The Heroes

being always ready were a bit overdone. He let his sword drop, squinting up at the black sky, stars peeping between shreds of cloud. ‘Why is it dark? Have no fear, children, Whirrun is among you and ready to fight!’
    ‘Thank the dead,’ grunted Wonderful. ‘We’re saved.’
    ‘That you are, woman!’ Whirrun pulled his hood back, scratched at his hair, plastered flat on one side and sticking out like a thistle on the other. He stared about the Heroes and, seeing nought but guttering fires, sleeping men and the same old stones as ever, crawled up close to the flames, yawning. ‘Saved from dull conversation. Did I hear some talk of names?’
    ‘Aye,’ muttered Beck, not daring to say more. It was like having Skarling himself to talk to. He’d been raised on stories about Whirrun of Bligh’s high deeds. Listened to old drunk Scavi tell ’em down in the village, and begged for more. Dreamed of standing beside him as an equal, claiming aplace in his songs. Now here he was, sitting beside him as fraud, and coward, and friend-killer. He dragged his mother’s cloak tight, felt something crusted under his fingers. Realised the cloth was still stiff with Reft’s blood and had to stop a shiver. Red Beck. He’d blood on his hands, all right. But it didn’t feel like he’d always dreamed it would.
    ‘Names, is it?’ Whirrun lifted his sword and stood it on end in the firelight, looking too long and too heavy ever to make much sense as a weapon. ‘This is the Father of Swords, and men have a hundred names for it.’ Yon closed his eyes and sank back, Wonderful rolled hers up towards the sky, but Whirrun droned on, deep and measured, like it was a speech he’d given often before. ‘Dawn Razor. Grave-Maker. Blood Harvest. Highest and Lowest. Scac-ang-Gaioc in the valley tongue which means the Splitting of the World, the battle that was fought at the start of time and will be fought again at its end. This is my reward and my punishment both. My blessing and my curse. It was passed to me by Daguf Col as he lay dying, and he had it from Yorweel the Mountain who had it from Four-Faces who had it from Leef-reef-Ockang, and so on ’til the world was young. When Shoglig’s words come to pass and I lie bleeding, face to face with the Great Leveller at last, I’ll hand it on to whoever I think best deserves it, and will bring it fame, and the list of its names, and the list of the names of the great men who wielded it, and the great men who died by it, will grow, and lengthen, and stretch back into the dimness beyond memory. In the valleys where I was born they say it is God’s sword, dropped from heaven.’
    ‘Don’t you?’ asked Flood.
    Whirrun rubbed some dirt from the crosspiece with his thumb. ‘I used to.’
    ‘Now?’
    ‘God makes things, no? God is a farmer. A craftsman. A midwife. God gives things life.’ He tipped his head back and looked up at the sky. ‘What would God want with a sword?’
    Wonderful pressed one hand to her chest. ‘Oh, Whirrun, you’re so fucking
deep
. I could sit here for hours trying to work out everything you meant.’
    ‘Whirrun of Bligh don’t seem so deep a name,’ said Beck, and regretted it straight away when everyone looked at him, Whirrun in particular.
    ‘No?’
    ‘Well … you’re from Bligh, I guess. Ain’t you?’
    ‘Never been there.’
    ‘Then—’
    ‘I couldn’t honestly tell you how it came about. Maybe Bligh’s the only place up there folk down here ever heard of.’ Whirrun shrugged. ‘Don’t hardly matter. A name’s got nothing in it by itself. It’s what you make of it.Men don’t brown their trousers when they hear the Bloody-Nine because of the name. They brown their trousers because of the man that had it.’
    ‘And Cracknut Whirrun?’ asked Drofd.
    ‘Straightforward. An old man up near Ustred taught me the trick of cracking a walnut in my fist. What you do is—’
    Wonderful snorted. ‘That ain’t why they call you Cracknut.’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘No,’ said Yon. ‘It ain’t.’
    ‘They call you Cracknut for the same reason they gave Cracknut Leef the name,’ and Wonderful tapped at the side of her shaved head. ‘Because it’s widely assumed your nut’s cracked.’
    ‘They do?’ Whirrun frowned. ‘Oh, that’s less complimentary, the fuckers. I’ll have to have words next time I hear that. You’ve completely bloody spoiled it for me!’
    Wonderful spread her hands. ‘It’s a gift.’
    ‘Morning, people.’ Curnden