The Heroes

grumbled curses from the men gathered around them. He found a path between two of the torchlit Heroes, saw gold glinting on the slope and caught up with its owner as he strode angrily downhill.
    ‘Golden! Golden, I need to talk to you!’
    Glama Golden frowned over his shoulder. Perhaps the intention was fearsome fury, but the swellings on his cheek made him look like he was worried at the taste of something he was eating. Calder had to bite back a giggle. That smashed-up face was an opportunity for him, one he could ill afford to miss.
    ‘What would I have to thay to you, Calder?’ he snarled, three of his Named Men bristling behind him, hands tickling their many weapons.
    ‘Quietly, we’re watched!’ Calder came close, huddling as though he had secrets to share. An attitude he’d noticed tended to make men do the same, however little they were inclined to. ‘I thought we could help each other, since we find ourselves in the same position—’
    ‘The thame?’ Golden’s bloated, blotched and bloodied face loomed close. Calder shrank back, all fear and surprise, while on the inside he was a fisherman who feels the tug on his line. Talk was his battlefield, and most of these fools were as useless on it as he was on a real one. ‘How are we the thame,
peathemaker?’
    ‘Black Dow has his favourites, doesn’t he? And the rest of us have to struggle over the scraps.’
    ‘Favourith?’ Golden’s battered mouth was giving him a trace of a lisp and every time he slurred a word he looked even more enraged.
    ‘You led the charge today, while
others
lagged at the back. You put your life in the balance, were wounded fighting Dow’s battle. And now
others
are getting the place of honour, in the front line, while you sit at the rear? Wait, in case you’re needed?’ He leaned even closer. ‘My father always admired you. Always told me you were a clever man, a righteous man, the kind who could be relied on.’ It’s amazing how well the most pathetic flattery can work. On enormously vain people especially. Calder knew that well enough. He used to be one.
    ‘He never told me,’ muttered Golden, though it was plain he wanted to believe it.
    ‘How could he?’ wheedled Calder. ‘He was King of the Northmen. He didn’t have the luxury of telling men what he really thought.’ Which was just as well, because he’d thought Golden was a puffed-up halfhead, just as Calder did. ‘But I can.’ He just chose not to. ‘There’s no reason you and I need to stand on different sides. That’s what Dow wants, to divide us. So he can share all the power, and the gold, and the glory with the likes of Splitfoot, and Tenways … and Ironhead.’ Golden twitched at the name as if it was a hook tugging at his battered face. Their feud was so big he couldn’t see around it, the idiot. ‘We don’t need to let that happen.’ Almost a lover’s whisper, and Calder risked slipping his hand gently onto Golden’s shoulder. ‘Together, you and I could do great things—’
    ‘Enough!’ mumbled Golden through his split lips, slapping away Calder’s hand. ‘Peddle your lieth elthewhere!’ But Calder could smell the doubt as Golden turned away, and a little doubt was all he was after. If you can’t make your enemies trust you, you can at least make them mistrust each other. Patience, his father would have told him, patience. He allowed himself a smirk as Golden and his men stomped off into the night. He was just sowing seeds. Time would bring the harvest. If he lived long enough to swing the scythe.
    Lord Governor Meed gave Finree one last disapproving frown before leaving her alone with her father. He clearly could not stand anyone being in a position of power over him, especially a woman. But if he supposed she would give him a lacklustre report behind his back, he had profoundly underestimated her.
    ‘Meed is a primping dunce,’ she shot over her shoulder. ‘He’ll be as much use on a battlefield as a two-copper whore.’ She thought about it a moment. ‘Actually, I’m not being fair. The whore at least might improve morale. Meed is about as inspiring as a mouldy flannel. Just as well for himyou called off the siege of Ollensand before it turned into a complete fiasco.’
    She was surprised to see her father had dropped into a chair behind a travelling desk, head in his hands. He looked suddenly like a different man. Shrunken, and tired, and old. ‘I lost a thousand men today, Fin. And a thousand more