The Heroes

backs. Through the fields they went, at an interminable walk, towards the gap in Clail’s Wall where Calder had faced the Union charge a few days before.
    His heart was beating just as fast as it had then. The Union had pulled back behind the river that morning and Pale-as-Snow’s boys were up north behind the Heroes, but there were still eyes around. A few nervous pickers combing through the trampled barley, searching for some trifle others might have missed. Scrounging up arrowheads or buckles or anything that could turn a copper. A couple of men thrashing through the crops off to the east, one with a fishing rod over his shoulder. Strange, how quickly a battlefield turned back to being just a stretch of ground. One day every finger’s breadth of it is something men can die over. The next it’s just a path from here to there. As he looked about Calder caught Shivers’ eye and the killer lifted his chin, silently asking the question. Calder jerked his head away like a hand from a boiling pot.
    He’d killed men before. He’d killed Brodd Tenways with his own sword hours after the man had saved his life. He’d ordered Forley the Weakest dead for nothing but his own vanity. Killing a man when Skarling’s Chair was the prize shouldn’t have made his hand shake on the reins, should it?
    ‘Why didn’t you help me, Calder?’ Scale had eased his stump out from the gap in the cloak and was frowning down at it, jaw set hard. ‘At the bridge. Why didn’t you come?’
    ‘I wanted to.’ Liar, liar. ‘Found out there were Union men in the woods across that stream. Right on our flank. I wanted to go but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.’ That much was true. He was sorry. For what good that did.
    ‘Well.’ Scale’s face was a grimacing mask as he slid the stump back under his cloak. ‘Looks like you were right. The world needs more thinkers and fewer heroes.’ He glanced over for an instant and the look in his eye made Calder wince. ‘You always were the clever one.’
    ‘No. It was you who was right. Sometimes you have to fight.’
    This was where he’d made his little stand and the land still bore the scars. Crops trodden, broken arrow shafts scattered, scraps of ruined gear around the remains of the trenches. Before Clail’s Wall the ground had been churned to mud then baked hard again, smeared bootprints, hoof-prints, handprints stamped into it, all that was left of the men who died there.
    ‘Get what you can with words,’ muttered Calder, ‘but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter. Like you said. Like our father said.’ And hadn’t he said something about family, as well? How nothing is more important? And mercy? Always think about mercy?
    ‘When you’re young you think your father knows everything,’ said Scale. ‘Now I’m starting to realise he might’ve been wrong on more than one score. Look how he ended up, after all.’
    ‘True.’ Every word said was like lifting a great stone. How long had Calder lived with the frustration of having this thick-headed heap of brawn in his way? How many knocks, and mocks, and insults had he endured from him? His fist closed tight around the metal in his pocket. His father’s chain. His chain. Is nothing more important than family? Or is family the lead that weighs you down?
    They’d left the pickers behind, and the scene of the fighting too. Down the quiet track near the farmhouse where Scale had woken him a few mornings before. Where Bayaz had given him an even harsher awakening the previous night. Was this a test? To see whether Calder was ruthless enough for the wizard’s tastes? He’d been accused of many things, but never too little ruthlessness.
    How long had he dreamed of taking back his father’s place? Even before his father lost it, and now there was only one last little fence to jump. All it would take was a nod. He looked sideways at Scale, wrung-out wreck that he was. Not much of a fence to trip a man with ambition. Calder had been accused of many things, but never too little ambition.
    ‘You were the one took after our father,’ Scale was saying. ‘I tried, but … couldn’t ever do it. Always thought you’d make a better king.’
    ‘Maybe,’ whispered Calder. Definitely.
    Shivers was close behind, one hand on the reins, the other resting on his hip. He looked as relaxed as ever a man could, swaying gently with the movements of his horse. But his fingertips just so happened to be brushing the grip of his sword,