Abercrombie, Joe - The Heroes

The rain had stopped for the time being and the officers had drifted back to their units. All except one.

It looked as if Bremer dan Gorst had been caught between leaning nonchalantly against the rail their horses were tied to or standing proudly straight, and had ended up posed awkwardly in no-man’s-land between the two.

Even so, Finree could not think of him as quite the harmless figure she once had, when they used to share brief and laughably formal conversations in the sunny gardens of the Agriont. Only a graze down the side of his face gave any indication that he had been in action at all that day, and yet she had it from Captain Hardrick that he had charged alone into a legion of Northmen and killed six. When she heard the story from Colonel Brint it had become ten. Who knew what story the enlisted men were telling by now? The pommel of his steel glinted faintly as he straightened, and she realised with an odd cold thrill that he had killed men with that sword, only a few hours before. Several men, whichever story you believed. It should not have raised him in her estimation in the least, and yet it did, very considerably. He had acquired the glamour of violence.

‘Bremer. Are you waiting for my father?’

‘I thought …’ in that strangely incongruous, piping voice of his, and then, slightly lower, ‘you might need an escort.’

She smiled. ‘So there are still some heroes left in the world? Lead the way.’

Calder sat in the damp darkness, a long spit from the shit-pits, listening to other men celebrate Black Dow’s victory. He didn’t like admitting it, but he missed Seff. He missed the warmth and safety of her bed. He certainly missed the scent of her as the breeze picked up and wafted the smell of dung under his nose. But in all this chaos of campfires, drunken singing, drunken boasting, drunken wrestling, there was only one place he could think of where you could be sure of catching a man alone. And treachery needs privacy.

He heard heavy footsteps thumping towards the pit. Their maker was no more than a black outline with orange firelight down the edges, the very faintest grey planes of a face, but even so Calder recognised him. There were few men, even in this company, who were quite so wide. Calder stood, stretching out his stiff legs, and walked up to the edge of the pit beside the newcomer, wrinkling his nose. Pits full of shit, and pits full of corpses. That’s all war left behind, as far as he could see.

‘Cairm Ironhead,’ he said quietly. ‘What are the chances?’

‘My, my.’ The sound of spittle sucked from the back of a mouth, then sent spinning into the hole. ‘Prince Calder, this is an honour. Thought you were camped over to the west with your brother.’

‘I am.’

‘My pits smell sweeter than his, do they?’

‘Not much.’

‘Come to measure cocks with me, then? It ain’t how much you’ve got, you know, but what you do with it.’

‘You could say the same about strength.’

‘Or guile.’ Nothing else but silence. Calder didn’t like a silent man. A boastful man like Golden, an angry man like Tenways, even a savage man like Black Dow, they give you something to work with. A quiet man like Ironhead gives nothing. Especially in the dark, where Calder couldn’t even guess at his thoughts.

‘I need your help,’ he tried.

‘Think of running water.’

‘Not with that.’

‘With what, then?’

‘I’ve heard it said Black Dow wants me dead.’

‘More’n I know. But if it’s true, what’s my interest? We don’t all love you as much as you love yourself, Calder.’

‘You’ll have need of allies of your own before too long, and you well know it.’

‘Do I?’

Calder snorted. ‘No fool gets where you are, Ironhead. Black Dow scarcely has more liking for you than me, I think.’

‘No liking? Has he not put me in the place of honour? Front and middle, boy!’

Calder got the unpleasant feeling there was a trace of mocking laughter in Ironhead’s voice. But it was some kind of opening and he had no choice but to charge in with his most scornful chuckle. ‘The place of honour? Black Dow? He turned on the man who spared his life, and stole my father’s chain for himself. The place of honour ? He’s done what I’d do to the man I fear most. Put you where you’ll take the brunt of the enemy’s fury. My father always said you were the toughest fighter in the North, and Black Dow knows it. Knows you’ll never back down. He’s put you where your own strength will work against you. And who’s to benefit? Who’s been left out of the fight? Tenways and Golden.’ He’d been hoping for that name to work some magic, but Ironhead didn’t move so much as a hair. ‘They hang back while you, and my brother, and my wife’s father do the fighting. I hope your honour can stop a knife in the back, when it comes.’

There was a grunt. ‘Finally.’

‘Finally what?’

The sound of piss spattering below them. ‘That. You know, Calder, you said it yourself.’

‘Said what?’

‘No fool gets where I am. I’m a long way from convinced Black Dow’s set on my doom or even on yours. But if he is, what help can you offer me? Your father’s praise? That lost most of its worth when he got bested in the High Places, and all the rest when the Bloody-Nine smashed his skull to porridge. Oops.’ Calder felt piss spattering over his boots. ‘Sorry ’bout that. Guess we’re not all as nimble with our cocks as you are. Reckon I’ll stick with Dow, touched though I am by your offer of alliance.’

‘Black Dow’s got nothing to offer but war and the fear men have of him. If he dies there’s nothing left.’ Silence, while Calder wondered if he’d gone a step too far.

‘Huh.’ There was a jingling as Ironhead fastened his belt. ‘Kill him, then. But until you do, find other ears for your lies. Find another piss-pit too, you wouldn’t want to drown in this one.’ Calder was slapped on the back, hard enough to leave him teetering at the brink, waving his arms for balance. When he found it, Ironhead was gone.

Calder stood there for a moment. If talk sows seeds, he wasn’t sure at all what harvest he could expect from this. But that didn’t have to be a bad thing. He’d learned Cairm Ironhead was a subtler man than he appeared. That alone was worth some piss on his boots.

‘One day I’ll sit in Skarling’s Chair,’ Calder whispered into the darkness. ‘And I’ll make you eat my shit, and you’ll tell me nothing ever tasted so sweet.’ That made him feel a little better.

He shook the wet from his boots as best he could, and strutted off into the night.

Rest and Recreation

Finree did not make much noise. Neither did Gorst. But that suited him well enough. Knobs of backbone showed through pale skin, thin muscles in her hunched shoulders tensing and relaxing, an unsightly ripple going through her arse with every thrust of his hips. He closed his eyes. In his head it was prettier.

They were in her husband’s tent. Or no. That wasn’t working. My quarters in the palace. The ones he used to have when he was the king’s First Guard. Yes. That was better. Nice feel, they’d had. Airy. Or maybe her father’s headquarters? On his desk? In front of the other officers at a briefing? Hell, no. Urgh. His quarters in the palace were easiest, familiar from a thousand well-worn fantasies in which the Closed Council had never stripped him of his position.

I love you, I love you, I love you. It hardly felt like love, though. It hardly felt like much of anything. Certainly nothing beautiful. A mechanical action. Like winding a clock or peeling a carrot or milking a cow. How long had he been at it now? His hips were aching, his stomach was aching, his back and his shoulder were bruised as a trampled apple from the fight in the shallows. Slap, slap, slap, skin on skin. He bared his teeth, gripping hard at her hips, forcing himself back to his airy quarters at the palace …