‘Er,’ he muttered. I floundered around in a stream and killed seven men that I am sure of, but without doubt maimed several more. I hacked them apart in the hope that our fickle monarch would hear of it, and commute my undeserved sentence of undeath. I made myself guilty of mass murder so I could be proclaimed innocent of incompetence. Sometimes they hang men for this type of thing, and sometimes they applaud. ‘I am … lucky to be alive.’

She came closer and he felt a dizzy rush of blood, a lightness in his head not unlike serious illness. ‘I have a feeling we are all lucky you are alive.’

I have a feeling in my trousers. If I was truly lucky you would put your hand down them. Is that too much to ask? After saving the army, and so on? ‘I…’ I’m so sorry. I love you. Why am I sorry? I didn’t say anything. Does a man need to feel sorry for what he thinks? Probably.

She had already walked off to speak to her father, and he could hardly blame her. If I was her, I wouldn’t even look at me, let alone listen to me squeak my halting way through half a line of insipid drivel. And yet it hurts. It hurts so much when she goes. He trudged for the door.

Fuck, I’m pathetic.

Calder slipped out of Dow’s meet before he had to explain himself to his brother and hurried away between the fires, ignoring grumbled curses from the men gathered around them. He found a path between two of the torchlit Heroes, saw gold glinting on the slope and caught up with its owner as he strode angrily downhill.

‘Golden! Golden, I need to talk to you!’

Glama Golden frowned over his shoulder. Perhaps the intention was fearsome fury, but the swellings on his cheek made him look like he was worried at the taste of something he was eating. Calder had to bite back a giggle. That smashed-up face was an opportunity for him, one he could ill afford to miss.

‘What would I have to thay to you, Calder?’ he snarled, three of his Named Men bristling behind him, hands tickling their many weapons.

‘Quietly, we’re watched!’ Calder came close, huddling as though he had secrets to share. An attitude he’d noticed tended to make men do the same, however little they were inclined to. ‘I thought we could help each other, since we find ourselves in the same position—’

‘The thame?’ Golden’s bloated, blotched and bloodied face loomed close. Calder shrank back, all fear and surprise, while on the inside he was a fisherman who feels the tug on his line. Talk was his battlefield, and most of these fools were as useless on it as he was on a real one. ‘How are we the thame, peathemaker?’

‘Black Dow has his favourites, doesn’t he? And the rest of us have to struggle over the scraps.’

‘Favourith?’ Golden’s battered mouth was giving him a trace of a lisp and every time he slurred a word he looked even more enraged.