Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

“Halt!” And the Union soldiers clattered and grumbled to a stop, started sorting themselves out into a line, spread across the highest part of the ridge. A great long line, the Dogman reckoned, judging from the number of men he’d watched going up into the woods, and they were right at the far end of it. He peered off into the empty trees on their left, and frowned. Lonely place to be, the end of a line.

“But the safest,” he muttered to himself.

“What’s that?” asked Cathil, sitting down on a great fallen tree trunk.

“Safe here,” he said in her tongue, managing a grin. He still didn’t have half an idea how to behave around her. There was a hell of a gap between them in the daylight, a yawning great gap of race, and age, and language that he wasn’t sure could ever be bridged. Strange, how the gap dwindled down to nothing at night. They understood each other well enough in the dark. Maybe they’d work it out, in time, or maybe they wouldn’t, and that’d be that. Still, he was glad she was there. Made him feel like a proper human man again, instead of just an animal slinking in the woods, trying to scratch his way from one mess to another.

He watched a Union officer break off from his men and walk towards them, strut up to Threetrees, some kind of a polished stick wedged under his arm. “General Poulder asks that you remain here on the left wing, to secure the far flank.” He spoke slow and very loud, as though that’d make him understood if they didn’t talk the language.

“Alright,” said Threetrees.

“The division will be deploying along the high ground to your right!” And he flicked his stick thing towards the trees where his men were slowly and noisily getting ready. “We will be waiting until Bethod’s forces are well engaged with General Kroy’s division, and then we will attack, and drive them from the field!”

Threetrees nodded. “You need our help with any of that?”

“Frankly I doubt it, but we will send word if matters change.” And he strutted off to join his men, slipping a few paces away and nearly going down on his arse in the muck.

“He’s confident,” said the Dogman.

Threetrees raised his brows. “Bit too much, if you’re asking me, but if it means he leaves us out I reckon I can live with it. Right then!” he shouted, turning round to the Carls. “Get hold o’ that tree trunk and drag it up along the brow here!”

“Why?” asked one of ’em, sitting rubbing at one knee and looking sullen.

“So you got something to hide behind if Bethod turns up,” barked Dow at him. “Get to it, fool!”

The Carls downed their weapons and set to work, grumbling. Seemed that joining up with the legendary Rudd Threetrees was less of a laugh than they’d hoped. Dogman had to smile. They should’ve known. Leaders don’t get to be legendary by handing out light duty. The old boy himself was stood frowning into the woods as Dogman walked up beside him. “You worried, chief?”

“It’s a good spot up here for hiding some men. A good spot for waiting ’til the battles joined, then charging down.”

“It is,” grinned the Dogman. “That’s why we’re here.”

“And what? Bethod won’t have thought of that?” Dogman’s grin started to fade. “If he’s got men to spare he might think they’d be well used up here, waiting for the right moment, just like we are. He might send ’em through these trees here and up this hill to right where we’re sitting. What’d happen then, d’you reckon?”

“We’d set to killing each other, I daresay, but Bethod don’t have men to spare, according to Shivers and his boys. He’s outnumbered worse’n two to one as it is.”

“Maybe, but he likes to cook up surprises.”

“Alright,” said Dogman, watching the Carls heaving the fallen tree trunk around so it blocked off the top of the slope. “Alright. So we drag a tree across here and we hope for the best.”

“Hope for the best?” grunted Threetrees. “Just when did that ever work?” He strode off to mutter to Grim, and Dogman shrugged his shoulders. If a few hundred Carls did turn up all of a sudden, they’d be in a fix, but there weren’t much he could do about it now. So he knelt down beside his pack, pulled out his flint and some dry twigs, stacked it all up careful and started striking sparks.

Shivers squatted down near him, palms resting on his axe-handle. “What’re you at?”

“What does it look like?” Dogman blew into the kindling, watched the flame spreading out. “I’m making me a fire.”

“Ain’t we waiting for a battle to start?”

Dogman sat back, pushed some of the dry twigs closer in and watched ’em take light. “Aye, we’re waiting, and that’s the best time for a fire, I reckon. War’s all waiting, lad. Weeks of your life, maybe, if you’re in our line o’ work. You could spend that time being cold, or you could try to get comfortable.”

He slid his pan out from his pack and onto the fire. New pan, and a good one, he’d got it off the Southerners. He unwrapped the packet inside. Five eggs there, still whole. Nice, brown, speckled eggs. He cracked one on the edge of the pan, poured it in, heard it hiss, grinning all the while. Things were looking up, alright. Hadn’t had eggs in a good long time. It was as he was cracking the last one that he smelled something, just as the breeze turned. Something more than eggs cooking. He jerked his head up, frowning.

“What?” asked Cathil.

“Nothing, most likely.” But it was best not to take chances. “You wait here a moment and watch these, eh?”

“Alright.”

Dogman clambered over the fallen trunk, made for the nearest tree and leaned against it, squatting on his haunches, peering down the slope. Nothing to smell, that he could tell. Nothing to see in the trees either—just the wet earth patched with snow, the dripping pine branches and the still shadows. Nothing. Just Threetrees got him nervous with his talk about surprises.

He was turning back when he caught a whiff again. He stood up, took a few paces downhill, away from the fire and the fallen tree, staring into the woods. Threetrees came up beside him, shield on his arm, sword drawn and clutched in his big fist.

“What is it, Dogman, you smell something?”

“Could be.” He sniffed again, long and slow, sucking the air through his nose, sifting at it. “Most likely nothing.”

“Don’t nothing me, Dogman, your nose has got us out of a scrape or two before now. What d’you smell?”

The breeze shifted, and this time he caught it full. Hadn’t smelled it in a while, but there was no mistaking it. “Shit,” he breathed. “Shanka.”

“Oy!” And the Dogman looked round, mouth open. Cathil was just climbing over the fallen tree, the pan in her hand. “Eggs are done,” she said, grinning at the two of them.

Threetrees flailed his arm at her and bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Everyone get back behind the—”

A bowstring went, down in the brush. Dogman heard the arrow, felt it hiss past in the air. They’re not the best of archers, on the whole, the Flatheads, and it missed him by a stride or two. It was just piss-poor luck it found another mark.

“Ah,” said Cathil, blinking down at the shaft in her side. “Ah…” and she fell down, just like that, dropping the pan in the snow. Then Dogman was running up the hill towards her, his breath scraping cold in his throat. Then he was scrabbling for her arms, saw Threetrees take a hold round her knees. It was a lucky thing she weren’t heavy. Not heavy at all. An arrow or two shot past. One stuck wobbling in the tree trunk, and they bundled her over and took cover on the other side.

“There’s Shanka down there!” Threetrees was shouting, “They shot the girl!”