The Heroes

surprise.’
    Gorst paused for a moment. ‘General, I would prefer to remain where I can—’
    ‘I understand entirely. You wish to be close to the action. But the king asked specifically in his last letter that I do everything possible to keep you out of danger. Don’t worry, the front line will hold perfectly well without you. We friends of the king must stick together, mustn’t we?’
    All the king’s fools, capering along in military motley to the same mad bugle music! Make the one with the silly voice turn another cartwheel, my sides are splitting!
‘Of course, sir.’ And Gorst trudged back towards his horse.

Scale

    C alder nudged his horse down a path so vague he wasn’t even sure it was one, smirk clamped tight to his face. If Deep and Shallow were keeping an eye on him – and since he was their best source of money it was a certainty – he couldn’t tell. Admittedly, there wasn’t much point to men like Deep and Shallow if a man like Calder could tell where they were, but by the dead he would’ve liked some company. Like a starving man tossed a crust, seeing Curnden Craw had only whetted Calder’s appetite for friendly faces.
    He’d ridden through Ironhead’s men, soaking up their scorn, and Tenways’, soaking up their hostility, and now he was getting into the woods at the west end of the valley, where Scale’s men were gathered. His brother’s men. His men, he supposed, though they didn’t feel much like his. Tough-looking bastards, ragged from hard marching, bandaged from hard fighting. Worn down from being far from Black Dow’s favour where they did the toughest jobs for the leanest rewards. They didn’t look in a mood to celebrate anything, and for damn sure not the arrival of their Chief’s coward brother.
    It didn’t help that he’d struggled into his chain mail shirt, hoping to at least look like a warrior prince for the occasion. It had been a gift from his father, years ago, made from Styrian steel, lighter than most Northern mixtures but still heavy as an anvil and hot as a sheepskin. Calder had no notion how men could wear these damn things for days at a time. Run in them. Sleep in them. Fight in them. Mad business, fighting in this. Mad business, fighting. He’d never understood what men saw in it.
    And few men saw more in it than his own brother, Scale.
    He was squatting in a clearing with a map spread out in front of him. Pale-as-Snow was at his left elbow and White-Eye Hansul at his right, old comrades of Calder’s father from the time when he ruled the best part of the North. Men who’d fallen a long way when the Bloody-Nine threw Calder’s father from his battlements. Almost as far as Calder had fallen himself.
    Him and Scale were born to different mothers, and the joke always was that Scale’s must’ve been a bull. He looked like a bull, and a particularlymean and muscular one at that. He was Calder’s opposite in almost every way – blond where Calder was dark, blunt-featured where Calder was sharp, quick to anger and slow to think. Nothing like their father. Calder was the one who’d taken after Bethod, and everyone knew it. One reason why they hated him. That and he’d spent so much of his life acting like a prick.
    Scale looked up when he heard the hooves of Calder’s horse, gave a great smile as he strode over, still carrying that trace of a limp the Bloody-Nine had given him. He wore his chain mail lightly as a maiden wears a shift even so, a heavy black-forged double coat of it, plates of black steel strapped on top, all scratched and dented. ‘Always be armed,’ their father had told them, and Scale had taken it literally. He was criss-crossed with belting and bristling with weapons, two swords and a great mace at his belt, three knives in plain sight and probably others out of it. He had a bandage around his head stained brown on one side, and a new nick through his eyebrow to add to a rapidly growing collection of scars. It looked as if Calder’s frequent attempts to persuade Scale to stay out of battle had been as wasted as Scale’s frequent attempts to persuade Calder to charge into it.
    Calder swung from his saddle, finding it a straining effort in his mail and trying to make it look like he was only stiff from a hard ride. ‘Scale, you thick bastard, how’ve you—’
    Scale caught him in a crushing hug, lifted his feet clear of the ground and gave him a slobbery kiss on the forehead. Calder hugged him back the best he could with