Joe Abercrombie - The Heroes

That gave Craw a much bigger surprise than the blade in the back might’ve. ‘I reckon they can. Just didn’t reckon you’d be one of ’em.’

Dow seemed to think about that for a moment. ‘Neither did I. Guess we’re both surprised.’

‘Aye,’ said Craw, no idea what else to say.

‘We can let the Union come to us tomorrow,’ said Dow. ‘Spare your old legs.’

‘You reckon they’ll come on? After this?’

Dow’s grin was wider’n ever. ‘We gave Jalenhorm a hell of a beating, but half his men never even got across the river. And that’s only one division out of three.’ He pointed over towards Adwein, lights starting to twinkle in the dusk, bright dots marking the path of the road as marching men got torches lit. ‘And Mitterick’s just bringing his men up over there. Fresh and ready. Meed on the other side, I hear.’ And his finger moved over to the left, towards the Ollensand Road. Craw picked out lights there too, further back, his heart sinking all the time. ‘There’s still heaps more work here, don’t worry about that.’ Dow leaned close, fingers squeezing at Craw’s shoulder. ‘We’re just getting started.’

The Defeated

Y our August Majesty,

I regret to inform you that today your army and interests in the North suffered a most serious reverse. The foremost elements of General Jalenhorm’s division reached the town of Osrung this morning and took up a powerful position on a hill surmounted by a ring of ancient stones called the Heroes. Reinforcements were held up on the bad roads, however, and before they could move across the river the Northmen attacked in great numbers. Although they fought with the greatest courage, the Sixth and Rostod Regiments were overwhelmed. The standard of the Sixth was lost. Casualties may well be close to a thousand dead, perhaps the same number of wounded, and many more in the hands of the enemy.

It was only by a valiant action of your Majesty’s First Cavalry that further disaster was averted. The Northmen are now well entrenched around the Heroes. One can see the lights of their campfires on the slopes. One can almost hear their singing when the wind shifts northerly. But we yet hold the ground south of the river, and the divisions of General Mitterick on the western flank, and Lord Governor Meed on the eastern, have begun to arrive and are preparing to attack at first light.

Tomorrow, the Northmen will not be singing.

I remain your Majesty’s most faithful and unworthy servant,

Bremer dan Gorst, Royal Observer of the Northern War

The gathering darkness was full of shouts, clanks and squeals, sharp with the tang of woodsmoke, the even sharper sting of defeat. Fires rustled in the wind and torches sputtered in pale hands, illuminating faces haggard from a day of marching, waiting, worrying. And perhaps, in a few cases, even fighting.

The road up from Uffrith was an endless parade of overloaded wagons, mounted officers, marching men. Mitterick’s division grinding through, seeing the wounded and the beaten, catching the contagion of fear before they even caught a whiff of the enemy. Things that might have been just objects before the rout on the Heroes had assumed a crushing significance. A dead mule, lamplight shining in its goggling eyes. A cart with a broken axle tipped off the road and stripped down for firewood. An abandoned tent, blown from its moorings, the yellow sun of the Union stitched into the trampled canvas. All become emblems of doom.

Fear had been a rarity over the past few months, as Gorst took his morning runs through the camps of one regiment or another. Boredom, exhaustion, hunger, illness, hopelessness and homesickness, all commonplace. But not fear of the enemy. Now it was everywhere, and the stink of it only grew stronger as the clouds rolled steadily in and the sun sank below the fells.

If victory makes men brave, defeat renders them cowards.

Progress through the village of Adwein had been entirely stalled by several enormous wagons, each drawn by a team of eight horses. An officer was bellowing red-faced at an old man huddled on the seat of the foremost one.

‘I am Saurizin, Adeptus Chemical of the University of Adua!’ he shouted back, waving a document smudged by the first spots of rain. ‘This equipment must be allowed through, by order of Lord Bayaz!’

Gorst left them arguing, strode past a quartermaster hammering on doors, searching for billets. A Northern woman stood in the street with three children pressed against her legs, staring at a handful of coins as the drizzle grew heavier. Kicked out of their shack to make way for some sneering lieutenant, who’ll be elbowed off to make way for some preening captain, who’ll be shuffled on to make way for some bloated major. Where will this woman and her children be by then? Will they slumber peacefully in my tent while I doss heroically on the damp sod outside? I need only reach out my hand … Instead he put his head down and trudged by them in silence.

Most of the village’s mean buildings were already crowded with wounded, the less serious cases spilling out onto the doorsteps. They looked up at him, pain-twisted, dirt-smeared or bandaged faces slack, and Gorst looked back in silence. My skills are for making casualties, not comforting them. But he pulled the stopper from his canteen and offered it out, and each in turn they took a mouthful until it was empty. Apart from one who gripped his hand for a moment they did not thank him and he did not care.

A surgeon in a smeared apron appeared at a doorway, blowing out a long sigh. ‘General Jalenhorm?’ Gorst asked. He was pointed down a rutted side-track and after a few strides heard the voice. That same voice he’d heard blathering orders for the last few days. Its tone was different now.

‘Lay them down here, lay them here! Clear a space! You, bring bandages!’ Jalenhorm was kneeling in the mud, clasping the hand of a man on a stretcher. He seemed to have shaken off his huge staff, finally, if he had not left them dead on the hill. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll have the best of care. You’re a hero. You’re all heroes!’ His knees squelched into the muck beside the next man. ‘You did everything that could have been asked. Mine was the fault, my friends, mine were the mistakes.’ He squeezed the casualty’s shoulder then stood, slowly, staring down. ‘Mine is the guilt.’

Defeat, it seems, brings out the best in some men.

‘General Jalenhorm.’

He looked up, face tipping into the torchlight, looking suddenly very old for a man so young. ‘Colonel Gorst, how are you—’

‘Marshal Kroy is here.’ The general visibly deflated, like a pillow with half the stuffing pulled out.

‘Of course he is.’ He straightened his dirt-smudged jacket, twisted his sword-belt into the correct position. ‘How do I look?’ Gorst opened his mouth to speak, but Jalenhorm cut him off. ‘Don’t bother to humour me. I look defeated.’ True. ‘Please don’t deny it.’ I didn’t. ‘That’s what I am.’ It is.

Gorst led the way back down the crowded alleys, through the steam of the army’s kitchens and the glow from the stalls of enterprising pedlars, hoping for silence. He was disappointed. As so very often.

‘Colonel Gorst, I need to thank you. That charge of yours saved my division.’

Perhaps it will also have saved my career. Your division can all drown if I can be the king’s First Guard again. ‘My motives were not selfless.’

‘Whose are? It’s the results that go down in history. Our reasons are written in smoke. And the fact is I nearly destroyed my division. My division.’ Jalenhorm snorted bitterly. ‘The one the king had most foolishly lent me. I tried to turn it down, you know.’ It seems you did not try hard enough. ‘But you know the king.’ All too well. ‘He has romantic notions about his old friends.’ He has romantic notions about everything. ‘No doubt I will be laughed at when I return home. Humiliated. Shunned.’ Welcome to my life. ‘Probably I deserve it.’ Probably you do. I don’t.