed of this moment? Am I dreaming now? He bit his sore tongue and the sweet taste of blood was a relief. Prised his eyelids open again, tears running freely, and stared at the letter through the shimmering water.

Dear and trusted friend … rightful place as First Guard … comfort and delight… as we were before Sipani. As we were before Sipani …

He frowned. Brushed his tears on the back of his wrist and peered down at the date. The letter had been despatched six days ago. Before I fought at the fords, on the bridge, at the Heroes. Before the battle even began. He hardly knew whether to laugh or cry more and in the end did both, shuddering with weepy giggles, spraying the letter with happy specks of spit.

What did it matter why? I have what I deserve.

He burst from the tent and it was as if he had never felt the sunlight before. The simple joy of the life-giving warmth on his face, the caress of the breeze. He gazed about in damp-eyed wonder. The patch of ground sloping down to the river, a mud-churned, rubbish-strewn midden when he trudged inside, had become a charming garden, filled with colour. With hopeful faces and pleasing chatter. With laughter and birdsong.

‘You all right?’ Rurgen looked faintly concerned, as far as Gorst could tell through the wet.

‘I have a letter from the king,’ he squeaked, no longer caring a damn how he sounded.

‘What is it?’ asked Younger. ‘Bad news?’

‘Good news.’ And he grabbed Younger around the shoulders and made him groan as he hugged him tight. ‘The best.’ He gathered up Rurgen with the other arm, lifting their feet clear of the ground, squeezing the pair of them like a loving father might squeeze his sons. ‘We’re going home.’

Gorst walked with an unaccustomed bounce. Armour off, he felt so light he might suddenly spring into the sunny sky. The very air smelled sweeter, even if it did still carry the faint tang of latrines, and he dragged it in through both nostrils. All his injuries, all his aches and pains, all his petty disappointments, faded in the all-conquering glow.

I am born again.

The road to Osrung – or to the burned-out ruin that had been Osrung a few days before – brimmed with smiling faces. A set of whores blew kisses from the seat of a wagon and Gorst blew them back. A crippled boy gave excited hoots and Gorst jovially ruffled his hair. A column of walking wounded shuffled past, one on crutches at the front nodded and Gorst hugged him, kissed him on the forehead and walked on, smiling.

‘Gorst! It’s Gorst!’ Some cheering went up, and Gorst grinned and shook one scabbed fist in the air. Bremer dan Gorst, hero of the battlefield! Bremer dan Gorst, confidant of the monarch! Knight of the Body, First Guard to the High King of the Union, noble, righteous, loved by all! He could do anything. He could have anything.

Joyous scenes were everywhere. A man with sergeant’s stripes was being married by the colonel of his regiment to a pudding-faced woman with flowers in her hair while a gathering of his comrades gave suggestive whistles. A new ensign, absurdly young-looking, beamed in the sunlight as he carried the colours of his regiment by way of initiation, the golden sun of the Union snapping proudly. Perhaps one of the very flags that Mitterick so carelessly lost only a day ago? How soon some trespasses are forgotten. The incompetent rewarded along with the wronged.

As if to illustrate that very point, Gorst caught sight of Felnigg beside the road in his new uniform, staff officers in a crowing crowd around him, giving hell to a tearful young lieutenant beside a tipped-over cart, gear, weapons and for some reason a full-sized harp spilled from its torn awning like the guts from a dead sheep.

‘General Felnigg!’ called Gorst jauntily. ‘Congratulations on your promotion!’ It could not have happened to a less deserving drunken pedant. He briefly considered the possibility of challenging the man to the duel he had been too cowardly to demand a few evenings before. Then to the possibility of backhanding him into the ditch as he passed. But I have other business.

‘Thank you, Colonel Gorst. I wished to let you know how very much I admire your—’

Gorst could not even be bothered to make excuses. He simply barged past, scattering Felnigg’s staff – most of whom had recently been Marshal Kroy’s staff – like a plough through muck and left them clucking and puffing in his wake. And away to fuck with the lot of you, I’m free. Free! He sprang up and punched the air.

Even the wounded near the charred gates of Osrung looked happy as he passed, tapping shoulders with his fist, muttering banal encouragements. Share my joy, you crippled and dying! I have plenty to spare!

And there she stood, among them, giving out water. Like the Goddess of mercy. Oh, soothe my pain. He had no fear now. He knew what he had to do.

‘Finree!’ he called, then cleared his throat and tried again, a little deeper. ‘Finree.’

‘Bremer. You look … happy.’ She lifted one enquiring eyebrow, as though a smile on his face was as incongruous as on a horse, or a rock, or a corpse. But get used to this smile, for it is here to stay!

‘I am, very happy. I wanted to say …’ I love you. ‘Goodbye. I am returning to Adua this evening.’

‘Really? So am I.’ His heart leaped. ‘Well, as soon as my husband is well enough to be moved.’ And plummeted back down. ‘But they say that won’t be long.’ She looked annoyingly delighted about it too.

‘Good. Good.’ Fuck him. Gorst realised his fist was clenched, and forced it open. No, no, forget him. He is nothing. I am the winner, and this is my moment. ‘I received a letter from the king this morning.’

‘Really? So did we!’ She blurted it out, seizing him by the arm, eyes bright. His heart leaped again, as though her touch was a second letter from his Majesty. ‘Hal is being restored to his seat on the Open Council.’ She looked furtively around, then whispered it in a husky rush. ‘They’re making him lord governor of Angland!’

There was a long, uncomfortable pause while Gorst took that in. Like a sponge soaking up a puddle of piss. ‘Lord … governor?’ It seemed a cloud had moved across the sun. It was no longer quite so warm upon his face as it had been.

‘I know! There will be a parade, apparently.’

‘A parade.’ Of cunts. A chilly breeze blew up and flapped his loose shirt. ‘He deserves it.’ He presided over a blown-up bridge and so he gets a parade? ‘You deserve it.’ Where’s my fucking parade?

‘And your letter?’

My letter? My pathetic embarrassment of a letter? ‘Oh … the king has asked me to take up my old position as First Guard.’ Somehow he could no longer muster quite the enthusiasm he had when he opened it. Not lord governor, oh no! Nothing like lord governor. The king’s first hand-holder. The king’s first cock-taster. Pray don’t wipe your own arse your Majesty, let me!

‘That’s wonderful news.’ Finree smiled as though everything had turned out just right. ‘War is full of opportunities, after all, however terrible it may be.’

It is pedestrian news. My triumph is all spoiled. My garlands rotted. ‘I thought …’ His face twitched. He could not cling on to his smile any longer. ‘My success seems quite meagre now.’

‘Meagre? Well, of course not, I didn’t mean—’

‘I’ll never have anything worth the having, will I?’

She blinked. ‘I—’

‘I’ll never have you.’

Her eyes went wide. ‘You’ll— What?’

‘I’ll never have you, or anyone like you.’ Colour burned up red under her freckled cheeks. ‘Then let me be honest. War is terrible, you say?’ He hissed it right in her horrified face. ‘Shit, I say! I fucking love war.’ The unsaid words boiled out of him. He could not stop them, did not want to. ‘In the dreamy yards, and drawing rooms, and pretty parks of Adua, I am a squeaking fucking joke. A falsetto embarrassment. A ridiculous clown-man.’ He leaned even closer, enjoying it that she flinched. Only this way will she know that I exist. Then let it be this way. ‘But on the battlefield? On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I … I wish it wasn’t over. I wish … I wish …’

But far sooner than he had expected, the well had run dry. He was left standing there, breathing hard, staring down at her. Like a man who has throttled his wife and come suddenly to his senses, he had no idea what to do next. He turned to make his escape, but Finree’s hand was still on his arm and now her fingers dug into him, pulling him back.

The blush of shock was fading now, her face hard with growing anger, jaw muscles clenched. ‘What happened in Sipani?’

And now it was his cheeks that burned. As if the name was a slap. ‘I was betrayed.’ He tried to make the last word stab at her as it stabbed him, but his voice had lost all its edge. ‘I was made the scapegoat.’ A goat’s plaintive bleating, indeed. ‘After all my loyalty, all my diligence …’ He fumbled for more words but his voice was not used to making them, fading into a squeaky whine as she bared her teeth.