The Heroes

Jalenhorm had what looked like the most expensive armour in the world. It hardly seemed fair that Retter didn’t have any, but the army wasn’t the place for fair, he supposed.
    He snatched a look back as his pony scrambled from the water and up onto a little island of sand, driftwood gathered in a pale tangle at one end. The shallows were filled with soldiers, marching up to ankles, or knees, or even waists in places. Behind them the whole long bank was covered by ranks of men waiting to follow, still more appearing over the brow behind them. It made Retter feel brave, to be one among so many. If the Northmen killed a hundred, if they killed a thousand, there would still be thousands more. He wasn’t honestly sure how many a thousand was, but it was a lot.
    Then it occurred to him that was all very well unless you were one of the thousand flung in a pit, in which case it wasn’t very good at all, especially since he’d heard only officers got coffins, and he really didn’t want to lie pressed up cold against the mud. He looked nervously towards the orchards, flinched again as an arrow clattered from a shield a dozen strides away.
    ‘Keep up, lad!’ called Jalenhorm, spurring his horse onto the next bar of shingle. They were half way across the shallows now, the great hill looming up ever steeper beyond the trees ahead.
    ‘Sir!’ Retter realised he was hunching his shoulders, pressing himself down into his saddle to make a smaller target, realised he looked a coward and forced himself straight. Over on the far bank he saw men scurrying from a patch of scrubby bushes. Ragged men with bows. The enemy, he realised. Northern skirmishers. Close enough to shout at, and be heard. So close it seemed a little silly. Like the games of chase he used to play behind the barn. He sat up taller, forced his shoulders back. They looked every bit as scared as he was. One with a shock of blond hair knelt to shoot an arrowwhich came down harmlessly in the sand just ahead of the front rank. Then he turned and hurried off towards the orchards.
    Curly ducked into the trees along with the rest, rushed through the apple-smelling darkness bent low, heading uphill. He hopped over the felled logs and came up kneeling on the other side, peering off to the south. The sun was barely risen and the orchards were thick with shadows. He could see the metal gleaming to either side, men hidden in a long line through the trees.
    ‘They coming?’ someone asked. ‘They here?’
    ‘They’re coming,’ said Curly. Maybe he’d been the last to run but that was nothing much to take pride in. They’d been rattled by the sheer number of the bastards. It was like the land was made of men. Seething with ’em. Hardly seemed worth sitting there on the bank, no cover but a scraggy bush or two, just a few dozen shooting arrows at all that lot. Pointless as going at a swarm of bees with a needle. Here in the orchard was a better place to give ’em a test. Ironhead would understand that. Curly hoped to hell he would.
    They’d got all mixed up with some folks he didn’t know on the way back. A tall old-timer with a red hood was squatting by him in the dappled shadows. Probably one of Golden’s boys. There was no love lost between Golden’s lot and Ironhead’s most of the time. Not much more’n there was between Golden and Ironhead themselves, which was less than fuck all. But right now they had other worries.
    ‘You see the number of ’em?’ someone squeaked.
    ‘Bloody hundreds.’
    ‘Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and—’
    ‘We ain’t here to stop ’em,’ growled Curly. ‘We slow ’em, we put a couple down, we give ’em something to think about. Then, when we have to, we pull back to the Children.’
    ‘Pull back,’ someone said, sounding like it was the best idea he’d ever heard.
    ‘When we have to!’ snapped Curly over his shoulder.
    ‘They got Northmen with ’em too,’ someone said, ‘some o’ the Dogman’s boys, I reckon.’
    ‘Bastards,’ someone grunted.
    ‘Aye, bastards. Traitors.’ The man with the red hood spat over their log. ‘I heard the Bloody-Nine was with ’em.’
    There was a nervy silence. That name did no favours for anyone’s courage.
    ‘The Bloody-Nine’s back to the mud!’ Curly wriggled his shoulders. ‘Drowned. Black Dow killed him.’
    ‘Maybe.’ The man with the red hood looked grim as a gravedigger. ‘But I heard he’s here.’
    A bowstring went right by Curly’s ear and he