‘But tomorrow.’ Calder backed away, still with that smirk on his face. ‘You’ll give me a start.’ One foot after another, down the hillside. ‘You won’t tell him. I know you, Craw. Raised me from a babe, didn’t you? You’ve got more bones than that. You’re not Black Dow’s dog. Not you.’

‘It ain’t a question of bones, nor dogs neither. I gave my word, and I’ll tell him tomorrow.’

‘No, you won’t.’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘No.’ And Calder’s smirk was gone into the darkness. ‘You won’t.’

Craw stood there for a moment, in the wind, frowning at nothing. Then he gritted his teeth, and pushed his fingers into his hair, bent over and gave a strangled roar of frustration. He hadn’t felt this hollow since Wast Never sold him out and tried to kill him after eight years a friend. Would’ve done it too if it hadn’t been for Whirrun. Wasn’t clear who’d get him out of this particular scrape. Wasn’t clear how anyone could. This time it was him doing the betraying. He’d be doing it to someone whatever he did.

Always do the right thing sounds an easy rule to stick to. But when’s the right thing the wrong thing? That’s the question.

The King’s Last Hero

Your August Majesty,

Darkness has finally covered the battlefield. Great gains were made today. Great gains at great cost. I deeply regret to inform you that Lord Governor Meed was killed, fighting with the highest personal courage for your Majesty’s cause alongside many of his staff.

There was bitter combat from dawn to dusk in the town of Osrung. The fence was carried in the morning and the Northmen driven across the river, but they launched a savage counterattack and retook the northern half of the town. Now the water separates the two sides once again.

On the western wing, General Mitterick had better fortune. Twice the Northmen resisted his assaults on the Old Bridge, but on the third attempt they were finally broken and fled to a low wall some distance away over open fields. Mitterick is moving his cavalry across the river, ready for an attack at first light tomorrow. From my tent I can see the standards of your Majesty’s Second and Third Regiments, defiantly displayed on ground held by the Northmen only a few hours ago.

General Jalenhorm, meanwhile, has reorganised his division, augmented by reserves from the levy regiments, and is prepared for an attack upon the Heroes in overwhelming force. I mean to stay close to him tomorrow, witness his success at first hand, and inform your Majesty of Black Dow’s defeat as soon as the stones are recaptured.

I remain your Majesty’s most faithful and unworthy servant,

Bremer dan Gorst, Royal Observer of the Northern War

Gorst held the letter out to Rurgen, clenching his teeth as pain flashed through his shoulder. Everything was hurting. His ribs were even worse than yesterday. His armpit was one great itching graze where the edge of his breastplate had been ground into it. For some reason there was a cut between his shoulder blades just where it was hardest to reach. Though no doubt I deserve far worse, and probably will get it before we’re done with this worthless valley.

‘Can Younger take this?’ he grunted.

Younger!’ called Rurgen.

‘What?’ from outside.

‘Letter!’

The younger man ducked his head through the tent flap, stretching for it. He winced, had to come a step closer, and Gorst saw that the right side of his face was covered by a large bandage, soaked through with a long brown mark of dried blood.

Gorst stared at him. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Huh,’ grunted Rurgen. ‘Tell him.’

Younger frowned at his colleague. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Felnigg happened,’ said Rurgen. ‘Since you ask.’

Gorst was out of his seat, pains forgotten. ‘Colonel Felnigg? Kroy’s chief of staff?’

‘I got in his way. That’s all. That’s the end of it.’

‘Whipped him,’ said Rurgen.

‘Whipped … you?’ whispered Gorst. He stood staring for a moment. Then he snatched up his long steel, cleaned, sharpened and sheathed just beside him on the table.

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?’

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