The Heroes

we’ve got the Union out there in the woods to the west. Tell him Scale needs him. Needs him now, or we’ll lose the Old Bridge.’
    Hansul raised an eyebrow. ‘Tenways?’
    ‘Dow said he should help, if we needed it! We need it.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘Get up there!’
    Pale-as-Snow and Hansul traded a glance. Then White-Eye clambered back up onto his horse and cantered off towards Skarling’s Finger. Calder realised everyone was watching him. Wondering why he hadn’t done the right thing already, and charged to his brother’s rescue. Wondering whether they should stay loyal to this clueless idiot with the good hair.
    ‘Tenways has to help,’ he muttered, though he wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince. ‘We lose that bridge and we’re all in the shit. This is about the whole North.’ As if he’d ever cared a damn about the whole North, or even anyone much further away than the end of his own foot.
    His patriotic bluster carried no more weight with Pale-as-Snow than it did with him. ‘If the world worked that way,’ said the old warrior, ‘we’d have no need for swords in the first place. No offence, Calder, but Tenways hates you like the plague hates the living, and he doesn’t feel a whole stretch warmer towards your brother. He won’t put himself or his men on the line for your sakes, whatever Dow says. If you want your brother helped, I reckon you’ll have to do it yourself. And soon.’ He raised his white brows. ‘So what do we do?’
    Calder wanted very much to hit him, but he was right. He wanted to hithim because he was right. What should he do? He lifted his eyeglass again and scanned the treeline, slowly one way, then the other, then stopped dead.
    Did he catch, just for a moment, the glint of another eyeglass trained on him?
    Corporal Tunny peered through his eyeglass towards the drystone wall. He wondered if, just for an instant, he caught the glint of another trained on him? But probably he’d just imagined it. There certainly wasn’t much sign of anything else going on.
    ‘Movement?’ squeaked Yolk.
    ‘Nah.’ Tunny slapped the glass closed then scratched at his increasingly stubbly, greasy, itchy neck. He’d a strong feeling something other than him had taken up residence in his collar. A decision hard to understand, since he’d rather have been pretty much anywhere else himself. ‘They’re just sitting there, far as I can tell.’
    ‘Like us.’
    ‘Welcome to the glory-fields, Trooper Yolk.’
    ‘Still no damn orders? Where the hell has bloody Lederlingen got to?’
    ‘No way of knowing.’ Tunny had long ago given up feeling any surprise when the army didn’t function quite as advertised. He glanced over his shoulder. Behind them, Colonel Vallimir was having another one of his rages, this time directed at Sergeant Forest.
    ‘Yolk leaned in to whisper, ‘Every man shitting on the man below, Corporal?’
    ‘Oh, you’re developing a keen sense of the mechanisms of his Majesty’s forces. I do believe you’ll make a fine general one day, Yolk.’
    ‘My ambition don’t go past corporal, Corporal.’
    ‘I think that’s very wise. As you can tell.’
    ‘Still no orders, sir,’ Forest was saying, face screwed up like a man looking into a stiff wind.
    ‘Bloody hell!’ snapped Vallimir. ‘It’s the right time to go! Any fool can see that.’
    ‘But … we can’t go without orders, sir.’
    ‘Of course we bloody can’t! Dereliction of duty, that’d be! But now’s the right time, so of course General bloody Mitterick will be demanding to know why I didn’t act on my own initiative!’
    ‘Very likely, sir.’
    ‘Initiative, eh, Forest?
Initiative.
What the bloody hell is that except an excuse to demote a man? It’s like a card game they won’t tell you the rules to, only the stakes!’ And on, and on, and on he went, just like always.
    Tunny gave a sigh, and handed his eyeglass to Yolk.
    ‘Where you going, Corporal?’
    ‘Nowhere, I reckon. Absolutely nowhere.’ He wedged himself back against his tree trunk and dragged his coat closed over him. ‘Wake me if that changes, eh?’ He scratched his neck, then pulled his cap down over his eyes. ‘By some miracle.’

Closing Arguments

    I t was the noise that was the most unexpected thing about battle. It was probably the loudest thing Finree had ever heard. Several dozen men roaring and shrieking at the very highest extent of their broken voices, crashing wood, stamping boots, clanging metal, all