Joe Abercrombie - The Heroes

‘Help!’ roared Stodder at no one, pressed against the wall with a cleaver dangling from one hand. ‘Help!’

Beck didn’t turn and run. He just backed softly up the stairs the way he came, and he hurried to the open cupboard, ripped its single shelf out then ducked into the cobwebby shadows inside. He worked his fingertips into a gap between two planks of the door and he dragged it shut, bent over with his back against the rafters. Pressed into the darkness, in a child’s bad hiding place. Alone with his father’s sword, and his own whimpering breath, and the sounds of his crew being slaughtered downstairs.

Lord Governor Meed gazed imperiously out of the northern window of the common hall with hands clasped behind his back, nodding knowingly at scraps of information as if he understood them, his officers crowding about him and gabbling away like eager goslings around their mother. An apt metaphor, as the man had all the military expertise of a mother goose. Finree lurked at the back of the room, an ugly secret, desperately wanting to know what was going on but desperately not wanting to give anyone the satisfaction of asking, chewing at her nails, silently stewing and turning over various unlikely scenarios for her revenge.

Mostly, though, she was forced to admit, she was annoyed at herself. She saw now it would have been much better if she had pretended to be patient, and charming, and humble just as Hal had wanted, clapped her hands at Meed’s pitiful soldiering and slid into his confidence like a cuckoo into an old pigeon’s nest.

Still, the man was vain enough to haul an overblown portrait of himself around on campaign. It might not be too late to play the wayward lamb, and worm her way into his good graces through simpering contrition. Then, when the opportunity presented, she could stab him in the back from a nice, short distance. She’d stab him one way or another, that was a promise. She could hardly wait to see the look on Meed’s papery old face when she finally—

Aliz let go a snort of laughter. ‘Why, who’s that?’

‘Who’s what?’ Finree glanced out of the eastern window, entirely ignored since the battle was happening to the north. A ragged man had emerged from the woods and was standing on a small outcropping of rock, staring towards the inn, long black hair twitched by the wind. Clearly, he was by no stretch of the imagination a Union soldier.

Finree frowned. Most of the Dogman’s men were supposed to be well behind them, and in any case there was something about this lonely figure that just looked … wrong.

‘Captain Hardrick!’ she called. ‘Is he one of the Dogman’s men?’

‘Who?’ Hardrick strolled up beside them. ‘All honesty I couldn’t say …’

The man on the rock lifted something to his mouth and bent his head back. A moment later a long, mournful note echoed out over the empty fields.

Aliz laughed. ‘A horn!’

Finree felt that note right in her stomach, and straight away she knew. She grabbed Hardrick’s arm. ‘Captain, you need to ride to General Jalenhorm and tell him we are under attack.’

‘What? But there’s …’ His gormless grin slowly faded as he looked towards the east.

‘Oh,’ said Aliz. The whole treeline was suddenly alive with men. Wild, they looked, even at this distance. Long-haired, rag-clothed, many half-naked. Now that he stood in the midst of hundreds of others and there was some sense of scale, Finree realised what had puzzled her about the man with the horn. He was a giant, in the truest sense of the word.

Hardrick stared, his mouth hanging open, and Finree dug her fingers into his arm and dragged him towards the door. ‘Now! Find General Jalenhorm. Find my father. Now!’

‘I should have orders—’ His eyes flickered over to Meed, still blithely observing his attack on Osrung, along with all the other officers except for a couple who had drifted over without much urgency to investigate the sound of the horn.

‘Who are they?’ one asked.

Finree had no time to argue her case. She gave vent to the shrillest, longest, most blood-curdling girlish scream she could manage. One of the musicians issued a screeching wrong note, the other played on for a moment before leaving the room in silence, every head snapping towards Finree, except Hardrick’s. She was relieved to see she had shocked him into running for the door.

‘What the hell—’ Meed began.

‘Northmen!’ somebody wailed. ‘To the east!’

‘What Northmen? Whatever are you—’

‘Then everyone was shouting. ‘There! There!’

‘Bloody hell!’

‘Man the walls!’

‘Do we have walls?’

Men out in the fields – drivers, servants, smiths and cooks – were scattering wildly from tents and wagons, back towards the inn. There were already horsemen among them, mounted on shaggy ponies, without stirrups, even, but moving quickly nonetheless. She thought they might have bows, and a moment later arrows clattered against the north wall of the inn. One looped through a window and skittered across the floor. A black, jagged, ill-formed thing, but no less dangerous for that. Someone drew their sword with a faint ring of metal, and soon there were blades flashing out all around the hall.

‘Get some archers on the roof!’

‘Do we have archers?’

‘Get the shutters!’

‘Where is Colonel Brint?’

A folding table squealed in protest as it was dragged in front of one of the windows, papers sliding across the floor.

Finree snatched a look out as two officers struggled to get the rotten shutters closed. A great line of men was surging through the fields towards them, already half way between the trees and the inn and closing rapidly, spreading out as they charged. Torn standards flapped behind them, adorned with bones. At her first rough estimate there were at least two thousand, and no more than a hundred in the inn, most lightly armed. She swallowed at the simple horror of the arithmetic.

‘Are the gates closed?’

‘Prop them!’

‘Recall the Fifteenth!’

‘Is it too late to take—’

‘By the Fates.’ Aliz’ eyes had gone wide, white showing all the way around, darting about as if looking for some means of escape. There was none. ‘We’re trapped!’

‘Help will be coming,’ said Finree, trying to sound as calm as she could with her heart threatening to burst her ribs.

‘From who?’

‘From the Dogman,’ who had very reasonably made every effort to put as much ground between himself and Meed as possible, ‘or General Jalenhorm,’ whose men were in such a disorganised shambles after yesterday’s disaster they were no help to themselves let alone anyone else, ‘or from our husbands,’ who were both thoroughly entangled with the attack on Osrung and probably had not the slightest idea that a new threat had emerged right behind them. ‘Help will be coming.’ It sounded pathetically unconvincing even to her.

Officers dashed to nowhere, pointed everywhere, screeched contradictory orders at each other, the room growing steadily darker and more confused as the windows were barricaded with whatever gaudy junk was to hand. Meed stood in the midst, suddenly ignored and alone, staring uncertainly about with his gilded sword in one hand and the other opening and closing powerlessly. Like a nervous father at a great wedding so carefully planned that he found himself entirely unwanted on the big day. Above him, his masterful portrait frowned scornfully down.

‘What should we do?’ he asked of no one in particular. His desperately wandering eyes lighted on Finree. ‘What should we do?’

It wasn’t until she opened her mouth that she realised she had no answer.

Chains of Command

After a brief spell of fair weather the clouds had rolled back in and rain had begun to fall again, gently administering Marshal Kroy and his staff another dose of clammy misery and entirely obscuring both flanks of the battlefield.