The Heroes

we’re to be neighbours there should be no chill between us.’
    ‘Different sides. That happens. Time comes you got to bury it.’ The Dogman stood, looking Calder in the eye all the way. ‘But you killed Forley the Weakest. Never did no harm to no one, that lad. Came to give you a warning, and you killed him for it.’
    Calder’s smile had turned, for the first time, slightly lopsided. ‘There isn’t a morning comes I don’t regret it.’
    ‘Then here’s another.’ The Dogman leaned forward, extended his forefinger, pressed one nostril closed with it and blew snot out of the other straight into Calder’s open palm. ‘Set foot south o’ the Cusk, I’ll cut the bloody cross in you. Then there’ll be no chill.’ And he gave a scornful sniff, and stalked past Gorst and away.
    Mitterick nervously cleared his throat. ‘We will reconvene soon, then?’ Looking to Bayaz for support that did not arrive.
    ‘Absolutely.’ Calder regained most of his grin as he wiped the Dogman’s snot off on the edge of the table. ‘In three days.’ And he turned his back and went to talk to the man with the metal eye. The one called Shivers.
    ‘This Calder seems a slippery bastard,’ Mitterick muttered to Bayaz as they left the table. ‘I’d rather have dealt with Black Dow. At least with him you knew what you were getting.’ Gorst was hardly listening. He was too busy staring at Calder and his scarred henchman.
I know him. I know that face. But from where … ?
    ‘Dow was a fighter,’ Bayaz was murmuring. ‘Calder is a politician. He realises we are keen to leave, and that when the troops go home we will have nothing to bargain with. He knows he can win far more by sitting still and smirking than Dow ever did with all the steel and fury in the North…’
    Shivers turned the ruined side of his face away as he spoke to Calder, the unburned side moving into the sun … and Gorst’s skin prickled with recognition, and his mouth came open.
    Sipani.
    That face, in the smoke, before he was sent tumbling down the stairs.
That face.
How could it be the same man? And yet he was almost sure.
    Bayaz’ voice faded behind him as Gorst strode around the table, jaw clenched, and onto the Northmen’s side of the Children. One of Calder’s old retainers grunted as Gorst shouldered him out of the way. Probably this was extremely poor, if not potentially fatal, etiquette for peace negotiations.
And I could not care less.
Calder glanced up, and took a worried step back. Shivers turned to look. Not angry. Not afraid.
    ‘Colonel Gorst!’ someone shouted, but Gorst ignored it, his hand closing around Shivers’ arm and pulling him close. The War Chiefs about the edge of the Children were all frowning. The giant took a huge step forwards. The man with the golden armour was calling out to the body of Carls. Another had put his hand to the hilt of his sword.
    ‘Calm, everyone!’ Calder shouted in Northern, one restraining palm up behind him. ‘Calm!’ But he looked nervous.
As well he should. All our lives are balanced on a razor’s edge. And I could not care less.
    Shivers did not look as if he cared overmuch himself. He glanced downat Gorst’s gripping hand, then back up at his face, and raised the brow over his good eye.
    ‘Can I help you?’ His voice was the very opposite of Gorst’s. A gravelly whisper, harsh as millstones grinding. Gorst looked at him. Really looked. As though he could drill into his head with his eyes. That face, in the smoke. He had glimpsed it only for a moment, and masked, and without the scar.
But still.
He had seen it every night since, in his dreams, and in his waking, and in the twisted space between, every detail stamped into his memory.
And I am almost sure.
    He could hear movement behind him. Excited voices. The officers and men of his Majesty’s Twelfth.
Probably upset to have missed out on the battle. Probably almost as keen to become involved in a new chapter of it as I am myself.
    ‘Colonel Gorst!’ came Bayaz’ warning growl.
    Gorst ignored him. ‘Have you ever been …’ he hissed, ‘to Styria?’ Every part of him tingling with the desire to do violence.
    ‘Styria?’
    ‘Yes,’ snarled Gorst, gripping even harder. Calder’s two old men were creeping back in fighting crouches. ‘To Sipani.’
    ‘Sipani?’
    ‘Yes.’ The giant had taken another immense step, looming taller than the tallest of the Children.
And I could not care less.
‘To Cardotti’s House of