Abercrombie, Joe - The Heroes

‘Greatest warrior in the world,’ scoffed Golden, though he hadn’t done much scoffing while the giant was in the room.

Dow rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. ‘The dead know I’m no fucking diplomat, but I’ll take the allies I can get. And a man that size’ll stop a lot of arrows.’ Tenways and Golden had themselves an arse-licking chuckle, but Calder saw beyond the joke. If the Bloody-Nine was still alive, maybe a man that size might stop him too. ‘You all know your tasks, eh? Let’s get to ’em.’

Ironhead and Golden gave each other a deadly glare on the way out. Tenways spat at Calder’s feet but he only grinned back, promising himself he’d get the last laugh as the ugly old bastard shambled into the evening.

Dow stood, blood still dotting the ground from the tip of his middle finger, watching the doors as they were closed. Then he gave a sigh. ‘Feuding, feuding, always bloody feuding. Why can no one just get on, eh, Calder?’

‘My father used to say, “Point three Northmen the same way, they’ll be killing each other before you can order the charge.’”

‘Hah! He was a clever bastard, Bethod, whatever else he was. Couldn’t stop the warring, though, once he’d started.’ Dow frowned at his blood-daubed palm, working the fingers. ‘Once your hands get bloody it ain’t so easy to get ’em clean. The Dogman told me that. My hands been bloody all my life.’ Calder flinched as Splitfoot tossed something into the air, but it was only a cloth. Dow snatched it out of the darkness and started winding it around his cut hand. ‘Guess it’s a bit late to clean ’em now, eh?’

‘It’ll just have to be more blood,’ said Splitfoot.

‘I reckon.’ Dow wandered into one of the empty stalls, tipped his head back, rolled his eyes to the ceiling and winced. A moment later Calder heard the sound of his piss spattering the straw. ‘There … we … go.’

If the aim was to make him feel even more insignificant, it worked. He’d been half-expecting them to murder him. Now it seemed they couldn’t be bothered, and that pricked at Calder’s pride. ‘Got any orders for me?’ he snapped.

Dow glanced over his shoulder. ‘Why? You’d only fuck ’em up or ignore ’em.’

Probably true. ‘Why send for me, then?’

‘The way your brother tells it, you’ve got the sharpest mind in the whole North. I got sick of him telling me he couldn’t do without you.’

‘I thought Scale was up near Ustred?’

‘Two days’ ride away, and soon as I learned the Union were moving I sent to him to join up with us.’

‘Not much point me going, then.’

‘Wouldn’t say so …’ The sound of pissing stopped. ‘There it is!’ And started up again.

Calder ground his teeth. ‘Maybe I’ll go see Reachey. Watch this weapontake of his.’ Or talk him into helping Calder live out the month, even better.

‘You’re a free man, ain’t you?’ They both knew the answer to that one. Free as a pigeon already plucked and in the pot. ‘Things are just like they were in your father’s day, really. Any man can do what he likes. Right, Splitfoot?’

‘Right, Chief.’

‘Just as long as it’s exactly what I fucking tell ’em to do.’ And Dow’s Carls all chuckled away like they never heard finer wit. ‘Give Reachey my regards.’

‘I will.’ Calder turned for the door.

‘And Calder!’ Dow was just tapping off the drips. ‘You ain’t going to make more trouble for me, are you?’

‘Trouble? Wouldn’t know how, Chief.’

‘’Cause what with all those Southerners to fight … and unknowable fucks like Whirrun of Bligh and this Crinna-Come-Boasting weirdness … and my own people treading all over each other … I’ve got about as much arse-ache as I need. Can’t stand for anyone playing their own games. Someone tries to dig my roots from under me at a time like this, well, I’ve got to tell you, things’ll get fucking ugly !’ He screamed the last two words, eyes suddenly bulging from his face, veins popping from his neck, fury boiling out of him with no warning and making every man in the room flinch. Then he was calm as a kitten again. ‘Get me?’

Calder swallowed, trying not to let his fear show even though his skin was all prickling. ‘I think I have the gist.’

‘Good lad.’ Dow worked his hips about as he finished lacing up, then grinned around like a fox grins at a chicken coop left open. ‘I’d hate to hurt your wife, she’s a pretty little thing. Not so pretty as you, o’ course.’

Calder hid his fury under another smirk. ‘Who is?’

He strode between the grinning Carls and out into the evening, all the while thinking about how he was going to kill Black Dow, and take back what was stolen from his father.

What War?

‘Beautiful, ain’t it?’ said Agrick, big grin across his freckled face.

‘Is it?’ muttered Craw. He’d been thinking about the ground, and how he might use it, and how an enemy might do the same.

An old habit. It had been the better half of Bethod’s talk, when they were on campaign. The ground, and how to make a weapon of it.

The hill the Heroes stood on was ground an idiot could’ve seen the value of. It sprouted alone from the flat valley, so much alone and so oddly smooth a shape it seemed almost a thing man-made. Two spurs swelled from it – one pushing west with a single needle of rock raised up on end which folk had named Skarling’s Finger, one to the southeast, a ring of smaller stones on top they called the Children.

The river wound through the valley’s shallow bottom, skirting golden barley fields to the west, losing itself in a bog riddled with mirror-pools, then under the crumbling bridge Scorry Tiptoe was watching which was called, with a stubborn lack of imagination, the Old Bridge. The water flowed on fast around the foot of the hill, flaring out in sparkling shallows streaked with shingle. Somewhere down there among the scraggy brush and driftwood Brack was fishing. Or, more likely, sleeping.

On the far side of the river, off to the south, Black Fell rose up. A rough-heaped mass of yellow grass and brown bracken, stained with scree and creased with white-watered gills. To the east Osrung straddled the river, a cluster of houses around a bridge and a big mill, huddled inside a high fence. Smoke drifted from chimneys, into the bright blue and off to nowhere. All normal, and nothing to remark upon, and no sign whatever of the Union, or Hardbread, or any of the Dogman’s boys.

Hard to believe there was any war at all.

But then in Craw’s experience, and he’d plenty, wars were made from ninety-nine parts boredom, usually in the cold and damp, hungry and ill, often hauling a great weight of metal uphill, to one part arse-opening terror. Made him wonder yet again why the hell he ever got into the black business, and why the hell he still hadn’t got out. Talent for it, or a lack of talent for aught else. Or maybe he’d just gone with the wind and the wind had blown him here. He peered up, shreds of cloud shifting across the deep sky, now one memory, now another.

‘Beautiful,’ said Agrick again.

‘Everything looks prettier in the sun,’ said Craw. ‘If it was raining you’d be calling it the ugliest valley in the world.’

‘Maybe.’ Agrick closed his eyes and tipped his face back. ‘But it ain’t raining.’

That was a fact, and not necessarily a happy one. Craw had a long-established tendency to sunburn, and had spent most of yesterday edging around the tallest of the Heroes along with the shade. Only thing he liked less than the heat was the cold.

‘Oh, for a roof,’ he muttered. ‘Damn fine invention for keeping the weather off.’

‘Bit o’ rain don’t bother me none,’ grunted Agrick.

‘You’re young. Wait ’til you’re out in all weathers at my age.’

Agrick shrugged. ‘By then I hope to have a roof, Chief.’

‘Good idea,’ said Craw. ‘You cheeky little bastard.’ He opened his battered eyeglass, the one he’d taken from a dead Union officer they found frozen in the winter, and peered towards the Old Bridge again. Nothing. Checked the shallows. Nothing. Eyed the Ollensand Road, jerked up at a moving spot there, then realised it was some tiny fly on the end of the glass and sank back. ‘Guess a man can see further in fine weather, at least.’

‘It’s the Union we’re watching for, ain’t it? Those bastards couldn’t creep up on a corpse. You worry too much, Chief.’

‘Someone has to.’ But Agrick had a point. Worrying too much or not enough is ever a fine balance, and Craw always found himself falling heavily on the worried side of it. Every hint of movement had him starting, ripe to call for weapons. Birds flapping lazily into the sky. Sheep grazing on the slopes of the fells. Farmers’ wagons creeping along the roads. A little while ago Jolly Yon had started up axe practice with Athroc, and the sudden scrape of metal had damn near made him soak his trousers. Craw worried too much, all right. Shame is, a man can’t just choose not to worry.

‘Why are we here, Agrick?’

‘Here? Well, you know. Sit on the Heroes, watch to see if the Union come, tell Black Dow if they do. Scouting, like always.’

‘I know that. It was me told it to you. I mean, why are we here?’

‘What, like, meaning of life and that?’

‘No, no.’ Craw grabbed at the air as though what he meant was something he couldn’t quite get a hold of. ‘Why are we here ?’

Agrick’s face puckered up as he thought on it. ‘Well … The Bloody-Nine killed Bethod, and took his chain, and made himself King o’ the Northmen.’

‘True.’ Craw remembered the day well enough, Bethod’s corpse sprawled out bloody in the circle, the crowd roaring Ninefingers’ name, and he shivered in spite of the sun. ‘And?’

‘Black Dow turned on the Bloody-Nine and took the chain for his self.’ Agrick realised he might have used some risky phrasing there, started covering his tracks. ‘I mean, he had to do it. Who’d want a mad bastard like the Bloody-Nine for king? But the Dogman called Dow traitor, and oath-breaker, and most of the clans from down near Uffrith, they tended to his way of seeing things. The King of the Union, too, having been on some mad journey with Ninefingers and made a friend of him. So the Dogman and the Union decided to make war on Black Dow, and here we all are.’ Agrick slumped back on his elbows, closing his eyes and looking quite heavily pleased with himself.

‘That’s a fine understanding of the politics of the current conflict.’

‘Thanks, Chief.’

‘Why Black Dow and the Dogman got a feud. Why the Union’s taken the Dogman’s side in it, though I daresay that’s got more to do with who owns what than who made a friend of who.’

‘All right. There you are then.’

‘But why are we here?’

Agrick sat up again, frowning. Behind them, metal clonked on wood as his brother took a swipe at Yon’s shield and got knocked over for his pains.

‘Sideways, I said, y’idiot!’ came Yon’s un-jolly growl.

‘Well …’ tried Agrick, ‘I guess we stand with Dow because Dow stands for the North, rough bastard or not.’

‘The North? What?’ Craw patted the grass beside him. ‘The hills and the forests and the rivers and that, he stands for them, does he? Why would they want armies tramping all over ’em?’

‘Well, not the land of it. The people in it, I mean. You know. The North.’

‘But there’s all kinds of people in the North, ain’t there? Lot of ’em don’t care much for Black Dow, and he certainly don’t care much for them. Most just want to keep their heads down low and scratch out a living.’