Joe Abercrombie - The Heroes

‘The smell of it. The feel of it.’ He rubbed one hand up and down the stained sheath of his sword, making a faint swishing sound. ‘War is honest. There’s no lying to it. You don’t have to say sorry here. Don’t have to hide. You cannot. If you die? So what? You die among friends. Among worthy foes. You die looking the Great Leveller in the eye. If you live? Well, lad, that’s living, isn’t it? A man isn’t truly alive until he’s facing death.’ Whirrun stamped his foot into the sod. ‘I love war! Just a shame Ironhead’s down there on the Children. Do you reckon they’ll even get all the way up here, Craw?’

‘Couldn’t say.’

‘I reckon they will. I hope they will. Better come before the rain starts, though. That sky looks like witch’s work, eh?’ It was true there was a strange colour to the first hint of sunrise, great towers of sullen-looking cloud marching in over the fells to the north. Whirrun bounced up and down on his toes. ‘Oh, bloody hell, I can’t wait!’

‘Ain’t they people too, though?’ muttered Beck, thinking of the face of that Union man lying dead in the shack yesterday. ‘Just like us?’

Whirrun squinted across at him. ‘More than likely they are. But if you start thinking like that, well … you’ll get no one killed at all.’

Beck opened his mouth, then closed it. Didn’t seem much he could say to that. Made about as much sense as anything else had happened the last few days.

‘It’s easy enough for you,’ grunted Craw. ‘Shoglig told you the time and place of your death and it ain’t here.’

Whirrun’s grin got bigger. ‘Well, that’s true and I’ll admit it’s a help to my courage, but if she’d told me here and she’d told me now, do you really reckon that’d make any difference to me?’

Wonderful snorted. ‘You might not be yapping about it so bloody loud.’

‘Oh!’ Whirrun wasn’t even listening. ‘They’re off already, look! That’s early!’ He pointed the Father of Swords at arm’s length to the west, towards the Old Bridge, flinging his other arm around Beck’s shoulders. The strength in it was fearsome, he nearly lifted Beck without even trying. ‘Look at the pretty horses!’ Beck couldn’t see much down there but dark land, the glimmer of the river and a speckling of lights. ‘That’s fresh of ’em, isn’t it, though? That’s cheeky! Getting started and it’s hardly dawn!’

‘Too dark for riding,’ said Craw, shaking his head.

‘They must be as bloody eager as I am. Reckon they mean business today, eh, Craw? Oh, by the dead,’ and he shook his sword towards the valley, dragging Beck back and forth and nearly right off his feet, ‘I reckon there’ll be some songs sung about today!’

‘I daresay,’ grunted Wonderful through gritted teeth. ‘Some folk’ll sing about any old shit.’

The Riddle of the Ground

‘Here they come,’ said Pale-as-Snow, utterly deadpan, as if there was nothing more worrying than a herd of sheep on its way. It hardly needed an announcement. Calder could hear them, however dark it was. First the long note of a trumpet, then the whispering rustle of horses through crops, far off but closing, sprinkled with calls, whinnies, jingles of harness that seemed to tickle at Calder’s clammy skin. All faint, but all crushingly inevitable. They were coming, and Calder hardly knew whether to be smug or terrified. He settled on a bit of both.

‘Can’t believe they fell for it.’ He almost wanted to laugh it was so ridiculous. Laugh or be sick. ‘Those arrogant fucks.’

‘If you can rely on one thing in a battle, it’s that men rarely do what’s sensible.’ Good point. If Calder had any sense he’d have been on horseback himself, spurring hard for somewhere a long, long way away. ‘That’s what made your father the great man. Always kept a cold head, even in the fire.’

‘Would you say we’re in the fire now?’

Pale-as-Snow leaned forward and carefully spat. ‘I’d say we’re about to be. Reckon you’ll keep a cold head?’

‘Can’t see why.’ Calder’s eyes darted nervously to either side, across the snaking line of torches before the wall. The line of his men, following the gentle rise and fall of the earth. ‘The ground is a puzzle to be solved,’ his father used to say, ‘the bigger your army, the harder the puzzle.’ He’d been a master at using it. One look and he’d known where to put every man, how to make each slope, and tree, and stream, and fence fight on his side. Calder had done what he could, used each tump and hummock and ranged his archers behind Clail’s Wall, but he doubted that ribbon of waist-high farmer’s drystone would give a warhorse anything more than a little light exercise.

The sad fact was a flat expanse of barley didn’t offer much help. Except to the enemy, of course. No doubt they were delighted.

It was an irony Calder hadn’t missed that his father was the one who’d smoothed off this ground. Who’d broken up the little farms in this valley and a lot of others. Pulled up the hedgerows and filled in the ditches so there could be more crops grown, and taxes paid, and soldiers fed. Rolled out a golden carpet of welcome to the matchless Union cavalry.

Calder could just make out, against the dim fells on the far side of the valley, a black wave through the black sea of barley, sharpened metal glimmering at the crest. He found himself thinking about Seff. Her face coming up so sharp it caught his breath. He wondered if he’d see that face again, if he’d live to kiss his child. Then the soft thoughts were crushed under the drumming of hooves as the enemy broke into a trot. The shrill calls of officers as they struggled to keep the ranks closed, to keep hundreds of tons of horseflesh lined up in one unstoppable mass.

Calder glanced over to the left. Not too far off the ground sloped up towards Skarling’s Finger, the crops giving way to thin grass. Much better ground, but it belonged to that flaking bastard Tenways. He glanced over to the right. A gentler upward slope, Clail’s Wall hugging the middle, then disappearing out of sight as the ground dropped away to the stream. Beyond the stream, he knew, were woods full of more Union troops, eager to charge into the flank of his threadbare little line and rip it to tatters. But enemies Calder couldn’t see were far from his most pressing problem. It was the hundreds, if not thousands, of heavily armed horsemen bearing down from dead ahead, whose treasured flags he’d just pissed on, that were demanding his attention. His eyes flickered over that tide of cavalry, details starting from the darkness now, hints of faces, of shields, lances, polished armour.

‘Arrows?’ grunted White-Eye, leaning close beside him.

Best to look like he had some idea how far bowshot was, so he waited a moment longer before he snapped his fingers. ‘Arrows.’

White-Eye roared the order and Calder heard the bowstrings behind him, shafts flickering overhead, flitting down into the crops between them and the enemy, into the enemy themselves. Could little bits of wood and metal really do any damage to all that armoured meat, though?

The sound of them was like a storm in his face, pressing him back as they closed and quickened, streaming north towards Clail’s Wall and the feeble line of Calder’s men. The hooves battered the shaking land, threshed crops flung high. Calder felt a sudden need to run. A shock through him. Found he was edging back despite himself. To stand against that was mad as standing under a falling mountain.

But he found he was less afraid with every moment, and more excited. All his life he’d been dodging this, ferreting out excuses. Now he was facing it, and finding it not so terrible as he’d always feared. He bared his teeth at the dawn. Almost smiling. Almost laughing. Him, leading Carls into battle. Him, facing death. And suddenly he was standing, and spreading his arms in welcome, and roaring nothing at the top of his lungs. Him, Calder, the liar, the coward, playing the hero. You never can tell who’ll be called on to fill the role.