The Heroes

too, though?’ muttered Beck, thinking of the face of that Union man lying dead in the shack yesterday. ‘Just like us?’
    Whirrun squinted across at him. ‘More than likely they are. But if you start thinking like that, well … you’ll get no one killed at all.’
    Beck opened his mouth, then closed it. Didn’t seem much he could say to that. Made about as much sense as anything else had happened the last few days.
    ‘It’s easy enough for you,’ grunted Craw. ‘Shoglig told you the time and place of your death and it ain’t here.’
    Whirrun’s grin got bigger. ‘Well, that’s true and I’ll admit it’s a help to my courage, but if she’d told me here and she’d told me now, do you really reckon that’d make any difference to me?’
    Wonderful snorted. ‘You might not be yapping about it so bloody loud.’
    ‘Oh!’ Whirrun wasn’t even listening. ‘They’re off already, look! That’s early!’ He pointed the Father of Swords at arm’s length to the west, towards the Old Bridge, flinging his other arm around Beck’s shoulders. The strength in it was fearsome, he nearly lifted Beck without even trying.‘Look at the pretty horses!’ Beck couldn’t see much down there but dark land, the glimmer of the river and a speckling of lights. ‘That’s fresh of ’em, isn’t it, though? That’s cheeky! Getting started and it’s hardly dawn!’
    ‘Too dark for riding,’ said Craw, shaking his head.
    ‘They must be as bloody eager as I am. Reckon they mean business today, eh, Craw? Oh, by the dead,’ and he shook his sword towards the valley, dragging Beck back and forth and nearly right off his feet, ‘I reckon there’ll be some songs sung about today!’
    ‘I daresay,’ grunted Wonderful through gritted teeth. ‘Some folk’ll sing about any old shit.’

The Riddle of the Ground

    ‘H ere they come,’ said Pale-as-Snow, utterly deadpan, as if there was nothing more worrying than a herd of sheep on its way. It hardly needed an announcement. Calder could hear them, however dark it was. First the long note of a trumpet, then the whispering rustle of horses through crops, far off but closing, sprinkled with calls, whinnies, jingles of harness that seemed to tickle at Calder’s clammy skin. All faint, but all crushingly inevitable. They were coming, and Calder hardly knew whether to be smug or terrified. He settled on a bit of both.
    ‘Can’t believe they fell for it.’ He almost wanted to laugh it was so ridiculous. Laugh or be sick. ‘Those arrogant fucks.’
    ‘If you can rely on one thing in a battle, it’s that men rarely do what’s sensible.’ Good point. If Calder had any sense he’d have been on horseback himself, spurring hard for somewhere a long, long way away. ‘That’s what made your father the great man. Always kept a cold head, even in the fire.’
    ‘Would you say we’re in the fire now?’
    Pale-as-Snow leaned forward and carefully spat. ‘I’d say we’re about to be. Reckon you’ll keep a cold head?’
    ‘Can’t see why.’ Calder’s eyes darted nervously to either side, across the snaking line of torches before the wall. The line of his men, following the gentle rise and fall of the earth. ‘The ground is a puzzle to be solved,’ his father used to say, ‘the bigger your army, the harder the puzzle.’ He’d been a master at using it. One look and he’d known where to put every man, how to make each slope, and tree, and stream, and fence fight on his side. Calder had done what he could, used each tump and hummock and ranged his archers behind Clail’s Wall, but he doubted that ribbon of waist-high farmer’s drystone would give a warhorse anything more than a little light exercise.
    The sad fact was a flat expanse of barley didn’t offer much help. Except to the enemy, of course. No doubt they were delighted.
    It was an irony Calder hadn’t missed that his father was the one who’d smoothed off this ground. Who’d broken up the little farms in this valley and a lot of others. Pulled up the hedgerows and filled in the ditches sothere could be more crops grown, and taxes paid, and soldiers fed. Rolled out a golden carpet of welcome to the matchless Union cavalry.
    Calder could just make out, against the dim fells on the far side of the valley, a black wave through the black sea of barley, sharpened metal glimmering at the crest. He found himself thinking about Seff. Her face coming up so sharp it caught his breath. He wondered if he’d