The Heroes

non-committal splutterings. The bleating of a goat would serve the same purpose.
He turned his back on the knot of staff officers and wandered over to where the Northmen were digging graves. The grey-haired one watched him come, leaning on his spade.
    ‘My name is Gorst.’
    The older man raised his brows.
Surprise that a Union man should speak Northern, or surprise that a big man should speak like a little girl?
‘Hard-bread’s mine. I fight for the Dogman.’ His words slightly mangled in a badly battered mouth.
    Gorst nodded to the corpses. ‘These are your men?’
    ‘Aye.’
    ‘You fought up here?’
    ‘Against a dozen led by a man called Curnden Craw.’ He rubbed at his bruised jaw. ‘We had the numbers but we lost.’
    Gorst frowned around the circle of stones. ‘They had the ground.’
    ‘That and Whirrun of Bligh.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Some fucking hero,’ scoffed the one with a red bird on his shield.
    ‘From way up north in the valleys,’ said Hardbread, ‘where it snows every bloody day.’
    ‘Mad bastard,’ grunted one of Hardbread’s men, nursing a bandaged arm. ‘They say he drinks his own piss.’
    ‘I heard he eats children.’
    ‘He has this sword they say fell out of the sky.’ Hardbread wiped his forehead on the back of one thick forearm. ‘They worship it, up there in the snows.’
    ‘They worship a sword?’ asked Gorst.
    ‘They think God dropped it or something. Who knows what they think up there? Either way, Cracknut Whirrun is one dangerous bastard.’ Hard-bread licked at a gap in his teeth, and from his grimace it was a new one. ‘I can tell you that from my own experience.’
    Gorst frowned towards the forest, trees shining dark green in the sun. ‘Do you think Black Dow’s men are near?’
    ‘I reckon they are.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because Craw fought against the odds, and he ain’t a man to fight over nothing. Black Dow wanted this hill.’ Hardbread shrugged as he bent back to his task. ‘We’re burying these poor bastards then we’re going down. I’ll be leaving a tooth back there on the slope and a nephew in the mud and I don’t plan on leaving aught else in this bloody place.’
    ‘Thank you.’ Gorst turned back towards Jalenhorm and his staff, now engaged in a heated debate about whether the latest company to arrive should be placed behind or in front of the ruined wall. ‘General!’ he called. ‘The scouts think Black Dow might be nearby!’
    ‘I hope he is!’ shot back Jalenhorm, though it was obvious he was scarcely listening. ‘The crossings are in our hands! Take control of all three crossings, that’s our first objective!’
    ‘I thought there were four crossings.’ It was said quietly, one man murmuring to another, but the hubbub dropped away at that moment. Everyone turned to see a pale young lieutenant, somewhat surprised to have become the centre of attention.
    ‘Four?’ Jalenhorm rounded on the man. ‘There is the Old Bridge, to the west.’ He flung out one arm, almost knocking down a portly major. ‘The bridge in Osrung, to the east. And the shallows where we made the passage. Three crossings.’ The general waved three big fingers in the lieutenant’s face. ‘All in our hands!’
    The young man flushed. ‘One of the scouts told me there is a path through the bogs, sir, further west of the Old Bridge.’
    ‘A path through the bogs?’ Jalenhorm squinted off to the west. ‘A secretway? I mean to say, Northmen could use that path and get right around us! Damn good work, boy!’
    ‘Well, thank you, sir—’
    The general spun one way, then back the other, heel twisting up the sod, casting around as though the right strategy was always just behind him. ‘Who hasn’t crossed the river yet?’
    His officers milled about in their efforts to stay in his line of sight.
    ‘Are the Eighth up?’
    ‘I thought the rest of the Thirteenth—’
    ‘Colonel Vallimir’s first cavalry are still deploying there!’
    ‘I believe they have one battalion in order, just reunited with their horses—’
    ‘Excellent! Send to Colonel Vallimir and ask him to take that battalion through the bogs.’
    A couple of officers grumbled their approval. Others glanced somewhat nervously at each other. ‘A whole battalion?’ one muttered. ‘Is this path suitable for—’
    Jalenhorm swatted them away. ‘Colonel Gorst! Would you ride back across the river and convey my wishes to Colonel Vallimir, make sure the enemy can’t give us an unpleasant