The Heroes

downward movement of his body, timed the downward movement of his arm to match and neatly cut the man’s head off, felt it bounce from his knee as he plunged on up the track. A young lad tossed away a spear, face contorted with fear as he looked over his shoulder. Gorst chopped deep into his backside and he went down howling in the crops.
    It was so easy it was faintly ridiculous. Gorst hacked the legs out from one man, gained on another and dropped him with a cut across the back, struck an arm from a third and let him stumble on for a few wobbling steps before he smashed him over backwards with his shield.
    Is this still battle? Is this still the glorious matching of man against man? Or is this just murder?
He did not care.
I cannot tell jokes, or make pretty conversation, but this I can do. This I am made for. Bremer dan Gorst, king of the world!
    He chopped them down on both sides, left their blubbing, leaking bodies wrecked in his wake. A couple turned stumbling to face him and he chopped them down as well. Made meat of them all, regardless. On he went, and on, hacking away like a mad butcher, the air whooping triumphantly in his throat. He passed a farm on his right, half way or more to a long wall up ahead. No Northmen within easy reach, he stole a glance over his shoulder, and slowed.
    None of Mitterick’s men were following. They had stopped near the bridge, a hundred strides behind him. He was entirely alone in the fields, aone-man assault on the Northmen’s positions. He stopped, uncertainly, marooned in a sea of barley.
    A lad he must have overtaken earlier jogged up. Shaggy-haired, wearing a leather jerkin with a bloody sleeve. No weapon. He spared Gorst a quick glance, then laboured on. He passed close enough that Gorst could have stabbed him without moving his feet, but suddenly he could not see the point.
    The elation of combat was leaking out of him, the familiar weight gathering on his shoulders again.
So quickly I am sucked back into the bog of despond. The foetid waters close over my face. Only count three, and I am once again the very same sad bastard who all know and scorn.
He looked back towards his own lines. The trail of broken bodies no longer felt like anything to take pride in.
    He stood, skin prickling with sweat, sucking air through gritted teeth. Frowning towards the wall through the crops to the north, and the spears bristling up behind it, and the beaten men still struggling back towards it.
Perhaps I should charge on, all alone. Glorious Gorst, there he goes! Falling upon the enemy like a shooting star! His body dies but his name shall live for ever!
He snorted.
Idiot Gorst, throwing his life away, the stupid, squeaking arse. Dropping into his pointless grave like a turd into a sewer, and just as quickly forgotten.
    He shook the ruined shield from his arm and let it drop to the track, pulled the folded letter from his breastplate between two fingers, crumpled it tightly in his fist, then tossed it into the barley.
It was a pathetic letter anyway. I should be ashamed of myself.
    Then he turned, head hanging, and trudged back towards the bridge.
    One Union soldier, for some reason, had chased far down the track after Scale’s fleeing troops. A big man wearing heavy armour and with a sword in his hand. He didn’t look particularly triumphant as he stared up the road, standing oddly alone in that open field. He looked almost as defeated as Calder felt. After a while he turned and plodded back towards the bridge. Back towards the trenches Scale’s men had dug the previous night, and where the Union were now taking up positions.
    Not all dramas on the battlefield spring from glorious action. Some slink from everyone just sitting there, doing nothing. Tenways had sent no help. Calder hadn’t moved. He hadn’t even got as far as making his mind up not to move. He’d just stood, staring at nothing through his eyeglass, in a frozen agony of indecision, and then suddenly all of Scale’s men who still could were running, and the Union had carried the bridge.
    Thankfully, it looked as if they were satisfied for now. Probably they didn’t want to risk pushing further with the light fading. They could push further tomorrow, after all, and everyone knew it. They had a good foothold on the north bank of the river, and no shortage of men in spite of theprice Scale had made them pay. It looked as if the price Scale had paid had been heavier yet.
    The last of his defeated Carls were still