Unhappy the land that 9 page

The woods were crawling with men thick as ants in the grass. Black Dow’s own Carls – veterans, cold-headed and cold-hearted and with lots of cold steel to share out. Some had plate armour like the Union wore, others strange weapons, beaked, picked and hooked for punching through steel, all manner of savage inventions new to the world that the world was more’n likely better off without. He doubted any of these would be thinking twice before robbing a few coins off the dead, or the living either.

Craw had been most of his life a fighting man, but crowds of ’em still somehow made him nervous, and the older he got the less he felt he fit. Any day now they’d spot him for a fraud. Realise that keeping his threadbare courage stitched together was harder work every morning. He winced as his teeth bit into the quick and jerked his nails away.

‘Can’t be right,’ he muttered to himself, ‘for a Named Man to be scared all the time.’

‘What?’ Craw had almost forgotten Shivers was there, he moved so silent.

‘You get scared, Shivers?’

A pause, that eye of his glinting as the sun peeped through the branches. ‘Used to. All the time.’

‘What changed?’

‘Got my eye burned out o’ my head.’

So much for calming small talk. ‘Reckon that could change your outlook.’

‘Halves it.’

Some sheep were bleating away beside the track, pressed tight into a pen much too small. Foraged, no doubt, meaning stolen, some unlucky shepherd’s livelihood vanished down the gullets and out the arses of Black Dow’s army. Behind a screen of hides, not two strides from the flock, a woman was slaughtering ’em and three more doing the skinning and gutting and hanging the carcasses, all soaked to the armpits in blood and not caring much about it either.

Two lads, probably just reached fighting age, were watching. Laughing at how stupid the sheep were, not to guess what was happening behind those hides. They didn’t see that they were in the pen, and behind a screen of songs and stories and young men’s dreams, war was waiting, soaked to the armpits and not caring. Craw saw it all well enough. So why was he still sitting meek in his pen? Might be old sheep can’t jump new fences either.

The black standard of the Protector of the North was dug into the earth outside some ivy-wrapped ruin, long ago conquered by the forest. More men busy in the clearing before it, and stirring horses tethered in long rows. A grindstone being pedalled, metal shrieking, sparks spraying. A woman hammering at a cartwheel. A smith working at a hauberk with pincers and a mouthful of mail rings. Children hurrying about with armfuls of shafts, slopping buckets on yokes, sacks of the dead knew what. A complicated business, violence, once the scale gets big enough.

A man sprawled on a stone slab, oddly at ease in the midst of all this work that made nothing, on his elbows, head tipped back, eyes closed. Body all in shadow but a chink of sun from between the branches coming down across his smirk so it was bathed in double brightness.

‘By the dead.’ Craw walked to him and stood looking down. ‘If it ain’t the prince o’ nothing much. Those women’s boots you’re wearing?’

‘Styrian leather.’ Calder’s lids drifted open a slit, that curl to his lip he’d had since a boy. ‘Curnden Craw. You still alive, you old shit?’

‘Bit of a cough, as it goes.’ He hawked up and spat phlegm onto the old stone between Calder’s fancy foot-leather. ‘Reckon I’ll survive, though. Who made the mistake o’ letting you crawl back from exile?’

Calder swung his legs off the slab. ‘None other than the great Protector himself. Guess he couldn’t beat the Union without my mighty sword-arm.’

‘What’s his plan? Cut it off and throw it at ’em?’

Calder spread his arms out wide. ‘How would I hold you then?’ And they folded each other tight. ‘Good to see you, you stupid old fool.’

‘Likewise, you lying little fuck.’

Shivers frowned from the shadows all the while. ‘You two seem tight,’ he muttered.

‘Why, I practically raised this little bastard!’ Craw scrubbed Calder’s hair with his knuckles. ‘Fed him milk from a squeezed cloth, I did.’

‘Closest thing I ever had to a mother,’ said Calder.

Shivers nodded slowly. ‘Explains a lot.’

‘We should talk.’ Calder gave Craw’s arm a squeeze. ‘I miss our talks.’

‘And me.’ Craw took a careful step back as a horse reared nearby, knocked its cart sideways and sent a tangle of spears clattering to the ground. ‘Almost as much as I miss a decent bed. Today might not be the day, though.’

‘Maybe not. I hear there’s some sort of battle about to happen?’ Calder backed off, throwing up his hands. ‘It’s going to kill my whole afternoon!’

He passed a cage as he went, a couple of filthy Northmen squatting naked inside, one sticking an arm out through the bars in hopes of water, or mercy, or just so some part of him could be free. Deserters would’ve been hanged already which made these thieves or murderers. Waiting on Black Dow’s pleasure, which was more’n likely going to be to hang ’em anyway, and probably burn ’em into the bargain. Strange, to lock men up for thieving when the whole army lived on robbery. To dangle men for murder when they were all at the business of killing. What makes a crime in a time when men take what they please from who they please?

‘Dow wants you.’ Splitfoot stood frowning in the ruin’s archway. He’d always been a dour bastard but he looked ’specially put upon today. ‘In there.’

‘You want my sword?’ Craw was already sliding it out.

‘No need.’

‘No? When did Black Dow start trusting people?’

‘Not people. Just you.’

Craw wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. ‘All right, then.’

Shivers made to follow but Splitfoot held him back with one hand. ‘Dow didn’t ask for you.’

Craw caught Shivers’ narrowed eye for a moment, and shrugged, and ducked through the ivy-choked archway, feeling like he was sticking his head in a wolf’s mouth and wondering when he’d hear the teeth snap. Down a passage hung with cobweb, echoing with dripping water. Into a wide stretch of brambly dirt, broken pillars scattered around its edge, some still holding up a crumbling vault, but the roof long gone and the clouds above starting to show some bright blue between. Dow sat in Skarling’s Chair at the far end of the ruined hall, toying with the pommel of his sword. Caul Reachey sat near him, scratching at his white stubble.

‘When I give the word,’ Dow was saying, ‘you’ll lead off alone. Move on Osrung with everything you’ve got. They’re weak there.’

‘How d’you know that?’

Dow winked. ‘I’ve got my ways. They’ve too many men and not enough road, and they rushed to get here so they’re stretched out thin. Just some horsemen in the town, and a few o’ the Dogman’s lads. Might’ve got some foot up there by the time we go, but not enough to stop you if you take a proper swing at it.’

‘Oh, I’ll swing at it,’ said Reachey. ‘Don’t worry on that score.’

‘I’m not. That’s why you’re leading off. I want your lads to carry my standard, nice and clear up at the front. And Golden’s, and Ironhead’s, and yours. Where everyone can see.’

‘Make ’em think it’s our big effort.’

‘Any luck they’ll pull some men off from the Heroes, leave the stones weaker held. Once they’re in the open fields between hill and town, I’ll let slip Golden’s boys and he’ll tear their arses out. Meantime me, and Ironhead, and Tenways’ll make the proper effort on the Heroes.’

‘How d’you plan to work it?’

Dow flashed that hungry grin of his. ‘Run up that hill and kill everything living.’

‘They’ll have had time to get set, and that’s some tough ground to charge. It’s where they’ll be strongest. We could go around—’

‘Strongest here.’ Dow dug his sword into the ground in front of Skarling’s Chair. ‘Weakest here.’ And he tapped at his chest with a finger. ‘We’ve been going around the sides for months, they won’t be expecting us front on. We break ’em at the Heroes, we break ’em here,’ and he thumped his chest again, ‘and the rest all crumbles. Then Golden can follow up, chase ’em right across the fords if need be. All the way to Adwein. Scale should be ready on the right by then, can take the Old Bridge. With you in Osrung in weight, when the rest o’ the Union turn up tomorrow all the best ground’ll be ours.’

Reachey slowly stood. ‘Right y’are, Chief. We’ll make it a red day. A day for the songs.’

‘Shit on the songs,’ said Dow, standing himself. ‘I’ll take just victory.’

They clasped hands a moment, then Reachey moved for the entrance, saw Craw and gave a big gap-toothed smile.

‘Old Caul Reachey.’ And Craw held out his hand.

‘Curnden Craw, as I live and breathe.’ Reachey folded it in one of his then slapped the other down on top. ‘Ain’t enough of us good men left.’

‘Those are the times.’

‘How’s the knee?’

‘You know. It is how it is.’

‘Mine too. Yon Cumber?’

‘Always with a joke ready. How’s Flood getting on?’

Reachey grinned. ‘Got him looking after some new recruits. Right shower o’ piss-water, in the main.’

‘Maybe they’ll shape up.’

‘They better had, and fast. I hear we got a battle coming.’ Reachey clapped him on the arm as he passed. ‘Be waiting for your order, Chief!’ And he left Craw and Black Dow watching each other over a few strides of rubble-strewn, weed-sprouting, nettle-waving old mud. Birds twittered, leaves rustled, the hint of distant metal serving notice there was bloody business due.

‘Chief.’ Craw licked his lips, no idea how this was going to go.

Dow took a long breath in and screamed at the top of his voice. ‘Didn’t I tell you to hold on to that fucking hill!’

Craw went cold as the echoes rang from the crumbling walls. Looked like it might not go well at all. He wondered if he might find himself stripped in a cage before sundown. ‘Well, I was holding on to it all right … until the Union showed up …’

Dow came closer, sheathed sword still in one fist, and Craw had to make himself not back off. Dow leaned forwards and Craw had to make himself not flinch. Dow raised one hand and put it gently down on Craw’s sore shoulder, and he had to make himself not shudder. ‘Sorry ’bout this,’ said Dow quietly, ‘but I’ve a reputation to look to.’

A wave of giddy relief. ‘’Course, Chief. Let rip.’ He narrowed his eyes as Dow took another breath.

‘You useless old limping fuck!’ Spraying Craw with spit, then patting the bruised side of his face, none too gently. ‘You made a fight of it, then?’

‘Aye. With Hardbread and a few of his lads.’

‘I remember that old bastard. How many did he have?’

‘Twenty-two.’

Dow bared his teeth somewhere between smile and scowl. ‘And you, what, ten?’

‘Aye, with Shivers.’

‘And you saw ’em off?’

‘Well—’

‘Wish I’d fucking been there!’ Dow twitched with violence, eyes fixed on nothing like he could see Hardbread and his boys coming up that slope and they couldn’t come fast enough for him. ‘Wish I’d been there!’ And he lashed out with the pommel of his sheathed sword and struck splinters from the nearest pillar, making Craw take a careful step back. ‘’Stead of sitting back here fucking talking. Talking, talking, fucking talking!’ Dow spat, and took a breath, then seemed to remember Craw was there, eyes sliding back towards him. ‘You saw the Union come up?’

‘At least a thousand on the road to Adwein and I got the feeling there were more behind.’

‘Jalenhorm’s division,’ said Dow.

‘How d’you know that?’

‘He has his ways.’

‘By the—’ Craw took a startled pace, got his feet caught in a bramble and nearly fell. There was a woman lying on one of the highest walls. Draped over it like a wet cloth, one arm and one leg dangling, head hanging over the side like she was resting on some garden bench ’stead of a tottering heap of masonry six strides above the dirt.

‘Friend o’ mine.’ Dow didn’t even look up. ‘Well – when I say friend—’

‘Enemy’s enemy.’ She rolled off the back of the wall. Craw stared, waiting for the sound of her hitting the ground. ‘I am Ishri.’ The voice whispered in his ear.

This time he went right on his arse in the dirt. She stood over him, skin black, and smooth, and perfect, like the glazing on a good pot. She wore a long coat, tails dragging on the dirt, hanging open, body all bound in white bandages underneath. If anyone ever looked like a witch, she was it. Not that there was much more evidence of witchery needed past vanishing from one place and stepping out of another.

Dow barked with laughter. ‘You never can tell where she’ll spring from. I’m always worried she’ll pop out o’ nowhere while I’m … you know.’ And he mimed a wanking action with one fist.

‘You wish,’ said Ishri, looking down at Craw with eyes blacker than black, unblinking, like a jackdaw staring at a maggot.

‘Where did you come from?’ muttered Craw as he scrambled up, hopping a little on account of his stiff knee.

‘South,’ she said, though that much was clear enough from her skin. ‘Or do you mean, why did I come?’

‘I’ll take why.’

‘To do the right thing.’ There was a faint smile on her face, at that. ‘To fight against evil. To strike mighty blows for righteousness. Or … do you mean who sent me?’

‘All right, who sent you?’

‘God.’ Her eyes rolled to the sky, framed by jutting weeds and saplings. ‘And how could it be otherwise? God puts us all where he wants us.’

Craw rubbed at his knee. ‘Got a shitty sense o’ humour, don’t he?’

‘You do not know the half of it. I came to fight against the Union, is that enough?’

‘It’s enough for me,’ said Dow.

Ishri’s black eyes flicked away to him, and Craw felt greatly relieved. ‘They are moving onto the hill in numbers.’

‘Jalenhorm’s lot?’

‘I believe so.’ She stretched up tall, wriggling all over the place like she had no bones in her. Reminded Craw of the eels they used to catch from the lake near his workshop, spilling from the net, squirming in the children’s hands and making them squeal. ‘You fat pink men all look the same to me.’

‘What about Mitterick?’ asked Dow.

Her bony shoulders drifted up and down. ‘Some way behind, chomping at the bit, furious that Jalenhorm is in his way.’

‘Meed?’

‘Where is the fun in knowing everything?’ She pranced past Craw, up on her toes, almost brushing against him so he had to nervously step back and nearly trip again. ‘God must be so bored.’ She wedged one foot into a crack in the wall too narrow for a cat to squeeze through, twisting her leg, somehow working it in up to the hip. ‘To it, then, my heroes!’ She writhed like a worm cut in half, wriggling into the ruined masonry, her coat dragging up the mossy stonework behind her. ‘Do you not have a battle to fight?’ Her skull somehow slid into the gap, then her arms, she clapped her bandaged hands once and just a finger was left sticking from the crack. Dow walked over to it, reached out, and snapped it off. It wasn’t a finger at all, just a dead bit of twig.

‘Magic,’ muttered Craw. ‘Can’t say I care for the stuff.’ In his experience it did more harm than good. ‘I daresay a sorcerer’s got their uses and all but, I mean, do they always have to act so bloody strange?’

Dow flicked the twig away with a wrinkled lip. ‘It’s a war. I care for whatever gets the job done. Best not mention my black-skinned friend to anyone else though, eh? Folks might get the wrong idea.’

‘What’s the right idea?’

‘Whatever I fucking say it is!’ snarled Dow, and he didn’t look like he was faking the anger this time.

Craw held up his open hands. ‘You’re the Chief.’

‘Damn right!’ Dow frowned at that crack. ‘I’m the Chief.’ Almost like it was himself he was trying to convince. Just for a moment Craw wondered whether Black Dow ever felt like a fraud. Whether Black Dow’s courage needed stitching together every morning.

He didn’t like that thought much. ‘We’re fighting, then?’

Dow’s eyes swivelled sideways and his killing smile broke out fresh, no trace of doubt in it, or fear neither. ‘High fucking time, no? You hear what I was telling Reachey?’

‘Most of it. He’ll try and draw ’em off towards Osrung, then you’ll go straight at the Heroes.’

‘Straight at ’em!’ barked Dow, like he could make it work by shouting it. ‘The way Threetrees would’ve done it, eh?’

‘Would he?’

Dow opened his mouth, then paused. ‘What does it matter? Threetrees is seven winters in the mud.’

‘True. Where do you want me and my dozen?’

‘Right beside me when I charge up to the Heroes, o’ course. Expect there’s nothing in the world you’d like more’n to take that hill back from those Union bastards.’

Craw gave a long sigh, wondering what his dozen would have to say about that. ‘Oh, aye. It’s top o’ my list.’

The Very Model

‘An officer should command from horseback, eh, Gorst? The proper place for a headquarters is the saddle!’ General Jalenhorm affectionately patted the neck of his magnificent grey, then leaned over without waiting for an answer to roar at a spotty-faced courier. ‘Tell the captain that he must simply clear the road by whatever means necessary! Clear the road and move them up! Haste, all haste, lad, Marshal Kroy wants the division moving north!’ He swivelled to bellow over the other shoulder. ‘Speed, gentlemen, speed! Towards Carleon, and victory!’

Jalenhorm certainly looked a conquering hero. Fantastically young to command a division and with a smile that said he was prepared for anything, dressed with an admirable lack of pretension in a dusty trooper’s uniform and as comfortable in the saddle as a favourite armchair. If he had been half as fine a tactician as he was a horseman, they would long ago have had Black Dow in chains and on public display in Adua. But he is not, and we do not.

A constantly shifting body of staff officers, adjutants, liaisons and even a scarcely pubescent bugler trailed eagerly along in the general’s wake like wasps after a rotten apple, fighting to attract his fickle attention by snapping, jostling and shouting over one another with small dignity. Meanwhile Jalenhorm himself barked out a volley of confusing and contradictory replies, questions, orders and occasional musings on life.

‘On the right, on the right, of course!’ to one officer. ‘Tell him not to worry, worrying solves nothing!’ to another. ‘Move them up, Marshal Kroy wants them all up by lunch!’ A large body of infantry were obliged to shuffle exhausted from the road, watch the officers pass, then chew on their dust. ‘Beef, then,’ bellowed Jalenhorm with a regal wave, ‘or mutton, whichever, we have more important business! Will you come up the hill with me, Colonel Gorst? Apparently one gets quite the view from the Heroes. You are his Majesty’s observer, are you not?’

I am his Majesty’s fool. Almost as much his Majesty’s fool as you are. ‘Yes, General.’

Jalenhorm had already whisked his mount from the road and down the shingle towards the shallows, pebbles scattering. His hangers-on strained to follow, splashing out into the water and heedlessly showering a company of heavily loaded foot who were struggling across, up to their waists in the river. The hill rose out of the fields on the far side, a great green cone so regular as to seem artificial. The circle of standing stones that the Northmen called the Heroes jutted from its flat top, a much smaller circle on a spur to the right, a single tall needle of rock on another to the left.

Orchards grew on the far bank, the twisted trees heavy with reddening apples, thin grass underneath patched with shade and covered in halfrotten windfalls. Jalenhorm leaned out to pluck one from a low-hanging branch and happily bit into it. ‘Yuck.’ He shuddered and spat it out. ‘Cookers, I suppose.’

‘General Jalenhorm, sir!’ A breathless messenger whipping his horse down one row of trees towards them.

‘Speak, man!’ Without slowing from a trot.

‘Major Kalf is at the Old Bridge, sir, with two companies of the Fourteenth. He wonders whether he should push forward to a nearby farm and establish a perimeter—’

‘Absolutely! Forward. We need to make room! Where are the rest of his companies?’ The messenger had already saluted and galloped off westwards. Jalenhorm frowned around at his staff. ‘Major Kalf’s other companies? Where’s the rest of the Fourteenth?’

Dappled sunlight slid over baffled faces. An officer opened his mouth but said nothing. Another shrugged. ‘Perhaps held up in Adwein, sir, there is considerable confusion on the narrow roads—’

He was interrupted by another messenger, bringing a well-lathered horse from the opposite direction. ‘Sir! Colonel Vinkler wishes to know whether he should turn the residents of Osrung out of their houses and garrison—’

‘No, no, turn them out? No!’

‘Sir!’ The young man pulled his horse about.

‘Wait! Yes, turn them out. Garrison the houses. Wait! No. No. Hearts and minds, eh, Colonel Gorst? Hearts and mind, don’t you think? What do you think?’

I think your close friendship with the king has caused you to be promoted far beyond the rank at which you were most effective. I think you would have made an excellent lieutenant, a passable captain, a mediocre major and a dismal colonel, but as a general you are a liability. I think you know this, and have no confidence, which makes you behave, paradoxically, as if you have far too much. I think you make decisions with little thought, abandon some with none and stick furiously to others against all argument, thinking that to change your mind would be to show weakness. I think you fuss with details better left to subordinates, fearing to tackle the larger issues, and that makes your subordinates smother you with decisions on every trifle, which you then bungle. I think you are a decent, honest, courageous man. And I think you are a fool. ‘Hearts and minds,’ said Gorst.

Jalenhorm beamed. The messenger tore off, presumably to win the people of Osrung to the Union cause by allowing them keep their own houses. The rest of the officers emerged from the shade of the apple trees and into the sun, the grassy slope stretching away above them.

‘With me, boys, with me!’ Jalenhorm urged his charger uphill, maintaining an effortless balance in the saddle while his retainers struggled to keep up, one balding captain almost torn from his seat as a low branch clubbed him in the head.

An old drystone wall ringed the hill not far from the top, sprouting with seeding weeds, no higher than a stride or two even on its outside face. One of the more impetuous young ensigns tried to show off by jumping it, but his horse shied and nearly dumped him. A fitting metaphor for the Union involvement in the North so far – a lot of vainglory but it all ends in embarrassment.

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.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 553