The Heroes

what’s my interest? We don’t all love you as much as you love yourself, Calder.’
    ‘You’ll have need of allies of your own before too long, and you well know it.’
    ‘Do I?’
    Calder snorted. ‘No fool gets where you are, Ironhead. Black Dow scarcely has more liking for you than me, I think.’
    ‘No liking? Has he not put me in the place of honour? Front and middle, boy!’
    Calder got the unpleasant feeling there was a trace of mocking laughter in Ironhead’s voice. But it was some kind of opening and he had no choice but to charge in with his most scornful chuckle. ‘The place of
honour?
Black Dow? He turned on the man who spared his life, and stole my father’s chain for himself. The place of
honour
? He’s done what I’d do to the man I fear most. Put you where you’ll take the brunt of the enemy’sfury. My father always said you were the toughest fighter in the North, and Black Dow knows it. Knows you’ll never back down. He’s put you where your own strength will work against you. And who’s to benefit? Who’s been left out of the fight? Tenways and Golden.’ He’d been hoping for that name to work some magic, but Ironhead didn’t move so much as a hair. ‘They hang back while you, and my brother, and my wife’s father do the fighting. I hope your honour can stop a knife in the back, when it comes.’
    There was a grunt. ‘Finally.’
    ‘Finally what?’
    The sound of piss spattering below them. ‘That. You know, Calder, you said it yourself.’
    ‘Said what?’
    ‘No fool gets where I am. I’m a long way from convinced Black Dow’s set on my doom or even on yours. But if he is, what help can you offer me? Your father’s praise? That lost most of its worth when he got bested in the High Places, and all the rest when the Bloody-Nine smashed his skull to porridge. Oops.’ Calder felt piss spattering over his boots. ‘Sorry ’bout that. Guess we’re not all as nimble with our cocks as you are. Reckon I’ll stick with Dow, touched though I am by your offer of alliance.’
    ‘Black Dow’s got nothing to offer but war and the fear men have of him. If he dies there’s nothing left.’ Silence, while Calder wondered if he’d gone a step too far.
    ‘Huh.’ There was a jingling as Ironhead fastened his belt. ‘Kill him, then. But until you do, find other ears for your lies. Find another piss-pit too, you wouldn’t want to drown in this one.’ Calder was slapped on the back, hard 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

    F inree 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,