The Heroes

now as the fear clawed up his throat. He saw a shape looming out of the murk, a pale face, startled.
    ‘Help!’ he screeched. ‘Help!’
    Someone squatting, pinching off a turd. ‘What?’
    And Calder was past, thumping through the mud, leaving the fires of Reachey’s camp behind. He snatched a glance over his shoulder, couldn’t see a thing beyond the wobbling black outline of the land. But he could hear them still, too close behind. Far too close. He caught water glimmering at the bottom of a slope, then his lovely Styrian boot toe caught something and he was in the air.
    He came down mouth first, crumpled, tumbled, head filled with his own despairing whimpers as the earth battered at him. Slid to what might’ve been a stop though it felt like he was still going. Struggled up, arms clutching at him.
    ‘Off me, bastards!’ It was his own cloak, heavy with mud. He floundered a half-step, realised he was going up the bank as the killers came down it. He tried to turn and flopped over in the stream, gasping for air, cold water gripping him.
    ‘Some runner, ain’t he?’ The voice boomed through the surging blood in Calder’s head, a nasty kind of chuckle on the end. Why do they always have to laugh?
    ‘Oh, aye. Come here.’ That scraping sound as one drew a blade. Calder remembered he had a sword himself, fished numbly for it, trying to struggle up out of the freezing water. He only got as far as his knees. The nearest killer came at him, then fell over sideways.
    ‘What you doing?’ said the other. Calder wondered if he’d drawn and stabbed him, then realised his sword was still all tangled up with his cloak. He couldn’t have got it free even if he had the strength to move his arm – which, at that moment, he didn’t.
    ‘What?’ His tongue felt twice its normal size.
    A shape flashed from nowhere. Calder gave a kind of squeal, arms jerking pointlessly to cover his face. He felt the wind of something passing, it crashed into the second killer and he went down on his back. The first was trying to crawl away up the bank, making a wet groan. The outline of a man walked down to him, slinging a bow over his shoulder and drawing a sword, and stabbed him through the back without breaking stride. He strolled up close and stood there, a blacker shape in the darkness. Calder stared at him through the spread-out fingers over his face, cold water bubbling at his knees. Thinking of Seff. Waiting for his death.
    ‘If it ain’t Prince Calder. Wouldn’t expect to chance on you in such surroundings.’
    Calder slowly prised his trembling hands away from his face. He knew that voice. ‘Foss Deep?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Relief spouted up in Calder like a fountain, so much he almost wanted to laugh. Laugh or be sick. ‘My brother sent you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Scale’s busy… busy… busy these days,’ grunted Shallow, still stabbing the second killer, blade squelching in and out.
    ‘Very busy.’ Deep watched his brother as if he was watching a man dig a ditch. ‘Fighting and so forth. War. The old swords-and-marching game. Loves him some war, Scale, can’t get enough. If that’s not dead yet, by the way, ain’t never going to be.’
    ‘True.’ Shallow stabbed his man once more then rocked back on his haunches, his blade, and his hand, and his arm to the elbow all sticky black with blood in the moonlight.
    Calder made himself not look at it, trying to keep his mind off his rising gorge. ‘Where the hell did you come from?’
    Deep offered a hand and Calder took it. ‘We heard you were returned from exile and – aware what a popular boy you are – thought we’d come and stand lookout. Case someone tried something. And whatever do you know …’
    Calder held Deep’s forearm a moment longer as the dark world started to steady. ‘Good thing you came when you did. Moment longer I’d have had to kill those bastards myself.’ He stood, the blood rushed to his head, and he doubled up and puked all over his Styrian boots.
    ‘Things were about to get ugly, all right,’ said Deep solemnly.
    ‘If you could just’ve got your sword free from your fancy-arsed cloak you’d have cut those bastards up every which way.’ Shallow was coming down the slope and dragging something after him. ‘We caught this one. He was holding their horses.’ And he shoved a shape down in the mud in front of Calder. A young lad, pale face dirt-speckled in the half-light.
    ‘That’s some good work.’ Calder wiped his sour mouth