The Heroes

with white-watered gills. To the east Osrung straddled the river, a cluster of houses around a bridge and a big mill, huddled inside a high fence. Smoke drifted from chimneys, into the bright blue and off to nowhere. All normal, and nothing to remark upon, and no sign whatever of the Union, or Hardbread, or any of the Dogman’s boys.
    Hard to believe there was any war at all.
    But then in Craw’s experience, and he’d plenty, wars were made from ninety-nine parts boredom, usually in the cold and damp, hungry and ill, often hauling a great weight of metal uphill, to one part arse-opening terror. Made him wonder yet again why the hell he ever got into the black business, and why the hell he still hadn’t got out. Talent for it, or a lack of talent for aught else. Or maybe he’d just gone with the wind and the windhad blown him here. He peered up, shreds of cloud shifting across the deep sky, now one memory, now another.
    ‘Beautiful,’ said Agrick again.
    ‘Everything looks prettier in the sun,’ said Craw. ‘If it was raining you’d be calling it the ugliest valley in the world.’
    ‘Maybe.’ Agrick closed his eyes and tipped his face back. ‘But it ain’t raining.’
    That was a fact, and not necessarily a happy one. Craw had a long-established tendency to sunburn, and had spent most of yesterday edging around the tallest of the Heroes along with the shade. Only thing he liked less than the heat was the cold.
    ‘Oh, for a roof,’ he muttered. ‘Damn fine invention for keeping the weather off.’
    ‘Bit o’ rain don’t bother me none,’ grunted Agrick.
    ‘You’re young. Wait ’til you’re out in all weathers at my age.’
    Agrick shrugged. ‘By then I hope to have a roof, Chief.’
    ‘Good idea,’ said Craw. ‘You cheeky little bastard.’ He opened his battered eyeglass, the one he’d taken from a dead Union officer they found frozen in the winter, and peered towards the Old Bridge again. Nothing. Checked the shallows. Nothing. Eyed the Ollensand Road, jerked up at a moving spot there, then realised it was some tiny fly on the end of the glass and sank back. ‘Guess a man can see further in fine weather, at least.’
    ‘It’s the Union we’re watching for, ain’t it? Those bastards couldn’t creep up on a corpse. You worry too much, Chief.’
    ‘Someone has to.’ But Agrick had a point. Worrying too much or not enough is ever a fine balance, and Craw always found himself falling heavily on the worried side of it. Every hint of movement had him starting, ripe to call for weapons. Birds flapping lazily into the sky. Sheep grazing on the slopes of the fells. Farmers’ wagons creeping along the roads. A little while ago Jolly Yon had started up axe practice with Athroc, and the sudden scrape of metal had damn near made him soak his trousers. Craw worried too much, all right. Shame is, a man can’t just choose not to worry.
    ‘Why are we here, Agrick?’
    ‘Here? Well, you know. Sit on the Heroes, watch to see if the Union come, tell Black Dow if they do. Scouting, like always.’
    ‘I know that. It was me told it to you. I mean,
why
are we here?’
    ‘What, like, meaning of life and that?’
    ‘No, no.’ Craw grabbed at the air as though what he meant was something he couldn’t quite get a hold of. ‘Why are we
here
?’
    Agrick’s face puckered up as he thought on it. ‘Well … The Bloody-Nine killed Bethod, and took his chain, and made himself King o’ the Northmen.’
    ‘True.’ Craw remembered the day well enough, Bethod’s corpse sprawled out bloody in the circle, the crowd roaring Ninefingers’ name, and he shivered in spite of the sun. ‘And?’
    ‘Black Dow turned on the Bloody-Nine and took the chain for his self.’ Agrick realised he might have used some risky phrasing there, started covering his tracks. ‘I mean, he had to do it. Who’d want a mad bastard like the Bloody-Nine for king? But the Dogman called Dow traitor, and oath-breaker, and most of the clans from down near Uffrith, they tended to his way of seeing things. The King of the Union, too, having been on some mad journey with Ninefingers and made a friend of him. So the Dogman and the Union decided to make war on Black Dow, and here we all are.’ Agrick slumped back on his elbows, closing his eyes and looking quite heavily pleased with himself.
    ‘That’s a fine understanding of the politics of the current conflict.’
    ‘Thanks, Chief.’
    ‘Why Black Dow and the Dogman got a feud.