The Heroes

glory on your own, could I?’
    Calder kicked the leaking body away and floundered up. ‘I’ve half a mind to tell you to get fucked!’
    ‘What about the other half?’
    ‘Shitting itself.’ No joke. He wouldn’t have been at all surprised if his was the next head Tenways’ sword whipped off.
    But Tenways only gave him a rotten smile. ‘Might be the first honest thing I’ve ever heard you say.’
    ‘Probably that’s fair.’
    Tenways nodded towards the soaked melee. ‘You coming?’
    ‘Damn right.’ Calder wondered for a moment whether he should charge in, roaring like a madman, and turn the tide of battle. That’s what Scale would’ve done. But it would hardly have been playing to his strengths. The enthusiasm he’d felt when he saw the cavalry routed had long ago leached away leaving him wet, cold, sore and exhausted. He feigned a grimace as he took a step, clutching at his knee. ‘Ah! Shit! I’ll have to catch you up.’
    Tenways grinned. “Course. Why wouldn’t you? With me, you bastards!’ And he led a glowering wedge of his Carls towards the gap in the lines, more of them pouring over the wall on the left and adding their weight to the straining combat.
    The rain was thinning. Calder could see a little further and, to his great relief, it looked as if Tenways’ arrival might have shifted the balance back their way. Might have. A few more Union soldiers on the other side of thescales and it could all still come apart. The sun peeped through the clouds for a moment, brought out a faint rainbow that curved down above the heaving mass of wet metal on the right and gently touched the bare rise beyond, and the low wall on top of it.
    Those bastards beyond the stream. How long would they just sit still?

Peace in Our Time

    T here were wounded men everywhere on the slopes of the hill. Dying men. Dead men. Finree thought she saw faces she knew among them, but could not be sure whether they really were dead friends, or dead acquaintances, or just corpses with familiar hair. More than once she saw Hal’s slack face leering, gaping, grinning. It hardly seemed to matter. The truly frightening thing about the dead, once she realised it, was that she was used to them.
    They passed through a gap in a low wall and into a circle of stones, casualties sprawled on every spare stretch of grass. A man was trying to hold a great wound in his leg together, but when he clamped one end shut the other sagged open, blood welling out. Her father climbed down from his horse, his officers following him, she following them, a pale lad with a bugle clutched in one muddy fist watching her in silence. They picked their way through the madness in a pale procession, virtually ignored, her father staring about him, jaw clenched tight.
    A junior officer trampled heedlessly past, waving a bent sword. ‘Form up! Form
up
! You! Where the hell—’
    ‘Lord Marshal.’ An unmistakable high voice. Gorst stood, somewhat unsteadily, from a group of tattered soldiers, and gave Finree’s father a tired-looking salute. Without doubt he had seen a great deal of action. His armour was battered and stained. His scabbard was empty and drooped about his legs in a manner that might have been comical on another day. He had a long, black-scabbed cut under one eye, his cheek, his jaw, the side of his thick neck streaked and crusted with drying blood. When he turned his head Finree saw the white of the other eye was bruised a sickly red, bandages above it soaked through.
    ‘Colonel Gorst, what happened?’
    ‘We attacked.’ Gorst blinked, noticed Finree and seemed to falter, then silently raised his hands and let them fall. ‘We lost.’
    ‘The Northmen still hold the Heroes?’
    He nodded slowly.
    ‘Where is General Jalenhorm?’ asked her father.
    ‘Dead,’ piped Gorst.
    ‘Colonel Vinkler?’
    ‘Dead.’
    ‘Who is in command?’
    Gorst stood in silence. Finree’s father turned away, frowning towards the summit. The rain was slackening off, the long slope leading up to the Heroes starting to take shape out of the grey, and with each stride of trampled grass that became visible, so did more corpses. Dead of both sides, broken weapons and armour, shattered stakes, spent arrows. Then the wall that ringed the summit, rough stones turned black by the storm. More bodies below it, the spears of the Northmen above. Still holding. Still waiting.
    ‘Marshal Kroy!’ The First of the Magi had not bothered to dismount. He sat, wrists