The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country (119 page)

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.

‘My name is Gorst.’

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

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

‘Aye.’

‘You fought up here?’

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

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

‘That and Whirrun of Bligh.’

‘Who?’

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

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

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

‘I heard he eats children.’

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

‘They worship a sword?’ asked Gorst.

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

Gorst frowned towards the forest, trees shining dark green in the sun. ‘Do you think Black Dow’s men are near?’

‘I reckon they are.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Craw fought against the odds, and he ain’t a man to fight over nothing. Black Dow wanted this hill.’ Hardbread shrugged as he bent back to his task. ‘We’re burying these poor bastards then we’re going down. I’ll be leaving a tooth back there on the slope and a nephew in the mud and I don’t plan on leaving aught else in this bloody place.’

‘Thank you.’ Gorst turned back towards Jalenhorm and his staff, now engaged in a heated debate about whether the latest company to arrive should be placed behind or in front of the ruined wall. ‘General!’ he called. ‘The scouts think Black Dow might be nearby!’

‘I hope he is!’ shot back Jalenhorm, though it was obvious he was scarcely listening. ‘The crossings are in our hands! Take control of all three crossings, that’s our first objective!’

‘I thought there were four crossings.’ It was said quietly, one man murmuring to another, but the hubbub dropped away at that moment. Everyone turned to see a pale young lieutenant, somewhat surprised to have become the centre of attention.

‘Four?’ Jalenhorm rounded on the man. ‘There is the Old Bridge, to the west.’ He flung out one arm, almost knocking down a portly major. ‘The bridge in Osrung, to the east. And the shallows where we made the passage. Three crossings.’ The general waved three big fingers in the lieutenant’s face. ‘All in our hands!’

The young man flushed. ‘One of the scouts told me there is a path through the bogs, sir, further west of the Old Bridge.’

‘A path through the bogs?’ Jalenhorm squinted off to the west. ‘A secret
way? I mean to say, Northmen could use that path and get right around us! Damn good work, boy!’

‘Well, thank you, sir—’

The general spun one way, then back the other, heel twisting up the sod, casting around as though the right strategy was always just behind him. ‘Who hasn’t crossed the river yet?’

His officers milled about in their efforts to stay in his line of sight.

‘Are the Eighth up?’

‘I thought the rest of the Thirteenth—’

‘Colonel Vallimir’s first cavalry are still deploying there!’

‘I believe they have one battalion in order, just reunited with their horses—’

‘Excellent! Send to Colonel Vallimir and ask him to take that battalion through the bogs.’

A couple of officers grumbled their approval. Others glanced somewhat nervously at each other. ‘A whole battalion?’ one muttered. ‘Is this path suitable for—’

Jalenhorm swatted them away. ‘Colonel Gorst! Would you ride back across the river and convey my wishes to Colonel Vallimir, make sure the enemy can’t give us an unpleasant surprise.’

Gorst paused for a moment. ‘General, I would prefer to remain where I can—’

‘I understand entirely. You wish to be close to the action. But the king asked specifically in his last letter that I do everything possible to keep you out of danger. Don’t worry, the front line will hold perfectly well without you. We friends of the king must stick together, mustn’t we?’

All the king’s fools, capering along in military motley to the same mad bugle music! Make the one with the silly voice turn another cartwheel, my sides are splitting!
‘Of course, sir.’ And Gorst trudged back towards his horse.

C
alder nudged his horse down a path so vague he wasn’t even sure it was one, smirk clamped tight to his face. If Deep and Shallow were keeping an eye on him – and since he was their best source of money it was a certainty – he couldn’t tell. Admittedly, there wasn’t much point to men like Deep and Shallow if a man like Calder could tell where they were, but by the dead he would’ve liked some company. Like a starving man tossed a crust, seeing Curnden Craw had only whetted Calder’s appetite for friendly faces.

He’d ridden through Ironhead’s men, soaking up their scorn, and Tenways’, soaking up their hostility, and now he was getting into the woods at the west end of the valley, where Scale’s men were gathered. His brother’s men. His men, he supposed, though they didn’t feel much like his. Tough-looking bastards, ragged from hard marching, bandaged from hard fighting. Worn down from being far from Black Dow’s favour where they did the toughest jobs for the leanest rewards. They didn’t look in a mood to celebrate anything, and for damn sure not the arrival of their Chief’s coward brother.

It didn’t help that he’d struggled into his chain mail shirt, hoping to at least look like a warrior prince for the occasion. It had been a gift from his father, years ago, made from Styrian steel, lighter than most Northern mixtures but still heavy as an anvil and hot as a sheepskin. Calder had no notion how men could wear these damn things for days at a time. Run in them. Sleep in them. Fight in them. Mad business, fighting in this. Mad business, fighting. He’d never understood what men saw in it.