The Heroes

stairs the way he came, and he hurried to the open cupboard, ripped its single shelf out then ducked into the cobwebby shadows inside. He worked his fingertips into a gap between two planks of the door and he dragged it shut, bent over with his back against the rafters. Pressed into the darkness, in a child’s bad hiding place. Alone with his father’s sword, and his own whimpering breath, and the sounds of his crew being slaughtered downstairs.
    Lord Governor Meed gazed imperiously out of the northern window of the common hall with hands clasped behind his back, nodding knowingly at scraps of information as if he understood them, his officers crowding about him and gabbling away like eager goslings around their mother. An apt metaphor, as the man had all the military expertise of a mother goose. Finree lurked at the back of the room, an ugly secret, desperately wanting to know what was going on but desperately not wanting to give anyone the satisfaction of asking, chewing at her nails, silently stewing and turning over various unlikely scenarios for her revenge.
    Mostly, though, she was forced to admit, she was annoyed at herself. She saw now it would have been much better if she had pretended to be patient, and charming, and humble just as Hal had wanted, clapped her hands at Meed’s pitiful soldiering and slid into his confidence like a cuckoo into an old pigeon’s nest.
    Still, the man was vain enough to haul an overblown portrait of himself around on campaign. It might not be too late to play the wayward lamb, and worm her way into his good graces through simpering contrition. Then, when the opportunity presented, she could stab him in the back from a nice, short distance. She’d stab him one way or another, that was a promise. She could hardly wait to see the look on Meed’s papery old face when she finally—
    Aliz let go a snort of laughter. ‘Why, who’s that?’
    ‘Who’s what?’ Finree glanced out of the eastern window, entirely ignored since the battle was happening to the north. A ragged man had emerged from the woods and was standing on a small outcropping of rock, staring towards the inn, long black hair twitched by the wind. Clearly, he was by no stretch of the imagination a Union soldier.
    Finree frowned. Most of the Dogman’s men were supposed to be well behind them, and in any case there was something about this lonely figure that just looked …
wrong.
    ‘Captain Hardrick!’ she called. ‘Is he one of the Dogman’s men?’
    ‘Who?’ Hardrick strolled up beside them. ‘All honesty I couldn’t say …’
    The man on the rock lifted something to his mouth and bent his headback. A moment later a long, mournful note echoed out over the empty fields.
    Aliz laughed. ‘A horn!’
    Finree felt that note right in her stomach, and straight away she knew. She grabbed Hardrick’s arm. ‘Captain, you need to ride to General Jalenhorm and tell him we are under attack.’
    ‘What? But there’s …’ His gormless grin slowly faded as he looked towards the east.
    ‘Oh,’ said Aliz. The whole treeline was suddenly alive with men. Wild, they looked, even at this distance. Long-haired, rag-clothed, many half-naked. Now that he stood in the midst of hundreds of others and there was some sense of scale, Finree realised what had puzzled her about the man with the horn. He was a giant, in the truest sense of the word.
    Hardrick stared, his mouth hanging open, and Finree dug her fingers into his arm and dragged him towards the door. ‘Now! Find General Jalenhorm. Find my father. Now!’
    ‘I should have orders—’ His eyes flickered over to Meed, still blithely observing his attack on Osrung, along with all the other officers except for a couple who had drifted over without much urgency to investigate the sound of the horn.
    ‘Who are they?’ one asked.
    Finree had no time to argue her case. She gave vent to the shrillest, longest, most blood-curdling girlish scream she could manage. One of the musicians issued a screeching wrong note, the other played on for a moment before leaving the room in silence, every head snapping towards Finree, except Hardrick’s. She was relieved to see she had shocked him into running for the door.
    ‘What the hell—’ Meed began.
    ‘Northmen!’ somebody wailed. ‘To the east!’
    ‘What Northmen? Whatever are you—’
    ‘Then everyone was shouting. ‘There! There!’
    ‘Bloody hell!’
    ‘Man the walls!’
    ‘Do we have walls?’
    Men out in the