The Heroes

men’s cowardice, rashness, incompetence or, worst of all, good intentions might twist your purposes. The more chance could play a hand, and chance rarely played well. With every promotion, Marshal Kroy had looked forward to finally slipping the shackles and standing all powerful. And with every promotion he had found himself more helpless than before.
    ‘I’m like a blind old idiot who’s got himself into a duel,’ he murmured. Except there were thousands of lives hanging on his clueless flailing, rather than just his own.
    ‘Would you care for your brandy and water, Lord—’
    ‘No I would not bloody care for it!’ he snapped at his orderly, thenwinced as the man backed nervously away with the bottle. How could he explain that he had been drinking it yesterday when he heard that he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of his men, and now the very idea of brandy and water utterly sickened him?
    It was no help that his daughter had placed herself so close to the front lines. He kept finding his eyeglass drawn towards the eastern side of the battle, trying to pick out the inn Meed was using as his headquarters through the drizzle. He scratched unhappily at his cheek. He had been interrupted while shaving by a worrying report sent from the Dogman, signs of savages from beyond the Crinna loose in the countryside to their east. Men the Dogman reckoned savage were savage indeed. Now Kroy was deeply distracted and, what was more, one side of his face was smooth and the other stubbly. Those sorts of details had always upset him. An army is made of details the way a house is made of bricks. One brick carelessly laid and the whole is compromised. But attend to the perfect mortaring of every—
    ‘Huh,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I am a bloody mason.’
    ‘Latest report from Meed says things are going well on the right,’ said Felnigg, no doubt trying to allay his fears. His chief of staff knew him too well. ‘They’ve got most of southern Osrung occupied and are making an effort on the bridge.’
    ‘So things were going well half an hour ago?’
    ‘Best one could say for them, sir.’
    ‘True.’ He looked for a moment longer, but could scarcely make out the inn, let alone Osrung itself. There was nothing to be gained by worrying. If his entire army had been as brave and resourceful as his daughter they would already have won and been on their way home. He almost pitied the Northman who ran across her in a bad mood. He turned to the west, following the line of the river with his eyeglass until he came to the Old Bridge.
    Or thought he did. A faint, straight, light line across the faint, curved, dark line which he assumed was the water, all of it drifting in and out of existence as the rain thickened or slackened in the mile or two between him and the object. In truth he could have been looking at anything.
    ‘Damn this drizzle! What about the left?’
    ‘Last word from Mitterick was that his second assault had, how did he put it? Been blunted.’
    ‘By now it will have failed, then. Still, tough work, carrying a bridge against determined resistance.’
    ‘Huh,’ grunted Felnigg.
    ‘Mitterick may lack many things—’
    ‘Huh,’ grunted Felnigg.
    ‘—but persistence is not one of them.’
    ‘No, sir, he is persistently an arse.’
    ‘Now, now, let us be generous.’ And then, under his breath, ‘Every man needs an arse, if only to sit on.’ If Mitterick’s second assault had recently failed he would be preparing another. The Northmen facing him would be off balance. Kroy snapped his eyeglass closed and tapped it against his palm.
    The general who waited to make a decision until he knew everything he needed to would never make one, and if he did it would be far too late. He had to feel out the moment. Anticipate the ebb and flow of battle. The shifting of morale, of pressure, of advantage. One had to trust one’s instincts. And Marshal Kroy’s instincts told him the crucial moment on the left wing was soon coming.
    He strode through the door of his barn-cum-headquarters, making sure he ducked this time, as he had no need of another painful bruise on the crown of his head, and went straight to his desk. He dipped pen in ink without even sitting and wrote upon the nearest of several dozen slips of paper prepared for the purpose:

Colonel Vallimir
    General Mitterick’s troops are heavily engaged at the Old Bridge. Soon he will force the enemy to commit all his reserves. I wish you to