Wonderful shook her head. ‘All part of the hero’s mystery.’

‘That too.’ Whirrun grinned. ‘How about it, Wonderful? Does a wet shirt chafe your nipples? I need to know.’

She shook his hand. ‘You worry about your nipples, Cracknut, I’ll handle mine.’

Everything was bright now, and still, and quiet. Water gleaming on armour, furs curled up with wet, bright painted shields beaded with dew. Faces flashed at Craw, known and unknown. Grinning, stern, crazy, afraid. He held out his hand, and Whirrun pressed it in his own, grinning with every tooth. ‘You ready?’

Craw always had his doubts. Ate ’em, breathed ’em, lived ’em twenty years or more. Hardly a moment free of the bastards. Every day since he buried his brothers.

But now was no time for doubts. ‘I’m ready.’ And he drew his sword, and looked down towards the Union men, hundreds upon hundreds, blurring in the rain to spots and splashes and glints of colour, and he smiled. Maybe Whirrun was right, and a man ain’t really alive until he faces death. Craw raised his sword up high, and he gave a howl, and all around him men did the same.

And they waited for the Union to come.

More Tricks

The sun had to be up somewhere but you’d never have known it. The angry clouds had thickened and the light was still poor. Positively beggarly, in fact. As far as Corporal Tunny could tell, and somewhat to his surprise, no one had moved. The helmets and spears still showed above the stretch of wall that he could see, shifting a little from time to time but going nowhere fast. Mitterick’s attack was well underway. That much they could hear. But on this forgotten far end of the battle, the Northmen waited.

‘Are they still there?’ asked Worth. Waiting for action like this got most men shitting themselves. Worth was unique, in that it seemed it was the one thing that could stop him.

‘They’re still there.’

‘Not moving?’ squeaked Yolk.

‘If they were moving we’d be moving, wouldn’t we?’ Tunny peered through his eyeglass once again. ‘No. They’re not moving.’

‘Is that fighting I can hear?’ muttered Worth, as a gust of wind brought the echoing of angry men, horses and metal across the stream.

‘It’s that or it’s a serious disagreement in a stable. Do you think it’s a disagreement in a stable?’

‘No, Corporal Tunny.’

‘No. Neither do I.’

‘Then what’s going on?’ asked Yolk. A riderless horse appeared from over the rise, stirrups flapping at its flanks, trotted down towards the water, stopped and started nibbling at the grass.

Tunny lowered his eyeglass. ‘Honestly, I’m not sure.’ All around them, rain tapped at the leaves.

The trampled barley was scattered with dead and dying horses, dead and dying men. In front of Calder and his stolen standards they were heaped up in a bloody tangle. Only a few strides away, three Carls were arguing with each other as they tried to free their spears, all impaled in the same Union rider. A few boys had been sent scurrying out to gather spent arrows. A couple more had been unable to resist clambering into the third pit to get an early start at picking over the bodies there, and White-Eye was roaring at them to get back into line.