Abercrombie, Joe - The Heroes

When was the last time I truly held someone? When I won the semi-final in the contest, did my father hug me? No. A firm shake of the hand. An awkward clap on the shoulder. Perhaps he would have hugged me if I’d won, but I failed, just as he said I would. When, then? Women paid to do it? Men I scarcely know in meaningless drunken camaraderie? But not like this. By an equal, who truly understands me. If only it could last…

He leaped back, jerking his head away from the whistling mace and letting the man in black stumble past. Gorst’s steel flashed towards his head as he righted himself and he only just managed to deflect the blow, sword wrenched from his hand and sent skittering away among the pounding boots. The man in black bellowed, twisting to swing his mace at a vicious diagonal.

Too much brawn, not enough precision. Gorst saw it coming, let it glance harmlessly from his shield and slid around it into space, aimed a carefully gauged chop, little more than a fencer’s flick, at that weak left knee. The blade of his steel caught the thigh-plate, found the chain mail on the joint and bit through. The man in black lurched sideways, only staying upright by clawing at the parapet, his mace scraping the mossy stone.

Gorst blew air from his nose as he brought the steel scything up and over, no fencer’s movement this. It chopped cleanly through the man’s thick forearm, armour, flesh and bone, and clanged against the old rock underneath, streaks of blood, rings of mail, splinters of stone flying.

The man in black gave an outraged snort as he struggled up, roared as he swung his mace at Gorst’s head with a killing blow. Or would have, had his hand still been attached. Somewhat to the disappointment of them both, Gorst suspected, his gauntlet and half his forearm were hanging by a last shred of chain mail, the mace dangling puppet-like from the wrist by a leather thong. As far as Gorst could tell without seeing his face, the man was greatly confused.

Gorst smashed him in the head with his shield and snapped his helmet back, blood squirting from his severed arm in thick black drops. He was pawing clumsily for a dagger at his belt when Gorst’s long steel clanged into his black faceplate and left a bright dent down the middle. He tottered, arms out wide, then toppled backwards like a great tree felled.

Gorst held up his shield and bloody sword, shaking them at the last few dismayed Northmen like a savage, and gave a great shrill scream. I win, fuckers! I win! I win!

As if that were an order, the lot of them turned and fled northwards, thrashing through the crops in their desperate haste to get away, weighed down by their flapping mail and their fatigue and their panic, and Gorst was among them, a lion among the goats.

Compared to his morning routine this was like dancing on air. A Northman slipped beside him, yelping in terror. Gorst charted the downward movement of his body, timed the downward movement of his arm to match and neatly cut the man’s head off, felt it bounce from his knee as he plunged on up the track. A young lad tossed away a spear, face contorted with fear as he looked over his shoulder. Gorst chopped deep into his backside and he went down howling in the crops.

It was so easy it was faintly ridiculous. Gorst hacked the legs out from one man, gained on another and dropped him with a cut across the back, struck an arm from a third and let him stumble on for a few wobbling steps before he smashed him over backwards with his shield.

Is this still battle? Is this still the glorious matching of man against man? Or is this just murder? He did not care. I cannot tell jokes, or make pretty conversation, but this I can do. This I am made for. Bremer dan Gorst, king of the world!

He chopped them down on both sides, left their blubbing, leaking bodies wrecked in his wake. A couple turned stumbling to face him and he chopped them down as well. Made meat of them all, regardless. On he went, and on, hacking away like a mad butcher, the air whooping triumphantly in his throat. He passed a farm on his right, half way or more to a long wall up ahead. No Northmen within easy reach, he stole a glance over his shoulder, and slowed.

None of Mitterick’s men were following. They had stopped near the bridge, a hundred strides behind him. He was entirely alone in the fields, a one-man assault on the Northmen’s positions. He stopped, uncertainly, marooned in a sea of barley.

A lad he must have overtaken earlier jogged up. Shaggy-haired, wearing a leather jerkin with a bloody sleeve. No weapon. He spared Gorst a quick glance, then laboured on. He passed close enough that Gorst could have stabbed him without moving his feet, but suddenly he could not see the point.

The elation of combat was leaking out of him, the familiar weight gathering on his shoulders again. So quickly I am sucked back into the bog of despond. The foetid waters close over my face. Only count three, and I am once again the very same sad bastard who all know and scorn. He looked back towards his own lines. The trail of broken bodies no longer felt like anything to take pride in.

He stood, skin prickling with sweat, sucking air through gritted teeth. Frowning towards the wall through the crops to the north, and the spears bristling up behind it, and the beaten men still struggling back towards it. Perhaps I should charge on, all alone. Glorious Gorst, there he goes! Falling upon the enemy like a shooting star! His body dies but his name shall live for ever! He snorted. Idiot Gorst, throwing his life away, the stupid, squeaking arse. Dropping into his pointless grave like a turd into a sewer, and just as quickly forgotten.

He shook the ruined shield from his arm and let it drop to the track, pulled the folded letter from his breastplate between two fingers, crumpled it tightly in his fist, then tossed it into the barley. It was a pathetic letter anyway. I should be ashamed of myself.

Then he turned, head hanging, and trudged back towards the bridge.

One Union soldier, for some reason, had chased far down the track after Scale’s fleeing troops. A big man wearing heavy armour and with a sword in his hand. He didn’t look particularly triumphant as he stared up the road, standing oddly alone in that open field. He looked almost as defeated as Calder felt. After a while he turned and plodded back towards the bridge. Back towards the trenches Scale’s men had dug the previous night, and where the Union were now taking up positions.

Not all dramas on the battlefield spring from glorious action. Some slink from everyone just sitting there, doing nothing. Tenways had sent no help. Calder hadn’t moved. He hadn’t even got as far as making his mind up not to move. He’d just stood, staring at nothing through his eyeglass, in a frozen agony of indecision, and then suddenly all of Scale’s men who still could were running, and the Union had carried the bridge.

Thankfully, it looked as if they were satisfied for now. Probably they didn’t want to risk pushing further with the light fading. They could push further tomorrow, after all, and everyone knew it. They had a good foothold on the north bank of the river, and no shortage of men in spite of the price Scale had made them pay. It looked as if the price Scale had paid had been heavier yet.

The last of his defeated Carls were still hobbling back, clambering over the wall to lie scattered in the crops behind, dirt and blood-smeared, broken and exhausted. Calder stopped a man with a hand on his shoulder.

‘Where’s Scale?’

‘Dead!’ he screamed, shaking him off. ‘Dead! Why didn’t you come, you bastards? Why didn’t you help us?’

‘Union men over the stream there,’ Pale-as-Snow was explaining as he led him away, but Calder hardly heard. He stood at the gate, staring across the darkening fields towards the bridge.

He’d loved his brother. For being on his side when everyone else was against him. Because nothing’s more important than family.

He’d hated his brother. For being too stupid. For being too strong. For being in his way. Because nothing’s more important than power.

And now his brother was dead. Calder had let him die. Just by doing nothing. Was that the same as killing a man?

All he could think about was how it might make his life more difficult. All the extra tasks he’d have to do, the responsibilities he didn’t feel ready for. He was the heir, now, to all his father’s priceless legacy of feuds, hatred and bad blood. He felt annoyance rather than grief, and puzzled he didn’t feel more. Everyone was looking at him. Watching him, to see what he’d do. To judge what kind of man he was. He was embarrassed, almost, that this was all his brother’s death made him feel. Not guilty, not sad, just cold. And then angry.

And then very angry.

Strange Bedfellows

The hood was pulled from her head and Finree squinted into the light. Such as it was. The room was dim and dusty with two mean windows and a low ceiling, bowing in the middle, cobwebs drifting from the rafters.

A Northman stood a couple of paces in front of her, feet planted wide and hands on hips, head tipped slightly back in the stance of a man used to being obeyed, and quickly. His short hair was peppered with grey and his face was sharp as a chisel, notched with old scars, an appraising twist to his mouth. A chain of heavy golden links gleamed faintly around his shoulders. An important man. Or one who thought himself important, at least.

An older man stood behind him, thumbs in his belt near a battered sword hilt. He had a shaggy grey growth on his jaw somewhere between beard and stubble and a fresh cut on his cheek, dark red and rimmed with pink, closed with ugly stitches. He wore an expression somewhat sad, somewhat determined, as if he did not like what was coming but could see no way to avoid it, and now was fixed on seeing it through, whatever it cost him. A lieutenant of the first man.

As Finree’s eyes adjusted she saw a third figure in the shadows against the wall. A woman, she was surprised to see, and with black skin. Tall and thin, a long coat hanging open to show a body wrapped in bandages. Where she stood in this, Finree could not tell.

She did not turn her head to look, in spite of the temptation, but she knew there was another man behind her, his gravelly breath at the edge of her hearing. The one with the metal eye. She wondered if he had that little knife in his hand, and how close the point was to her back. Her skin prickled inside her dirty dress at the thought.

‘This is her?’ sneered the man with the chain at the black-skinned woman, and when he turned his head Finree saw there was only a fold of old scar where his ear should have been.

‘Yes.’

‘She don’t look much like the answer to all my problems.’

The woman stared at Finree, unblinking. ‘Probably she has looked better.’ Her eyes were like a lizard’s, black and empty.

The man with the chain took a step forwards and Finree had to stop herself cringing. There was something in the set of him that made her feel he was teetering on the edge of violence. That his every smallest movement was the prelude to a punch, or a headbutt, or worse. That his natural instinct was to throttle her and it took a constant effort to stop himself doing it, and talk instead. ‘Do you know who I am?’

She lifted her chin, trying to look undaunted and almost certainly failing. Her heart was thumping so hard she was sure they must be able to hear it against her ribs. ‘No,’ she said in Northern.

‘You understand me, then.’

‘Yes.’