‘He is a pleasant enough man, of course. Brave and honest and all those things housewives like to coo about. But he is a fool and, what is worse, the son of a notorious traitor and the husband of a shrew to boot. His only significant friend is your father, and your father’s days in the sun are numbered in small digits.’ Meed spoke softly, but not so softly that he could not easily be overheard. One young captain’s mouth fell open with surprise. It seemed Meed was not held quite so tightly by the bonds of etiquette as she had supposed.
‘I frustrated an attempt by the Closed Council to prevent me taking my brother’s place as lord governor, did you know that? The Closed Council. Do you really suppose some soldier’s daughter might succeed where they failed? Address me only once again without the proper respect and I will crush you and your husband like the pretty, ambitious, irrelevant lice you are.’ He calmly plucked his eyeglass from her limp hand and looked through it towards Osrung, precisely as if he had never spoken and she did not exist.
Finree should have whipped out some acid rejoinder, but the only thing in her mind was an overpowering urge to smash the front of Meed’s eyeglass with her fist and drive the other end into his skull. The room seemed uncomfortably bright. The violins ripped at her ears. Her face burned as if she had been slapped. All she could do was blink, and meekly retreat. It was as if she floated to the other side of the room without moving her feet. A couple of the officers watched her get there, muttering among themselves, evidently party to her one-sided humiliation and no doubt relishing it too.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Aliz. ‘You look pale.’
‘I am perfectly well.’ Or, in fact, seething with fury. Insulting her was one thing, no doubt she deserved it. Insulting her husband and her father were other things entirely. That she would make the old bastard pay for, she swore it.
Aliz leaned close. ‘What do we do now?’
‘Now? We sit here like good little girls and applaud while idiots stack up the coffins.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t worry. Later on they might let you weep over a wound or two and, if the mood takes you, you can flutter your eyelashes at the awful futility of it all.’
Aliz swallowed, and looked away. ‘Oh.’
‘That’s right. Oh.’
So this was battle. Beck and Reft had never had too much to say to each other, but since the Union first started fighting their way over the fence they hadn’t said a word. Just stood silent at the windows. Beck wished he’d got friends beside him. Or wished he’d tried harder to make friends of the lads he’d found beside him. But it was too late now.
His bow was in his hand, an arrow nocked and the string ready to draw. He’d had it ready the best part of an hour, but there was no one he could shoot at. Nothing he could do but watch, and sweat, and lick his lips, and watch. He’d started off wishing he could see more, but now the rain had slacked off, and the sun was getting up, and Beck found he was seeing far more than he wanted to.
The Union were over the fence in three or four places, into the town in numbers. There was fighting all over, everything broken up into separate little scraps facing every which way. No lines, just a mass of confusion and mad noise. Shouts and howls mashed together, din of clashing metal and breaking wood.
Beck was no expert. He didn’t know how anyone could be at this. But he could feel the balance shifting over there on the south side of the river. More and more Northmen were scurrying back across the bridge, some limping or holding wounds, some shouting and pointing off south, threading their way through the shield wall at the north end of the span and into the square under Beck’s window. Safety. He hoped. Felt a long bloody way from safe, though. Felt about as far from safe as Beck had in his whole life.
‘I want to see!’ Brait was dragging at Beck’s shirt, trying to get a peek through the window. ‘What’s going on?’
Beck didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know if he could find his voice, even. Right under them some wounded man was screaming. Gurgling, retching screams. Beck wished he’d stop. He felt dizzy with it.
The fence was mostly lost. He could see one tall Union man on the walkway, pointing towards the bridge with a sword, clapping men on their backs as they flooded off the ladders to either side of him. There were still a few dozen Carls at the gate, clustered around a tattered standard, painted shields facing out in a half-circle but they were surrounded and well outnumbered, shafts hissing down into ’em from the walkways.
Some of the bigger buildings were still in Northern hands. Beck could see men at the windows, shooting arrows out, ducking back in. Doors nailed shut and barricaded, but Union men swarming around ’em like bees around a hive. They’d managed to set fires for a couple of the most stubborn holdouts, in spite of the damp. Now brown smoke billowed out and was carried off east by the wind, lit by the dull orange of flames flickering.
A Northman came charging from a burning building, swinging an axe around his head in both hands. Beck couldn’t hear him shouting, could see he was, though. In the songs he’d have taken a load down with him and joined the dead proud. Couple of Union men scattered away before some others herded him back against the wall with spears. One stuck him in the arm and he dropped his axe, held his other hand up, shouting more. Giving up, maybe, or insults, didn’t make much difference. They stuck him in the chest and he slumped down. Stuck him on the ground, spear shafts going up and down like a couple of men digging in the fields.
Beck’s wide-open, watery eyes kept on darting across the buildings, murder in plain view all along the riverbank not a hundred strides from where he stood. They dragged someone struggling out from a hovel and bent him over. There was the twinkle of a knife, then they shoved him into the water and he floated away on his face while they wandered back inside the house. Cut his throat, Beck reckoned. Cut his throat, just like that.
‘They’ve got the gate.’ Reft’s voice sounded strangled. Like he’d never spoken before. Beck saw he was right, though. They’d cut down the last defenders, and were dragging the bars clear, and pulling the gates open, and daylight showed through the square archway.
‘By the dead,’ whispered Beck, but it came out just a breath. Hundreds of the bastards started flowing into Osrung, pouring out into the smoke and the scattered buildings, flooding down the lane towards the bridge. The triple row of Northmen at its north end looked a pitiful barrier all of a sudden. A sand wall to hold back the ocean. Beck could see them stirring. Wilting, almost. Could feel their deep desire to join the men who were scattering back across the bridge and through their ranks, trying to escape the slaughter on the far bank.
Beck felt it too, that tickling need to run. To do something, and run was all he could think of. His eyes flickered over the burning buildings on the south side of the river, flames reaching higher now, smoke spreading over the town.
Beck wondered what it was like inside those houses. No way out. Thousands of Union bastards beating at the doors, at the walls, shooting arrows in. Low rooms filling up with smoke. Wounded men with small hopes of mercy. Counting their last shafts. Counting their dead friends. No way out. Time was Beck’s blood would’ve run hot at thoughts like that. It was on the chilly side now, though. Those weren’t no fortresses built for defending on the other side of the river, they were little wooden shacks.
Just like the one he was in.
The Infernal Contraptions
Your August Majesty,
Morning on the second day of battle, and the Northmen occupy strong positions on the north side of the river. They hold the Old Bridge, they hold Osrung, and they hold the Heroes. They hold the crossings and invite us to take them. The ground is theirs, but they have handed the initiative to Lord Marshal Kroy and, now that all our forces have reached the battlefield, he will not be slow to seize it.