Joe Abercrombie - The Heroes

‘I … What?’

‘I was at the bridge today! Saw the whole thing!’ Still pumping away at Gorst’s hand like a demented washerwoman at a mangle. ‘Crashing through the crops after them, cutting them down!’ And he slashed at the air with his glass, slopping wine about. ‘Like something out of a storybook!’

‘Colonel Felnigg!’ The guard from outside, shoving through the flap with mud smeared all down his side. ‘This man—’

‘I know! Colonel Bremer dan Gorst! Never saw such personal courage! Such skill at arms! The man’s worth a regiment to his Majesty’s cause! Worth a division, I swear! How many of the bastards did you get, do you think? Must’ve been two dozen! Three dozen, if it was a single one!’

The guard scowled but, seeing that things were not running his way, was forced to retreat into the night. ‘No more than fifteen,’ Gorst found he had said. And only a couple on our side! A heroic ratio if ever there was one! ‘But thank you.’ He tried unsuccessfully to lower his voice to somewhere around a tenor. ‘Thank you.’

‘It’s us who should be thanking you! That bloody idiot Mitterick certainly should be. His fiasco of an attack would have sunk in the river without you. No more than fifteen, did you hear that?’ And he slapped one of his fellows on the arm and made him spill his wine. ‘I’ve already written to my friend Halleck on the Closed Council, told him what a bloody hero you are! Didn’t think there was room for ’em in the modern age, but here you are, large as life.’ He clapped Gorst jauntily on the shoulder. ‘Larger! I’ve been telling everyone I could find all about it!’

‘I’ll say he has,’ grunted one of the officers, peering down at his cards.

‘That is … most kind.’ Most kind? Kill him! Hack his head off like you hacked the head from that Northman today. Throttle him. Murder him. Punch all his teeth out, at least. Hurt him. Hurt him now! ’ Most … kind.’

‘I’d be bloody honoured if you’d consent to have a drink with me. We all would!’ Felnigg spun about and snatched up the bottle. ‘What brings you up here onto the fell, anyway?’

Gorst took a heavy breath. Now. Now is the time for courage. Now do it. But he found each word was an immense effort, excruciatingly aware of how foolish his voice sounded. How singularly lacking in threat or authority, the nerve leaking out of him with every slobbering movement of his lips. ‘I am here … because I heard that earlier today … you whipped …’ My friend. One of my only friends. You whipped my friend, now prepare for your last moments. ‘My servant.’

Felnigg spun about, his jaw falling open. ‘That was your servant? By the … you must accept my apologies!’

‘You whipped someone?’ asked one of the officers.

‘And not even at cards?’ muttered another, to scattered chuckles.

Felnigg blathered on. ‘So very sorry. No excuse for it. I was in a terrible rush with an order from the lord marshal. No excuse, of course.’ He grabbed Gorst by the arm, leaning close enough to blast him with a strong odour of spirits. ‘You must understand, I would never have … never, had I known he was your servant … of course I would never have done any such thing!’

But you did, you chinless satchel of shit, and now you will pay. There must be a reckoning, and it will be now. Must be now. Definitely, positively, absolutely bloody now. ‘I must ask—’

‘Please say you’ll drink with me!’ And Felnigg thrust the overfull glass into Gorst’s hand, wine slopping onto his fingers. ‘A cheer for Colonel Gorst! The last hero in his Majesty’s army!’ The other officers hurried to raise their own glasses, all grinning, one thumping at the table with his free hand and making the silverware jingle.

Gorst found he was sipping at the glass. And he was smiling. Worse yet, he was not even having to force himself. He was enjoying their adulation.

I slaughtered men today who had done me not the slightest grain of harm. No more than fifteen of them. And here I stand with a man who whipped one of my only friends. What horrors should I visit upon him? Why, to smile, and slurp up his cheap wine, and the congratulations of pandering strangers too, what else? What will I tell Younger? That he need not worry about his pain and humiliation because his tormentor warmly approved of my murderous rampage? The king’s last hero? I want to be fucking sick. He became acutely aware that he was still clutching his sheathed long steel in one white knuckled fist. He attempted, unsuccessfully, to hide it behind his leg. I want to vomit up my own liver.

‘It’s certainly a hell of a story the way Felnigg tells it,’ one of the officers was droning while he rearranged his cards. ‘I daresay it’s the second bravest thing I’ve heard about today.’

‘Risking his Majesty’s rations hardly counts,’ someone frothed, to more drunken laughter.

‘I was speaking of the lord marshal’s daughter, in fact. I do prefer a heroine to a hero, they look much better in the paintings.’

Gorst frowned. ‘Finree dan Kroy? I thought she was at her father’s headquarters?’

‘You didn’t hear?’ asked Felnigg, giving him another dose of foul breath. ‘The damndest thing! She was with Meed at the inn when the Northmen butchered him and his whole staff. Right there, in the room! She was taken prisoner, but she talked her way free, and negotiated the release of sixty wounded men besides! What do you make of that! More wine?’

Gorst did not know what to make of it, except that he felt suddenly hot and dizzy. He ignored the proffered bottle, turned without another word and pushed through the tent flap into the chill night air. The guard he had thrown was outside, making a futile effort to brush himself clean. He gave an accusing look and Gorst glanced guiltily away, unable to summon the courage even to apologise—

And there she was. Standing by a low stone wall before Marshal Kroy’s headquarters and frowning down into the valley, a military coat wrapped tight around her, one pale hand holding it closed at her neck.

Gorst went to her. He had no choice. It was as if he was pulled by a rope. A rope around my cock. Dragged by my infantile, self-destructive passions from one cringingly embarrassing episode to another.

She looked up at him, and the sight of her red-rimmed eyes froze the breath in his throat. ‘Bremer dan Gorst.’ Her voice was flat. ‘What brings you up here?’

Oh, I came to murder your father’s chief of staff but he offered me drunken praise so instead I drank a toast with him to my heroism. There is a joke there somewhere …

He found he was staring at the side of her darkened face. Staring and staring. A lantern beyond her picked out her profile in gold, made the downy hairs on her top lip glow. He was terrified that she would glance across, and catch him looking at her mouth. No innocent reason, is there, to stare at a woman’s mouth like this? A married woman? A beautiful, beautiful, married woman? He wanted her to look. Wanted her to catch him looking. But of course she did not. What possible reason would a woman have to look at me? I love you. I love you so much it hurts me. More than all the blows I took today. More even than all the blows I gave. I love you so much I want to shit. Say it. Well, not the part about shit, but the other part. What is there to lose? Say it and be damned!

‘I heard that—’ he almost whispered.

‘Yes,’ she said.

An exquisitely uncomfortable pause. ‘Are you—’

‘Yes. Go on, you can tell me. Tell me I shouldn’t have been down there in the first place. Go on.’

Another pause, more uncomfortable yet. For him there was a chasm between mind and mouth he could not see how to bridge. Did not dare to bridge. She did it so easily it quite took his breath away. ‘You brought men back,’ he managed to murmur in the end. ‘You saved lives. You should be proud of—’