Abercrombie, Joe - The Heroes

Jalenhorm and his officers passed in file through a narrow gap, the ancient stones on the summit looming larger with every hoofbeat, then rearing over Gorst and the rest as they crested the hill’s flat top.

It was close to midday, the sun was high and hot, the morning mists were all burned off and, aside from some towers of white cloud casting ponderous shadows over the forests to the north, the valley was bathed in golden sunlight. The wind made waves through the crops, the shallows glittered, a Union flag snapped proudly over the tallest tower in the town of Osrung. To the south of the river the roads were obscured by the dust of thousands of marching men, the occasional twinkle of metal showing where bodies of soldiers moved: infantry, cavalry, supplies, rolling sluggishly from the south. Jalenhorm had drawn his horse up to take in the view, and with some displeasure.

‘We aren’t moving fast enough, damn it. Major!’

‘Sir?’

‘I want you to ride down to Adwein and see if you can hurry them along there! We need to get more men on this hill. More men into Osrung. We need to move them up!’

‘Sir!’

‘And Major?’

‘Sir?’

Jalenhorm sat, open-mouthed, for a moment. ‘Never mind. Go!’

The man set off in the wrong direction, realised his error and was gone down the hill the way they had come.

Confusion reigned in the wide circle of grass within the Heroes. Horses had been tethered to two of the stones but one had got loose and was making a deafening racket, scaring the others and kicking out alarmingly while several terrified grooms tried desperately to snatch its bridle. The standard of the King’s Own Sixth Regiment hung limp in the centre of the circle beside a burned out fire where, utterly dwarfed by the sullen slabs of rock that surrounded it on every side, it did little for morale. Although, let us face the facts, my morale is beyond help.

Two small wagons that had somehow been dragged up the hill had been turned over onto their sides and their eclectic contents – from tents to pans to smithing instruments to a shining new washboard – scattered across the grass while soldiers rooted through the remainder like plunderers after a rout.

‘What the hell are you about, Sergeant?’ demanded Jalenhorm, spurring his horse over.

The man looked up guiltily to see the attention of a general and two dozen staff officers all suddenly focused upon him, and swallowed. ‘Well, sir, we’re a little short of flatbow bolts, General, sir.’

‘And?’

‘It seems ammunition was considered very important by those that packed the supplies.’

‘Naturally.’

‘So it was packed first.’

‘First.’

‘Yes, sir. Meaning, on the bottom, sir.’

‘The bottom?’

‘Sir!’ A man with a pristine uniform hastened over, chin high, giving Jalenhorm a salute so sharp that the snapping of his well-polished heels was almost painful to the ear.

The general swung from his saddle and shook him by the hand. ‘Colonel Wetterlant, good to see you! How do things stand?’

‘Well enough, sir, most of the Sixth is up here now, though lacking a good deal of our equipment.’ Wetterlant led them across the grass, soldiers doing the best they could to make room amid the chaos. ‘One battalion of the Rostod Regiment too, though what happened to their commanding officer is anyone’s guess.’

‘Laid up with the gout, I believe—’ someone muttered.

‘Is that a grave?’ asked Jalenhorm, pointing out a patch of fresh-turned earth in the shadow of one of the stones, trampled with boot-prints.

The colonel frowned at it. ‘Well, I suppose—’

‘Any sign of the Northmen?’

‘A few of my men have seen movement in the woods to the north but nothing we could say for certain was the enemy. More likely than not it’s sheep.’ Wetterlant led them between two of the towering stones. ‘Other than that, not a sniff of the buggers. Apart from what they left behind, that is.’

‘Ugh,’ said one of the staff officers, looking sharply away. Several bloodstained bodies were laid out in a row. One of them had been sliced in half and had lost his lower arm besides, flies busy on his exposed innards.

‘Was there combat?’ asked Jalenhorm, frowning at the corpses.

‘No, those are yesterday’s. And they were ours. Some of the Dogman’s scouts, apparently.’ The colonel pointed out a small group of Northmen, a tall one with a red bird on his shield and a heavy set old man conspicuous among them, busy digging graves.

‘What about the horse?’ It lay on its side, an arrow poking from its bloated belly.

‘I really couldn’t say.’

Gorst took in the defences, which were already considerable. Spearmen were manning the drystone wall on this side of the hill, packed shoulder to shoulder at a gap where a patchy track passed down the hillside. Behind them, higher up the slope, a wide double curve of archers fussed with bolts and flatbows or simply lazed about, chewing disconsolately at dried rations, a couple apparently arguing over winnings at dice.

‘Good,’ said Jalenhorm, ‘good,’ without specifying exactly what met his approval. He frowned out across the patchwork of field and pasture, over the few farms and towards the woods that blanketed the north side of the valley. Thick forest, of the kind that covered so much of the country, the monotony of trees only relieved by the vague stripes of two roads leading north between the fells. One of them, presumably, to Carleon. And victory.

‘There could be ten Northmen out there or ten thousand,’ muttered Jalenhorm. ‘We must be careful. Mustn’t underestimate Black Dow. I was at the Cumnur, you know, Gorst, where Prince Ladisla was killed. Well, the day before the battle, in fact, but I was there. A dark day for Union arms. Can’t be having another of those, eh?’

I strongly suggest that you resign your commission, then, and allow someone with better credentials to take command. ‘No, sir.’

Jalenhorm had already turned away to speak to Wetterlant. Gorst could hardly blame him. When did I last say anything worth hearing? Bland agreements and non-committal splutterings. The bleating of a goat would serve the same purpose. He turned his back on the knot of staff officers and wandered over to where the Northmen were digging graves. The grey-haired one watched him come, leaning on his spade.

‘My name is Gorst.’

The older man raised his brows. Surprise that a Union man should speak Northern, or surprise that a big man should speak like a little girl? ‘Hard-bread’s mine. I fight for the Dogman.’ His words slightly mangled in a badly battered mouth.

Gorst nodded to the corpses. ‘These are your men?’

‘Aye.’

‘You fought up here?’

‘Against a dozen led by a man called Curnden Craw.’ He rubbed at his bruised jaw. ‘We had the numbers but we lost.’

Gorst frowned around the circle of stones. ‘They had the ground.’

‘That and Whirrun of Bligh.’

‘Who?’

‘Some fucking hero,’ scoffed the one with a red bird on his shield.

‘From way up north in the valleys,’ said Hardbread, ‘where it snows every bloody day.’

‘Mad bastard,’ grunted one of Hardbread’s men, nursing a bandaged arm. ‘They say he drinks his own piss.’

‘I heard he eats children.’

‘He has this sword they say fell out of the sky.’ Hardbread wiped his forehead on the back of one thick forearm. ‘They worship it, up there in the snows.’

‘They worship a sword?’ asked Gorst.

‘They think God dropped it or something. Who knows what they think up there? Either way, Cracknut Whirrun is one dangerous bastard.’ Hard-bread licked at a gap in his teeth, and from his grimace it was a new one. ‘I can tell you that from my own experience.’