Abercrombie, Joe - The Heroes

‘You’ll find out.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we’ll get there.’

‘No. Why are you doing this?’

They burst out laughing together, as though that was quite the joke. ‘Do you think we were watching you by accident, over at Caul Reachey’s camp?’

‘No, no, no,’ hummed Shallow. ‘No.’

They were moving away from the Heroes, now. Fewer people, fewer fires. Hardly any light but the circle of crops picked out by Deep’s torch. Any hope of help fading into the black behind them along with the bragging and the songs. If Calder was going to be saved he’d have to do it himself. They hadn’t even bothered to take his sword away from him. But who was he fooling? Even if his right hand hadn’t been useless, Shallow could’ve cut his throat a dozen times before he got it drawn. Across the darkened fields he could pick out the line of trees far to the north. Maybe if he ran—

‘No.’ Shallow’s knife pricked at Calder’s side again. ‘No nee no no no.’

‘Really no,’ said Deep.

‘Look, maybe we can come to an arrangement. I’ve got money—’

‘There’s no pockets deep enough to outbid our employer. Your best bet is just to follow along like a good boy.’ Calder rather doubted that but, clever as he liked to think he was, he had no better ideas. ‘We’re sorry about this, you know. We’ve naught but respect for you just as we’d naught but respect for your father.’

‘What good is your sorry going to do me?’

Deep’s shoulders shrugged. ‘A little less than none, but we always make a point of saying it.’

‘He thinks that lends us class,’ said Shallow.

‘A noble air.’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Calder. ‘You’re a right pair of fucking heroes.’

‘It’s a pitiable fellow who ain’t a hero to someone,’ said Deep. ‘Even if it’s only himself.’

‘Or Mummy,’ said Shallow.

‘Or his brother.’ Deep grinned over his shoulder. ‘How did your brother feel about you, my lordling?’

Calder thought about Scale, fighting against the odds on that bridge, waiting for help that never came. ‘I’m guessing he went off me at the end.’

‘Wouldn’t cry too many tears about it. It’s a rare fine fellow who ain’t a villain to someone. Even if it’s only himself.’

‘Or his brother,’ whispered Shallow.

‘And here we are.’

A ramshackle farmhouse had risen out of the darkness. Large and silent, stone covered with rustling creeper, flaking shutters slanting in the windows. Calder realised it was the same one he’d slept in for two nights, but it looked a lot more sinister now. Everything does with a knife at your back.

‘This way, if you please.’ To the porch on the side of the house, lean-to roof missing slates, a rotten table under it, chairs lying on their sides. A lamp swung gently from a hook on one of the flaking columns, its light shifting across a yard scattered with weeds, a slumping fence beyond separating the farm from its fields.

There were a lot of tools leaning against the fence. Shovels, axes, pickaxes, caked in mud, as though they’d been hard used that day by a team of workmen and left there to be used again tomorrow. Tools for digging. Calder felt his fear, faded slightly on the walk, shoot up cold again. Through a gap in the fence and the light of Deep’s torch flared out across trampled crops and fell on fresh-turned earth. A knee-high heap of it, big as the foundations of a barn. Calder opened his mouth, maybe to make some desperate plea, strike some last bargain, but he had no words any more.

‘They been working hard,’ said Deep, as another mound crept from the night beside the first.

‘Slaving away,’ said Shallow, as the torchlight fell on a third.

‘They say war’s an awful affliction, but you’ll have a hard time finding a gravedigger to agree.’

The last one hadn’t been filled in yet. Calder’s skin crawled as the torch found its edges, five strides across, maybe, its far end lost in the sliding shadows. Deep made it to the corner and peered over the edge. ‘Phew.’ He wedged his torch in the earth, turned and beckoned. ‘Up you come, then. Walking slow ain’t going to make the difference.’

Shallow gave him a nudge and Calder plodded on, throat tightening with each drawn-out breath, more and more of the sides of the pit crawling into view with each unsteady step.

Earth, and pebbles, and barley roots. Then a pale hand. Then a bare arm. Then corpses. Then more. The pit was full of them, heaped up in a grisly tangle. The refuse of battle.

Most were naked. Stripped of everything. Would some gravedigger end up with Calder’s good cloak? The dirt and the blood looked the same in the torchlight. Black smears on dead white skin. Hard to say which twisted legs and arms belonged to which bodies.

Had these been men a couple of days before? Men with ambitions, and hopes, and things they cared for? A mass of stories, cut off in the midst, no ending. The hero’s reward.

He felt a warmth down his leg and realised he’d pissed himself.

‘Don’t worry.’ Deep’s voice was soft, like a father to a scared child. ‘That happens a lot.’

‘We’ve seen it all.’

‘And then a little more.’

‘You stand here.’ Shallow took him by the shoulders and turned him to face the pit, limp and helpless. You never think you’ll just meekly do what you’re told when you’re facing your death. But everyone does. ‘A little to the left.’ Guiding him a step to the right. ‘That’s left, right?’

‘That’s right, fool.’

‘Fuck!’ Shallow gave him a harder yank and Calder slipped at the edge, boot heel sending a few lumps of earth down onto the bodies. Shallow pulled him back straight. There?’

‘There,’ said Deep. ‘All right, then.’

Calder stood, looking down, silently starting to cry. Dignity no longer seemed to matter much. He’d have even less soon enough. He wondered how deep the pit was. How many bodies he’d share it with when they picked those tools up in the morning and heaped the earth on top. Five score? Ten score? More?

He stared at the nearest of them, right beneath him, a great black wound in the back of its head. His head, Calder supposed, though it was hard to think of it as a man. It was a thing, robbed of all identity. Robbed of all … unless …

The face had been Black Dow’s. His mouth was open, half-full of dirt, but it was the Protector of the North, no doubt. He looked almost as if he was smiling, one arm flung out to welcome Calder, like an old friend, to the land of the dead. Back to the mud indeed. So quickly it can happen. Lord of all to meat in a hole.

Tears crept down Calder’s hot face, glistened in the torchlight as they pattered into the pit, making fresh streaks through the grime on Black Dow’s cold cheek. Death in the circle would’ve been a disappointment. How much worse was this? Tossed in a nameless hole, unmarked by those that loved or even those that hated him.

He was blubbing like a baby, sore ribs heaving, the pit and the corpses glistening through the salt water.

When would they do it? Surely, now, here it came. A breeze wafted up, chilling the tears on his face. He let his head drop back, squeezing his eyes shut, wincing, grunting, as if he could feel the knife sliding into his back. As if the metal was already in him. When would they do it? Surely now …

The wind dropped away, and he thought he heard clinking. Voices from behind him, from the direction of the house. He stood for a while longer, making a racking sob with every breath.

‘Fish to start,’ someone said.

‘Excellent.’

Trembling, cringing, every movement a terrifying effort, Calder slowly turned.

Deep and Shallow had vanished, their torch flickering abandoned at the edge of the pit. Beyond the ramshackle fence, under the ramshackle porch, the old table had been covered with a cloth and set for dinner. A man was unpacking dishes from a large basket. Another sat in one of the chairs. Calder wiped his eyes on the back of his wildly trembling hand, not sure whether to believe the evidence of his senses. The man in the chair was the First of the Magi.