Chief.’ He leaned a little closer. ‘Don’t get killed.’
Beck squeezed back. ‘Aye. Thanks, Chief.’
‘Where’s Whirrun?’
‘Never fear!’ And he came shouldering through the wet and unhappy throng. ‘Whirrun of Bligh stands among you!’
For reasons known only to himself he’d taken his shirt off and was standing stripped to his waist, Father of Swords over one shoulder. ‘By the dead,’ muttered Craw. ‘Every time we fight you’re bloody wearing less.’
Whirrun tipped his head back and blinked into the rain. ‘I’m not wearing a shirt in this. A wet shirt only chafes my nipples.’
Wonderful shook her head. ‘All part of the hero’s mystery.’
‘That too.’ Whirrun grinned. ‘How about it, Wonderful? Does a wet shirt chafe your nipples? I need to know.’
She shook his hand. ‘You worry about your nipples, Cracknut, I’ll handle mine.’
Everything was bright now, and still, and quiet. Water gleaming on armour, furs curled up with wet, bright painted shields beaded with dew. Faces flashed at Craw, known and unknown. Grinning, stern, crazy, afraid. He held out his hand, and Whirrun pressed it in his own, grinning with every tooth. ‘You ready?’
Craw always had his doubts. Ate ’em, breathed ’em, lived ’em twenty years or more. Hardly a moment free of the bastards. Every day since he buried his brothers.
But now was no time for doubts. ‘I’m ready.’ And he drew his sword, and looked down towards the Union men, hundreds upon hundreds, blurring in the rain to spots and splashes and glints of colour, and he smiled. Maybe Whirrun was right, and a man ain’t really alive until he faces death. Craw raised his sword up high, and he gave a howl, and all around him men did the same.
And they waited for the Union to come.
More Tricks
The sun had to be up somewhere but you’d never have known it. The angry clouds had thickened and the light was still poor. Positively beggarly, in fact. As far as Corporal Tunny could tell, and somewhat to his surprise, no one had moved. The helmets and spears still showed above the stretch of wall that he could see, shifting a little from time to time but going nowhere fast. Mitterick’s attack was well underway. That much they could hear. But on this forgotten far end of the battle, the Northmen waited.
‘Are they still there?’ asked Worth. Waiting for action like this got most men shitting themselves. Worth was unique, in that it seemed it was the one thing that could stop him.
‘They’re still there.’
‘Not moving?’ squeaked Yolk.
‘If they were moving we’d be moving, wouldn’t we?’ Tunny peered through his eyeglass once again. ‘No. They’re not moving.’
‘Is that fighting I can hear?’ muttered Worth, as a gust of wind brought the echoing of angry men, horses and metal across the stream.
‘It’s that or it’s a serious disagreement in a stable. Do you think it’s a disagreement in a stable?’
‘No, Corporal Tunny.’
‘No. Neither do I.’
‘Then what’s going on?’ asked Yolk. A riderless horse appeared from over the rise, stirrups flapping at its flanks, trotted down towards the water, stopped and started nibbling at the grass.
Tunny lowered his eyeglass. ‘Honestly, I’m not sure.’ All around them, rain tapped at the leaves.
The trampled barley was scattered with dead and dying horses, dead and dying men. In front of Calder and his stolen standards they were heaped up in a bloody tangle. Only a few strides away, three Carls were arguing with each other as they tried to free their spears, all impaled in the same Union rider. A few boys had been sent scurrying out to gather spent arrows. A couple more had been unable to resist clambering into the third pit to get an early start at picking over the bodies there, and White-Eye was roaring at them to get back into line.
The Union cavalry were all done. A brave effort, but a stupid one. It seemed to Calder the two often went together. To make matters worse, having failed once they’d insisted on giving it another try, still more doomed. Three score or so had jumped the third pit on the right, managed to get over Clail’s Wall and kill a few archers before they were shot or speared themselves. All pointless as mopping a beach. That was the trouble with pride, and courage, and all those clench-jawed virtues bards love to harp on. The more you have, the more likely you are to end up bottom in a pile of dead men. All the Union’s bravest had achieved was to give Calder’s men the biggest boost to their spirits they’d had since Bethod was King of the Northmen.
They were letting the Union know it, now, as the survivors rode, or limped, or crawled back towards their lines. They danced about, and clapped and whooped into the drizzle. They shook each others’ hands, and thumped each other’s backs, and clashed their shields together. They chanted Bethod’s name, and Scale’s, and even quite frequently Calder’s, which was gratifying. The comradeship of warriors, who would’ve thought? He grinned around as men cheered and brandished their weapons at him, held up his sword and gave it a wave in return. He wondered whether it was too late to smear a bit of blood on the blade, since he hadn’t quite got around to swinging it. There was plenty of blood about and he doubted its previous owners would miss it now.
‘Chief?’
‘Eh?’
Pale-as-Snow was pointing off to the south. ‘Might want to pull ’em back into position.’
The rain was getting weightier, fat drops leaving the earth spattered with dark spots, pinging from the armour of the living and the dead. It had drawn a misty haze across the battlefield to the south, but beyond the riderless horses aimlessly wandering, and the horseless riders stumbling back towards the Old Bridge, Calder thought he could see shapes moving in the barley.
He shielded his eyes with one hand. More and more emerged from the rain, turning from ghosts to flesh and metal. Union foot. Vast blocks of them, trampling forward in carefully measured, well-ordered, dreadfully purposeful ranks, pole-arms held high, flags struck limp by the wet.
Calder’s men had seen them too, and their triumphant jeering was already a memory. The barking voices of Named Men rang through the rain, bringing them grimly back to their places behind the third pit. White-Eye was marshalling some of the lightly wounded to fight as a reserve and plug any holes. Calder wondered if they’d be plugging holes in him before the day was out. It looked a good bet.
‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any more tricks?’ asked Pale-as-Snow.
‘Not really.’ Unless you counted running like hell. ‘You?’
‘Just the one.’ And the old warrior carefully wiped the blood from his sword with a rag and held it up.
‘Oh.’ Calder looked down at his own clean blade, glistening with beads of water. ‘That.’
The Tyranny of Distance
‘I can’t see a damn thing!’ hissed Finree’s father, taking a stride forwards and peering through his eyeglass again, presumably to no more effect than before. ‘Can you?’
‘No, sir,’ grumbled one of his staff, unhelpfully.
They had witnessed Mitterick’s premature charge in stunned silence. Then, as the first light crawled across the valley, the start of Jalenhorm’s advance. Then the drizzle had begun. First Osrung had disappeared in the grey pall on the right, then Clail’s Wall on the left, then the Old Bridge and the nameless inn where Finree had almost died yesterday. Now even the shallows were half-remembered ghosts. Everyone stood silent, paralysed with anxiety, straining for sounds that would occasionally tickle at the edge of hearing, over the damp whisper of the rain. For all that they could see now, there might as well have been no battle at all.
Finree’s father paced back and forth, the fingers of one hand fussing at nothing. He came to stand beside
