‘Thought I might help you out.’ Who should be standing behind, sword in hand, but Brodd Tenways, nasty-looking grin on his rashy face and his chain mail gleaming with rainwater. An unlikely saviour if ever there was one. ‘Couldn’t leave you to snatch all the glory on your own, could I?’

Calder kicked the leaking body away and floundered up. ‘I’ve half a mind to tell you to get fucked!’

‘What about the other half?’

‘Shitting itself.’ No joke. He wouldn’t have been at all surprised if his was the next head Tenways’ sword whipped off.

But Tenways only gave him a rotten smile. ‘Might be the first honest thing I’ve ever heard you say.’

‘Probably that’s fair.’

Tenways nodded towards the soaked melee. ‘You coming?’

‘Damn right.’ Calder wondered for a moment whether he should charge in, roaring like a madman, and turn the tide of battle. That’s what Scale would’ve done. But it would hardly have been playing to his strengths. The enthusiasm he’d felt when he saw the cavalry routed had long ago leached away leaving him wet, cold, sore and exhausted. He feigned a grimace as he took a step, clutching at his knee. ‘Ah! Shit! I’ll have to catch you up.’

Tenways grinned. “Course. Why wouldn’t you? With me, you bastards!’ And he led a glowering wedge of his Carls towards the gap in the lines, more of them pouring over the wall on the left and adding their weight to the straining combat.

The rain was thinning. Calder could see a little further and, to his great relief, it looked as if Tenways’ arrival might have shifted the balance back their way. Might have. A few more Union soldiers on the other side of the scales and it could all still come apart. The sun peeped through the clouds for a moment, brought out a faint rainbow that curved down above the heaving mass of wet metal on the right and gently touched the bare rise beyond, and the low wall on top of it.

Those bastards beyond the stream. How long would they just sit still?

Peace in Our Time

There were wounded men everywhere on the slopes of the hill. Dying men. Dead men. Finree thought she saw faces she knew among them, but could not be sure whether they really were dead friends, or dead acquaintances, or just corpses with familiar hair. More than once she saw Hal’s slack face leering, gaping, grinning. It hardly seemed to matter. The truly frightening thing about the dead, once she realised it, was that she was used to them.

They passed through a gap in a low wall and into a circle of stones, casualties sprawled on every spare stretch of grass. A man was trying to hold a great wound in his leg together, but when he clamped one end shut the other sagged open, blood welling out. Her father climbed down from his horse, his officers following him, she following them, a pale lad with a bugle clutched in one muddy fist watching her in silence. They picked their way through the madness in a pale procession, virtually ignored, her father staring about him, jaw clenched tight.