The Heroes

side of the room without moving her feet. A couple of the officers watched her get there, muttering among themselves, evidently party to her one-sided humiliation and no doubt relishing it too.
    ‘Are you all right?’ asked Aliz. ‘You look pale.’
    ‘I am perfectly well.’ Or, in fact, seething with fury. Insulting her was one thing, no doubt she deserved it. Insulting her husband and her father were other things entirely. That she would make the old bastard pay for, she swore it.
    Aliz leaned close. ‘What do we do now?’
    ‘Now? We sit here like good little girls and applaud while idiots stack up the coffins.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘Don’t worry. Later on they might let you weep over a wound or two and, if the mood takes you, you can flutter your eyelashes at the awful futility of it all.’
    Aliz swallowed, and looked away. ‘Oh.’
    ‘That’s right. Oh.’
    So this was battle. Beck and Reft had never had too much to say to each other, but since the Union first started fighting their way over the fence they hadn’t said a word. Just stood silent at the windows. Beck wished he’d got friends beside him. Or wished he’d tried harder to make friends of the lads he’d found beside him. But it was too late now.
    His bow was in his hand, an arrow nocked and the string ready to draw. He’d had it ready the best part of an hour, but there was no one he could shoot at. Nothing he could do but watch, and sweat, and lick his lips, and watch. He’d started off wishing he could see more, but now the rain hadslacked off, and the sun was getting up, and Beck found he was seeing far more than he wanted to.
    The Union were over the fence in three or four places, into the town in numbers. There was fighting all over, everything broken up into separate little scraps facing every which way. No lines, just a mass of confusion and mad noise. Shouts and howls mashed together, din of clashing metal and breaking wood.
    Beck was no expert. He didn’t know how anyone could be at this. But he could feel the balance shifting over there on the south side of the river. More and more Northmen were scurrying back across the bridge, some limping or holding wounds, some shouting and pointing off south, threading their way through the shield wall at the north end of the span and into the square under Beck’s window. Safety. He hoped. Felt a long bloody way from safe, though. Felt about as far from safe as Beck had in his whole life.
    ‘I want to see!’ Brait was dragging at Beck’s shirt, trying to get a peek through the window. ‘What’s going on?’
    Beck didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know if he could find his voice, even. Right under them some wounded man was screaming. Gurgling, retching screams. Beck wished he’d stop. He felt dizzy with it.
    The fence was mostly lost. He could see one tall Union man on the walkway, pointing towards the bridge with a sword, clapping men on their backs as they flooded off the ladders to either side of him. There were still a few dozen Carls at the gate, clustered around a tattered standard, painted shields facing out in a half-circle but they were surrounded and well outnumbered, shafts hissing down into ’em from the walkways.
    Some of the bigger buildings were still in Northern hands. Beck could see men at the windows, shooting arrows out, ducking back in. Doors nailed shut and barricaded, but Union men swarming around ’em like bees around a hive. They’d managed to set fires for a couple of the most stubborn holdouts, in spite of the damp. Now brown smoke billowed out and was carried off east by the wind, lit by the dull orange of flames flickering.
    A Northman came charging from a burning building, swinging an axe around his head in both hands. Beck couldn’t hear him shouting, could see he was, though. In the songs he’d have taken a load down with him and joined the dead proud. Couple of Union men scattered away before some others herded him back against the wall with spears. One stuck him in the arm and he dropped his axe, held his other hand up, shouting more. Giving up, maybe, or insults, didn’t make much difference. They stuck him in the chest and he slumped down. Stuck him on the ground, spear shafts going up and down like a couple of men digging in the fields.
    Beck’s wide-open, watery eyes kept on darting across the buildings, murder in plain view all along the riverbank not a hundred strides fromwhere he stood. They dragged someone struggling out from a hovel