The Heroes

his short beard.
    ‘Rafts,’ murmured Gorst, watching an officer on one furiously brandish his sword at the far bank, about as likely ever to reach it as he was the moon.
    There was another thunderous explosion, followed almost immediately by a chorus of gasps, sighs and cheers of wonder from the swelling audience, gathered at the top of the rise in a curious crescent. This time Gorst scarcely flinched.
Amazing how quickly the unbearable becomes banal.
More smoke issued from the nearest tube, wandering gently up to join the acrid pall already hanging over the experiment.
    That weird rumble rolled out again, smoke rising from somewhere across the river to the south. ‘What the hell are they up to?’ muttered Calder. Even standing on the wall, he couldn’t see a thing.
    He’d been there all morning, waiting. Pacing up and down, in the drizzle, then the dry. Waiting, every minute an age, with his thoughts darting round and round like a lizard in a jar. Peering to the south and not being able to see a thing, the sounds of combat drifting across the fields in waves, sometimes sounding distant, sometimes worryingly near. But no call for help. Nothing but a few wounded carried past, scant reinforcement for Calder’s wavering nerve.
    ‘Here’s news,’ said Pale-as-Snow.
    Calder stretched up, shading his eyes. It was White-Eye Hansul, riding up hard from the Old Bridge. He had a smile on his wrinkled face as he reined in, though, which gave Calder a trace of hope. Right then putting off the fighting seemed almost as good as not doing it at all.
    He wedged a boot up on the gate in what he hoped was a manly style, trying to sound cool as snow while his heart was burning. ‘Scale got himself in a pickle, has he?’
    ‘It’s the Southerners pickled so far, the stupid bastards.’ White-Eye pulled his helmet off and wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. ‘Twice Scale’s driven them back. First time they came strolling across like they thought we’d just give the bridge over. Your brother soon cured them of that notion.’ He chuckled to himself and Pale-as-Snow joined him. Calder offered up his own, though it tasted somewhat sour. Everything did today.
    ‘Second time they tried rafts as well.’ White-Eye turned his head and spat into the barley. ‘Could’ve told them the current’s way too strong for that.’
    ‘Good thing they never asked you,’ said Pale-as-Snow.
    ‘That it is. I reckon you lot can sit back here and take your boots off. We’ll hold ’em all day at this rate.’
    ‘There’s a lot of day still,’ Calder muttered. Something flashed by. His first thought was that it was a bird skimming the barley, but it was too fast and too big. It bounced once in the fields, sending up a puff of stalk and dust and leaving a long scar through the crop. A couple of hundred strides to the east, down at the grassy foot of the Heroes, it hit Clail’s Wall.
    Broken stones went spinning high, high into the air, showering out in a great cloud of dust and bits. Bits of tents. Bits of gear. Bits of men, Calder realised, because there were men camped behind the whole length of the wall.
    ‘By—’ said Hansul, gaping at the flying wreckage.
    There was a sound like a whip cracking but a thousand times louder. White-Eye’s horse reared up and he went sliding off the back, tumbling down into the barley, arms flailing. All around men gawped and shouted, drew weapons or flung themselves on the ground.
    That last looked a good idea.
    ‘Shit!’ hissed Calder, scrambling from the gate and throwing himself in a ditch, his desire to look manly greatly outweighed by his desire to stay alive. Earth and stones rattled down around them like unseasonal hail, pinging from armour, bouncing in the track.
    ‘Sticking to the sunny side,’ said Pale-as-Snow, utterly unmoved, ‘that’s Tenways’ stretch of wall.’
    Bayaz’ servant lowered an eyeglass with a curl of mild disappointment to his mouth. ‘Wayward,’ he said.
    A towering understatement.
The devices had been discharged perhaps two dozen times and their ammunition, which appeared to be large balls of metal or stone, scattered variously across the slope of the hill ahead, the fields to each side, the orchard at the foot, the sky above and on one occasion straight into the river sending up an immense fountain of spray.
    How much the cost of this little aside, so we could dig a few holes in the Northern landscape? How many hospitals could have been built