The Heroes

hobbling back, clambering over the wall to lie scattered in the crops behind, dirt and blood-smeared, broken and exhausted. Calder stopped a man with a hand on his shoulder.
    ‘Where’s Scale?’
    ‘Dead!’ he screamed, shaking him off. ‘Dead! Why didn’t you come, you bastards? Why didn’t you help us?’
    ‘Union men over the stream there,’ Pale-as-Snow was explaining as he led him away, but Calder hardly heard. He stood at the gate, staring across the darkening fields towards the bridge.
    He’d loved his brother. For being on his side when everyone else was against him. Because nothing’s more important than family.
    He’d hated his brother. For being too stupid. For being too strong. For being in his way. Because nothing’s more important than power.
    And now his brother was dead. Calder had let him die. Just by doing nothing. Was that the same as killing a man?
    All he could think about was how it might make his life more difficult. All the extra tasks he’d have to do, the responsibilities he didn’t feel ready for. He was the heir, now, to all his father’s priceless legacy of feuds, hatred and bad blood. He felt annoyance rather than grief, and puzzled he didn’t feel more. Everyone was looking at him. Watching him, to see what he’d do. To judge what kind of man he was. He was embarrassed, almost, that this was all his brother’s death made him feel. Not guilty, not sad, just cold. And then angry.
    And then very angry.

Strange Bedfellows

    T he hood was pulled from her head and Finree squinted into the light. Such as it was. The room was dim and dusty with two mean windows and a low ceiling, bowing in the middle, cobwebs drifting from the rafters.
    A Northman stood a couple of paces in front of her, feet planted wide and hands on hips, head tipped slightly back in the stance of a man used to being obeyed, and quickly. His short hair was peppered with grey and his face was sharp as a chisel, notched with old scars, an appraising twist to his mouth. A chain of heavy golden links gleamed faintly around his shoulders. An important man. Or one who thought himself important, at least.
    An older man stood behind him, thumbs in his belt near a battered sword hilt. He had a shaggy grey growth on his jaw somewhere between beard and stubble and a fresh cut on his cheek, dark red and rimmed with pink, closed with ugly stitches. He wore an expression somewhat sad, somewhat determined, as if he did not like what was coming but could see no way to avoid it, and now was fixed on seeing it through, whatever it cost him. A lieutenant of the first man.
    As Finree’s eyes adjusted she saw a third figure in the shadows against the wall. A woman, she was surprised to see, and with black skin. Tall and thin, a long coat hanging open to show a body wrapped in bandages. Where she stood in this, Finree could not tell.
    She did not turn her head to look, in spite of the temptation, but she knew there was another man behind her, his gravelly breath at the edge of her hearing. The one with the metal eye. She wondered if he had that little knife in his hand, and how close the point was to her back. Her skin prickled inside her dirty dress at the thought.
    ‘This is her?’ sneered the man with the chain at the black-skinned woman, and when he turned his head Finree saw there was only a fold of old scar where his ear should have been.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘She don’t look much like the answer to all my problems.’
    The woman stared at Finree, unblinking. ‘Probably she has looked better.’ Her eyes were like a lizard’s, black and empty.
    The man with the chain took a step forwards and Finree had to stop herself cringing. There was something in the set of him that made her feel he was teetering on the edge of violence. That his every smallest movement was the prelude to a punch, or a headbutt, or worse. That his natural instinct was to throttle her and it took a constant effort to stop himself doing it, and talk instead. ‘Do you know who I am?’
    She lifted her chin, trying to look undaunted and almost certainly failing. Her heart was thumping so hard she was sure they must be able to hear it against her ribs. ‘No,’ she said in Northern.
    ‘You understand me, then.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’m Black Dow.’
    ‘Oh.’ She hardly knew what to say. ‘I thought you’d be taller.’
    Dow raised one scar-nicked brow at the older man. The older man shrugged. ‘What can I say? You’re shorter’n your