Stour worked his red mouth a moment, frowning up towards the summit of the hill. Then he bared his teeth, and spat red, and turned away. “We fucking pull back.”
“They’re coming,” gasped Leo. Every breath was a moan through teeth gritted against the pain.
Ghosts in the smoke. Shadows in the dust. Among the corpses of man and horse, the heaps of rubble and broken spears.
“You have to go,” he hissed at Jin.
Whitewater tried to grin. There was a great wound on his head, a bit of his scalp flapping loose. “We’ve come this far together. Reckon I’ll finish the journey with you.” He growled as he snapped off the flatbow bolt buried in his leg. “And I’ll be running nowhere anyway.”
He dragged himself to one knee, facing the oncoming figures, holding his broken shield up, mace ready in his fist.
There was nothing Leo could do. He couldn’t even stand. He twisted around, dragging himself with his one good arm, ruined leg scraping after him, fist still clinging to his sword. That commemorative sword with the lion’s head pommel. The one King Jezal had presented to him. The proudest day of his life.
“Antaup!” he croaked.
The standard was upright, somehow, in the crook of his limp arm. But Antaup sat staring at nothing, blood streaked from the holes in his breastplate, that loose lock of hair still stuck to his pale forehead.
Leo dragged himself up to sit beside him, breathing hard, blowing bloody spit. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”
“Come on, you bastards!” roared Jin in Northern.
Leo heard the rattle of flatbows and Jin tottered back, lurched down on one knee.
“No,” hissed Leo, forcing the one leg that worked underneath him, hooking his elbow around the saddle horn of a dead horse and hauling himself to a wobbling crouch.
Jin toppled over, three bolts sticking from his body.
Heavy boots crunched across the square. A big man in full armour, golden sun of the Union on his breastplate, heavy battle steels in his hands. He pushed his visor up with the back of one gauntlet. Bremer dan Gorst, great jaw clenched tight.
Jin lifted an arm to paw weakly at his ankle. Gorst frowned and kicked it away.
Leo used his sword like a crutch, weight all on his good leg, which an hour ago had been his bad leg. It hardly seemed to hurt at all now. Not compared to the other one, crushed by his horse. Not compared to his dangling arm, riddled with bits of steel from a cannon.
“Finish it.” The words tasted like blood. Did he catch a mocking flash of gold, high above, as the smoke shifted? The Steadfast Standard? A last glimpse of glory?
Gorst glanced from Leo to Jin, to Antaup, to the rest of the corpses. “It’s already over,” he said, in that little girl’s voice. “It couldn’t be more over.”
Something in his total lack of feeling made Leo utterly furious. He screamed as he lurched forward, lifting his sword for a clumsy thrust.
Gorst took a step back out of reach, Leo’s ruined leg crumpled and he crashed down on his side in the blood-spattered, cannon-scarred, rubbish-strewn square.
He whimpered as he wedged his good arm under him, stretched his hand out for the hilt of his fallen sword.
His fingers crawled across the flags, clutching for the lion-head pommel, half its gilding scraped away.
Gorst stepped forward and flicked it aside with his armoured boot.
It was over.
Just Talk
“Another step and you’ll be arrow-pricked, all four o’ you!”
Rikke stopped where she was and showed both her open hands and all her teeth.
Her father used to tell her your best shield is a smile. She’d been sceptical then. Looking up at the black battlements, with here or there a glimpse of a bow or arrow, she was sceptical now.
No one else was smiling. Shivers was a man who subscribed to the notion that your best shield is a shield. The Nail was a man who scorned the whole notion of shields, and if offered one would no doubt have gone for an extra axe instead. Corleth, meanwhile, was still working at her angry-little-dog act, fists clenched tight around the staff of the banner with the Long Eye stitched into it.
Still, good teeth were one of Rikke’s few natural blessings that hadn’t been covered with tattoos or blinded with a needle, so she made the best use of ’em and smiled up wide enough to compensate for all the funereal faces.
“Wouldn’t want to be arrow-pricked!” she called. “I mean, who does? You know who I am?”
A pause, and then, very sour, “Rikke. Wi’ the Long Eye.”
“Says so on the banner, eh?” And Rikke nodded towards it. “Not to mention my face. No need to worry, I’ve just come to talk. I’m guessing you’re Brodd Silent?”
“I am.”
“Good, good. I hear Black Calder’s gone off to suck some cocks up in the High Valleys and left you holding the baby. That right?”
Silence. Though what could you expect from a man called Silent?
“I’ll treat that like a yes.” Rikke nodded to the Nail, and he hefted the casket down off his shoulder and dropped it on the cobbles with a thump and a jingle. “So I’ve got… what have I got? Did you count it?”
Shivers shrugged. “I look like a banker to you?”
The Nail shrugged, too. “Once I get past fifteen I’m all over the place.”
“Well, let’s see…” Rikke squatted beside the box and opened it so everyone up there could get a good look at the contents. As luck would have it, the sun slipped out right then and lent the whole heap a pretty glitter. “I’ve got… quite a lot of silver. Two thousand pieces, maybe?” She rooted through it with that merry clinking that somehow only money makes. “There’s some Carleon coins here, and some Union, and some Styrian scales, and… what’s this?” She held a big coin up to the light. Had a head on both sides.
“Gurkish,” grunted Shivers. “Emperor on one side, Prophet on t’other.”
“A Gurkish coin, how about that? All the way from the sunny South!” She stood, brushing her knees off. “Anyway, this is for whoever opens the gates. How you split it is up to you. If Master Silent wants to open ’em, he can share it out, I guess.” She left a meaningful pause. “Or the rest of you could. Have yourselves a wrestling match over the Gurkish one. Your business. Long as someone lets us in.”
“You ain’t buying your way in here!” shouted Silent from up on the wall, but he sounded a little shrill over the possibility.
“Well,” she said, all innocence. “You’ve got another choice…”
The Nail did that trick of curling his lip and whistling with just his teeth, so loud it was almost painful, and armed men showed themselves between every building, at every door and window around the walls. Battle-hardened, well-armed men of Uffrith and the West Valleys. Dozens of ’em, and adding not one smile to the tally.
“Which is I give these bastards the money to come over the walls and draw the bolts from that side.” Rikke pressed a hand to her chest. “Now, I’ve naught but pride for how peaceful we’ve been so far, and when it comes to bloodshed I’d rather have a trickle than a flood. But I’ve seen myself sitting in Skarling’s Chair, with this banner behind.” She turned her left eye towards them and tapped at her tattooed cheek. “I’ve seen it, with the Long Eye, understand? So it’s happening. That’s a done deal. Whether you bastards end up rich or dead on the way, the cost’s about the same to—”