Abercrombie, Joe - The Heroes

‘Chief.’ Calder spun about, fumbling for his sword hilt. A man had slithered from the barley beside them, mud smeared on his face, eyes standing out strangely white in the midst of it. One of theirs. Calder wondered if he should’ve smeared some mud on his face too. It made a man look like he knew his business. He waited for Pale-as-Snow to answer for a while. Then he realised he was the Chief.

‘Oh, right.’ Letting go of his sword and pretending he hadn’t been surprised at all. ‘What?’

‘We’re in the trenches,’ whispered the newcomer. ‘Sent a few Union boys back to the mud.’

‘They seem ready?’ asked Pale-as-Snow, who hadn’t so much as looked round.

‘Shit, no.’ The man’s grin was a pale curve in his blacked-out face. ‘Most of ’em were sleeping.’

‘Best time to kill a man.’ Though Calder had to wonder whether the dead would agree. The old warrior held out one hand. ‘Shall we?’

‘We shall.’ Calder winced as he set off crawling through the barley. It was far sharper, rougher, more painful stuff to sneak through than you could ever have expected. It didn’t take long for his hands to chafe raw, and it hardly helped that he knew he was heading towards the enemy. He was a man better suited to the opposite direction. ‘Bloody barley.’ When he took his father’s chain back he’d make a law against growing the bastard stuff. Only soft crops allowed, on pain of— He ripped two more bristly wedges out of his way and froze.

The standards were right ahead, no more than twenty strides off, flapping hard on their staves. Each was embroidered with a golden sun, glittering in the light of a dozen lanterns. Beyond them the stretch of bald, soggy ground Scale had died defending sloped down towards the river, crawling with Union horses. Hundreds of tons of big, glossy, dangerous-looking horseflesh and, as far as he could tell by the patchy torchlight, they were still coming across, hooves clattering on the flags of the bridge, panicked whinnies echoing out as they jostled each other in the darkness. There was no shortage of men either, shouting as they struggled to get their mounts into position, bellowed orders fading on the wind. All making good and ready to trample Calder and his boys into the mud in a few short hours. Not a particularly comforting thought, it had to be said. Calder didn’t mind the odd trampling but he much preferred being in the saddle to being under the hooves.

A pair of guards flanked the standards, one with his arms wrapped around him and a halberd hugged tight in the crook of his elbow, the other stamping his feet, sword sheathed and using his shield as a windbreak.

‘Do we go?’ whispered Pale-as-Snow.

Calder looked at those guards, and he thought about mercy. Neither one seemed the slightest bit ready for what was coming. They looked even more unhappy about being here than he was, which was quite the achievement. He wondered whether they had wives waiting for them too. Wives with children in their soft bellies, maybe, curled up asleep under the furs with a warm space beside them. He sighed. Damn shame they weren’t all with their wives, but mercy wasn’t going to drive the Union out of the North, or Black Dow out of his father’s chair either.

‘We go,’ he said.

Pale-as-Snow held up a hand and made a couple of gestures. Then he did the same on the other side and settled back onto his haunches. Calder wasn’t sure who he was even waving at, let alone what the meaning was, but it worked like magic.

The guard with the shield suddenly went over backwards. The other turned his head to look then did the same. Calder realised they’d both had their throats cut. Two black shapes lowered them gently to the ground. A third had caught the halberd as it dropped and now he turned, hugging it in the crook of his own elbow, giving them a gap-toothed grin as he imitated the Union guard.

More Northmen had broken from the crops and were scurrying forwards, bent double, weapons gleaming faintly as the moon slipped from the clouds again. Not twenty strides away from them three Union soldiers were struggling with a wind-torn tent. Calder chewed at his lip, hardly able to believe they weren’t seen as they crept across the open ground and into the lamplight, one of them taking a hold of the right-hand flag, starting to twist it free of the earth.

‘You!’ A Union soldier, a flatbow part-raised, a look of mild puzzlement on his face. There was a moment of awkward silence, everyone holding their breath.

‘Ah,’ said Calder.

‘Shit,’ said Pale-as-Snow.

The soldier frowned. ‘Who are—’ Then he had an arrow in his chest. Calder didn’t hear the bowstring but he could see the black line of the shaft. The soldier shot his flatbow into the ground, gave a high shriek and fell to his knees. Not far away some horses startled, one dragging its surprised handler over onto his face and bumping across the mud. The three soldiers with the tent all snapped around at the same moment, two of them letting go of the canvas so that it was blown straight into the face of the third. Calder felt a sucking feeling in his stomach.

More Union men spilled into the light with frightening suddenness, a dozen or more, a couple with torches, flames whipped out sideways by a new gust. High wails echoed on Calder’s right and men darted from nowhere, steel glinting as swords were swung. Shadows flickered in the darkness, a weapon, or an arm, or the outline of a face caught for an instant against the orange glow of fire. Calder could hardly tell what was happening, then one of the torches guttered out and he couldn’t tell at all. It sounded as if there was fighting over on the left now too, his head yanked about by every sound.

He nearly jumped into the sky when he felt Pale-as-Snow’s hand on his shoulder. ‘Best be moving.’

Calder needed no further encouragement, he was off through the barley like a rabbit. He could hear other men, whooping, laughing, cursing, no clue whether they were his or the enemy. Something hissed into the crops next to him. An arrow, or just the wind blowing stalks about. Crops tangled his ankles, thrashed at his calves. He tripped and fell on his face, tore his way back up with Pale-as-Snow’s hand under his arm.

‘Wait! Wait.’

He stood frozen in the dark, bent over with his hands on his knees, ribcage going like a bellows. Voices were gabbling over each other. Northern voices, he was greatly relieved to hear.

‘They following?’

‘Where’s Hayl?’

‘Did we get the bloody flags?’

‘Those bastards wouldn’t even know which way to go.’

‘Dead. Caught an arrow.’

‘We got ’em!’

‘They were just dragging their bloody horses around!’

‘Thought we’d have nothing to say about it.’

‘But Prince Calder had something to say,’ Calder looked up at his name and found Pale-as-Snow smiling at him, one of the standards in his fist. Something like the smile a smith might have when his favourite apprentice finally hammers out something worth selling on the anvil.

Calder felt a poke in his side, started, then realised it was the other standard, the flag rolled up tight. One of the men was offering it out to him, grin shining in the moonlight in the midst of his muddy face. There was a whole set of grins pointed at him. As if he’d said something funny. As if he’d done something great. It didn’t feel that way to Calder. He’d just had the idea, which had been no effort at all, and set other men to work out how, and others still to take the risks. Hardly seemed possible that Calder’s father had earned his great reputation like this. But maybe that’s how the world works. Some men are made for doing violence. Some are meant for planning it. Then there are a special few whose talent is for taking the credit.

‘Prince Calder?’ And the grinning man offered him the flag again.

Well. If they wanted someone to admire, Calder wasn’t about to disappoint them. ‘I’m no prince.’ He snatched the standard, swung one leg over the flagstaff and held it there, sticking up at an angle. He drew his sword, for the first time that night, and thrust it straight up into the dark sky. ‘I’m the king of the fucking Union!’

It wasn’t much of a joke, but after the night they’d had, and the day they’d had yesterday, they were ready to celebrate. A gale of laughter went up, Calder’s men chuckling away, slapping each other on the backs.

‘All hail his fucking Majesty!’ shouted Pale-as-Snow, holding up the other flag, gold thread sparkling as it snapped in the wind. ‘King bloody Calder!’

Calder just kept on grinning. He liked the sound of that.

Shadows

Y our August Fuck-Hole,

The truth? Under the wilful mismanagement of the old villains on your Closed Council, your army is rotting. Frittered away with cavalier carelessness, as a rake might fritter away his father’s fortune. If they were the enemy’s councillors they could scarcely do more to frustrate your Fuck-Hole’s interests in the North. You could do better yourself, which is truly the most damning indictment of which I am capable. It would have been more honourable to load the men aboard in Adua, wave them off with a tear in the eye, then simply set fire to the ships and send them all to the bottom of the bay.

The truth? Marshal Kroy is competent, and cares for his soldiers, and I ardently desire to fuck his daughter, but there is only so much one man can do. His underlings, Jalenhorm, Mitterick and Meed, have been struggling manfully with each other for the place of worst general in history. I hardly know which deserves the higher contempt – the pleasant but incompetent dullard, the treacherous, reckless careerist, or the indecisive, war-mongering pedant. At least the last has already paid for his folly with his life. With any luck the rest of us will follow.

The truth? Why would you care? Old friends like us need have no pretences. I know better than most you are a cringing cipher, a spineless figurehead, a self-pitying, self-loving, self-hating child-man, king of nothing but your own vanity. Bayaz rules here, and he is bereft of conscience, scruple or mercy. The man is a monster. The worst I have seen, in fact, since I last looked in the mirror.

The truth? I am rotting too. I am buried alive, and already rotting. If I was not such a coward I would kill myself, but I am, and so I must content myself with killing others in the hope that one day, if I can only wade deep enough in blood, I will come out clean. While I wait breathlessly for rehabilitation that will never come, I will of course be delighted to consume any shit you might deign to squeeze into my face from the royal buttocks.

I remain your Fuck-Hole’s most betrayed and vilified scapegoat,

Bremer dan Gorst, Royal Observer of the Northern Fiasco

Gorst put down his pen, frowning at a tiny cut he had somehow acquired on the very tip of his forefinger where it rendered every slightest task painful. He blew gently over the letter until every gleam of wet ink had turned dry black, then folded it, running his one unbroken nail slowly along it to make the sharpest of creases. He took up the stick of wax, tongue pressed into the roof of his mouth. His eyes found the candle flame, twinkling invitingly in the shadows. He looked at that spark of brightness as a man scared of heights looks at the parapet of a great tower. It called to him. Drew him. Made him dizzy with the delightful prospect of self-annihilation. Like that, and this shameful unpleasantness that I laughingly call a life could all be over. Only seal it, and send it, and wait for the storm to break.