Abercrombie, Joe - The Heroes

‘Can we see yet?’ hissed Colonel Vallimir.

‘Yes, sir. They’re still there.’

‘Give me that!’ Vallimir snatched the eyeglass, peered towards the wall for a moment, then sulkily let it fall. ‘Damn it!’ Tunny had mild sympathy. About as much as he could ever have for an officer. Going meant disobeying the letter of Mitterick’s order. Staying meant disobeying the tone of it. Either way there was a good chance he’d suffer. Here, if one was needed, was a compelling argument against ever rising beyond corporal.

‘We go anyway!’ snapped Vallimir, desire for glory evidently having tipped the scales. ‘Get the men ready to charge!’

Forest saluted. ‘Sir.’

So there it was. No stratagems for delay, no routes to light duty, no feigning of illness or injuries. It was time to fight, and Tunny had to admit he was almost relieved as he did up the buckle on his helmet. Anything but crouching in the bloody bushes any longer. There was a whispering as the order was passed down the line, a rattling and scraping as men stood, adjusted their armour, drew their weapons.

‘That it, then?’ asked Yolk, eyes wide.

‘That’s it.’ Tunny was strangely light-headed as he undid the ties and slid the canvas cover from the standard. He felt that old, familiar tightness in his throat as he gently unfurled the precious square of red material. Not fear. Not fear at all. That other, much more dangerous thing. The one Tunny had tried over and over to smother, but always sprouted up again as powerful as ever when he wanted it least.

‘Oh, here we go,’ he whispered. The golden sun of the Union slipped out of hiding as the cloth unrolled. The number one embroidered on it. The standard of Corporal Tunny’s regiment, which he’d served with since a boy. Served with in the desert and the snow. The names of a score of old battles stitched in gold thread, glittering in the shadows. The names of battles fought and won by better men than him.

‘Oh, here we bloody go.’ His nose hurt. He looked up at the branches, at the black leaves and the bright cracks of sky between them, at the glittering beads of water at their edges. His eyelids fluttered, blinking back tears. He stepped forward to the very edge of the trees, trying to swallow the dull pain behind his breastbone as men gathered around him in a long line. His limbs were tingling. Yolk and Worth behind him, the last of his little flock of recruits, both pale as they faced towards the water, and the wall beyond it. As they faced—

‘Charge!’ roared Forest, and Tunny was away. He burst from the trees and down the long slope, threading between old tree stumps, bounding from one to another. He heard men shouting behind him, men running, but he was too busy holding the standard high in both hands, the wind taking the cloth and dragging it out straight above his head, tugging hard at his hands, his arms, his shoulders.

He splashed out into the stream, floundered through the slow water to the middle, no more than thigh deep. He turned, waving the standard back and forth, its golden sun flashing. ‘On, you bastards!’ he roared at the crowd of running men behind him. ‘On, the First! Forward! Forward!’ Something whipped past in the air, just seen out of the corner of his eye.

‘I’m hit!’ shrieked Worth, staggering in the stream, helmet twisted across his stricken face, clutching at his breastplate.

‘By birdshit, idiot!’ Tunny took the standard in one hand and wedged the other under Worth’s armpit, dragged him along a few steps until he had his balance back then plunged on himself, lifting his knees up high, spraying water with every step.

He hauled himself up the mossy bank, free hand clutching at roots, wet boots wrestling at the loose earth, finally clambering onto the overhanging turf. He snatched a look back, all he could hear his own whooping breath echoing in his helmet. The whole regiment, or the few hundred who remained, at any rate, were flooding down the slope and across the stream after him, kicking up sparkling drops.

He shoved the snapping standard high into the air, gave a meaningless roar as he drew his sword and ran on, face locked into a snarling mask, thumping towards the wall, spear-tips showing above it. Two more great strides and he sprang up onto the drystone, screaming like a madman, swinging his sword wildly one way and the other to clatter against the spears and knock them toppling …

There was no one there.

Just old pole-arms leaning loose against the wall, and damp barley shifting in the wind, and the calm, wooded fells rising faint at the north side of the valley very much like they did at the south side.

No one to fight.

No doubt there had been fighting, and plenty of it too. Over to the right the crops were flattened, the ground before the wall trampled to a mass of mud, littered with the bodies of men and horses, the ugly rubbish of victory and defeat.

But the fighting was over now.

Tunny narrowed his eyes. A few hundred strides away, off to the north and east, figures were jogging across the fields, chinks of sunlight through the heavy clouds glinting on armour. The Northmen, presumably. And since no one appeared to be pursuing them, pulling back in their own time, and on their own terms.

‘Yah!’ shrieked Yolk as he ran up, a war cry that could hardly have made a duck nervous. ‘Yah!’ Leaning over the wall to poke away wildly with his sword. ‘Yah?’

‘No one here,’ said Tunny, letting his own blade slowly fall.

‘No one here?’ muttered Worth, trying to straighten his twisted helmet.

Tunny sat down on the wall, the standard between his knees. ‘Only him.’ Not far away a scarecrow had been planted, a spear nailed to each stick arm, a brightly polished helmet on its sack-head. ‘And I reckon the whole regiment can take him.’ It all looked a pathetic ruse now. But then ruses always do, once you’ve seen through them. Tunny ought to have known that. He’d played more than a few himself, though usually on his own officers rather than the enemy.

More soldiers were reaching the wall. Wet through, tired out, mixed up. One clambered over it, walked up to the scarecrow and levelled his sword.

‘Lay down your arms in the name of his Majesty!’ he roared. There was a smattering of laughter, quickly cut off as Colonel Vallimir clambered up onto the drystone with a face like fury, Sergeant Forest beside him.

A horseman was pounding over from the empty gap in the wall on their right. The gap where they’d been sure a furious battle was taking place. A battle they would gloriously turn the tide of. A battle that was already over. He reined in before them, he and his horse breathing hard, dashed with mud from a full gallop.

‘Is General Mitterick here?’ he managed to gasp.

‘Afraid not,’ said Tunny.

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘Afraid not,’ said Tunny.

‘What’s the matter, man?’ snapped Vallimir, getting tangled with his scabbard as he hopped down from the wall and nearly falling on his face.

The messenger snapped out a salute. ‘Sir. Lord Marshal Kroy orders all hostilities to cease at once.’ He smiled, teeth gleaming white in his muddy face. ‘We’ve made peace with the Northmen!’ He turned his horse smartly and rode off, past a pair of stained and tattered flags drooping forgotten from leaning poles and south, towards a line of Union foot advancing across the ruined fields.

‘Peace?’ mumbled Yolk, soaked and shivering.

‘Peace,’ grunted Worth, trying to rub the birdshit from his breastplate.

‘Fuck!’ snarled Vallimir, flinging down his sword.

Tunny raised his brows, and stuck his own blade point-first in the earth. He couldn’t say he felt anywhere near as strongly as Vallimir about it, but he had to admit to feeling a mite disappointed at the way things had turned out.