The Heroes

yourself.’
    ‘Oh, I have. I was quite the firebrand in my youth. But an unquenchable thirst for danger is unseemly in the old. Heroes have their uses, but someone has to point them the right way. And clean up afterwards. They always raise a cheer from the public, but they leave a hell of a mess.’ Bayaz thoughtfully patted his stomach. ‘No, a cup of tea at the rear is more my style. Men like your husband can gather the plaudits.’
    ‘You are far too generous.’
    ‘Few indeed would agree.’
    ‘But where is your tea now?’
    Bayaz frowned at his empty hand. ‘My servant has … more important errands to run this morning.’
    ‘Can there be anything more important than attending to your whims?’
    ‘Oh, my whims stretch beyond the kettle …’
    Hoofbeats echoed out of the rain, a lone rider thumping up the track from the west, everyone straining breathlessly to see as a chinless frown emerged from the wet gloom.
    ‘Felnigg!’ snapped Finree’s father. ‘What’s happening on the left?’
    ‘Mitterick bloody well went off half-drawn!’ frothed Felnigg as he swung from the saddle. ‘Sent his cavalry across the barley in the dark! Pure bloody recklessness!’
    Knowing the state of the relationship between the two men, Finree suspected Felnigg had made his own contribution to the fiasco.
    ‘We saw,’ her father forced through tight lips, evidently coming to a similar conclusion.
    ‘The man should be bloody drummed out!’
    ‘Perhaps later. What was the outcome?’
    ‘It was … still in doubt when I left.’
    ‘So you haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on over there?’
    Felnigg opened his mouth, then closed it. ‘I thought it best to return at once—’
    ‘And report Mitterick’s mistake, rather than inform me of its consequences. My thanks, Colonel, but I am already amply supplied withignorance.’ And her father turned his back before Felnigg had the chance to speak, striding across the hillside again to look fruitlessly to the north. ‘Shouldn’t have sent them,’ she heard him mutter as he squelched past. ‘Should never have sent them.’
    Bayaz sighed, the sound niggling at her sweaty shoulders like a corkscrew. ‘I sympathise most deeply with your father.’
    Finree was finding that her admiration for the First of the Magi was steadily fading, while her dislike only sharpened with time. ‘Do you,’ she said, in the same way one would say, ‘Shut up,’ and with the same meaning.
    If Bayaz took it he ignored it. ‘Such a shame we cannot see the little people struggle from afar. There is nothing quite like looking down upon a battle, and this is a large one, even in my experience. But the weather answers to no one.’ Bayaz grinned up into the increasingly solemn heavens. ‘A veritable storm! What drama, eh? What better accompaniment to a clash of arms?’
    ‘Did you call it up yourself just for the atmosphere?’
    ‘I wish I had the power. Only imagine, there could be thunder whenever I approached! In the Old Time my master, great Juvens, could call down lightning with a word, make a river flood with a gesture, summon a hoar frost with a thought. Such was the power of his Art.’ And he spread his hands wide, tipping his face into the rain and raising his staff towards the streaming heavens. ‘But that was long ago.’ He let his arms drop. ‘These days the winds blow their own way. Like battles. We who remain must work in a more … roundabout fashion.’
    More hoofbeats, and a dishevelled young officer cantered from the murk ahead.
    ‘Report!’ demanded Felnigg at great volume, making Finree wonder how he had lasted so long without being punched in the face.
    ‘Jalenhorm’s men have flushed the enemy from the orchards,’ answered the messenger breathlessly, ‘and are climbing the slope at the double!’
    ‘How far have they gone?’ asked Finree’s father.
    ‘When I last saw them they were well on the way up to the smaller stones. The Children. But whether or not they were able to take them—’
    ‘Heavy resistance?’
    ‘Becoming heavier.’
    ‘When did you leave them?’
    ‘I rode here with all despatch, sir, so perhaps a quarter of an hour ago?’
    Finree’s father bared his teeth at the downpour. The outline of the hill the Heroes stood on was little more than a darker smudge in a curtain of grey. She could follow his thoughts. By now they might have captured the summit in glory, be engaged in furious combat, or have been bloodily driven off.