‘Dead.’

‘Right. Well. You can’t think about that. Least you made it.’ Flood slid one arm around his shoulders and led him out into the bright street.

The wind outside felt cold through Beck’s blood-soaked shirt and his piss-soaked trousers, made him shiver. Cobbles coated with dust and blowing ash, with splintered wood, fallen weapons. Dead of both sides tossed around and wounded too. Saw a Union man on the ground, holding up a helpless arm while two Thralls hacked at him with axes. Smoke still shifting across the square, but Beck could see there was a new struggle on the bridge, shadows of men and weapons in the murk, the odd flitting arrow.

A big old-timer in dark mail and a battered helmet sat on horseback at the front of a wedge of others, pointing across the square with a broken length of wood, roaring at the top of his lungs in a voice husky from smoke. ‘Push ’em back over the bridge! Drive the bastards!’ One of the men behind had a standard on a pole – white horse on green. Reachey’s sign. Which he guessed made the old man Reachey his self.

Beck was only just starting to make sense of it. The Northmen had laid on an attack of their own, just the way Flood had said, and caught the Union as they got bogged down in the houses and the twisting lanes. Driven ’em back across the river. Looked like he might even not die today, and the thought made him want to cry. Maybe he would’ve, if his eyes hadn’t been watering already from the smoke.

‘Reachey!’

The old warrior looked over. ‘Flood! Still alive, y’old bastard?’

‘Half way to it, Chief. Hard fighting hereabouts.’

‘I’ll say. I broke my bloody axe! Union men got good helmets, eh? Not good enough, though.’ Reachey tossed the splintered haft clattering across the ruined square. ‘You did some decent work here.’

‘Lost about all my boys, though,’ said Flood. ‘Just this one left.’ And he clapped Beck on the shoulder. ‘Got four o’ the bastards on his own, he did.’

‘Four? What’s your name, lad?’

Beck gawped up at Reachey and his Named Men. All watching him. He should’ve put ’em all right. Told the truth. But even if he’d had the bones, and he didn’t, he didn’t have the breath in him to say that many words. So he just said, ‘Beck.’

‘Just Beck?’

‘Aye.’

Reachey grinned. ‘Man like you needs a bit more name than that, I reckon. We’ll call you …’ He looked Beck up and down for a moment, then nodded to himself like he had the answer. ‘Red Beck.’ He turned in his saddle and shouted to his Named Men. ‘How d’you like that, lads? Red Beck!’ And they started banging their shields with their sword hilts, and their chests with their gauntlets, and sending up a right clatter.

‘You see this?’ shouted Reachey. ‘Here’s the kind o’ lad we need! Everyone look at this lad! Let’s find us some more like him! Some more bloody little bastards!’ Laughter, and cheering, and nods of approval all round. Mostly for the Union being driven back past the bridge, but partly for him, and his bloody day. He’d always wanted respect, and the company of fighting men, and above all a fearsome name. Now he had the lot, and all he’d had to do was hide in a cupboard and kill someone on his own side, then take the credit for his work.