The Heroes

and his flaking horror of a face broke out in a shining grin as he saw Calder coming. ‘If it ain’t pretty little Calder! Help your brother out today, did you, you—’ His eyes went wide for a moment and he tensed, shifting his weight to get up.
    Then Calder’s fist crunched into his nose. He squawked as he went over backwards, boots kicking, and Calder was on top of him, flailing away with both fists, bellowing he didn’t even know what. Punching mindlessly at Tenways’ head, and his arms, and his flapping hands. He got another good one on that scabby nose before someone grabbed his elbow and dragged him off.
    ‘Whoa, Calder, whoa!’ Craw’s voice, he thought, and he let himself be pulled back, thrashing about and shouting like you’re supposed to. As if all he wanted to do was keep fighting when in fact he was all relief to let it be stopped, as he’d run right out of ideas and his left hand was really hurting.
    Tenways stumbled up, blood bubbling out of his nostrils as he snarled curses, slapping away a helping hand from one of his men. He drew his sword with that soft metal whisper that somehow sounds so loud, steel gleaming in the firelight. There was a silence, the crowd of curious men around them all heaving a nervous breath together. Ironhead raised his brows, and folded his arms, and took a pace out of the way.
    ‘You little fucker!’ growled Tenways, and he stepped over the log he’d been sitting on.
    Craw dragged Calder behind him and suddenly his sword was out too. Not a moment later a pair of Tenways’ Named Men were beside their Chief, a big bearded bastard and a lean one with a lazy eye, weapons ready, though they looked like men who never had to reach too far for them. Calder felt Pale-as-Snow slide up beside him, blade held low. White-Eye Hansul on his other side, red-faced and puffing from his trek up the hillside but his sword steady. More of Tenways’ boys sprang up, and Jolly Yon Cumber was there with his axe and his shield and his slab of frown.
    It was then Calder realised things had gone a bit further than he’d planned on. Not that he’d planned at all. He thought it was probably bad form to leave his sword sheathed, what with everyone else drawing and him having stirred the pot in the first place. So he drew himself, smirking in Tenways’ bloody face.
    He’d felt grand when he’d seen his father put on the chain and sit in Skarling’s Chair, three hundred Named Men on their knee to the first King of the Northmen. He’d felt grand when he put his hand on his wife’s belly and felt his child kick for the first time. But he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt such fierce pride as he did in the moment Brodd Tenways’ nose-bone broke under his knuckles.
    No way he would’ve said no to more of that feeling.
    ‘Ah, shit!’ Drofd scrambled up, kicking embers over Beck’s cloak and making him gasp and slap ’em off.
    A right commotion had flared up, folk stomping, metal hissing, grunts and curses in the darkness. There was some sort of a fight, and Beck had no idea who’d started it or why or what side he was supposed to be on. But Craw’s dozen were all piling in so he just went with the current, drew his father’s sword and stood shoulder to shoulder with the rest, Wonderful on his left with her curved blade steady, Drofd on his right with a hatchet in his fist and his tongue stuck out between his teeth. Wasn’t so difficult to do, what with everyone else doing it. Would’ve been damn near impossible not to, in fact.
    Brodd Tenways and some of his boys were facing ’em across a windblown fire, and he had a lot of blood on his rashy face and maybe a broken nose too. Might be that Calder had been the one to do it, given how he’d come stomping past like that and now was standing next to Craw with sword in hand and smirk on face. Still, the whys didn’t seem too important right then. It was the what nexts that were looming large on everyone’s minds.
    ‘Put ’em away.’ Craw spoke slow but there was a kind of iron to his voice said he’d be backing down from nothing. It put iron in Beck’s bones, made him feel like he’d be backing down from nothing neither.
    Tenways didn’t look like taking any backward steps himself, though. ‘You fucking put ’em away.’ And he spat blood into the fire.
    Beck found his eyes had caught a lad’s on the other side, maybe a year or two older’n him. Yellow-haired lad with a scar on one cheek. They turned a little to face