The Heroes

Splitfoot.
    ‘I reckon.’ Dow wandered into one of the empty stalls, tipped his head back, rolled his eyes to the ceiling and winced. A moment later Calder heard the sound of his piss spattering the straw. ‘There … we … go.’
    If the aim was to make him feel even more insignificant, it worked. He’d been half-expecting them to murder him. Now it seemed they couldn’t be bothered, and that pricked at Calder’s pride. ‘Got any orders for me?’ he snapped.
    Dow glanced over his shoulder. ‘Why? You’d only fuck ’em up or ignore ’em.’
    Probably true. ‘Why send for me, then?’
    ‘The way your brother tells it, you’ve got the sharpest mind in the whole North. I got sick of him telling me he couldn’t do without you.’
    ‘I thought Scale was up near Ustred?’
    ‘Two days’ ride away, and soon as I learned the Union were moving I sent to him to join up with us.’
    ‘Not much point me going, then.’
    ‘Wouldn’t say so …’ The sound of pissing stopped. ‘There it is!’ And started up again.
    Calder ground his teeth. ‘Maybe I’ll go see Reachey. Watch thisweapontake of his.’ Or talk him into helping Calder live out the month, even better.
    ‘You’re a free man, ain’t you?’ They both knew the answer to that one. Free as a pigeon already plucked and in the pot. ‘Things are just like they were in your father’s day, really. Any man can do what he likes. Right, Splitfoot?’
    ‘Right, Chief.’
    ‘Just as long as it’s exactly what I fucking tell ’em to do.’ And Dow’s Carls all chuckled away like they never heard finer wit. ‘Give Reachey my regards.’
    ‘I will.’ Calder turned for the door.
    ‘And Calder!’ Dow was just tapping off the drips. ‘You ain’t going to make more trouble for me, are you?’
    ‘Trouble? Wouldn’t know how, Chief.’
    ‘’Cause what with all those Southerners to fight … and unknowable fucks like Whirrun of Bligh and this Crinna-Come-Boasting weirdness … and my own people treading all over each other … I’ve got about as much arse-ache as I need. Can’t stand for anyone playing their own games. Someone tries to dig my roots from under me at a time like this, well, I’ve got to tell you, things’ll get
fucking ugly
!’ He screamed the last two words, eyes suddenly bulging from his face, veins popping from his neck, fury boiling out of him with no warning and making every man in the room flinch. Then he was calm as a kitten again. ‘Get me?’
    Calder swallowed, trying not to let his fear show even though his skin was all prickling. ‘I think I have the gist.’
    ‘Good lad.’ Dow worked his hips about as he finished lacing up, then grinned around like a fox grins at a chicken coop left open. ‘I’d hate to hurt your wife, she’s a pretty little thing. Not so pretty as you, o’ course.’
    Calder hid his fury under another smirk. ‘Who is?’
    He strode between the grinning Carls and out into the evening, all the while thinking about how he was going to kill Black Dow, and take back what was stolen from his father.

What War?

    ‘B eautiful, ain’t it?’ said Agrick, big grin across his freckled face.
    ‘Is it?’ muttered Craw. He’d been thinking about the ground, and how he might use it, and how an enemy might do the same.
    An old habit. It had been the better half of Bethod’s talk, when they were on campaign. The ground, and how to make a weapon of it.
    The hill the Heroes stood on was ground an idiot could’ve seen the value of. It sprouted alone from the flat valley, so much alone and so oddly smooth a shape it seemed almost a thing man-made. Two spurs swelled from it – one pushing west with a single needle of rock raised up on end which folk had named Skarling’s Finger, one to the southeast, a ring of smaller stones on top they called the Children.
    The river wound through the valley’s shallow bottom, skirting golden barley fields to the west, losing itself in a bog riddled with mirror-pools, then under the crumbling bridge Scorry Tiptoe was watching which was called, with a stubborn lack of imagination, the Old Bridge. The water flowed on fast around the foot of the hill, flaring out in sparkling shallows streaked with shingle. Somewhere down there among the scraggy brush and driftwood Brack was fishing. Or, more likely, sleeping.
    On the far side of the river, off to the south, Black Fell rose up. A rough-heaped mass of yellow grass and brown bracken, stained with scree and creased