The Heroes

enough to leave him teetering at the brink, waving his arms for balance. When he found it, Ironhead was gone.

Calder stood there for a moment. If talk sows seeds, he wasn’t sure at all what harvest he could expect from this. But that didn’t have to be a bad thing. He’d learned Cairm Ironhead was a subtler man than he appeared. That alone was worth some piss on his boots.

‘One day I’ll sit in Skarling’s Chair,’ Calder whispered into the darkness. ‘And I’ll make you eat my shit, and you’ll tell me nothing ever tasted so sweet.’ That made him feel a little better.

He shook the wet from his boots as best he could, and strutted off into the night.

Rest and Recreation

Finree did not make much noise. Neither did Gorst. But that suited him well enough. Knobs of backbone showed through pale skin, thin muscles in her hunched shoulders tensing and relaxing, an unsightly ripple going through her arse with every thrust of his hips. He closed his eyes. In his head it was prettier.

They were in her husband’s tent. Or no. That wasn’t working. My quarters in the palace. The ones he used to have when he was the king’s First Guard. Yes. That was better. Nice feel, they’d had. Airy. Or maybe her father’s headquarters? On his desk? In front of the other officers at a briefing? Hell, no. Urgh. His quarters in the palace were easiest, familiar from a thousand well-worn fantasies in which the Closed Council had never stripped him of his position.

I love you, I love you, I love you. It hardly felt like love, though. It hardly felt like much of anything. Certainly nothing beautiful. A mechanical action. Like winding a clock or peeling a carrot or milking a cow. How long had he been at it now? His hips were aching, his stomach was aching, his back and his shoulder were bruised as a trampled apple from the fight in the shallows. Slap, slap, slap, skin on skin. He bared his teeth, gripping hard at her hips, forcing himself back to his airy quarters at the palace …

Getting there, getting there, getting there…

‘Are you nearly done?’

Gorst stopped dead, snatched to reality with an icy shock. Nothing like Finree’s voice. The side of her face turned towards him, gleaming damply in the light of the one candle, the dimple of an old acne scar inadequately covered by thick powder. Nothing like Finree’s face. All his thrusting seemed to have made little impression. She might have been a baker asking his apprentice if the pies were done.

His rasping breath echoed back from the canvas. ‘I thought I told you not to talk.’

‘I’ve a queue.’

So much for nearly there. His cock was already wilting. He struggled to his feet, sore head brushing against the ceiling of the tent. She was one of the cleaner ones, but still the air had a cloying feel. Too much sweat and breath, and other things, inadequately smothered by cheap flower-water. He wondered how many other men had already been through here tonight, how many more would come through. He wondered if they pretended they were somewhere else, she was someone else. Does she pretend that we are someone else? Does she care? Does she hate us? Or are we a procession of clocks to be wound, carrots to be peeled, cows to be milked?

She had her back to him, shrugging her dress on so she could shrug it off again. He felt as if he was suffocating. He dragged his trousers up and fumbled his belt shut. He tossed coins on a wooden box without counting, tore his way out through the flap into the night and stood there, eyes closed, breathing the damp air and swearing never to do this again. Again.

One of the pimps stood outside, apparently unbothered by the water gently dripping from the brim of his hat, with that knowing and slightly threatening smile they have to wear like uniforms. ‘Everything to your liking?’

My liking? I seem unable even to come in the allotted time. Most men are capable of that level of social interaction, at least, if no other, are they not? What am I, that I must debase and ruin even the one decent emotion I have? If one can call an entirely unhealthy obsession with another man’s wife decent. I don’t suppose one can. Well, probably he could.

Gorst looked at the man. Really looked, right in his eyes. Through that empty smile to the greed, and ruthlessness, and limitless boredom behind.

My liking? Shall I guffaw, and hug you like a brother? Hug you and hug you and twist your head all the way around, and your stupid fucking hat with it? If I beat your face until it has no bones in it, if I crush your scrawny throat with my hands, will that be a loss to the world, do you think? Will anyone even notice? Would I even notice? Would it be an evil deed, or a good? One less worm to get fat burrowing through the shit of the king’s glorious army?

Gorst’s mask must have slipped for a moment, or perhaps the man was more attuned by years of practice to hints of violence in a face than the cultured members of Jalenhorm’s staff and Kroy’s headquarters. His eyes narrowed and he took a cautious step back, one hand straying towards his belt.

Gorst found himself hoping the man would pull out a blade, excitement flaring briefly at the thought of seeing steel. Is that all that excites me now? Death? Facing it and causing it? Did he even feel the slightest renewed stirring in his sore groin at the possibility of violence? But the pimp only stood there, watching.

‘Everything is fine.’ And Gorst trudged past, boots squelching in the muck, away between the tents and into the mad carnival that sprang up behind the lines, as if by magic, whenever the army stopped for more than a couple of hours together. As full of bustle and variety as any market of the Thousand Isles, as full of blinding colour and choking fragrance as any Dagoskan bazaar, every need, taste or whim catered for a dozen times over.

Fawning merchants held swatches of bright cloth against officers too drunk to stand. Armourers battered out a shattering anvil music while salesmen demonstrated the strength, sharpness or beauty of wares nimbly replaced with trash when the money was handed over. A major with a bristling moustache sat frozen in double-chinned belligerence while a painter dashed off a shoddy representation by candlelight. Joyless laughter and meaningless babble hammered at Gorst’s aching head. Everything the best, the finest, the bespoke and renowned.

‘The new self-sharpening sheath!’ someone roared. ‘Self-sharpening!’

‘Advances to officers! Loans at first-rate rates!’

‘Suljuk girls here! Best fuckery you’ll ever get!’

‘Flowers!’ in a voice somewhere between song and scream. ‘For your wife! For your daughter! For your lover! For your whore!’

‘For pet or pot!’ a woman shrieked, thrusting up a bemused puppy. ‘For pet or pot!’

Children old long before their time darted through the crowd offering polishing or prophecy, sharpening or shaving, grooming or gravedigging. Offering anything and everything that could be bought or paid for. A girl whose age could not be reckoned slipped all around Gorst in a capering dance, bare feet mud-caked to the knee. Suljuk, Gurkish, Styrian, who knew of what mongrel derivation. ‘Like this?’ she cooed, gesturing at a stick upon which samples of gold braid were stapled.

Gorst felt a sudden choking need to weep, and gave her a sad smile, and shook his head. She spat at his feet, and was gone. A pair of elderly ladies stood at the flap of a dripping tent, handing out printed papers extolling the virtues of temperance and sobriety to illiterate soldiers who had already left them trampled in the mud for a half-mile in every direction, worthy lessons gently erased by the rain.

A few more steps, each an unimaginable effort, and Gorst stopped in the track, alone in the midst of all that crowd. Cursing soldiers slopped through the mud around him, all stranded like him with their petty despairs, all shopping like him for what cannot be bought. He looked up, open-mouthed, rain tickling his tongue. Hoping for guidance, perhaps, but the stars were shrouded in cloud. They light the happy way for better men. Harod dan Brock, and his like. Shoulders and elbows knocked and jostled him. Someone help me, please.

But who?