The Heroes

leaving empty-handed.’
    A Carl with a long moustache sat under dripping eaves with a bottle in his hand, sneering as he watched ’em walk past. Beside him a corpse lay in the doorway, half-in, half-out, the back of its head a glistening mass. Beck couldn’t tell if it was someone who’d lived in the house or someone who’d been fighting in it. Whether it was a man or a woman, even.
    ‘You’re quiet all of a sudden,’ said Reft.
    Beck wanted to think of something sharp, but all he could manage was, ‘Aye.’
    ‘Wait here.’ And Flood limped up to a man in a red cloak, pointing Carls off this way and that. Some figures sat slumped in an alleyway nearby, hands tied, shoulders hunched against the drizzle.
    ‘Prisoners,’ said Reft.
    ‘They don’t look much different than our lot,’ said Colving.
    ‘They ain’t.’ Reft frowned at ’em. ‘Some o’ the Dogman’s boys, I guess.’
    ‘Apart from him,’ said Beck. ‘That’s a Union man.’ He had a bandage round his head and a funny Union jacket, one red sleeve ripped and the skin underneath covered in grazes, the other with some kind of fancy gold thread all around the cuff.
    ‘Right,’ said Flood as he walked back over. ‘You’re going to look to these prisoners while I find out what the work’ll be tomorrow. Just make sure none o’ them, and none o’ you, end up dead!’ he shouted as he made off up the street.
    ‘Looking to prisoners,’ grumbled Beck, some of his bitterness bubbling back as he looked down at their hangdog faces.
    ‘Reckon you deserve better work, do you?’ The one who spoke had a crazy look to him, a big bandage around his belly, stained through brownwith some fresh red in the middle, ankles tied as well as wrists. ‘Bunch o’ fucking boys, don’t even have their Names yet!’
    ‘Shut up, Crossfeet,’ grunted one of the other prisoners, not hardly looking up.
    ‘You shut up, y’arsehole!’ Crossfeet gave him a look like he might tear him with his teeth. ‘Whatever happens tonight, the Union’ll be here tomorrow. More o’ those bastards than ants in a hill. The Dogman too, and you know who the Dogman’s got with him?’ He grinned, eyes going huge as he whispered the name. ‘The Bloody-Nine.’ Beck felt his face go hot. The Bloody-Nine had killed his father. Killed him in a duel with his own sword. The one he had sheathed beside him now.
    ‘That’s a lie,’ squeaked Brait, looking scared to his bones even though they had weapons and the prisoners were trussed up tight. ‘Black Dow killed Ninefingers, years ago!’
    Crossfeet kept giving him that crazy grin. ‘We’ll see. Tomorrow, you little bastard. We’ll—’
    ‘Let him alone,’ said Beck.
    ‘Oh aye? And what’s your name?’
    Beck stepped up and booted Crossfeet in the fruits. ‘That’s my name!’ He kept on kicking him as he folded up, all his anger boiling out. ‘That’s my name! That’s my fucking name, you heard it enough?’
    ‘Hate to interrupt.’
    ‘What?’ snarled Beck, spinning round with his fists clenched.
    A big man stood behind him, a half-head taller’n Beck, maybe, fur on his shoulders glistening with the rain. All across one side of his face, the biggest and most hideous scar Beck had ever seen, the eye on that side not an eye at all but a ball of dead metal.
    ‘Name’s Caul Shivers,’ voice a ground-down whisper.
    ‘Aye,’ croaked Beck. He’d heard stories. Everyone had. They said Shivers did tasks for Black Dow too black for his own hands. They said he’d fought at Black Well, and the Cumnur, and Dunbrec, and the High Places, fought beside old Rudd Threetrees, and the Dogman. The Bloody-Nine too. They said he’d gone south across the sea and learned sorcery. That he’d traded his eye willingly for that silver one, and that a witch had made it, and through it he could see what a man was thinking.
    ‘Black Dow sent me.’
    ‘Aye,’ whispered Beck, all his hairs standing up on end.
    ‘To get one o’ these. A Union officer.’
    ‘Reckon that’s this one.’ Colving used his toe to poke at the man with the tattered sleeve and made him grunt.
    ‘If it ain’t Black Dow’s bitch!’ Crossfeet was smiling up, teeth shining red, bandages round him reddened too. ‘Why don’t you bark, eh, Shivers? Bark, you bastard!’ Beck could hardly believe it. None of ’em could. Maybe he knew that wound in his gut was death, and it’d sent him mad.
    ‘Huh.’ Shivers jerked his trousers up so it was easy for