The Heroes

bastards, you’ll see. Just one day more …’
    Finree shut the door on their posturing, her back against the wood. Maybe whatever herder had built this barn had lived in this room. Now her father was sleeping there, his bed against one unplastered wall, travelling chests neatly organised against the others like soldiers around a parade ground.
    Everything was painful, suddenly. She pulled the sleeve of Hal’s coat back, grimacing at the long cut down her forearm, flesh angry pink along both sides. Probably it would need stitching, but she could not go back out there. Could not face their pitying expressions and their patriotic drivel. It felt as if her neck had ten strings of agony through it and however she moved her head it tugged at one or another. She touched her fingertips to her burning scalp. There was a mass of scab under her greasy hair. She could not stop her hand trembling as she took it away. She almost laughed it was shaking so badly, but it came out as an ugly snort. Would her hair grow back? She snorted again. What did it matter, compared to what she had seen? She found she could not stop snorting. Her breath came ragged, and shuddering, and in a moment her aching ribs were heaving with sobs, the quick breath whooping in her throat, her face crushed up and her mouth twisted, tugging at her split lip. She felt a fool, but her body would not let her stop. She slid downthe door until her backside hit stone, and bit on her knuckle to smother her blubbering.
    She felt absurd. Worse still, ungrateful. Treacherous. She should have been weeping with joy. She, after all, was the lucky one.

Bones

    ‘W here’s that scab-faced old cunt hiding?’
    The man’s eyes flickered about uncertainly, caught off balance with his cup frozen half way to the water butt. ‘Tenways is up on the Heroes with Dow and the rest, but if you’re—’
    ‘Get to
fuck
!’ Calder shoved past him, striding on through Tenways’ puzzled Carls, away from Skarling’s Finger and towards the stones, picked out on their hilltop by the light of campfires behind.
    ‘We won’t be coming along up there,’ came Deep’s voice in his ear. ‘Can’t watch your arse if you’re minded on sticking it in the wolf’s mouth.’
    ‘No money’s worth going back to the mud for,’ said Shallow. ‘Nothing is, in my humble opinion.’
    ‘That’s an interesting point o’ philosophy you’ve stumbled upon,’ said Deep, ‘what’s worth dying for and what ain’t. Not one we’re likely to—’
    ‘Stay and talk shit, then.’ Calder kept walking, uphill, the cold air nipping at his lungs and a few too many nips from Shallow’s flask burning at his belly. The scabbard of his sword slapped against his calf, as if with every step it was gently reminding him it was there, and that it was far from the only blade about either.
    ‘What’re you going to do?’ asked Pale-as-Snow, breathing hard from keeping up.
    Calder didn’t say anything. Partly because he was too angry to say anything worth hearing. Partly because he thought it made him look big. And partly because he hadn’t a clue what he was going to do, and if he started thinking about it there was every chance his courage would wilt, and quick. He’d done enough nothing that day. He strode through the gap in the drystone wall that ringed the hill, a pair of Black Dow’s Carls frowning as they watched him pass.
    ‘Just keep calm!’ Hansul shouted from further back. ‘Your father always kept calm!’
    ‘Shit on what my father did,’ Calder snapped over his shoulder. He was enjoying not having to think and just letting the fury carry him. Sweep him up onto the hill’s flat top and between two of the great stones. Fires burned inside the circle, flames tugged and snapped by the wind, sending up whirlsof sparks into the black night. They lit up the inside faces of the Heroes in flickering orange, lit up the faces of the men clustered around them, catching the metal of their mail coats, the blades of their weapons. They clucked and grumbled as Calder strode heedless through them towards the centre of the circle, Pale-as-Snow and Hansul following in his wake.
    ‘Calder. What are you about?’ Curnden Craw, some staring lad Calder didn’t know beside him. Jolly Yon Cumber and Wonderful were there too. Calder ignored the lot of them, brushed past Cairm Ironhead as he stood watching the flames with his thumbs in his belt.
    Tenways was sitting on a log on the other side of the fire,