Joe Abercrombie - The Heroes

‘The opposite. He is young, pretty and brave.’

‘I love those young brave pretty men!’ Dow glanced over at Craw. ‘It’s why I picked one out for my Second.’

‘None out of three ain’t bad.’ Craw realised he was chewing at his nail yet again, and whipped his hand away.

‘In the centre,’ said Ishri, ‘Jalenhorm has a great number of foot ready to cross the shallows.’

Dow gave his hungry grin. ‘Gives me something to look forward to today. I quite enjoy watching men try to climb hills I’m sat on top of.’ Craw couldn’t say he was looking forward to it, however much the ground might have taken their side.

‘In the west Mitterick strains at the leash, keen to make use of his pretty horses. He has men across the little river too, in the woods on your western flank.’

Dow raised his brows. ‘Huh. Calder was right.’

‘Calder has been hard at work all night.’

‘Damned if it ain’t the first hard work that bastard’s ever done.’

‘He stole two standards from the Union in the darkness. Now he taunts them.’

Black Dow chuckled to himself. ‘You’ll not find a better hand at taunting. I’ve always liked that lad.’

Craw frowned over at him. ‘You have?’

‘Why else would I keep giving him chances? I got no shortage of men can kick a door down. I can use a couple who’ll think to try the handle once in a while.’

‘Fair enough.’ Though Craw had to wonder what Dow would say if he knew Calder was trying the handle on his murder. When he knew. It was a case of when. Wasn’t it?

‘This new weapon they’ve got.’ Dow narrowed his eyes to lethal slits. ‘What is it?’

‘Bayaz.’ Ishri did some fairly deadly eye-narrowing of her own. Craw wondered if there was a harder pair of eye-narrowers in the world than these two. ‘The First of the Magi. He is with them. And he has something new.’

‘That’s the best you can do?’

She tipped her head back, looking down her nose. ‘Bayaz is not the only one who can produce surprises. I have one for him, later today.’

‘I knew there had to be a reason why I took you under my wing,’ said Dow.

‘Your wing shelters all the North, oh mighty Protector.’ Ishri’s eyes rolled slowly to the ceiling. ‘The Prophet shelters under the wing of God. I shelter under the wing of the Prophet. That thing that keeps the rain from your head?’ And she held her arm up, long fingers wriggling, boneless as a jar of bait. Her face broke out in a grin too white and too wide. ‘Great or small, we all must find some shelter.’ Dow’s torch popped, its light flickered for a moment, and she wasn’t there.

‘Think on it,’ came her voice, right in Craw’s ear.

Names

Beck hunched his shoulders and stared at the fire. Not much more’n a tangle of blackened sticks, a few embers in the centre still with a glow to ’em and a little tongue of flame, whipped, and snatched, and torn about, helpless in the wind. Burned out. Almost as burned out as he was. He’d clutched at that dream of being a hero so long that now it was naught but ashes he didn’t know what he wanted. He sat there under fading stars named for great men, great battles and great deeds, and didn’t know who he was.

‘Hard to sleep, eh?’ Drofd shuffled up into the firelight cross-legged, blanket around his shoulders.

Beck gave the smallest grunt he could. Last thing he wanted to do was talk.

Drofd held out a piece of yesterday’s meat to him, glistening with grease. ‘Hungry?’

Beck shook his head. He weren’t sure when he last ate. Just before he last slept, most likely, but the smell alone was making him sick.

‘Might keep it for later, then.’ Drofd stuck the meat into a pocket on the front of his jerkin, bone sticking out, rubbed his hands together and held ’em to the smear of fire, so dirty the lines on his palms were picked out black. He looked about of an age with Beck, but smaller and darker, some spare stubble on his jaw. Right then, in the darkness, he looked a little bit like Reft. Beck swallowed, and looked away. ‘So you got yourself a name, then, eh?’

A little nod.

‘Red Beck.’ Drofd gave a chuckle. ‘It’s a good ’un. Fierce-sounding. You must be pleased.’

‘Pleased?’ Beck felt a stinging urge to say, ‘I hid in a cupboard and killed one o’ my own,’ but instead he said, ‘I reckon.’

‘Wish I had a name. Guess it’ll come in time.’

Beck kept staring into the fire, hoping to head off any more chatter. Seemed Drofd was the chattering sort, though.

‘You got family?’

All the most ordinary, obvious, lame bloody talk a lad could’ve thought of. Dragging the words out felt like a painful effort to begin with. ‘A mother. Two little brothers. One’s ’prenticed to the smith in the valley.’ Lame, maybe, but once he’d started talking, thoughts drifting homewards, he found he couldn’t stop. ‘More’n likely my mother’s making ready to bring the harvest in. Was getting ripe when I left. She’ll be sharpening the scythe and that. And Festen’ll be gathering up after her …’ And by the dead, how he wished he was with ’em. He wanted to smile and cry at once, didn’t dare say more for fear of doing it.

‘I got seven sisters,’ said Drofd, ‘and I’m the youngest. Like having eight mothers fussing over me, and putting me right all day long, and each with a tongue sharper’n the last. No man in the house, and no man’s business ever talked of. Home was a special kind of hell, I can tell you that.’

A warm house with eight women and no swords didn’t sound so awful right then. Beck had thought his home was a special kind of hell once. Now he had a different notion of what hell looked like.

Drofd blathered on.

‘But I got a new family now. Craw, and Wonderful, and Jolly Yon and the rest. Good fighters. Good names. Stick together, you know, mind their own. Lost a couple o’ people the last few days. Couple of good people, but …’ Seemed he ran out of words himself for a moment. Didn’t take him long to find more, though. ‘Craw was Second to old Threetrees, you know, way back. Been in every battle since whenever. Does things the old way. Real straight edge. You fell on your feet to fall in with this lot, I reckon.’

‘Aye.’ Beck didn’t feel like he’d fallen on his feet. He felt like he was still falling and, sooner or later but probably sooner, the ground would smash his brains out.

‘Where did you get the sword?’

Beck blinked at the hilt, almost surprised to see it was still there beside him. ‘It was my father’s.’

‘He was a fighter?’

‘Named Man. Famous one, I guess.’ And how he’d loved to boast about it once. Now the name was sour on his tongue. ‘Shama Heartless.’

‘What? The one who fought a duel against the Bloody-Nine? The one who …’

Lost. ‘Aye. The Bloody-Nine brought an axe to the duel, and my father brought this blade, and they spun the shield, and the Bloody-Nine won, and he chose the sword.’ Beck slid it out, stupidly worried he might stab someone without meaning to. He’d a respect of sharp metal he hadn’t had the night before. ‘They fought, and the Bloody-Nine split my father’s belly wide open.’ Seemed mad now that he’d rushed to follow the man’s footsteps. A man he’d never known, whose footsteps led all the way to his own spilled guts.

‘You mean … the Bloody-Nine held that sword?’

‘Guess he must’ve.’

‘Can I?’

Time was Beck would’ve told Drofd to fuck himself, but acting the loner hadn’t worked out too well for anyone concerned. This time around maybe he’d try and coax out a friendship or two. So he handed the blade across, pommel first.