Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

West swallowed. “Of course. Well and truly avenged.”

“A master-stroke, to use our Northmen as a decoy. A bold and a decisive manoeuvre. I am, and will always be, honoured to have played my small part! A famous day for Union arms! Marshal Burr would have been proud to see it!”

West had never in his life expected to receive praise from General Poulder, but now the great moment had come he found that he could take no pleasure in it. He had performed no acts of bravery. He had taken no risks with his own life. He had done nothing but say charge. He felt saddle-sore and bone-weary, his jaw ached from being constantly clenched with worry. Even speaking seemed an effort. “Is Bethod among the dead, or the captured?”

“As to specific prisoners, sir, I could not say. It may be that our Northern allies have him.” Poulder gave vent to a jagged chuckle. “In which case I doubt he’ll be with us much longer, eh, Marshal? Eh, Sergeant Pike?” He grinned as he drew his finger sharply across his belly and clicked his tongue. “The bloody cross for him, I shouldn’t wonder! Isn’t that what they do, these savages? The bloody cross, isn’t it?”

West did not see the funny side. “Ensure that our prisoners are given food and water, and such assistance with their wounded as we are able to provide. We should be gracious in victory.” It seemed like the sort of thing that a leader should say, after a battle.

“Quite so, my Lord Marshal.” And Poulder gave a smart salute, the very model of an obedient underling, then reined his mount sideways and spurred away.

West slid down from his own horse, gathered himself for a moment, and began to trudge on foot up the valley. Pike came after him, sword drawn.

“Can’t be too careful, sir,” he said.

“No,” murmured West. “I suppose not.”

The long slope was scattered with men, alive and dead. The corpses of Union horsemen lay where they had fallen. Surgeons tended to the wounded with bloody hands and grim faces. Some men sat and wept, perhaps by fallen comrades. Some stared numbly at their own wounds. Others howled and gurgled, screamed for help, or water. Still others rushed to bring it to them. Final kindnesses, for the dying. A long procession of sullen prisoners was winding down the valley alongside the rock wall, watched carefully by mounted Union soldiers. Nearby were tangled heaps of surrendered weapons, piles of mail coats, stacks of painted shields.

West picked his way slowly through what had been Bethod’s camp, rendered in one furious half-hour into a great expanse of rubbish, scattered across the bare rock and the hard earth. The twisted bodies of men and horses were mixed in with the trampled frames of tents, ripped and dragged-out canvas, burst barrels, broken boxes, gear for cooking, and mending, and fighting. All trodden into the churned mud, stamped with the smeared prints of hooves and boots.

In the midst of all this chaos there were strange islands of calm, where all seemed undisturbed, just as it must have been before West ordered the charge. A pot still hung over a smouldering fire, stew bubbling inside. A set of spears were neatly stacked against each other, with stool and whetstone beside, ready to be sharpened. Three bedrolls formed a perfect triangle, blankets well folded at the head of each one, all neat and orderly, except that a man lay sprawled across them, the contents of his gaping skull splattered across the pale wool.

Not far beyond a Union officer knelt in the mud, cradling another in his arms. West felt a sick twinge of recognition. The one on his knees was his old friend Lieutenant Brint. The one lying limp was his old friend Lieutenant Kaspa. For some reason, West felt an almost overpowering urge to walk away, off up the slope without stopping, and pretend not to have seen them. He had to force himself to stride over, his mouth filling with sour spit.

Brint looked up, pale face streaked with tears. “An arrow,” he whispered. “Just a stray. He never even drew his sword.”

“Bad luck,” grunted Pike. “Bad luck.”

West stared down. Bad luck indeed. He could just see, snapped off at the edge of Kaspa’s beard, under his jaw, the broken shaft of an arrow, but there was surprisingly little blood. Few marks of any kind. A splatter of mud down one sleeve of his uniform, and that was all. Despite the fact they were, in essence, staring cross-eyed at nothing, West could not help the feeling that Kaspa’s eyes were looking directly into his. There was a peevish twist to his lip, an accusatory wrinkling of his brows. West almost wanted to take him up on it, demand to know what he meant by it, then had to remind himself that the man was dead.

“A letter, then,” muttered West, his fingers fussing with each other, “to his family.”

Brint gave a miserable sniff which West found, for some reason, utterly infuriating. “Yes, a letter.”

“Yes. Sergeant Pike, with me.” West could not stand there a moment longer. He turned away from his friends, one living and one dead, and strode off up the valley. He did his very best not to dwell on the fact that, had he not ordered the charge, one of the most pleasant and inoffensive men of his acquaintance would still be alive. One cannot be a leader without a certain ruthlessness, perhaps. But ruthlessness is not always easy.

He and Pike floundered over a crushed earth rampart and a trampled ditch, the valley growing steadily narrower, the high cliffs of stone pressing in on either side. More corpses here. Northmen, and wild men such as they found in Dunbrec, and Shanka too, all peppered liberally across the broken ground. West could see the wall of the fortress now, little more than a mossy hump in the landscape with more death scattered round its foot.

“They held out in there, for seven days?” muttered Pike.

“So it would seem.”

The one entrance was a rough archway in the centre of the wall, its gates torn off and lying ruined. There seemed to be three strange shapes within it. As he got closer, West realised with some discomfort what they were. Three men, hanging dead by their necks from ropes over the top of the wall, their limp boots swinging gently at about chest height. There were a lot of grim Northmen gathered around that gate, looking up at those dangling corpses with some satisfaction. One in particular turned a cruel grin on West and Pike as they came close.

“Well, well, well, if it ain’t my old friend Furious,” said Black Dow. “Turned up late to the party, eh? You always was a slow mover, lad.”

“There were some difficulties. Marshal Burr is dead.”

“Back to the mud, eh? Well, he’s in good company, at least. Plenty of good men done that these past days. Who’s your chief, now?”

West took a long breath. “I am.”

Dow laughed, and West watched him laugh, feeling the slightest bit sick. “Big chief Furious, what do you know?” and he stood up straight and made a mockery of a Union salute while the bodies turned slowly this way and that behind him. “You should meet my friends. They’re all big men too. This here is Crendel Goring, fought for Bethod from way back.” And he reached up and gave one of the bodies a shove, watched it sway back and forth.

“This here is Whitesides, and you couldn’t have found a better man anywhere for killing folk and stealing their land.” And he gave the next a push and set it spinning round and round one way, then back the other, limbs all limp and floppy.

“And this one here is Littlebone. As hard a bastard as I’ve ever hung.” This last man was hacked near to meat, his gold-chased armour battered and dented, a great wound across his chest and his hanging grey hair thick with blood. One leg was off below his knee, and a pool of dry blood stained the ground underneath him.