The Heroes

And on the other side of it, the enemy.

Dow roared something over his shoulder but Craw couldn’t hear him. Could hardly hear anything over the hissing of the rain and the clamour of rough voices, loud as a storm themselves. Too late for orders. Time comes a man just has to stick with the orders he’s given, trust in his men to do the right thing, and fight. He thought maybe he saw the hilt of the Father of Swords waving between the spears. Should’ve been with his dozen. Stood with his crew. Why had he said yes to being Dow’s Second? Maybe ’cause he’d been Threetrees’ Second once, and he’d somehow thought if he had the place he used to have the world would be like it used to be. An old fool, grabbing at ghosts. Way too late. Should’ve married Colwen when he had the chance. Asked her, anyway. Given her the chance to turn him down.

He closed his eyes for a moment, breathed in the wet, cold air. ‘Should’ve stayed a carpenter,’ he whispered. But the sword had been the easier choice. To work wood you need all manner of tools – chisels and saws, axes great and small, nails and hammers, awls and planes. To be a killer you just need two. A blade and the will. Only Craw wasn’t sure he had the will any more. He squeezed his fist tight around his sword’s wet grip, the roar of battle growing louder and louder, binding with the roar of his own breath in his ears, the roar of his own heart pumping. Choices made. And he gritted his teeth, and snapped his eyes open.

The crowd split apart like a timber down the grain and the Union boiled from the gap. One barrelled into Craw before he could swing, their shields locked together, boots slithering in the mud. A glimpse of a snarling face, managed to tip his shield forward so the metal rim dug up into a nose, and back, and up, gurgling, whimpering. Dragging at the shield strap with all his strength, jabbing with it, stabbing with it, growling and spitting with it, grinding it into the man’s head. It caught the buckle on his helmet, halftore it off. Craw tried to twist his sword free, a blade whipped past him and took a great chunk out of the man’s face. Craw left sliding in the muck, nothing to push against.

Black Dow spun his axe around, brought the pick side down on someone’s helmet, punching right through to the haft. Left it buried in the corpse’s head as it toppled backwards, arms wide.

A mud-splattered Northman tangled with a spear, his arm twisted over it and his war-hammer wafting about uselessly, a clawing hand on his face, forcing his head up while he peered down at the fingers.

A Union soldier came at Craw. Someone tripped him and he went down on one knee in the muck. Craw hit him across the back of the head with a dull clonk and put a dent in his helmet. Hit him again and knocked him sprawling. Hit him again, and again, hammering his face into the mud, spitting curses.

Shivers smashed at someone with his shield, smiling, rain turned the great scar on his face bright red like a fresh wound. War tips everything upside down. Men who are a menace in peacetime become your best hope once the steel starts swinging.

A corpse kicked over from front to back, back to front again. Blood curling out into dirty water, plopping rain. The Father of Swords swung down and split someone open like a chisel splitting a carving of a man. Craw ducked behind his shield again as blood showered across it, rain spattered against it, mist of drops.

Spears pushing every way, a random, rattling, slippery mass. The point of one slid slowly down wood and into a hand, and through it, skewering it into someone’s chest and pushing him down into the muck, shaking his head, no, no, fumbling at the shaft with the other hand as the merciless boots thumped over him.

Craw prodded a spear-point away with his shield, stabbing back with his sword, caught someone under the jaw and sent his head jerking up, blood gushing as he fell, making a honking note like the first note of a song he used to know.

Behind him was a Union officer wearing the most beautiful armour Craw ever saw, carved all over with gleaming golden designs. He was beating away stupidly at Black Dow with a muddy sword, had managed to drive him to his knees. Stand by your Chief. Craw stepped up, roaring, boot hammering down in a puddle and showering muddy water. Cut mindlessly across that lovely breastplate, edge scoring a bright groove through all that craftsmanship and sending its owner lurching. Forward again, stabbing as the Union man turned, Craw’s blade grating against the bottom edge of his armour, sliding right through him and carrying him backwards.

Craw struggled with the grip of his sword, hot blood sticky all over his hand, up his arm. Holding this bastard up as he wrestled to twist the blade out of him, staggering together in the muck in a mad hug. Face against Craw’s cheek, stubble scratching, breath rasping in his ear, and Craw realised he never even got this close to Colwen. Choices made, eh? Choices—

Wanting is not always enough, and however much Gorst wanted to, he could not get there. Too many straining bodies in his way. By the time he had hacked the leg from the last of them and flung him aside, the old Northman had already run Jalenhorm right through the guts. Gorst could see the bloody point of the sword under the gilded rim of his rain-dewed breastplate. The general had the oddest expression as his killer struggled to pull the blade out of him. Almost a smile.

Redeemed.

The old Northman twisted around as he heard Gorst’s howl, eyes going wide, bringing his shield up. The long steel chopped deep into it, splitting the timbers, wrenching it around on his arm, driving the metal rim into his head and tossing him tumbling sideways.

Gorst stepped up to finish the job but again there was someone in his way. As always. Hardly more than a boy, swinging a hatchet, shouting. The usual stuff, probably, die, die, blah, blah, blah. Gorst was happy to die, of course. But not for this fool’s convenience. He jerked his head sideways, let the hatchet bounce harmlessly from his shoulder- plate, spun about, long steel curving after him through the wet air. The boy tried desperately to block it but the heavy blade snatched the hatchet from his hand and split his face wide open, spraying brains.

The point of a sword whispered at him and Gorst whipped back from the waist, felt the wind of it across his cheek, a niggling discomfort under his eye. A space had opened in the screaming crowd, the battle blooming from a single press to mindless clumps of sodden combat at the very centre of the Heroes. All concepts of lines, tactics, directions, orders, of sides even, vanished as though they had never been. And good riddance, they only confuse things.

For some reason a half-naked Northman stood facing him, with the biggest sword Gorst had ever seen. And I have seen a lot. Absurdly long, as if it had been forged for a giant’s use, dull grey metal gleaming with rain, a single letter stamped near the hilt.

He looked like some lurid painting by an artist who never saw a battlefield, but silly-looking people can be just as deadly as silly-sounding ones, and Gorst had coughed out all his arrogance in the smoke of Cardotti’s House of Leisure. A man must treat every fight as though it is his last. Will this be my last? We can hope.

He rocked back, cautious, as the man’s elbow twitched up for a sideways blow, shifted his shield to meet it, steel ready to counter. But instead of swinging the Northman lunged, using the great blade like a spear, the point darting past the edge of Gorst’s shield and squealing down his breastplate, sending him stumbling. A feint. The instinct to jump back was powerful but he forced himself to keep his eyes fixed on the blade, watched its path curve through the rain, an arc of glistening droplets following after.