The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country (148 page)

‘That’s all,’ he grunted, stepping back. ‘Hardly worth the trouble.’

‘What do we do, then?’ Yolk’s big flatbow was wobbling all over the place. ‘You want me to shoot him?’

‘You bloodthirsty little bastard! Why would you do that?’

‘Well … won’t he tell his friends across the stream we’re over here?’

‘We’ve had, what, four hundred men sitting around in a bog for over a day. Do you really think Hedges has been the only one wandering about? They know we’re here by now, Yolk, you can bet on that.’

‘So … we just let him go?’

‘You want to take him back to camp and keep him as a pet?’

‘No.’

‘You want to shoot him?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then?’

The three of them stood there for a moment in the fading light. Then Yolk lowered his bow, and waved with the other hand. ‘Piss off.’

Tunny jerked his head into the trees. ‘Off you piss.’

The Northman blinked for a moment. He scowled at Tunny, then at Yolk, then stalked off into the woods, muttering angrily.

‘Hearts and minds,’ murmured Yolk.

Tunny tucked the Northman’s knife inside his coat. ‘Exactly.’

T
he buildings of Osrung crowded in on Craw, all looking like they’d bloody stories to tell, each corner turned opening up a new stretch of disaster. A good few were all burned out, charred rafters still smouldering, air sharp with the tang of destruction. Windows gaped empty, shutters bristled with broken shafts, axe-scarred doors hung from hinges. The stained cobbles were scattered with rubbish and twisting shadows and corpses too, cold flesh that once was men, dragged by bare heels to their places in the earth.

Grim-faced Carls frowned at their strange procession. A full sixty wounded Union soldiers shambling along with Caul Shivers at the back like a wolf trailing a flock and Craw up front with his sore knees and the girl.

He found he kept glancing sideways at her. Didn’t get a lot of chances to look at women. Wonderful, he guessed, but that wasn’t the same, though she probably would’ve kicked him in the fruits for saying so. Which was just the point. This girl was a girl, and a pretty one too. Though probably she’d been prettier that morning, just like Osrung had. War makes nothing more beautiful. Looked as if she’d had a clump of hair torn from her head, the rest matted with clot on one side. A big bruise at the corner of her mouth. One sleeve of her dirty dress ripped and brown with dry blood. She shed no tears, though, not her.

‘You all right?’ asked Craw.

She glanced over her shoulder at the shambling column, and its crutches, and stretchers, and pain-screwed faces. ‘I could be worse.’

‘Guess so.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Eh?’

She pointed at his face and he touched the stitched cut on his cheek. He’d forgotten all about it until then. ‘What do you know, I could be worse myself.’

‘Just out of interest – if I wasn’t all right, what could you do about it?’ Craw opened his mouth, then realised he didn’t have much of an answer. ‘Don’t know. A kind word, maybe?’

The girl looked around at the ruined square they were crossing, the wounded men propped against the wall of a house on the north side, the wounded men following them. ‘Kind words wouldn’t seem to be worth much in the midst of this.’

Craw slowly nodded. ‘What else have we got, though?’

He stopped maybe a dozen paces from the north end of the bridge, Shivers walking up beside him. That narrow path of stone flags stretched off ahead, a pair of torches burning at the far end. No sign of men, but Craw was sure as sure the black buildings beyond the far bank were crammed full of the bastards, all with flatbows and tickly trigger-hands. Wasn’t that big a bridge, but it looked a hell of a march across right then. An awful lot of steps, and at every footfall he might get an arrow in his fruits. Still, waiting about wasn’t going to make that any less likely. More, in fact, since it was getting darker every moment.

So he hawked up some snot, made ready to spit it, realised the girl was watching him and swallowed it instead. Then he shrugged his shield off his shoulder and set it down by the wall, dragged his sword out from his belt and handed it to Shivers. ‘You wait here with the rest, I’ll go across and see if there’s someone around with an ear for reason.’

‘All right.’

‘And if I get shot … weep for me.’

Shivers gave a solemn nod. ‘A river.’

Craw held his hands up high and started walking. Didn’t seem that long ago he was doing more or less the same thing up the side of the Heroes. Walking into the wolf’s den, armed with nothing but a nervy smile and an overwhelming need to shit.

‘Doing the right thing,’ he muttered under his breath. Playing peacemaker. Threetrees would’ve been proud. Which was a great comfort, because when he got shot in the neck he could use a dead man’s pride to pull the arrow out, couldn’t he? ‘Too bloody old for this.’ By the dead, he should be retired. Smiling at the water with his pipe and his day’s work behind him. ‘The right thing,’ he whispered again. Would’ve been nice if, just one time, the right thing could’ve been the safe thing too. But Craw guessed life wasn’t really set up that way.

‘That’s far enough!’ came a voice in Northern.

Craw stopped, all kinds of lonely out there in the gloom, water chattering away underneath him. ‘Couldn’t agree more, friend! Just need to talk!’

‘Last time we talked it didn’t come out too well for anyone concerned.’ Someone was walking up from the other end of the bridge, a torch in his hand, orange light on a craggy cheek, a ragged beard, a hard-set mouth with a pair of split lips.

Craw found he was grinning as the man stopped an arm’s length away. He reckoned his chances at living through the night just took a leap for the better. ‘Hardbread, ’less I’m mistook all over the place.’ In spite of the fact
they’d been struggling to kill each other not a week before, it felt more like greeting an old friend than an old enemy. ‘What the hell are you doing over here?’

‘Lot o’ the Dogman’s boys hereabouts. Stranger-Come-Knocking and his Crinna bastards showed up without an invite, and we been guiding ’em politely to the door. Some messed-up allies your Chief makes, don’t he.’

Craw looked over towards some Union soldiers who’d gathered in the torchlight at the south end of the bridge. ‘I could say the same o’ yours.’

‘Aye, well. Those are the times. What can I do for you, Craw?’

‘I got some prisoners Black Dow wants handed back.’

‘Hardbread looked profoundly doubtful. ‘When did Dow start handing anything back?’

‘He’s starting now.’

‘Guess it ain’t never too late to change, eh?’ Hardbread called something in Union, over his shoulder.

‘Guess not,’ muttered Craw, under his breath, though he was far from sure Dow had made that big a shift.

A man came warily up from the south side of the bridge. He wore a Union uniform, high up by the markings but young, and fine-looking too. He nodded to Craw and Craw nodded back, then he traded a few words with Hardbread, then he looked over at the wounded starting to come across the bridge and his jaw dropped.

Craw heard quick footsteps at his back, saw movement as he turned. ‘What the—’ He made a tardy grab for his sword, realised it wasn’t there, by which point someone had already flashed past. The girl, and straight into the young man’s arms. He caught her, and they held each other tight, and they kissed, and Craw watched with his hand still fishing at the air where his hilt usually was and his eyebrows up high.

‘That was unexpected,’ he said.

Hardbread’s were no lower. ‘Maybe men and women always greet each other that way down in the Union.’

‘Reckon I’ll have to move down there myself.’

Craw leaned back against the pitted parapet of the bridge. Leaned back next to Hardbread and watched those two hold each other, eyes closed, swaying gently in the light of the torch like dancers to a slow music none could hear. He was whispering something in her ear. Comfort, or relief, or love. Words foreign to Craw, no doubt, and not just on account of the language. He watched the wounded shuffling across around the couple, a spark of hope lit in their worn-out faces. Going back to their own people. Hurt, maybe, but alive. Craw had to admit, the night might’ve been coming on cold but he’d a warmth inside. Not like that rush of winning a fight, maybe, not so strong nor so fierce as the thrill of victory.

But he reckoned it might last longer.

‘Feels good.’ As he watched the soldier and the girl make their way
across the bridge to the south bank, his arm around her. ‘Making a few folk happier, in the midst o’ this. Feels damn good.’

‘It does.’

‘Makes you wonder why a man chooses to do what we do.’

Hardbread took in a heavy breath. ‘Too coward to do aught else, maybe.’

‘You might be right.’ The woman and the officer faded into darkness, the last few wounded shambling after. Craw pushed himself away from the parapet and slapped the damp from his hands. ‘Right, then. Back to it, eh?’

‘Back to it.’

‘Good to see you, Hardbread.’

‘Likewise.’ The old warrior turned away and followed the others back towards the south side of the town. ‘Don’t get killed, eh?’ he tossed over his shoulder.

‘I’ll try to avoid it.’

Shivers was waiting at the north end of the bridge, offering out Craw’s sword. The sight of his eye gleaming in his lopsided smile was enough to chase any soft feelings away sharp as a rabbit from a hunter.

‘You ever thought about a patch?’ asked Craw, as he took his sword and slid it through his belt.

‘Tried one for a bit.’ Shivers waved a finger at the mass of scar around his eye. ‘Itched like a bastard. I thought, why wear it just to make other fuckers more comfortable? If I can live with having this face, they can live with looking at it. That or they can get fucked.’

‘You’ve a point.’ They walked on through the gathering gloom in silence for a moment. ‘Sorry to take the job.’

Shivers said nothing.

‘Leading Dow’s Carls. More’n likely you should’ve had it.’

Shivers shrugged. ‘I ain’t greedy. I’ve seen greedy, and it’s a sure way back to the mud. I just want what’s owed. No more and no less. A little
respect.’

‘Don’t seem too much to ask. Anyway, I’ll only be doing it while the battle’s on, then I’m done. I daresay Dow’ll want you for his Second then.’

‘Maybe.’ Another stretch of silence, then Shivers turned to look at him. ‘You’re a decent man, aren’t you, Craw? Folk say so. Say you’re a straight edge. How d’you stick at it?’

Craw didn’t feel like he’d stuck at it too well at all. ‘Just try to do the right thing, I reckon. That’s all.’

‘Why? I tried it. Couldn’t make it root. Couldn’t see the profit in it.’

‘There’s your problem. Anything good I done, and the dead know there ain’t much, I done for its own sake. Got to do it because you want to.’

‘It ain’t no kind o’ sacrifice if you want to do it, though, is it? How does doing what you want make you a fucking hero? That’s just what I do.’

Craw could only shrug. ‘I haven’t got the answers. Wish I did.’

Shivers turned the ring on his little finger thoughtfully round and round, red stone glistening. ‘Guess it’s just about getting through each day.’

‘Those are the times.’

‘You think other times’ll be any different?’

‘We can hope.’

‘Craw!’ His own name echoed at him and Craw whipped around, frowning into the darkness, wondering who he’d upset recently. Pretty much everyone, was the answer. He’d made a shitpile of enemies the moment he said yes to Black Dow. His hand strayed to his sword again, which at least was in the sheath this time around. Then he smiled. ‘Flood! I seem to run into men I know all over the damn place.’

‘That’s what it is to be an old bastard.’ Flood stepped over with a grin of his own, and a limp of his own too.

‘Knew there had to be an upside to it. You know Caul Shivers, do you?’

‘By reputation.’

Shivers showed his teeth. ‘It’s a fucking beauty, ain’t it?’

‘How’s the day been over here with Reachey?’ asked Craw.

‘It’s been bloody,’ was Flood’s answer. ‘Had a few young lads calling me Chief. Too young. All but one back to the mud.’

‘Sorry to hear that.’

‘Me too. But it’s a war. Thought I might come back over to your dozen, if you’ll have me, and I thought I might bring this one with me.’ Flood jerked his thumb at someone else. A big lad, hanging back in the shadows, wrapped up in a stained green cloak. He was looking at the ground, dark hair across his forehead so Craw couldn’t see much more’n the gleam of one eye in the dark. He’d a good sword at his belt, though, gold on the hilt. Craw saw the gleam of that quick enough. ‘He’s a good hand. Earned his name today.’

‘Congratulations,’ said Craw.

The lad didn’t speak. Not full of bragging and vinegar like some might be who’d won a name that day. Like Craw had been the day he won his, for that matter. Craw liked to see it. He didn’t need any fiery tempers landing everyone in the shit. Like his had landed him in the shit, years ago.