The Heroes

Thralls picking over the wreckage seemed no more concerned than if they’d been picking daisies. Stripping off clothes and armour, stacking up weapons and shields good enough to be used. If they were upset it was ’cause the Carls who’d led the charge had snaffled the best booty.
    ‘Too old for this shit,’ muttered Craw, leaning down to grip at his sore knee, a cold cord of pain running through it from ankle to hip.
    ‘If it ain’t Curnden Craw, at last!’ Whirrun had been sitting against one of the Heroes and now he stood, brushing dirt from his arse. ‘I’d almostgiven up on waiting.’ He swung the Father of Swords up onto one shoulder, sheathed again, and pointed into the valley with it, the way they’d come. ‘Thought maybe you’d decided to settle down in one of those farms on the way over here.’
    ‘I wish I had.’
    ‘Aw, but then who’d show me my destiny?’
    ‘Did you fight?’
    ‘I did, yes, as it happens. Stuck into the midst of it. I’m quite a one for fighting, according to the songs. Lots of fighting here.’ Not that he had a scratch on him. Craw had never seen Whirrun come out of a fight with a single mark. He frowned around the circle of butchery, scrubbing at his hair, and the wind chose that moment to freshen, stirring the tattered clothes of the corpses. ‘Lot of dead men, ain’t there.’
    ‘Aye,’ said Craw.
    ‘Heaps and heaps.’
    ‘Aye.’
    ‘Union mostly, though.’
    ‘Aye.’
    Whirrun shrugged his sword off his shoulder and stood it on its tip, hilt in both hands, leaning forward so his chin rested on the pommel. ‘Still, even when it’s enemies, a sight like this, well … makes you wonder whether war’s really such a good thing after all.’
    ‘You joking?’
    Whirrun paused, turning the hilt round and round so the end of the stained scabbard twisted into the stained grass. ‘I don’t really know any more. Agrick’s dead.’ Craw looked up, mouth open. ‘He charged off right at the head. Got killed in the circle. Stabbed, I think, with a sword, just about here,’ and he poked at his side, ‘under the ribs and went right through, probably—’
    ‘Don’t matter exactly how, does it?’ snapped Craw.
    ‘I guess not. Mud is mud. He had the shadow over him since his brother died, though. You could see it on him. I could, anyway. The boy wasn’t going to last.’
    Some consolation, that. ‘The rest?’
    ‘Jolly Yon got a nick or two. Brack’s leg’s still bothering him, though he won’t say so. Other than that, they’re all good. Good as before, leastways. Wonderful thought we could try and bury Agrick next to his brother.’
    ‘Aye.’
    ‘Let’s get a hole dug, then, shall we, ’fore someone else digs there?’
    Craw took a long breath as he looked around them. ‘If you can find a spare shovel. I’ll come say the words.’ A fitting end to the day that’d be. Before he got more’n a couple of steps, though, he found Caul Shivers in his way.
    ‘Dow wants you,’ he said, and with his whisper, and his scar, and his careless frown, he might’ve been the Great Leveller his self.
    ‘Right.’ Craw fought the urge to start chewing his nails again. ‘Tell ’em I’ll be back soon. I’ll be back soon, will I?’
    Shivers shrugged.
    Craw might not much have cared for what they’d done with the place, but Black Dow looked happy enough with the day’s work, leaning against one of the stones with a mostly eaten apple in one hand. ‘Craw, you old bastard!’ As he turned, Craw saw one side of his grinning face was all dashed and speckled with blood. ‘Where the hell did you get to?’
    ‘All honesty, limping along at the back.’ Splitfoot and a few of his Carls were scattered about, swords drawn and eyes peeled. A lot of bare steel, considering they’d won a victory.
    ‘Thought maybe you got yourself killed,’ said Dow.
    Craw winced as he worked his burning foot around, thinking there was still time. ‘I wish I could run fast enough to get myself killed. I’ll stand wherever you tell me, but this charging business is a young man’s game.’
    ‘I managed to keep up.’
    ‘Don’t all have your taste for blood, Chief.’
    ‘It’s been the making of me. Don’t reckon I’ve done a better day’s work than this, though.’ Dow put a hand on Craw’s shoulder and drew him out between the stones, out to the edge of the hill where they could get a look south across the valley. The very spot Craw had stood when they first saw the