The Heroes

around dawn, back against a tree and the regimental standard in one fist, and nudged his oilskin up with one finger to see the two men he had left hunched over the damp ground.
    ‘Like this?’ Yolk was squeaking.
    ‘No,’ whispered Worth. ‘Tinder under there, then strike it like—’
    Tunny was up in a flash, stomped down hard on their pile of slimy sticks and crushed it flat. ‘No fires, idiots, if the enemy miss the flames they’ll see the smoke for sure!’ Not that Yolk would’ve got that pitiable collection of soaked rot lit in ten years of trying. He wasn’t even holding the flint properly.
    ‘How we going to cook our bacon, though, Corporal?’ Worth held up his skillet, a pale and unappetising slice lying limp inside.
    ‘You’re not.’
    ‘We’ll eat it raw?’
    ‘Can’t advise it,’ said Tunny, ‘especially not to you, Worth, given the sensitivity of your intestines.’
    ‘My what?’
    ‘Your dodgy guts.’
    His shoulders slumped. ‘What do we eat, then?’
    ‘What have you got?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘That’s what you’re eating, then. Unless you can find something better.’ Even considering he’d been woken before dawn, Tunny was unusually grumpy. He had a lurking sense he had something to be very annoyed about, but wasn’t sure what. Until he remembered the dirty water closingover Klige’s face, and kicked Yolk’s embarrassment of a fire away into the dripping brush.
    ‘Colonel Vallimir came up a while ago,’ murmured Yolk, as though that was the very thing Tunny needed to lift his spirits.
    ‘Wonderful,’ he hissed. ‘Maybe we can eat him.’
    ‘Might be some food came up with him.’
    Tunny snorted. ‘All officers ever bring up is trouble, and our boy Vallimir’s the worst kind.’
    ‘Stupid?’ muttered Worth.
    ‘Clever,’ said Tunny. ‘And ambitious. The kind of officer climbs to a promotion over the bodies of the common man.’
    ‘Are we the common man?’ asked Yolk.
    Tunny stared at him. ‘You are the fucking definition.’ Yolk even looked pleased about it. ‘No sign of Latherliver yet?’
    ‘Lederlingen, Corporal Tunny.’
    ‘I know his name, Worth. I choose to mispronounce it because it amuses me.’ He puffed out his cheeks. His standard for amusement really had plummeted since this campaign got underway.
    ‘Haven’t seen him,’ said Yolk, gazing sadly at that forlorn slice of bacon.
    ‘That’s something, at least.’ Then, when the two lads looked blankly at him. ‘Leperlover went to tell the tin-soldier pushers where we are. Chances are he’ll be the one bringing the orders back.’
    ‘What orders?’ asked Yolk.
    ‘How the hell should I know what orders? But any orders is a bad thing.’ Tunny frowned off towards the treeline. He couldn’t see much through the thicket of trunk, branch, shadow and mist, but he could just hear the sound of the distant stream, swollen with half the drizzle that had fallen last night. The other half felt like it was in his underwear. ‘Might even be an order to attack. Cross that stream and hit the Northmen in the flank.’
    Worth carefully set his pan down, pressing at his stomach. ‘Corporal, I think—’
    ‘Well, I don’t want you doing it here, do I?’
    Worth dashed off into the shadowy brush, already fumbling with his belt. Tunny sat back against his trunk, slipped out Yolk’s flask and took the smallest nip.
    Yolk licked his pale lips. ‘Could I—’
    ‘No.’ Tunny regarded the recruit through narrowed eyes as he took another. ‘Unless you’ve something to pay with.’ Silence. ‘There you go, then.’
    ‘A tent would be something,’ whispered Yolk in a voice almost too soft to hear.
    ‘It would, but they’re with the horses, and the king has seen fit to supplyhis loyal soldiers with a new and spectacularly inefficient type which leaks at every seam.’ Leading, as it happened, to a profitable market in the old type in which Tunny had already twice turned a handsome profit. ‘How would you pitch one here anyway?’ And he wriggled back against his tree so the bark scratched his itchy shoulder blades.
    ‘What should we do?’ asked Yolk.
    ‘Nothing whatsoever, trooper. Unless specifically and precisely instructed otherwise, a good soldier always does nothing.’ In a narrow triangle between black branches, the sky was starting to show the faintest sickly tinge of light. Tunny winced, and closed his eyes. ‘The thing folks at home never realise about war is just how bloody boring