The Heroes

this in the first place. There’s people of my own I could’ve been killing, ’stead o’ wasting my sweat on you bastards.’
    The girl said a few words to her father, he said a few back. ‘My father is greatly relieved.’
    ‘Then my life’s worth living. I’ve a few things to tidy up before we hammer out the details.’ He cast an eye over the carnage on the Children. ‘Probably you have too. We’ll talk tomorrow. Let’s say after lunch, I can’t do business with a hollow belly.’
    The girl passed it on to her father in Union, and while she did it Craw looked down at the red-eyed soldier, and he looked back. He had a long smear of blood down his neck. His, or Craw’s, or one of Craw’s dead friends’? Not even an hour ago they’d struggled with every shred of strength and will to murder each other. Now there was no need. Made him wonder why there ever had been.
    ‘He’s a right fucking killer, your man there,’ said Dow, more or less summing up Craw’s thoughts.
    The girl looked over her shoulder. ‘He is …’ searching for the right words. ‘The king’s watcher.’
    Dow snorted. ‘He did a bit more’n fucking watch today. He’s got a devil in him, and I mean that as a compliment. Man like him could do well overon our side o’ the Whiteflow. He was a Northman he’d be in all the songs. Shit, might be he’d be a king instead o’ just watching one.’ Dow smiled that killing smile he had. ‘Ask him if he wants to work for me.’
    The girl opened her mouth but the neckless one spoke first, with a thick accent and the strangest, high, girlish little voice Craw had ever heard on a man. ‘I am happy where I am.’
    Dow raised one brow. “Course you are. Real happy. Must be why you’re so damn good at killing men.’
    ‘What about my friend?’ asked the girl. ‘The one who was captured with me—’
    ‘Don’t give up, do you?’ Dow showed his teeth again. ‘You really think anyone’ll want her back, now?’
    She looked him right in the eye. ‘I want her back. Didn’t I get what you asked for?’
    ‘Too late for some.’ Dow ran a careless eye over the carnage scattered across the slope, took in a breath, and blew it out. ‘But that’s war, eh? There have to be losers. Might be an idea to send some messengers, let everyone know they can all stop fighting and have a big sing-song instead. Be a shame to carry on butchering each other for nothing, wouldn’t it?’
    The woman blinked, then rendered it into Union again. ‘My father would like to recover our dead.’
    But the Protector of the North was already turning away. ‘Tomorrow. They won’t run off.’
    Black Dow walked off up the slope, the older man giving her the faintest, apologetic grin before he followed.
    Finree took a long breath, held it, then let it out. ‘I suppose that’s it.’
    ‘Peace is always an anticlimax,’ said her father, ‘but no less desirable for that.’ He started stiffly back towards the Children and she walked beside him.
    A throwaway conversation, a couple of bad jokes that half the gathering of five could not even have understood, and it was done. The battle was over. The war was over. Could they have had that conversation at the start, and would all those men – all these men – still be alive? Still have their arms, or legs? However she turned it around, she could not make it fit. Perhaps she should have been angry at the stupendous waste, but she was too tired, too irritated by the way her damp clothes were chafing her back. And at least it was over now after—
    Thunder rolled across the battlefield. Terribly, frighteningly loud. For a moment she thought it must be lightning striking the Heroes. A last, petulant stroke of the storm. Then she saw the mighty ball of fire belching up from Osrung, so large she fancied she could feel the heat of it on her face. Specks flew about it, spun away from it, streaks and spirals of dust following them high into the sky. Pieces of buildings, she realised. Beams,blocks. Men. The flame vanished and a great cloud of black smoke shot up after it, spilling into the sky like a waterfall reversed.
    ‘Hal,’ she muttered, and before she knew it, she was running.
    ‘Finree!’ shouted her father.
    ‘I’ll go.’ Gorst’s voice.
    She took no notice, charging on downhill as fast as she could with the tails of Hal’s coat snatching at her legs.
    ‘What the hell—’ muttered Craw, watching the column of smoke crawl up, the wind already dragging