Joe Abercrombie - The Heroes

But far sooner than he had expected, the well had run dry. He was left standing there, breathing hard, staring down at her. Like a man who has throttled his wife and come suddenly to his senses, he had no idea what to do next. He turned to make his escape, but Finree’s hand was still on his arm and now her fingers dug into him, pulling him back.

The blush of shock was fading now, her face hard with growing anger, jaw muscles clenched. ‘What happened in Sipani?’

And now it was his cheeks that burned. As if the name was a slap. ‘I was betrayed.’ He tried to make the last word stab at her as it stabbed him, but his voice had lost all its edge. ‘I was made the scapegoat.’ A goat’s plaintive bleating, indeed. ‘After all my loyalty, all my diligence …’ He fumbled for more words but his voice was not used to making them, fading into a squeaky whine as she bared her teeth.

‘I heard when they came for the king you were passed out drunk with a whore.’ Gorst swallowed. But he could hardly deny it. Stumbling from that room, head spinning, struggling to fasten his belt and draw his sword at once. ‘I heard it was not the first time you had disgraced yourself, and that the king had forgiven you before, and that the Closed Council would not let him do it again.’ She looked him up and down, and her lip curled. ‘God of the battlefield, eh? Gods and devils can look much alike to us little people. You went to a ford, and a bridge, and a hill, and what did you do there except kill? What have you made? Who have you helped?’

He stood there for a moment, all his bravado slithering out. She is right. And no one knows it better than me. ‘Nothing and no one,’ he whispered.

‘So you love war. I used to think you were a decent man. But I see now I was mistaken.’ She stabbed at his chest with her forefinger. ‘You’re a hero.’

She turned with one last look of excruciating contempt and left him standing among the wounded. They no longer looked so happy for him as they had done. They looked, on the whole, to be in very great pain. The birdsong was half-dead crowing once more. His elation was a charming sandcastle, washed away by the pitiless tide of reality. He felt as if he was cast from lead.

Am I doomed always to feel like this? A most uncomfortable thought occurred. Did I feel like this … before Sipani? He frowned after Finree as she vanished back into the hospital tent. Back to her pretty young dolt of a lord governor. He realised far too late he should have pointed out that he had been the one to save her husband. One never says the right things at the right time. A stupendous understatement if ever there was one. He gave an epic, grinding sigh. This is why I keep my fucking mouth shut.

Gorst turned and trudged away into the gloomy afternoon, fists clenched, frowning up towards the Heroes, black teeth against the sky at the top of their solemn hill.

By the Fates, I need to fight someone. Anyone.

But the war was over.

Black Calder

‘Just give me the nod.’

‘The nod?’

Shivers turned to look at him, and nodded. ‘The nod. And it’s done.’

‘Simple as that,’ muttered Calder, hunching in his saddle.

‘Simple as that.’

Easy. Just nod, and you can be king. Just nod, and kill your brother.

It was hot, a few shreds of cloud hanging in the blue over the fells, bees floating about some yellow flowers at the edge of the barley, the river glittering silver. The last hot day, maybe, before autumn shooed the summer off and beckoned winter on. It should’ve been a day for lazy dreams and trailing hot toes in the shallows. Perhaps a hundred strides downstream a few Northmen had stripped off and were doing just that. A little further along the opposite bank and a dozen Union soldiers were doing the same. The laughter of both sets would occasionally drift to Calder’s ear over the happy chattering of the water. Sworn enemies one day, now they played like children, close enough almost to splash.

Peace. And that had to be a good thing.

For months he’d been preaching for it, hoping for it, plotting for it, with few allies and fewer rewards, and here it was. If ever there was a day to smirk it was this one, but Calder could’ve lifted one of the Heroes more easily than the corners of his mouth. His meeting with the First of the Magi had been weighing them down all through a sleepless night. That and the thought of the meeting that was coming.

‘Ain’t that him?’ asked Shivers.

‘Where?’ There was only one man on the bridge, and not one he recognised.

‘It is. That’s him.’

Calder narrowed his eyes, then shaded them against the glare. ‘By the …’

Until last night he’d thought his brother killed. He hadn’t been so far wrong. Scale was a ghost, crept from the land of the dead and ready to be snatched back by a breath of wind. Even at this distance he looked withered, shrunken, greasy hair plastered to one side of his head. He’d long had a limp but now he shuffled sideways, left boot dragging over the old stones. He had a threadbare blanket around his shoulders, left hand clutching two corners at his throat while the others flapped about his legs.

Calder slid from his saddle, tossing the reins over his horse’s neck, bruised ribs burning as he hurried to help his brother.

‘Just give me the nod,’ came Shivers’ whisper.

Calder froze, guts clenching. Then he went on.

‘Brother.’

Scale squinted up like a man who hadn’t seen the sun for days, sunken face covered with scabby grazes on one side, a black cut across the swollen bridge of his nose. ‘Calder?’ He gave a weak grin and Calder saw he’d lost his two front teeth, blood dried to his cracked lips. He let go of his blanket to take Calder’s hand and it slid off, left him hunched around the stump of his right arm like a beggar woman around her baby. Calder found his eyes drawn to that horrible absence of limb. Strangely, almost comically shortened, bound to the elbow with grubby bandages, spotted brown at the end.

‘Here.’ He unclasped his cloak and slipped it around his brother’s shoulders, his own broken hand tingling unpleasantly in sympathy.

Scale looked too pained and exhausted even to gesture at stopping him. ‘What happened to your face?’

‘I took your advice about fighting.’

‘How did it work out?’

‘Painfully for all concerned,’ said Calder, fumbling the clasp shut with one hand and one thumb.

Scale stood, swaying as if he might drop at any moment, blinking out across the shifting barley. ‘The battle’s over, then?’ he croaked.

‘It’s over.’

‘Who won?’

Calder paused. ‘We did.’

‘Dow did, you mean?’

‘Dow’s dead.’

Scale’s bloodshot eyes went wide. ‘In the battle?’

‘After.’

‘Back to the mud.’ Scale wriggled his hunched shoulders under the cloak. ‘I guess it was coming.’

All Calder could think of was the pit opening up at the toes of his boots. ‘It’s always coming.’

‘Who’s taken his place?’

Another pause. The swimming soldiers’ laughter drifted over, then faded back into the rustling crops. ‘I have.’ Scale’s scabbed mouth hung gormlessly open. ‘They’ve taken to calling me Black Calder, now.’

‘Black … Calder.’

‘Let’s get you mounted.’ Calder led his brother over to the horses, Shivers watching them all the way.

‘Are you two on the same side now?’ asked Scale.

Shivers put a finger on his scarred cheek and pulled it down so his metal eye bulged from the socket. ‘Just keeping an eye out.’

Scale reached for the saddle-bow with his right arm, stopped himself and took it awkwardly with his left. He found one stirrup with a fishing boot and started to drag himself up. Calder hooked a hand under his knee to help him. When Calder had been a child Scale used to lift him up into the saddle. Fling him up sometimes, none too gently. How things had changed.