The Heroes

advice gratefully considered, sir.’
    ‘What if I make it an order?’
    ‘All orders considered too, sir.’
    ‘Huh. Dismissed.’
    Tunny snapped out his most sycophantic salute, turned and quick-marched off into the night before anyone decided to court martial him.
    The moments after a battle are a profiteer’s dream. Corpses to be picked over, or dug up and picked over, trophies to be traded, booze, and chagga, and husk to be sold to the celebrating or the commiserating at equally outrageous mark-ups. He’d seen men without a bit to their names in the year leading up to an engagement make their fortunes in the hour after. But most of Tunny’s stock was still on his horse, which was who knew where, and, besides, his heart just wasn’t in it.
    So he kept his distance from the fires and the men around them, strolling along behind the lines, heading north across the trampled battlefield. He passed a pair of clerks booking the dead by lamplight, one making notes in a ledger while the other twitched up shrouds to look forcorpses worth noting and shipping back to Midderland, men too noble to go in the Northern dirt. As though one dead man’s any different from another. He clambered over the wall he’d spent all day watching, become again the unremarkable farmer’s folly it had been before the battle, and picked his way through the dusk towards the far left of the line where the remains of the First were stationed.
    ‘I didn’t know, I just didn’t know, I just didn’t see him!’
    Two men stood in barley patched with little white flowers, maybe thirty strides from the nearest fire, staring down at something. One was a nervous-looking young lad Tunny didn’t recognise, holding an empty flatbow. A new recruit, maybe. The other was Yolk, a torch in one hand, stabbing at the lad with a pointed finger.
    ‘What’s to do?’ growled Tunny as he walked up, already developing a bad feeling. It got worse when he saw what they were looking at. ‘Oh, no, no.’ Worth lay in a bald patch of earth, his eyes open and his tongue hanging out, a flatbow bolt right through his breastbone.
    ‘I thought it was Northmen!’ said the lad.
    ‘The Northmen are on the north side of the lines, you fucking idiot!’ snapped Yolk at him.
    ‘I thought he had an axe!’
    ‘A shovel.’ Tunny dug it out of the barley, just beyond the limp fingers of Worth’s left hand. ‘Reckon he’d been off doing what he did best.’
    ‘I should fucking kill you!’ snarled Yolk, reaching for his sword. The lad gave a helpless squeak, holding his flatbow up in front of him.
    ‘Leave it.’ Tunny stepped between them, put a restraining palm on Yolk’s chest and gave a long, painful sigh. ‘It’s a battle. We all made mistakes. I’ll go to Sergeant Forest, see what’s to be done.’ He pulled the flatbow from the lad’s limp hands and pushed the shovel into them. ‘In the meantime, you’d better get digging.’ For Worth, the Northern dirt would have to do.

‘You never have to wait long, or look far,
to be reminded of how thin the line is
between being a hero or a goat’
    Mickey Mantle

End of the Road

    ‘H e in there?’
    Shivers gave one slow nod. ‘He’s there.’
    ‘Alone?’ asked Craw, putting his hand on the rotten handle.
    ‘He went in alone.’
    Meaning, more’n likely, he was with the witch. Craw wasn’t keen to renew his acquaintance with her, especially after seeing her surprise yesterday, but dawn was on the way, and it was past time he was too. About ten years past time. He had to tell his Chief first. That was the right thing to do. He blew out through his puffed cheeks, grimaced at his stitched face, then turned the handle and went in.
    Ishri stood in the middle of the dirt floor, hands on her hips, head hanging over on one side. Her long coat was scorched about the hem and up one sleeve, part of the collar burned away, the bandages underneath blackened. But her skin was still so perfect the torch flames were almost reflected in her cheek, like a black mirror.
    ‘Why fight this fool?’ she was sneering, one long finger pointing up towards the Heroes. ‘There is nothing you can win from him. If you step into the circle I cannot protect you.’
    ‘Protect me?’ Dow slouched by the dark window, hard face all in shadow, his axe held loose just under the blade. ‘I’ve handled men ten times harder’n Prince bloody Calder in the circle.’ And he gave it a long, screeching lick with a