Sharp Ends

Yesterday, Near a Village Called Barden …

Near Barden, Autumn 584

Tinder stood in his doorway, and watched the Union ruin his crop.

No pleasant pastime, just standing there and watching hours, and days, and months of your dawn-to-dusk hard work and hard worry crushed into the mud. But what were his choices? Charge out there with his pitchfork swinging and chase off the Union on his own? Tinder let out a bitter snort. Black Dow and all his War Chiefs and every Carl and Named Man in the wide and barren North were giving that their best effort and having little enough success. Tinder weren’t the fighter he used to be, and he’d never been the hardest around.

So he stood in his doorway, and watched the Union ruin his crop.

First had come the scouts, hooves pounding. Then the soldiers, row upon row of ’em, boots tramping. Then the wagons, creaking and groaning like the dead in hell, wheels ripping up Tinder’s land. Dozens. Hundreds. They’d churned the track to knee-deep slop, then they’d spilled off it and onto the verge and churned that to slop, then they’d spilled off that and into his crops and made slop of an ever-widening strip of them, too.

There’s war for you. You start with something worth something, you end up with slop.

The morning after the first scouts passed through they’d come for his chickens, a dozen jumpy Union soldiers and a Northman to make ’em understood. Tinder understood well enough without words. He knew when he was being robbed. The Northman had looked sorry about it, but a sorry look was all he’d got in trade. What could you do, though? Tinder was no hero. He’d been to war, and he’d seen no heroes there, either.

He gave a long, rough sigh. Probably he deserved it, for the misdeeds of his youth, but deserving it made the thought of a hungry winter no sweeter. He shook his head and spat out into the yard. Bloody Union. Though it was no worse’n when Ironhead and Golden had their last little disagreement, and both came through here robbing whatever they could get their fat hands on. Put a few men with swords together, even men with usually pleasant manners, and it’s never long before they’re all acting like animals. It was like old Threetrees always said – a sword’s a shitty thing to give a man. Shitty for him, and shitty for everyone around him.

‘Are they gone yet?’ asked Riam, creeping up close beside him to peer out, sunlight turning one half of her face white while the other was in shadow. She looked more like her mother with every day.

‘I’ll tell you when they’re gone!’ he growled at her, blocking the door with his body. He’d been on that march, down through Angland with Bethod. He’d done things, and he’d seen things done. Tinder knew how narrow the line was between folk in their house just minding their business and black bones in a burned-out shell. Tinder knew every moment those Union men were at the bottom of his field, him and his children were only just on the right side of that line. ‘Stay inside!’ he called after her as she made sulkily for the back room. ‘And keep the shutters closed!’

When he looked outside again, Cowan was coming around the side of the house, milking pail in one hand, plain as day, just like it was any old morning.

‘You soft in the head, boy?’ Tinder snapped at him as he slipped through the doorway. ‘Thought I told you to stay out o’ sight?’

‘You didn’t say how. They’re crawling everywhere. If they see me creeping they’ll just think we’ve got something to hide.’

‘We have got something to hide! You want ’em to take the goat as well?’

Cowan hung his head. ‘She ain’t giving much.’

Now Tinder felt guilty as well as scared. He reached out and ruffled his son’s hair. ‘No one’s giving much right now. There’s a war on. You just need to keep low and move quick, you hear?’

‘Aye.’

Tinder took the pail from Cowan and put it down beside the door. ‘Get back there with your sister, eh?’ Then he snatched a quick peek around the frame and cursed under his breath.

A Union man was walking up to the house, and one Tinder liked the look of even less than most. Big, with too little neck and too much armour, a long sword sheathed on one side and a shorter on the other. Tinder might not have been the hardest, but he’d seen enough to spot a killer in a crowd, and something in the set of this big man got the back of his neck to tingling.

‘What is it?’ asked Cowan.

‘Just get inside like I told you!’ Tinder slid the hatchet from the table and let it fall down behind his leg, working his fist around the cool, smooth handle, mouth suddenly dry.

He might not be the fighter he once was, and he might never have been the hardest, but a man’s no man who won’t die for his children.

Tinder had been half-expecting the neckless bastard to draw one of those swords and kick the door right down and Tinder along with it. But all he did was take two slow steps up to the porch, Tinder’s poor carpentry creaking under his big boots, and smile. An unconvincing, almost sorry-looking smile, slow to come, like doing it took an effort. Like he was smiling in spite of some burning wound.

‘Hello,’ he said, in Northern. Tinder felt his brows go up. He’d never heard such a strange, high little voice on a man, ’specially one big as this. Closer up his eyes were sad, not fierce. He had a satchel over his shoulder, a golden sun stamped into it.

‘Hello.’ Tinder tried to keep his face slack. Not angry. Not scared. Nothing and nobody. Certainly nobody who needed killing.

‘My name is Gorst.’ Tinder didn’t see a need to reply to that. Like anything else, a name’s a thing you share when you need to. Silence stretched out. An ugly, dangerous silence with the faint bad-tempered calls of men and animals floating over from the bottom of the field. ‘Did I see your son with milk?’

Tinder narrowed his eyes. Here was a tester. Deny what this Gorst had already seen and risk riling him up, maybe put Tinder and his children in deeper danger? Or admit it and risk losing his goat along with all the rest? The Union man shifted in the doorway and the light caught the pommel of one of his swords, brought a steely glint to it.

‘Aye,’ croaked Tinder. ‘A little.’

Gorst reached into his satchel, Tinder’s eye following that big hand all the way, and came out with a wooden cup. ‘Might I trouble you for some?’

Tinder had to put the axe down so he could pick up the bucket, but he didn’t see much choice. Never seemed to have any choice these days, no more’n a leaf on the wind can pick its path. That’s what it is to be ordinary folk with a war at the doorstep, he guessed.

The Union man dipped his cup, held it so a couple of drips fell, then looked up. They looked at each other for a long moment. No anger in the big man’s eyes, or spite, or even much of anything. Tired eyes, and slow, and Tinder swallowed, sure he was looking his death in its face, and far from a pretty face, too. But in the end Gorst only nodded his balding rock of a head towards the trees, where a little smoke from the forge was smudging the iron-grey sky. ‘Can you tell me the name of that village?’

‘It’s called Barden.’ Tinder cleared his croaky throat, desperate to get his hand on the axe again but not sure how he could do it without the big man noticing. ‘Ain’t much there, though.’

‘I was not planning a visit. But thank you.’ The big man looked at him, mouth half-open as though he’d say something more. Then he turned and trudged off, shoulders hunched like he had a great weight on him. Greater even than all the weight of steel he was wearing. He sat down on the stump of that old fir Tinder had a bastard of a time cutting down in the spring. The one that nearly fell on him when he finally got through the trunk.

‘What did he want?’ came Riam’s voice in his ear.

‘By the dead, can’t you stay out of sight?’ Tinder nearly puked on the words, his throat was so tight, struggling to bundle his daughter away from the door with one arm.

But the big man showed no sign of ordering Tinder’s goat seized, or his children, either. He pulled some papers from his satchel, placed them on the wood between his legs, uncorked a bottle of ink, dipped a pen in and wrote something. He took a sip of his milk – or Tinder’s milk, in fact – frowned over towards the trees, then up at the sky, then towards the scarcely moving column of horses and carts, dipped his pen again and wrote something else.

‘What’s he doing?’ whispered Riam.

‘Writing.’ Tinder worked his mouth and spat. It galled him a little, for no good reason, to have some big, sparrow-voiced Union bastard sitting on his stump, writing. What the hell was the use of writing when the world was so full of problems to be solved? But no doubt there was far worse he might be doing. And what could Tinder do about it anyway?

So he stood there, the mostly empty milking pail still gripped pale-knuckle tight in his fist, and watched the Union ruin his crop.

‘Colonel Gorst?’

‘Yes?’

There was absolutely no getting used to that voice, however much one might admire the man. It was like a lost little girl’s.

‘I’m Lieutenant Kerns. I was on the same ship as you coming over, was it … the Indomitable? The Invincible? The Insomething, anyway.’ Gorst sat in silence, a few sheets of paper spread out on the tree-stump between his legs, ink bottle open beside them, pen held with strange delicacy in one ham of a hand and what looked to be a small cup in the other. ‘I saw you training, more than once, on deck, in the mornings.’ Many of the men had gathered to watch. None of them had ever seen anything like it. ‘A most impressive spectacle. We spoke a little … at one point.’ Kerns supposed that was true in the strictest sense, though it had, in fact, been him who had done virtually all of the speaking.

It was the same routine this time around. Gorst stared up in stony silence all the while, deep-set eyes appraisingly narrowed, and that caused Kerns to start to blather, words coming faster and faster while he said less and less. ‘We talked about the reasons for the conflict, and so forth, and who was along, and who was in the right and wrong of it, and the whys and wherefores, you know.’ By the Fates, why couldn’t he shut up? ‘And how Marshal Kroy would handle the campaign, and which division would fight where, and so forth, you know. I think then, perhaps, we discussed the virtues of Styrian steel as opposed to Union mixtures, for blades and armour, and so on. Then it started to rain, so I retired below decks.’

‘Yes.’

How Kerns wished he could retire below decks now. He cleared his throat. ‘I’m in charge of the guards on this section of the supply column.’ Gorst swept the column with his glare, causing Kerns to cough ashamedly. For all his hard work, its order was hardly something a sensible man would take pride in. ‘Well, I and Lieutenant Pendel are in charge of them, and I saw you here writing, and I thought I might reintroduce myself … I say, is that a letter to the king?’

Gorst frowned. Which was to say, he frowned even more deeply, and shifted his mass of armoured body as if to conceal his papers. ‘Yes.’

‘It’s quite a thing, to think, you know, his Majesty, and all, reading those very words, along with his breakfast, or possibly his lunch. Can’t imagine what his Majesty has for lunch-’

‘It varies.’

Kerns cleared his throat. ‘Of course. Of course it does. I was wondering, if it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition, if it might be possible for me to borrow from you a sheet of paper? I received a letter from my wife this morning and I’m terribly keen to reply. Our first child was born just before we left, you see.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘Indeed. He’s beautiful.’ From what Kerns could remember, he had thought his son remarkably ugly, fat and prone to screaming, but fathers always said their children were beautiful, so he resolved to follow suit, and had practised that faraway smile you were supposed to make along with it. He flashed it now. ‘A beautiful, beautiful boy. Anyway, if I could-’

Gorst thrust a sheet of paper at him.

‘Yes. Exactly. Thank you so much. I will make sure to replace it in due course. Wouldn’t dream of-’

‘Forget it,’ grunted Gorst, hunching his heavy shoulders as he turned back to his own letter.

‘Yes.’ Kerns cleared his throat again. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Enough of this bloody nonsense.’ Pendel pulled the shovel from the side of the cart and set off through the flattened crops, wet earth squelching under his feet each step.

‘What are you doing?’ came Kerns’s niggling squawk. That voice was starting to scrape at Pendel’s nerves like a blunt razor at a sore neck. And always with the stupidest damn questions.

‘What do you think I’m doing?’ Pendel waved the shovel at him. ‘I’m going to dig a tunnel back to Adua!’ He turned towards the trees, adding under his breath, ‘You bloody moron.’

‘You sure you should be going over there?’ Kerns shouted after him, waving, for some reason, a sheet of paper. ‘What if-’

‘You can manage without me for a minute, I’m sure!’ And Pendel added a quiet, ‘You bloody moron,’ to that, too. Probably he could’ve excused himself for the whole day and found the column no more than a few strides advanced for all of Kerns’s silly fretting. It was always the same way with new officers. Rulebook, duty, honour, rulebook. If Pendel had wanted to be beaten over the head with the rules he could have stayed at headquarters and had Colonel bloody Felnigg belabour his undeserving skull with them every morning. Well, he could have stayed if it hadn’t been for that little oversight of his and the subsequent disciplinary action, but that was beside the point. The fact was he needed to crap, and he wasn’t going to do it with dozens of men and animals watching. Who wants to crap with an audience?

‘What if there are Northmen near the-’

‘Then I’ll bloody crap on them!’ And he left Kerns to kiss Gorst’s great big useless squeaking royal observer arse and first trotted, and then, when the trotting made him short of breath, strolled through the crops towards the welcoming darkness of the trees.

‘There they are.’

‘Oh, aye,’ muttered Pale-as-Snow around his pellet of chagga. ‘No doubt.’

You couldn’t very well miss the bastards. Dozens of carts and wagons, stretched out through the trampled wreckage that had once been some poor fool’s crops, some cargoes covered under canvas, but quite a few without even that much care taken. Bare hay bales waiting invitingly for a passing torch. Bundles of flatbow bolts practically begging to be carried off and shot back at their owners later. All kinds of things to steal and things to break. Not much movement down there. Way too much gear and nowhere near enough road, the story of the Union invasion of the North, far as Pale-as-Snow could tell. Horses shifted and pawed. Drivers slumped bored in their places. Not many guards, though, and those there were struck him as more ready for a nap than a fight.

‘Looks good, Chief,’ whispered Ripjack.

Pale-as-Snow glanced sideways at his Second, narrow-eyed. ‘Don’t put the curse on it, eh?’ Plenty were the times he’d come more’n a little unstuck in a good-looking situation. There was no such thing as too careful, even when it was the Union you were trying to creep up on.

Pale-as-Snow long ago lost count of the raids he’d had charge of. A lifetime of ’em, and he was still waiting for one that went exactly as he’d hoped. Still waiting for that perfect raid. However careful his planning, there was always some little splinter of bad luck. Some overeager fool on his side, or some over-watchful stickler on the other, a loose strap, or testy horse, or some wrinkle of the weather or the light, or a bloody dry twig in the wrong place. But that’s war, Pale-as-Snow supposed. You get luck of all kinds, and the winner’s the one who makes the best of his share.

But who knew? As he took in that flat field full of trampled crops with its one little house and its one little shed, and the great mass of unready, unruly men and supplies at the end of it, he started to get the tickly, eager feeling in the palms of his hands that this could be the day, and the corner of his mouth slowly twitched up.

Then he could go back and tell Scale that it had been a real beauty of a raid. A peach. His men all laughing and showing off their booty and telling ever less believable lies about their high deeds on the day. Scale clapping him on the back instead of giving him another rage to wince his way through. Honestly, Pale-as-Snow was getting a little sick of being raged at. He was a leader you could respect, was Scale. Just as long as he didn’t open his mouth.

Pale-as-Snow gave his chagga a long, slow chew as he scanned the field again, then he nodded. A good fighter has to be careful, but sooner or later he has to fight. The moment comes up smiling and offers its hand, you got to grab it.

‘All right. Let’s get the boys ready.’ He turned and started giving signals to the others, open hand pointing left and right through the trees to start ’em moving to where he wanted ’em, quicker at talking with his hands than he was with his mouth. Bows close to the treeline, Carls in two wedges to deal with the guards, Thralls in the centre, ready to rush the column and do as much damage as men could in the time it took for more guards to arrive. You’d be surprised how much damage men could do in that time, if they were good and ready for it. Just a little more of the right kind of luck and this might be the raid they measured all future raids against. A real beauty. A real-

‘Chief,’ hissed Ripjack.

‘Uh?’

The Named Man held a finger over his mouth for quiet, his eyes all big and round, then shifted that finger to point off through the undergrowth.

Pale-as-Snow felt his heart sinking. There was someone coming across the field towards ’em. A Union man, his polished helmet gleaming, a shovel over his shoulder, not a care in the world. Pale-as-Snow twisted around, hissing hard between his teeth to get the lads’ attention, then waving ’em frantically down. All together they dropped into the bushes, behind trees, found boulders, and like a trick of sorcery in a moment left the woods peaceful quiet and empty-looking.

The Southerner hadn’t stopped, though. He ducked under the branches and crashed through the undergrowth a few steps, coming straight at them, whistling tunelessly to himself like he was on his way to market rather’n wrapped up in a war. They were bloody idiots, these Union men. Bloody idiots, but if he kept on walking he’d see ’em sure, and soon, however much of an idiot he was.

‘Always something,’ mouthed Pale-as-Snow, putting his hand on his sword, the other one flat out behind him, palm up, to keep the rest of the lads quiet. Beside him he felt Ripjack very slowly slide out his knife, the blade of it gleaming murder in the shadows. Pale-as-Snow watched the Southerner come closer, a little itch making his eyelid twitch, his muscles tensing up all tight and ready to sweep his sword out and set to-

The Southerner stopped no more’n four strides away, dug his shovel down in the earth, took his helmet off and tossed it on the ground beside him, wiped his forehead on the back of his arm, turned around, then started undoing his belt.

Pale-as-Snow felt himself smile. He looked at Ripjack, took his hand gently from his sword, put his forefinger gently to his lips to say quiet, pointed it at the squatting Southerner busy getting his trousers down, then drew it gently across his throat.

Ripjack winced and pointed at his chest.

Pale-as-Snow grinned wider and nodded.

Ripjack winced more, then shrugged, then started to ease ever so very gently forward through the brush, twisting himself around the plants, eyes darting over the ground for anything might give him away. Pale-as-Snow settled back, watching. They’d sort this little piece of business, then they’d get the lads in place and everything ready, then they’d make a raid about which songs would be sung for a hundred years. Or they’d have a stab at it, anyway.

You get luck of all kinds in a war. The winner’s the one who makes the best of his share.

Pendel wriggled down into his heels, trying to get comfortable, one hand on the shovel and the other on his knee. He grunted, gritted his teeth. That was the bloody army life for you, always too hard or too runny, never a happy medium. There was no happy medium in war. He sighed and was shifting his weight for another effort when he felt a sharp pain across his backside.

‘Ah!’ He twisted around, cursing. One of those monstrous bloody nettles they had up here had leaned in, as if on purpose, and stung his left buttock, damn it.

‘Bloody North,’ he hissed, rubbing furiously at the affected area and making it sting all the worse. ‘Damn this fucking country.’ They’d been marching for what felt like months and he’d yet to see an acre of the place that was worth one man’s snot, let alone hundreds of lives, and he very much doubted-

Beyond the nettle, no more than a couple of strides away, a man was kneeling in the brush, staring at him.

A Northman.

A Northman with a knife in his hand.

Not a big knife. No more than average-sized.

But certainly big enough.

They stared at each other for what felt like a very long moment, Pendel squatting with his trousers around his ankles, the Northman squatting with trousers up but jaw down.

They moved together, as if on a signal firmly agreed and long prepared for. The Northman leaped forward, knife going up. Without conscious thought Pendel spun around, swinging the shovel, and its flat caught the Northman crisply on the side of the head with a metallic ping and sent blood, Northman and shovel all flying through the air.

With a girlish whoop, Pendel staggered away in the direction he’d come from, tripped, heard what he thought might be an arrow swish through the air beside him, rolled through a great patch of nettles and lurched to his feet, struggling to run, scream and pull his trousers up all at once with death breathing on his bare arse.

My darling wife Silyne,

I was overjoyed to receive your letter and the news of our son, though it took three weeks to reach me. Damn army post, you know. Glad to hear your mother is better. I wanted to tell you

Kerns leaned back, staring wistfully off across the field. Wanted to tell her what? It was ever this way. Desperate to write, but when he sat down, no words. None worth a damn, anyway. He was not really even sure he wanted to write, just felt that he should want to. His wife would be left with the most bland and uninteresting collection of waste paper if he was ever to die in battle, that was certain. No poetic professions of his deep love, no sage advice to his infant son on how to be a man, no secrets of his innermost self. He was, in all honestly, unsure that he had an innermost self. Certainly not one with any profound revelations to make.

It was hardly as though anything of the faintest interest ever happened here, anyway. They barely moved, let alone fought. Kerns did not want to be a hero, just to do his part. To test his mettle against an enemy rather than fighting mud, horses and Pendel’s incompetence every day. He had volunteered for action, not tedium. To distinguish himself. To win honour on the battlefield. To be celebrated, rewarded, toasted, admired. All right, he wanted to be a hero. And here he was, among the baggage, where the bravest deed done was greasing an axle.

He gave a long, tired sigh, frowned at his empty page and then over at Colonel Gorst, perhaps hoping to find inspiration there. But the colonel had put his pen down and was staring towards the trees with the most striking intensity. Kerns thought he heard a faint cry, high with a note of panic. It came again, louder, and Gorst shot to his feet, cup tumbling from his hand, milk spilling. Kerns looked towards the trees, his mouth dropping open. Pendel was there, bounding back through the crops towards them, trying to run and hold his open trousers up and shout all at the same time.

He managed to yell one audible word, voice shrill with terror.

‘Northmen!’

As if to add drama to his exclamation, an arrow looped over from behind him, narrowly missing his shoulder and vanishing into the crops. Kerns felt his face go hot. Time seemed perceptibly to slow. He stood as if in a dream, his limbs heavy, his mind sluggishly struggling to catch up with reality. He gawped at Pendel. He gawped at the column. He gawped at Gorst, who was already rushing forwards, drawing his heavy steels. He gawped at the treeline, from which men had now started to appear, running, shrill cries echoing over the silent field.

‘Bloody hell,’ Kerns whispered, flinging his pen away and tearing at his sword hilt. Bloody thing wouldn’t come free. He realised the securing thong was looped over the grip, started fumbling with it, failed, ripped his gloves off in a fury, fumbled again, finally loosening the hilt. He looked up. Northmen, undoubtedly Northmen, some of them with painted shields on their arms, bright weapons in their fists, whooping and shouting as they bounded towards the largely unguarded wagons.

He cast about for his helmet, knocking his ink bottle over and sending a spray of black across his banal fragment of a letter. Probably should’ve had his helmet on all the time but his men had mocked him mercilessly, and when he found it filled with dung that morning it had been the final straw. If he ever discovered who-

As he finally got his sword drawn and looked up, he realised it hardly mattered now. There were things moving in the air. Arrows. Arrows from kneeling Northmen, before the trees, bows raised. His wide eyes darted over the dark background of the woods, drawn by flickers of movement. He ducked uselessly, the arrows whispering past him and dropping among the carts. He saw one thud into wood and lodge there, quivering. Another stuck into a horse’s flank and it reared up, screaming.

‘With me!’ he bellowed, no idea who he was bellowing at, not bothering to check if anyone was with him or not, doing his best to lift his feet over the barley as he floundered on, all the silly frustrations of being assigned supply duty suddenly banished. Action! Here was action!

Gorst was up ahead in combat with two Northmen. His long steel hit a shield with a loud crack and sent one stumbling back. Gorst dodged a two-handed axe-blow, the heavy blade missing him by a terrifying whisker. Even as it thudded into the earth Gorst was spinning around, swift as lightning in spite of his bulk, long steel feathering the crops. It took the axeman’s right leg off cleanly at the knee and snatched the other out from under him, sending the unfortunate man cartwheeling in a spray of blood. His friend was just struggling to get up when Gorst’s long steel left a great dent in the front of his helmet and knocked him back, mouth silently gaping, arms spread, sword tumbling from one nerveless hand.

Kerns felt a shock run through him as he realised that he had seen two men killed before his eyes. Shock, and disbelief, and breathless excitement. Here was most definitely action! To stand alongside Colonel Gorst, a man who had been the king’s First Guard! To be smilingly acknowledged by him after the engagement, to be clapped on the shoulder and greeted as a brother! It was everything Kerns had dreamed of when he first tried on the uniform. Three more Northmen were jumping through the crops towards Gorst now, and Kerns hurried up to his side, raising his sword.

‘Colonel Gorst!’

He saw a flash of movement at the corner of his eye, jerked his head away on an instinct, and-

Gorst felt his long steel crunch into something at the very end of his swing, twisting the grip in his fist as the Northman before him toppled back, blood squirting from his neatly slit throat. But he had no time to think on it. I have other business.

Namely a short man in tarnished chain mail, ageing and running somewhat to fat, roaring as lustily as he could after a charge through the crops, ruddy cheeks full of broken veins. Those cheeks. They surprised Gorst with a stray memory of his father, shortly before his death when he had been confined to his bed, unable to speak properly and eternally surprised by the animal noises that emerged from his twisted mouth. Fussing with the tassels on his nightgown, shrivelled to a ghostly prune of his former self. A ghostly prune with prune-coloured cheeks.

How many years did I put up with that old fool’s disappointment, and his rebukes, and his jokes about ladies’ voices, and smile and nod like a dutiful son? Gorst’s lips curled back in an animal snarl. A passing resemblance to a close relative was not about to break his stride. Rather it urged him on. After all, Father, I never could shut you up in life …

The Northman swung his sword in an overhead arc as Gorst came close, a clumsy motion, easily anticipated. One would think these fools had never drawn a sword before. Not really my job to show them how it’s done, but … Gorst deflected it effortlessly with his long steel, blades scraping, closed and stabbed once with his short, getting it tangled with the rim of the painted shield. There was enough force behind it to twist its prune-faced owner sideways, though. Gorst stabbed again and felt the blade slide through mail and into flesh, the man’s mouth opening wide to scream. Quiet, now, Father. Gorst stabbed once more and cut that scream off in a last twisted gurgle. He shouldered the Northman away and chopped one ruddy cheek wide open with a swing of the long steel, showering blood and making another man check in his charge, check enough that Gorst could split his head, too, on the backswing and snatch him off his feet before he had time to remind Gorst of any other dead relatives.

No more enemies in easy reach, he spun about. There was fighting near the column. He saw a guard running, throwing his spear away as a wild-haired Northman bounded after him. Another was on his knees with an arrow in his shoulder. Dark shapes darted between the wagons. Someone had tossed a lit torch into a cart full of hay and quickly turned the cargo into a hearty fireball, rolls of oily smoke pouring up into the grey sky, horses screaming and plunging, harnesses tangling, dragging carts over in their terror.

‘The horses!’ Gorst squealed, not even bothering to deepen his voice. ‘The horses!’ Not that I really give a damn about horses. Or anything else. And he sprang over one of the corpses he had made and charged back towards the column, eager to make more.

Wrongside had never actually killed a man. Strange thing for a Thrall six years in the black business to take pride in, perhaps, and it wasn’t like he was advertising the fact, but take pride in it he did. More’n once he’d had an arrow nocked and beaded on an enemy, or a side or back turned to him in a fight, and it had come to him at that moment what his mother’s face would’ve looked like when he told her. She was long dead, o’ course, plague took her a dozen winters since, but still. That same look she’d had when he’d got up to some mischief or other, all hurt. Wrongside didn’t want to let his mother down. So he was proud he could say he’d never killed a man, even if he was only saying it to himself. Pale-as-Snow had said kill the horses, though, and when his Chief said a thing, Wrongside tried to do it.

So he squeezed his face into a wince and sank his spear into the nearest flank, keeping well clear of the thrashing hooves. Nothing the poor horse could do about it, harnessed as it was to three others. He dragged his spear clear as it fell and moved on to the next. Shit business, killing horses. But war’s a steady stream of shit business, and Wrongside always did have bad luck with his jobs. Ended up on the wrong side of every case, hence the name. Was only a week ago he’d taken part in another of Pale-as-Snow’s raids, just as the sun was going down and in the pissing rain, and a right bloody mess it had become, as usual. He’d ended up getting all turned around, splashing across a stream and well and truly onto the wrong side, with Union scouts crashing about everywhere looking for him.

Was only yesterday he’d finally found his way back to the rest of Scale’s boys, talked ’em into believing that he hadn’t run off on purpose and had been trying to get back best he could, so they didn’t hang him and burn him, as Black Dow was in the habit o’ doing to deserters. Then the very next day, another raid. How was that for shitty luck? Felt like he’d only just heard Pale-as-Snow’s bloody peach of a raid speech and he was listening to it again. Wrongside hated fighting. Far as he could tell, it was the one major drawback of the soldiering life. Apart from the hunger. And the cold. And the threat of hanging and burning. The soldiering life had a lot of drawbacks, in fact, now he came to consider the case. But now wasn’t the time for considering cases.

He gritted his teeth and stabbed another horse in its belly, his ears full of the screaming, crying, whinnying of dying animals. Sounded like children. They weren’t children. They weren’t, but it was still a bloody shame. He’d never seen such big, strong, beautiful beasts as these. Hurt his heart to think of what these lovely glossy horses might’ve fetched back at the market in his village. How the farmers’ jaws would’ve dropped just to see ’em in the rough-carved pen. How it might’ve changed the lives of his old mum and dad to have a horse like one of these to drag the plough and pull the haycart, and show off on festival days. How proud they’d have been to own just one. And here he was making mud out of a dozen. Made his heart hurt, it did.

But war’s a heart-hurting sort of an exercise, one way and another.

He dragged his blood-daubed spear from another horse, leaving it tottering sideways in its harness, neck arching. He turned for the next wagon and found himself staring, at reasonably close quarters, straight into the face of a Union man. A strange-looking one, unarmed, holding up his trousers with one hand while the broken buckle on his belt clinked at his knees.

Wrongside could tell from one glance at his eyes that he’d no more interest in fighting than Wrongside did. Not a word said, they made an agreement. Each man took a step back, circling gently away. Then another. Then they parted in good humour, more’n likely never to boast of or, indeed, mention it at all, but neither man the worse off for their meeting, which Wrongside felt was about the best that could be hoped for from two enemies on a battlefield.

He hurried away between two wagons, no wish to loiter, the air sticky and his nose tickly with the tang of burning now. He ducked some flying hooves, saw old Racket lifting an axe, eyes wide, then he heard a high screech and a sword came down and split Racket’s grey-haired head wide open, knees crumpling like he was made of leaves.

Wrongside didn’t see who’d swung that blade, and he didn’t wait to find out. Just turned right around and ran. He slipped in some horse-blood, caught his knee against the corner of a tipped-over cart and grabbed at it, stumbling sideways, stifling a groan of pain. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ Rubbing at his kneecap, then limping on, fast as he could. Had to get back across the field but there was a burning wagon on his right, a tower of flame and smoke, dead horses hitched to it and a living one plunging, flank dark with blood, eyes rolling with terror as it tried to get away and only dragged the fireball further into the midst of the column. Wrongside turned the other way, heard a scream and a clash of metal, decided swiftly against, took a deep breath and dived from the muddy track straight into the undergrowth, slithering down behind a tree, peering through the bracken and brambles, heart battering at his ribs.

‘Oh, hell,’ he whispered. Stuck in the woods, again, the enemy all around, again, covered head to toe in horse-blood … Well, this was the first time for that. But the rest was starting to become an uncomfortable pattern and no mistake. He wondered if old Pale-as-Snow would take his word for it this time around, when he finally stumbled back into camp after five days’ cold and hungry creeping through the brush. If he made it back to camp.

‘Oh, hell.’ By the dead, his knee hurt. War’s a knee-hurting sort of an exercise, one way and another.

So much for a peach of a raid.

Pale-as-Snow gave a sigh, licked the chagga juice from his front teeth, worked his tongue around and sourly spat into the undergrowth. He used to be a great man, didn’t he? One of Bethod’s four War Chiefs. He’d led the storming party at Uffrith. He’d shattered the Union line in the mist near the Cumnur. He’d been a man everyone had to respect, or at least show respect to and keep their contrary opinions to themselves. Hard to believe, now. Back to camp, and another of Scale’s bloody rages.

Still, nothing to be gained by hanging on here. Wasn’t as if everything would suddenly come out right. Surprise is like virginity. You only get the one chance at using it, and that normally turns out a crushing disappointment. Pale-as-Snow frowned towards the confused mess at the bottom of the field, then at Ripjack, squatting in the brush looking greatly sorry for himself with a bloody cloth pressed to his cut head. First thing a fighter needs to know is when to stop fighting.

‘Get ’em to sound the horn. We’ll do no more good today.’

Ripjack nodded, and waved the signal, and the blast of the horn echoed out as Pale-as-Snow turned away from the skirmish and crept off through the bushes, bent double, slowly shaking his head.

One day. One day he’d mount that perfect raid.

Pendel heard the faint sound of a horn. Peering out between the spokes of the cartwheel he saw men running back towards the trees. The Northmen, and in retreat. The wave of relief was almost strong enough to make him spontaneously finish the business he had begun in the woods. But he had no time, for relief or other business. Captain Bronkenhorm would no doubt even now be wheezing up with more guards, and it wouldn’t do for him to find Pendel hiding behind a cartwheel. Pendel had already been drummed out of the marshal’s headquarters. He wasn’t sure where you ended up when you were drummed out of the baggage guard, but he had no wish to find out.

He took a look both ways to check he was unobserved, dragged his trousers up once more, still cursing the broken buckle, then slipped out from under the wagon. He gasped as he nearly tripped over the body of a dead Union soldier, a bloodstained sword lying near one hand. Then he smiled. Serendipity. He snatched up the blade and stood tall, affecting a bellicose expression and striding boldly through the ruined crops, waving his stolen weapon towards the woods.

‘Come back here, you bastards! I’ll show you a fight! Get back here, damn you!’

Once he was confident there were plenty of men looking at him, he flung down his sword in a fury.

‘Cowards!’ he roared at the trees.

Someone was shouting, but Gorst wasn’t listening. He was looking down at one of the corpses. A young Union officer with a split head, one half of the face beyond recognition, the other blood-spotted, wearing the tongue-out leer of a man who has just made a revoltingly lewd suggestion.

What did he say his name was? Gorst crushed up his face as though that might somehow squeeze the answer out, but it was gone. Let us be honest, I was not listening. He had been married, Gorst remembered him saying that. And something about a child. Berns, was it? Ferns? Gorst remembered the feeling of his long steel crunching into something. For me, a moment barely registered. For him, the end of everything. Not that Gorst was entirely sure. It might have been his blade that did it. It might have been another. There was no shortage of hard-swung steel here a few moments ago, and certainties are sadly rare in combat.

Gorst sighed. What difference does it really make, anyway? Would he be any less dead if it had been a Northern sword that split his head? He found himself reaching out, pressing at the dead man’s face, trying to make it register a more dignified expression, but however he kneaded the flesh it returned to that red-speckled leer.

Should I not be choked with guilt? The little fatherless boy? The penniless widow? The family all clustered around to hear happy news from the front, then weeping over the letter? Howling and beating their breasts! Verns, Perns, Smerns, will never come back for the winter festival! Gorst puffed out his cheeks. He felt nothing but mild annoyance, the constant background hum of his own disappointment and some slight uncomfortable sweatiness beneath his armour. What kind of monster am I, that a little sweat upsets me more than a murder?

Gorst frowned at the last few fleeing Northmen disappearing into the woods. He frowned at the men desperately trying to beat out the flames now wreathing several of the wagons. He frowned at a Union officer, belt hanging undone and trousers sagging, brandishing one bloody fist. He frowned more deeply still, over towards the small house near the top of the field, and its slightly open door. He stood, worked his fist around the grip of his long steel and started to trudge towards it.

Looked like the fight was done, best Tinder could tell from peering around the doorframe. Who’d won, it was hard to say. In his experience, and he’d more’n enough to tell, rare were the fights after which it was easy to say who’d won. Reasonably rare were the fights anyone in particular did actually win, for that matter. There were a few dead men around, he could see that, and quite a few more wounded, he could hear them. Dying horses, too. More than one of the wagons was on fire, burning hay-stalks fluttering down all around. The Northmen were driven off, the last of ’em shooting a lazy arrow or two from the treeline. But it seemed Tinder had come through it without anyone burning his house down-

‘Shit,’ he hissed between his teeth. The big Union man was walking towards the house. The one with the silly voice. The one called Gorst. Striding towards the house with his head down, heavy sword still held in one fist, heavy jaw clenched like a man with some black work in mind. ‘Shit.’

A thing like this turned men mean. Even men who might be decent under decent circumstances. Thing like this made men look for someone to blame, and Tinder knew there was no one better placed for that than him. Him and his children.

‘What’s happening?’

Tinder caught his daughter’s arm and started to guide her towards the back, only just forcing words out through the fear clamping his throat up. ‘Listen to me, Riam. You get by the back door, and ready to open it. You hear me shout, run. You run, d’you understand? Just like we talked about. You run over to Old Nairn’s house, and I’ll join up with you later.’

His daughter’s eyes were wide in her pale face. ‘Will you?’ By the dead, how much she looked like her mother.

‘Course I will!’ he said, touching her cheek. ‘I said it, didn’t I? Don’t cry, you got Cowan looking to you.’

She caught a hold of him, and he felt tears coming, too, as he pushed her off and towards the back door, and she clung to him and wouldn’t let him free, and he had to start prising her fingers away but couldn’t bring himself to do it.

‘You got to go,’ he whispered at her, ‘you got to go right-’

The door was flung open, banging hard against the wall and sending a shower of dust down from the rafters. The Union man was there, a great shadow framed in the bright square of the doorway. He took a quick step into the house and Tinder was facing him, jaw clenched and axe in one hand, Riam held back behind his body with the other. Gorst stopped still, face in shadow, brightness down the edge of his heavy jaw, and his armour, and his sword, spots of blood gleaming on all three.

There was a long, still silence. Tinder could hear Riam’s breathing, fast and scared, and Cowan’s, faintest edge of a whimper in it, and his own, growling in his throat, and he wondered with each one whether it would be his last.

Felt like an age they stood there, then finally the Union man spoke, that strange high voice again, horribly shrill in the silence. ‘Are you … all right?’

A pause. Then Tinder gave the slightest nod. ‘All fine,’ he said, surprised how firm his voice sounded with his heart going like a busy smithy.

‘I’m … very sorry.’ Gorst looked down, seemed to realise he had a sword in his hand, moved to sheathe it, then, maybe seeing it was bloody as a slaughterman’s knife, didn’t. He stood, posed awkwardly, sideways on. ‘About … this.’

Tinder swallowed. The axe-handle felt slippery with sweat in his palm. ‘Sorry about what?’

Gorst shrugged. ‘Everything.’ He took a step back then, just as Tinder was allowing himself to relax, stopped in the doorway, reached out and put something down on the corner of the table. ‘For the milk.’ Then he ducked under the low lintel and hurried down Tinder’s creaking steps.

Tinder closed his eyes and breathed for a moment, revelling in the feeling of having no fatal wounds. Then he stole over to the door, easing it nearly closed with his fingertips. He picked up the coin the Southerner had left. A disc of silver, edge gleaming in the shadows, heavy in his palm. A hundred times what that cup of milk had been worth. A thousand times. Enough to replace all Tinder’s lost chickens and maybe even some of his lost crops into the bargain. He slowly closed his fist around it, hardly able to stop himself from trembling now, then wiped his eyes on the back of his sleeve.

He turned to his children, both staring at him from the shadows. ‘You’d best get in the back,’ he said softly. ‘And stay out of sight.’

He narrowed his eyes against the brightness as he peered around the doorframe again. The big Union man was walking away, head down, trying to wipe his sword clean with a rag much too small for the task. Beyond him it looked like they’d already started digging graves. Digging ’em right in the middle of Tinder’s field, of course, and ripping up what was left of his barley doing it. Tinder set his axe gently down on the table, and shook his head, and spat.

Then he stood in his doorway, and watched the Union ruin his crop.