The Heroes

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.’

‘Aye, I suppose.’

‘So how can Black Dow be for everyone?’

‘Well …’ Agrick squirmed about a bit. ‘I don’t know. I guess, just …’ He squinted down into the valley as Wonderful walked up behind them. ‘Why are we here, then?’

She clipped him across the back of the head and made him grunt. ‘Sit on the Heroes, watch for the Union.