The Heroes

spat, and took a breath, then seemed to remember Craw was there, eyes sliding back towards him. ‘You saw the Union come up?’
    ‘At least a thousand on the road to Adwein and I got the feeling there were more behind.’
    ‘Jalenhorm’s division,’ said Dow.
    ‘How d’you know that?’
    ‘He has his ways.’
    ‘By the—’ Craw took a startled pace, got his feet caught in a bramble and nearly fell. There was a woman lying on one of the highest walls. Draped over it like a wet cloth, one arm and one leg dangling, head hanging over the side like she was resting on some garden bench ’stead of a tottering heap of masonry six strides above the dirt.
    ‘Friend o’ mine.’ Dow didn’t even look up. ‘Well – when I say friend—’
    ‘Enemy’s enemy.’ She rolled off the back of the wall. Craw stared, waiting for the sound of her hitting the ground. ‘I am Ishri.’ The voice whispered in his ear.
    This time he went right on his arse in the dirt. She stood over him, skin black, and smooth, and perfect, like the glazing on a good pot. She wore a long coat, tails dragging on the dirt, hanging open, body all bound in white bandages underneath. If anyone ever looked like a witch, she was it. Not that there was much more evidence of witchery needed past vanishing from one place and stepping out of another.
    Dow barked with laughter. ‘You never can tell where she’ll spring from. I’m always worried she’ll pop out o’ nowhere while I’m … you know.’ And he mimed a wanking action with one fist.
    ‘You wish,’ said Ishri, looking down at Craw with eyes blacker than black, unblinking, like a jackdaw staring at a maggot.
    ‘Where did you come from?’ muttered Craw as he scrambled up, hopping a little on account of his stiff knee.
    ‘South,’ she said, though that much was clear enough from her skin. ‘Or do you mean, why did I come?’
    ‘I’ll take why.’
    ‘To do the right thing.’ There was a faint smile on her face, at that. ‘To fight against evil. To strike mighty blows for righteousness. Or … do you mean who sent me?’
    ‘All right, who sent you?’
    ‘God.’ Her eyes rolled to the sky, framed by jutting weeds and saplings. ‘And how could it be otherwise? God puts us all where he wants us.’
    Craw rubbed at his knee. ‘Got a shitty sense o’ humour, don’t he?’
    ‘You do not know the half of it. I came to fight against the Union, is that enough?’
    ‘It’s enough for me,’ said Dow.
    Ishri’s black eyes flicked away to him, and Craw felt greatly relieved. ‘They are moving onto the hill in numbers.’
    ‘Jalenhorm’s lot?’
    ‘I believe so.’ She stretched up tall, wriggling all over the place like she had no bones in her. Reminded Craw of the eels they used to catch from the lake near his workshop, spilling from the net, squirming in thechildren’s hands and making them squeal. ‘You fat pink men all look the same to me.’
    ‘What about Mitterick?’ asked Dow.
    Her bony shoulders drifted up and down. ‘Some way behind, chomping at the bit, furious that Jalenhorm is in his way.’
    ‘Meed?’
    ‘Where is the fun in knowing everything?’ She pranced past Craw, up on her toes, almost brushing against him so he had to nervously step back and nearly trip again. ‘God must be so
bored.’
She wedged one foot into a crack in the wall too narrow for a cat to squeeze through, twisting her leg, somehow working it in up to the hip. ‘To it, then, my heroes!’ She writhed like a worm cut in half, wriggling into the ruined masonry, her coat dragging up the mossy stonework behind her. ‘Do you not have a battle to fight?’ Her skull somehow slid into the gap, then her arms, she clapped her bandaged hands once and just a finger was left sticking from the crack. Dow walked over to it, reached out, and snapped it off. It wasn’t a finger at all, just a dead bit of twig.
    ‘Magic,’ muttered Craw. ‘Can’t say I care for the stuff.’ In his experience it did more harm than good. ‘I daresay a sorcerer’s got their uses and all but, I mean, do they always have to act so bloody
strange?’
    Dow flicked the twig away with a wrinkled lip. ‘It’s a war. I care for whatever gets the job done. Best not mention my black-skinned friend to anyone else though, eh? Folks might get the wrong idea.’
    ‘What’s the right idea?’
    ‘Whatever I fucking say it is!’ snarled Dow, and he didn’t look like he was faking the anger this time.
    Craw held up his