Unhappy the land that 25 page

Younger blocked his way, hands up. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’ Gorst brushed him aside and was out through the tent flap, into the chilly night, striding across the trampled grass. ‘Don’t do anything stupid!’

Gorst kept walking.

Felnigg’s tent was pitched on the hillside not far from the decaying barn Marshal Kroy had taken for his headquarters. Lamplight leaked from the flap and into the night, illuminating a slit of muddy grass, a tuft of dishevelled sedge and the face of a guard, epically bored.

‘Can I help you, sir?’

Help me, you bastard? Rather than giving him the opportunity to consider his position, the long walk up from the valley had only stoked Gorst’s fury. He grabbed the guard’s breastplate by one armhole and flung him tumbling down the hillside, ripping the tent flap wide. ‘Felnigg—!’

He came up short. The tent was crammed with officers. Senior members of Kroy’s staff, some of them clutching cards, others drinks, most with uniforms unbuttoned to some degree, clustered around an inlaid table that looked as if it had been salvaged from a palace. One was smoking a chagga pipe. Another was sloshing wine from a green bottle. A third hunched over a heavy book, making interminable entries by candlelight in an utterly unreadable script.

‘—that bloody captain wanted to charge fifteen for each cabin!’ Kroy’s chief quartermaster was braying as he clumsily sorted his hand. ‘Fifteen! I told him to be damned.’

‘What happened?’

‘We settled on twelve, the bloody sea-leech …’ He trailed off as, one by one, the officers turned to look at Gorst, the bookkeeper peering over thick spectacles that made his eyes appear grotesquely magnified.

Gorst was not good with crowds. Even worse than with individuals, which was saying something. But witnesses will only add to Felnigg’s humiliation. I will make him beg. I will make all of you bastards beg. Yet Gorst had stopped dead, his cheeks prickling with heat.

Felnigg sprang up, looking slightly drunk. They all looked drunk. Gorst was not good with drunk. Even worse than with sober, which was saying something. ‘Colonel Gorst!’ He lurched forwards, beaming. Gorst raised his open hand to slap the man across the face, but there was a strange delay in which Felnigg managed to grasp it with his own and give it a hearty shake. ‘I’m delighted to see you! Delighted!’

‘I … What?’

‘I was at the bridge today! Saw the whole thing!’ Still pumping away at Gorst’s hand like a demented washerwoman at a mangle. ‘Crashing through the crops after them, cutting them down!’ And he slashed at the air with his glass, slopping wine about. ‘Like something out of a storybook!’

‘Colonel Felnigg!’ The guard from outside, shoving through the flap with mud smeared all down his side. ‘This man—’

‘I know! Colonel Bremer dan Gorst! Never saw such personal courage! Such skill at arms! The man’s worth a regiment to his Majesty’s cause! Worth a division, I swear! How many of the bastards did you get, do you think? Must’ve been two dozen! Three dozen, if it was a single one!’

The guard scowled but, seeing that things were not running his way, was forced to retreat into the night. ‘No more than fifteen,’ Gorst found he had said. And only a couple on our side! A heroic ratio if ever there was one! ‘But thank you.’ He tried unsuccessfully to lower his voice to somewhere around a tenor. ‘Thank you.’

‘It’s us who should be thanking you! That bloody idiot Mitterick certainly should be. His fiasco of an attack would have sunk in the river without you. No more than fifteen, did you hear that?’ And he slapped one of his fellows on the arm and made him spill his wine. ‘I’ve already written to my friend Halleck on the Closed Council, told him what a bloody hero you are! Didn’t think there was room for ’em in the modern age, but here you are, large as life.’ He clapped Gorst jauntily on the shoulder. ‘Larger! I’ve been telling everyone I could find all about it!’

‘I’ll say he has,’ grunted one of the officers, peering down at his cards.

‘That is … most kind.’ Most kind? Kill him! Hack his head off like you hacked the head from that Northman today. Throttle him. Murder him. Punch all his teeth out, at least. Hurt him. Hurt him now!’ Most … kind.’

‘I’d be bloody honoured if you’d consent to have a drink with me. We all would!’ Felnigg spun about and snatched up the bottle. ‘What brings you up here onto the fell, anyway?’

Gorst took a heavy breath. Now. Now is the time for courage. Now do it. But he found each word was an immense effort, excruciatingly aware of how foolish his voice sounded. How singularly lacking in threat or authority, the nerve leaking out of him with every slobbering movement of his lips. ‘I am here … because I heard that earlier today … you whipped …’ My friend. One of my only friends. You whipped my friend, now prepare for your last moments. ‘My servant.’

Felnigg spun about, his jaw falling open. ‘That was your servant? By the … you must accept my apologies!’

‘You whipped someone?’ asked one of the officers.

‘And not even at cards?’ muttered another, to scattered chuckles.

Felnigg blathered on. ‘So very sorry. No excuse for it. I was in a terrible rush with an order from the lord marshal. No excuse, of course.’ He grabbed Gorst by the arm, leaning close enough to blast him with a strong odour of spirits. ‘You must understand, I would never have … never, had I known he was your servant … of course I would never have done any such thing!’

But you did, you chinless satchel of shit, and now you will pay. There must be a reckoning, and it will be now. Must be now. Definitely, positively, absolutely bloody now. ‘I must ask—’

‘Please say you’ll drink with me!’ And Felnigg thrust the overfull glass into Gorst’s hand, wine slopping onto his fingers. ‘A cheer for Colonel Gorst! The last hero in his Majesty’s army!’ The other officers hurried to raise their own glasses, all grinning, one thumping at the table with his free hand and making the silverware jingle.

Gorst found he was sipping at the glass. And he was smiling. Worse yet, he was not even having to force himself. He was enjoying their adulation.

I slaughtered men today who had done me not the slightest grain of harm. No more than fifteen of them. And here I stand with a man who whipped one of my only friends. What horrors should I visit upon him? Why, to smile, and slurp up his cheap wine, and the congratulations of pandering strangers too, what else? What will I tell Younger? That he need not worry about his pain and humiliation because his tormentor warmly approved of my murderous rampage? The king’s last hero? I want to be fucking sick. He became acutely aware that he was still clutching his sheathed long steel in one white knuckled fist. He attempted, unsuccessfully, to hide it behind his leg. I want to vomit up my own liver.

‘It’s certainly a hell of a story the way Felnigg tells it,’ one of the officers was droning while he rearranged his cards. ‘I daresay it’s the second bravest thing I’ve heard about today.’

‘Risking his Majesty’s rations hardly counts,’ someone frothed, to more drunken laughter.

‘I was speaking of the lord marshal’s daughter, in fact. I do prefer a heroine to a hero, they look much better in the paintings.’

Gorst frowned. ‘Finree dan Kroy? I thought she was at her father’s headquarters?’

‘You didn’t hear?’ asked Felnigg, giving him another dose of foul breath. ‘The damndest thing! She was with Meed at the inn when the Northmen butchered him and his whole staff. Right there, in the room! She was taken prisoner, but she talked her way free, and negotiated the release of sixty wounded men besides! What do you make of that! More wine?’

Gorst did not know what to make of it, except that he felt suddenly hot and dizzy. He ignored the proffered bottle, turned without another word and pushed through the tent flap into the chill night air. The guard he had thrown was outside, making a futile effort to brush himself clean. He gave an accusing look and Gorst glanced guiltily away, unable to summon the courage even to apologise—

And there she was. Standing by a low stone wall before Marshal Kroy’s headquarters and frowning down into the valley, a military coat wrapped tight around her, one pale hand holding it closed at her neck.

Gorst went to her. He had no choice. It was as if he was pulled by a rope. A rope around my cock. Dragged by my infantile, self-destructive passions from one cringingly embarrassing episode to another.

She looked up at him, and the sight of her red-rimmed eyes froze the breath in his throat. ‘Bremer dan Gorst.’ Her voice was flat. ‘What brings you up here?’

Oh, I came to murder your father’s chief of staff but he offered me drunken praise so instead I drank a toast with him to my heroism. There is a joke there somewhere …

He found he was staring at the side of her darkened face. Staring and staring. A lantern beyond her picked out her profile in gold, made the downy hairs on her top lip glow. He was terrified that she would glance across, and catch him looking at her mouth. No innocent reason, is there, to stare at a woman’s mouth like this? A married woman? A beautiful, beautiful, married woman? He wanted her to look. Wanted her to catch him looking. But of course she did not. What possible reason would a woman have to look at me? I love you. I love you so much it hurts me. More than all the blows I took today. More even than all the blows I gave. I love you so much I want to shit. Say it. Well, not the part about shit, but the other part. What is there to lose? Say it and be damned!

‘I heard that—’ he almost whispered.

‘Yes,’ she said.

An exquisitely uncomfortable pause. ‘Are you—’

‘Yes. Go on, you can tell me. Tell me I shouldn’t have been down there in the first place. Go on.’

Another pause, more uncomfortable yet. For him there was a chasm between mind and mouth he could not see how to bridge. Did not dare to bridge. She did it so easily it quite took his breath away. ‘You brought men back,’ he managed to murmur in the end. ‘You saved lives. You should be proud of—’

‘Oh, yes, I’m a real hero. Everyone’s terribly proud. Do you know Aliz dan Brint?’

‘No.’

‘Neither did I, really. Thought she was a fool, if I’m honest. She was with me. Down there.’ She jerked her head towards the dark valley. ‘She’s still down there. What’s happening to her now, do you think, while we stand here, talking?’

‘Nothing good,’ said Gorst, before he had considered it.

She frowned sideways at him. ‘Well. At least you say what you really think.’ And she turned her back and walked away up the slope towards her father’s headquarters, leaving him standing there as she always did, mouth half-open to say words he never could.

Oh yes, I always say what I really think. Would you like to suck my cock, by the way? Please? Or a tongue in the mouth? A hug would be something. She disappeared inside the low barn, and the door was closed, and the light shut in. Hold hands? No? Anyone?

The rain had started to come down again.

Anyone?

My Land

Calder took his time strolling up out of the night, towards the fires behind Clail’s Wall, spitting and hissing in the drizzle. He’d been in danger for a long time, and never deeper than now, but the strange thing was he still had his smirk.

His father was dead. His brother was dead. He’d even managed to turn his old friend Craw against him. His scheming had got him nowhere. All his careful seeds had yielded not the slightest bitter little fruit. With the help of an impatient mood and a bit too much of Shallow’s cheap booze he’d made a big, big mistake tonight, and there was a good chance it was going to kill him. Soon. Horribly.

And he felt strong. Free. No more the younger son, the younger brother. No more the cowardly one, the treacherous one, the lying one. He was even enjoying the throbbing pain in his left hand where he’d skinned his knuckles on Tenways’ mail. For the first time in his life he felt … brave.

‘What happened up there?’ Deep’s voice came out of the darkness behind him without warning, but Calder was hardly surprised.

He gave a sigh. ‘I made a mistake.’

‘Whatever you do, don’t make another, then,’ came Shallow’s whine from the other side.

Deep’s voice again. ‘You ain’t thinking of fighting tomorrow, are you?’

‘I am, in fact.’

A pair of sharp in-breaths. ‘Fighting?’ said Deep.

‘You?’ said Shallow.

‘Get moving now, we could be ten miles away before sun up. No reason to—’

‘No,’ said Calder. There was nothing to think about. He couldn’t run. The Calder of ten years ago, who’d ordered Forley the Weakest killed without a second thought, would already have been galloping off on the fastest horse he could steal. But now he had Seff, and an unborn child. If Calder stayed to pay for his own stupidity, Dow would probably stop at ripping him apart in front of a laughing crowd but spare Seff so Reachey would be left owing him. If Calder ran, Dow would see her hanged, and he couldn’t let that happen. It wasn’t in him.

‘Can’t recommend this,’ said Deep. ‘Battles. Never a good idea.’

Shallow clicked his tongue. ‘You want to kill a man, by the dead, you do it while he’s facing the other way.’

‘I heartily concur,’ said Deep. ‘I thought you did too.’

‘I did.’ Calder shrugged. ‘Things change.’

Whatever else he might be, he was Bethod’s last son. His father had been a great man, and he wasn’t about to put a cowardly joke on the end of his memory. Scale might have been an idiot but at least he’d had the dignity to die in battle. Better to follow his example than be hunted down in some desolate corner of the North, begging for his worthless hide.

But more than that, Calder couldn’t run because … fuck them. Fuck Tenways, and Golden, and Ironhead. Fuck Black Dow. Fuck Curnden Craw, too. He was sick of being laughed at. Sick of being called a coward. Sick of being one.

‘We don’t do battles,’ said Shallow.

‘Can’t watch over you if you’re fixed on fighting,’ said Deep.

‘Wasn’t expecting you to.’ And Calder left them in the darkness without a backward glance and strolled on down the track to Clail’s Wall, past men darning shirts, and cleaning weapons, and discussing their chances on the morrow. Not too good, the general opinion. He put one foot up on a crumbled patch of drystone and grinned over at the scarecrow, hanging sadly limp. ‘Cheer up,’ he told it. ‘I’m going nowhere. These are my men. This is my land.’

‘If it ain’t Bare-Knuckle Calder, the punching prince!’ Pale-as-Snow came swaggering from the night. ‘Our noble leader returns! Thought maybe we’d lost you.’ He didn’t sound too upset at the possibility.

‘I was giving some thought to running for the hills, in fact.’ Calder worked his toes inside his boot, enjoying the feel of it. He was enjoying little things a lot, tonight. Maybe that’s what happened when you saw your death coming at you fast. ‘But the hills are probably turning cold this time of year.’

‘The weather’s on our side, then.’

‘We’ll see. Thanks for drawing your sword for me. I always had you down as a man to back the favourite.’

‘So did I. But for a moment up there you reminded me of your father.’ Pale-as-Snow planted his own boot on the wall beside Calder’s. ‘I remembered how it felt to follow a man I admire.’

Calder snorted. ‘I wouldn’t get used to that feeling.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s gone already.’

‘Then I’ll spend every moment I’ve got left struggling to bring it back for you.’ Calder hopped up onto the wall, waving his arms for balance as a loose stone rocked under his feet, then stood, peering off across the black fields towards the Old Bridge. The torches of the Union pickets formed a dotted line, others moving about as soldiers poured across the river. Making ready to come flooding across the fields tomorrow morning, and over their tumbledown little wall, and murder the lot of them, and leave Bethod’s memory a joke regardless.

Calder squinted, shading his eyes from the light of his own fires. It looked as if they’d stuck two tall flags right up at the front. He could see them shifting in the wind, gold thread faintly glinting. It seemed strange that they were so easy to see, until he realised they were lit up on purpose. Some sort of display. Some show of strength, maybe.

‘By the dead,’ he muttered, and snorted with laughter. His father used to tell him it’s easy to see the enemy one of two ways. As some implacable, terrifying, unstoppable force that can only be feared and never understood. Or some block of wood that doesn’t think, doesn’t move, a dumb target to shoot your plans at. But the enemy is neither one. Imagine he’s you, that he’s no more and no less of a fool, or a coward, or a hero than you are. If you can imagine that, you won’t go too far wrong. The enemy is just a set of men. That’s the realisation that makes war easy. And the one that makes it hard.

The chances were high that General Mitterick and the rest were just as big a set of idiots as Calder was himself. Which meant they were big ones. ‘Have you seen those bloody flags?’ he called down.

Pale-as-Snow shrugged. ‘It’s the Union.’

‘Where’s White-Eye?’

‘Touring the fires, trying to keep mens’ spirits up.’

‘Not buoyed by having me in charge, then?’

Pale-as-Snow shrugged again. ‘They don’t all know you like I do. Probably Hansul’s busy singing the song of how you punched Brodd Tenways in the face. That’ll do their love for you no harm.’

Maybe not, but punching men on his own side wasn’t going to be enough. Calder’s men were beaten and demoralised. They’d lost a leader they loved and gained one nobody did. If he did any more nothing, the chances were high they’d fall apart in battle tomorrow morning, if they were even there when the sun rose.

Scale had said it. This is the North. Sometimes you have to fight.

He pressed his tongue into his teeth, the glimmers of an idea starting to take shape from the darkness. ‘Mitterick, is it, across the way?’

‘The Union Chief? Aye, Mitterick, I think.’

‘Sharp, Dow told me, but reckless.’

‘He was reckless enough today.’

‘Worked for him, in the end. Men tend to stick to what works. He loves horses, I heard.’

‘What? Loves ’em?’ Pale-as-Snow mimed a grabbing action and gave a couple of thrusts of his hips.

‘Maybe that too. But I think fighting on them was more the point.’

‘That’s good ground for horses.’ Pale-as-Snow nodded at the sweep of dark crops to the south. ‘Nice and flat. Maybe he thinks he’ll ride all over us tomorrow.’

‘Maybe he will.’ Calder pursed his lips, thinking about it. Thinking about the order crumpled in his shirt pocket. My men and I are giving our all. ‘Reckless. Arrogant. Vain.’ Roughly what men said about Calder, as it went. Which maybe gave him a little insight into his opponent. His eyes shifted back to those idiot flags, thrust out front, lit up like a dance on midsummer eve. His mouth found that familiar smirk, and stayed there. ‘I want you to get your best men together. No more than a few score. Enough to keep together and work quickly at night.’

‘What for?’

‘We’re not going to beat the Union moping back here.’ He kicked the bit of loose stone from the top of the wall. ‘And I don’t think some farmer’s boundary mark is going to keep them out either, do you?’

Pale-as-Snow showed his teeth. ‘Now you’re reminding me of your father again. What about the rest of the lads?’

Calder hopped down from the wall. ‘Get White-Eye to round them up. They’ve got some digging to do.’

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 490