Abercrombie, Joe - The Heroes
Gorst bared his teeth, raised his fist and started punching the man in the face, his gauntlet crunching against one side of the golden helmet. Up and down, up and down, his fist was a hammer and gradually it marked, then dented, then twisted the helmet out of shape until one side of it dug into the man’s face. Even better than the sword. Crunch, crunch, and it bent further, cutting into his cheek. More personal. No need for discussion or justification, for introductions or etiquette, for guilt or excuses. Only the incredible release of violence. So powerful that he felt this golden-armoured man must be his best friend in all the world. I love you. I love you, and that is why I must smash your head apart. He was laughing as he pounded his gauntleted knuckles into the man’s bloody-blond moustache again. Laughing and crying at once.
Then something hit him in the backplate with a dull clang, his head snapped back and he was out of the saddle, jostled upside down between their two horses, gripped by cold and his helmet full of bubbling river. He came up coughing, water sprayed in his face by thrashing hooves.
The man in the golden armour had floundered to a riderless horse and was dragging himself drunkenly into the saddle. There were corpses everywhere: horses and men, Union and Northman, sprawled on the shingle, bobbing in the ford, carried gently by the soft current. He hardly saw any Union cavalry left. Only Northmen, weapons raised, nudging their horses cautiously towards him.
Gorst fumbled with the buckle on his helmet and dragged it off, the wind shockingly cold on his face. He clambered to his feet, armour leaden with river water. He held his arms out, as if to embrace a dear friend, and smiled as the nearest Northman raised his sword.
‘I am ready,’ he whispered.
‘Shoot!’ There was a volley of clicks and rattles behind him. The Northman toppled from his saddle, stuck through with flatbow bolts. Another shrieked, axe tumbling as he clapped his hand to a bolt in his cheek. Gorst turned, stupidly, to look over his shoulder. The south bank of the shallows was one long row of kneeling flatbowmen. Another rank stepped between them as they started to reload, knelt and levelled their bows with mechanical precision.
A big man sat on a large grey at the far end of the line. General Jalenhorm. ‘Second rank!’ he roared, slashing his hand down. ‘Shoot!’ Gorst ducked on an instinct, head whipping around as he followed the bolts flickering overhead and into the Northmen, already turning their horses to flee, men and beasts screaming and snorting as they dropped in the shallows.
‘Third rank! Shoot!’ The hiss and twitter of another volley. A few more fell peppered, one horse rearing and going over backwards, crushing its rider. But most of the rest had made it up the bank and were away into the barley on the other side, tearing off to the north as quickly as they had arrived.
Gorst slowly let his arms drop as the sound of hooves faded and left, aside from the chattering of the water and the moaning of the wounded, an uncanny silence.
Apparently the engagement was over, and he was still alive.
How strangely disappointing.
The Better Part of Valour
By the time Calder pulled up his horse some fifty paces from the Old Bridge, the fighting was over. Not that he was shedding too many tears for having missed his part in it. That had been the point of hanging back.
The sun was starting to sink in the west and the shadows were stretching out towards the Heroes, insects floating lazily above the crops. Calder could almost have convinced himself he was out for an easy ride in the old days, son of the King of the Northmen and master of all he saw. Except for the few corpses of men and horses scattered on the track, one Union soldier spreadeagled on his face with a spear sticking straight up from his back, the dust underneath him stained dark.
It looked like the Old Bridge – a moss-crusted double span of ancient stone that looked as if it was about to collapse under its own weight – had been only lightly held, and when the Union men saw their fellows fleeing from the Heroes they’d pulled back to the other bank just as quickly as ever they could. Calder couldn’t say he blamed them.
Pale-as-Snow had found a big rock to sit on, spear dug point first into the ground beside him, his grey horse nibbling at the grass and the grey fur around his shoulders blowing in the breeze. Whatever the weather, he never seemed warm. It took Calder a moment to find the end of his scabbard with the point of his sword – not usually a problem of his – before he sheathed it and sat down beside the old warrior.
‘You took your time getting here,’ said Pale-as-Snow, without looking up.
‘I think my horse might be lame.’
‘Something’s lame, all right. You know your brother was right about one thing.’ He nodded towards Scale, striding about in the open ground at the north end of the bridge, shouting and waving his mace around. He still had his shield in the other fist, a flatbow bolt lodged near the rim. ‘Northmen won’t follow a man reckoned a coward.’
‘What’s that to me?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ Pale-as-Snow’s grey eyes showed no sign he was joking. ‘You’re everyone’s hero.’
White-Eye Hansul was trying to argue with Scale, open hands up for calm. Scale shoved him over onto his back with an ill-tempered flick of his arm and started bellowing again. It looked as though there hadn’t been enough fighting for his taste, and he was for pushing on across the river right away to find some more. It looked as though no one else thought that was a very good idea.
Pale-as-Snow gave a resigned sort of sigh, as if this had been happening a lot. ‘By the dead, but once your brother gets the fire under him it can be hard work putting it out. Maybe you can play at the voice of reason?’
Calder shrugged. ‘I’ve played at worse. Here’s your shield back.’ And he tossed it at Pale-as-Snow’s stomach so he almost fell off his rock catching it. ‘Oy! Pinhead!’ Calder swaggered towards Scale with hands on his hips. ‘Pinhead Scale! Brave as a bull, strong as a bull, thick as a bull’s arse.’ Scale’s eyes bulged right out of his livid face as they followed him. So did everyone else’s, but Calder didn’t mind that. He liked nothing better than an audience.
‘Good old stupid Scale! Great fighter but, you know … nothing but shit in his head.’ Calder tapped at his skull as he said it, then slowly stretched out his arm to point up towards the Heroes. ‘That’s what they say about you.’ Scale’s expression grew a touch less furious and a touch more thoughtful, but only a touch. ‘Up there, at Dow’s little wank-parties. Tenways, and Golden, and Ironhead, and the rest. They think you’re a fucking idiot.’ Calder didn’t entirely disagree, if it came to that. He leaned in close to Scale, well within punching range, he was painfully aware. ‘Why don’t you ride on over that bridge, and prove them all right?’
‘Fuck them!’ barked Scale. ‘We could get over that bridge and into Adwein. Get astride the Uffrith Road! Cut those Union bastards off at the roots. Get in behind ’em!’ He was punching at the air with his shield, trying to stoke his rage up again, but the moment he’d started talking instead of doing he’d lost and Calder had won. Calder knew it, and had to smother his contempt. That was no challenge, though. He’d been hiding contempt around his brother for years.
‘Astride the Uffrith Road? Might be half the Union army coming up that road before sunset.’ Calder looked at Scale’s horsemen, no more than ten score and most of their horses ridden out, the foot still hurrying through the fields far behind or stopped at a long wall that reached almost all the way to Skarling’s Finger. ‘No offence to the valour of our father’s proud Named Men here, but are you really going to take on countless thousands with this lot?’
Scale gave them a look himself, jaw muscles squirming in the side of his head as he ground his teeth. White-Eye Hansul, who’d picked himself up and was dusting his dented armour down, shrugged his shoulders. Scale flung his mace on the ground. ‘Shit!’
Calder risked a calming hand on his shoulder. ‘We were told to take the bridge. We took the bridge. If the Union want it back, they can cross over and fight us for it. On our ground. And we’ll be waiting for them. Ready and rested, dug in and close to supplies. Honestly, brother, if Black Dow doesn’t kill the pair of us through pure meanness you’ll more than likely do it through pure rashness.’
Scale took a long breath, and blew it out. He didn’t look at all happy. But he didn’t look like he was about to tear anyone’s head off. ‘All right, damn it!’ He frowned across the river, then back at Calder, then shook off his hand. ‘I swear, sometimes talking to you is like talking to our father.’
‘Thanks,’ said Calder. He wasn’t sure it was meant as a compliment, but he took it as one anyway. One of their father’s sons had to keep his temper.
Paths of Glory
Corporal Tunny tried to hop from one patch of yellow weed to another, the regimental standard held high above the filth in his left hand, his right already spattered to the shoulder from slips into the scum. The bog was pretty much what Tunny had been expecting. And that wasn’t a good thing.
The place was a maze of sluggish channels of brown water, streaked on the surface with multicoloured oil, with rotten leaves, with smelly froth, ill-looking rushes scattered at random. If you put down your foot and it only squelched in to the ankle, you counted yourself lucky. Here and there some species of hell-tree had wormed its leathery roots deep enough to stay upright and hang out a few lank leaves, festooned with beards of brown creeper and sprouting with outsize mushrooms. There was a persistent croaking that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Some cursed variety of bird, or frog, or insect, but Tunny couldn’t see any of the three. Maybe it was just the bog itself, laughing at them.
‘Forest of the fucking damned,’ he whispered. Getting a battalion across this was like driving a herd of sheep through a sewer. And, as usual, for reasons he could never understand, him and the four rawest recruits in the Union army were playing vanguard.
‘Which way, Corporal Tunny?’ asked Worth, doubled up around his guts.
‘Stick to the grassy bits, the guide said!’ Though there wasn’t much around that an honest man could’ve called grass. Not that there were many honest men around either. ‘Have you got a rope, boy?’ he asked Yolk, struggling through the mulch beside him, a long smear of mud down his freckled cheek.
‘Left ’em with the horses, Corporal.’
‘Of course. Of course we bloody did.’ By the Fates, how Tunny wished he’d been left with the horses. He took one step and cold water rushed over the top of his boot like a clammy hand clamping around his foot. He was just setting up to have a proper curse at that when a shrill cry came from behind.
‘Ah! My boot!’
Tunny spun round. ‘Keep quiet, idiot!’ Totally failing to keep quiet himself. ‘The Northmen’ll hear us in bloody Carleon!’
But Klige wasn’t listening. He’d strayed well away from the rushes and left one of his boots behind, sucked off by the bog. He was wading out to get it, sliding in up to his thighs. Yolk snickered at him as he started delving into the slime.
‘Leave it, Klige, you fool!’ snapped Tunny, floundering back towards him.
‘Got it!’ The bog made a squelching suck as Klige dragged his boot free, looking like it was caked in black porridge. ‘Whoa!’ He lurched one way, then the other. ‘Whoa!’ And he was in up to his waist, face flipped from triumph to panic in an instant. Yolk snickered again, then suddenly realised what was happening.
‘Who’s got a rope?’ shouted Lederlingen. ‘Someone get a rope!’ He floundered out towards Klige, grabbing hold of the nearest piece of tree, a leafless twig thrust out over the mire. ‘Take my hand! Take my hand!’
But Klige was panicking, thrashing around and only working himself deeper. He went down with shocking speed, face tipped back, only just above the level of the filth, a big black leaf stuck across one cheek.
‘Help me!’ he squealed, stretching fingers still a good stride short of Lederlingen’s. Tunny slopped up, shoving the flagstaff out towards Klige. ‘Help murghhh—’ His bulging eyes rolled towards Tunny, then they were lost, his floating hair vanished, a few bubbles broke on the foetid surface, and that was it. Tunny poked at the mush uselessly, but Klige was gone. Aside from his rescued boot, floating slowly away, no trace he’d ever existed.
They struggled the rest of the way in silence, the other recruits looking stunned, Tunny with his jaw furiously clenched, all sticking to the tumps of yellow weed as close as new foals to their mothers. Soon enough the ground started to rise, the trees turned from twisted swamp monsters to firs and oaks. Tunny leaned the filthy standard against a trunk and stood, hands on hips. His magnificent boots were ruined.
‘Shit!’ he snarled. ‘Fucking shit!’
Yolk sank down in the muck, staring into nowhere, white hands trembling. Lederlingen licked his pale lips, breathing hard and saying nothing. Worth was nowhere to be seen, though Tunny thought he could hear someone groaning in the undergrowth. Even the drowning of a comrade couldn’t delay the working of that lad’s troublesome bowels. If anything it had made them accelerate. Forest walked up, caked to the knees in black mud. They all were caked, daubed, spattered with it, and Tunny in particular.
‘I hear we lost one of our recruits.’ Forest had said it often enough that he could say it deadpan. That he had to.
‘Klige,’ Tunny squeezed between gritted teeth. ‘Was going to be a weaver. We lost a man in a fucking bog. Why are we here, even?’ The bottom half of his coat was heavy with oily filth and he peeled it off and flung it down.
‘You did the best you could.’
‘I know,’ snapped Tunny.
‘Nothing more you—’
‘He had some of my bloody gear in his pack! Eight good bottles of brandy! You know how much that could’ve made me?’
There was a pause.
‘Eight bottles.’ Forest slowly nodded. ‘Well, you’re a piece of work, Corporal Tunny, you know that? Twenty-six years in his Majesty’s army but you can always find a way to surprise me. I tell you what, you can get up that rise and find out where in the pit of hell we are while I try and get the rest of the battalion across without sinking any more bottles. Maybe that’ll take your mind off the depth of your loss.’ And he stalked away, hissing to some men who were trying to heave a trembling mule out of the knee-deep muck.
Tunny stood fuming a moment longer, but fuming was going to do no good. ‘Yolk, Latherlister, Worth, get over here!’
Yolk stood up, wide-eyed. ‘Worth … Worth—’
‘Still squirting,’ said Lederlingen, busy rooting through his pack and hanging various sodden items up on branches to dry.
