Joe Abercrombie - The Heroes

‘Not great, no,’ said Red Hat.

Dogman eased his way closer to the edge of the trees and hunkered down again. ‘And it looks no better from here.’

‘Wasn’t going to, really, was it?’

‘Not really. But a man needs hope.’

The ground weren’t offering much. A couple more fruit trees, a scrubby bush or two, then the bare hillside sloped up sharp ahead. Some runners were still struggling up the grass and beyond them, as the sun started throwing some light onto events, the ragged line of some digging in. Above that the tumbledown wall that ringed the Children, and above that the Children themselves.

‘All crawling with Ironhead’s boys, no doubt,’ muttered the Dogman, speaking Red Hat’s very thoughts.

‘Aye, and Ironhead’s a stubborn bastard. Always been tricky to shift, once he gets settled.’

‘Like the pox,’ said Dogman.

‘And about as welcome.’

‘Reckon the Union’ll need more’n dead heroes to get up there.’

‘Reckon they’ll need a few living ones too.’

‘Aye.’

‘Aye.’ Red Hat shielded his eyes with one hand, realised too late he’d got blood stuck all over the side of his face. He thought he could see a big man standing up on the diggings below the Children, shouting at the stragglers as they fled. Could just hear his bellowing voice. Not quite the words, but the tone spoke plenty.

Dogman was grinning. ‘He don’t sound happy.’

‘Nope,’ said Red Hat, grinning too. As his old mum used to say, there’s no music so sweet as an enemy’s despair.

‘You fucking coward bastards!’ snarled Irig, and he kicked the last of ’em on the arse as he went past, bent over and gasping from the climb, knocked him on his face in the muck. Better’n he deserved. Lucky he only got Irig’s boot, rather’n his axe.

‘Fucking bastard cowards!’ sneered Temper at a higher pitch, and kicked the coward in the arse again as he started to get up.

‘Ironhead’s boys don’t run!’ snarled Irig, and he kicked the coward in the side and rolled him over.

‘Ironhead’s boys never run!’ And Temper kicked the lad in the fruits as he tried to scramble off and made him squeal.

‘But the Bloody-Nine’s down there!’ shouted another, his face milk pale and his eyes wide as shit-pits, cringing like a babe. A worried muttering followed the name, rippling through the boys all waiting behind the ditch. ‘The Bloody-Nine. The Bloody-Nine? The Bloody-Nine. The—’

‘Fuck ,’ snarled Irig, ‘the Bloody-Nine!’

‘Aye,’ hissed Temper. ‘Fuck him. Fucking fuck him!’

‘Did you even see him?’

‘Well … no, I mean, not myself, but—’

‘If he ain’t dead, which he is, and if he’s got the bones, which he don’t, he can come up here.’ And Irig leaned close to the lad, and tickled him under the chin with the spike on the end of his axe. ‘And he can deal with me.’

‘Aye!’ Temper was nearly shrieking it, veins popping out his head. ‘He can come up here and deal with … with him! With Irig! That’s right! Ironhead’s going to hang you bastards for running! Like he hung Crouch, and cut his guts out for treachery, he’ll fucking do the same to you, he will, and we’ll—’

‘You think you’re helping?’ snapped Irig.

‘Sorry, Chief.’

‘You want names? We got Cairm Ironhead up there at the Children. And at his back on the Heroes, we got Cracknut Whirrun, and Caul Shivers, and Black Dow his bloody self, for that matter—’

‘Up there,’ someone muttered.

‘Who said that?’ shrieked Temper. ‘Who fucking well said—’

‘Any man who stands now,’ Irig held up his axe and gave it a shake with each word, since he’d often found a shaken axe adds an edge to the bluntest of arguments, ‘and does his part, he’ll get his place at the fire and his place in the songs. Any man runs from this spot here, well,’ and Irig spat onto the curled-up coward next to his boot. ‘I won’t put Ironhead to the trouble o’ passing judgement, I’ll just give you to the axe, and there’s an end on it.’

‘An end!’ shrieked Temper.

‘Chief.’ Someone was tugging at his arm.

‘Can’t you see I’m trying to—’ snarled Irig, spinning around. ‘Shit.’

‘Never mind the Bloody-Nine. The Union were coming.

‘Colonel, you must dismount.’

Vinkler smiled. Even that was an effort. ‘Couldn’t possibly.’

‘Sir, really, this is no time for heroics.’

‘Then …’ Vinkler glanced across the massed ranks of men emerging from the fruit trees to either side. ‘When is the time, exactly?’

‘Sir—’

‘The bloody leg just won’t manage it.’ Vinkler winced as he touched his thigh. Even the weight of his hand on it was agonising now.

‘Is it bad, sir?’

‘Yes, sergeant, I think it’s quite bad.’ He was no surgeon, but he was twenty years a soldier and well knew the meaning of stinking dressings and a mottling of purple-red bruises about a wound. He had, in all honesty, been surprised to wake at all this morning.

‘Perhaps you should retire and see the surgeon, sir—’

‘I have a feeling the surgeons will be very busy today. No, Sergeant, thank you, but I’ll press on.’ Vinkler turned his horse with a twitch of the reins, worried that the man’s concern would cause his courage to weaken. He needed all the courage he had. ‘Men of his Majesty’s Thirteenth!’ He drew his sword and directed its point towards the scattering of stones high above them. ‘Forward!’ And with his good heel he urged his horse up onto the slope.

He was the only mounted man in the whole division now, as far as he could tell. The rest of the officers, General Jalenhorm and Colonel Gorst among them, had left their horses in the orchard and were proceeding on foot. Only a complete fool would have chosen to ride up a hill as steep as this one, after all. Only a fool, or the hero from an unlikely storybook, or a dead man.

The irony was that it hadn’t even been much of a wound. He’d been run through at Ulrioch, all those years ago, and Lord Marshal Varuz had visited him in the hospital tent, and pressed his sweaty hand with an expression of deep concern, and said something about bravery which Vinkler had often wished he could remember. But to everyone’s surprise, his own most of all, he had lived. Perhaps that was why he had thought nothing of a little nick on the thigh. Now it gave every appearance of having killed him.

‘Bloody appearances,’ he forced through gritted teeth. The only thing for it was to smile through the agony. That’s what a soldier was meant to do. He had written all the necessary letters and supposed that was something. His wife had always worried there would be no goodbye.

Rain was starting to flit down. He could feel the odd spot against his face. His horse’s hooves were slipping on the short grass and it tossed and snorted, making him grimace as his leg was jolted. Then a flight of arrows went up ahead. A great number of arrows. Then they began to curve gracefully downwards, falling from on high.

‘Oh, bloody hell.’ He narrowed his eyes and hunched his shoulders instinctively as a man might stepping from a porch into a hailstorm. Some of them dropped down around him, sticking silently into the turf to either side. He heard clanks and rattles behind as they bounced from shields or armour. He heard a shriek, followed by another. Shouting. Men hit.

Damned if he was going to just sit there. ‘Yah!’ And Vinkler gave his horse the spurs, wincing as it lurched up the hill, well ahead of his men. He stopped perhaps twenty strides from the enemy’s earthworks. He could see the archers peering down, their bows picked out black against the sky, which was starting to darken again, drizzle prickling at Vinkler’s helmet. He was terribly close. An absurdly easy target. More arrows whizzed past him. With a great effort he turned in his saddle and, lips curled back against the pain, stood in his stirrups, raising his sword.