Craw held up his open hands. ‘You’re the Chief.’

‘Damn right!’ Dow frowned at that crack. ‘I’m the Chief.’ Almost like it was himself he was trying to convince. Just for a moment Craw wondered whether Black Dow ever felt like a fraud. Whether Black Dow’s courage needed stitching together every morning.

He didn’t like that thought much. ‘We’re fighting, then?’

Dow’s eyes swivelled sideways and his killing smile broke out fresh, no trace of doubt in it, or fear neither. ‘High fucking time, no? You hear what I was telling Reachey?’

‘Most of it. He’ll try and draw ’em off towards Osrung, then you’ll go straight at the Heroes.’

‘Straight at ’em!’ barked Dow, like he could make it work by shouting it. ‘The way Threetrees would’ve done it, eh?’

‘Would he?’

Dow opened his mouth, then paused. ‘What does it matter? Threetrees is seven winters in the mud.’

‘True. Where do you want me and my dozen?’

‘Right beside me when I charge up to the Heroes, o’ course. Expect there’s nothing in the world you’d like more’n to take that hill back from those Union bastards.’

Craw gave a long sigh, wondering what his dozen would have to say about that. ‘Oh, aye. It’s top o’ my list.’

The Very Model

‘An officer should command from horseback, eh, Gorst? The proper place for a headquarters is the saddle!’ General Jalenhorm affectionately patted the neck of his magnificent grey, then leaned over without waiting for an answer to roar at a spotty-faced courier. ‘Tell the captain that he must simply clear the road by whatever means necessary! Clear the road and move them up! Haste, all haste, lad, Marshal Kroy wants the division moving north!’ He swivelled to bellow over the other shoulder. ‘Speed, gentlemen, speed! Towards Carleon, and victory!’

Jalenhorm certainly looked a conquering hero. Fantastically young to command a division and with a smile that said he was prepared for anything, dressed with an admirable lack of pretension in a dusty trooper’s uniform and as comfortable in the saddle as a favourite armchair. If he had been half as fine a tactician as he was a horseman, they would long ago have had Black Dow in chains and on public display in Adua. But he is not, and we do not.

A constantly shifting body of staff officers, adjutants, liaisons and even a scarcely pubescent bugler trailed eagerly along in the general’s wake like wasps after a rotten apple, fighting to attract his fickle attention by snapping, jostling and shouting over one another with small dignity. Meanwhile Jalenhorm himself barked out a volley of confusing and contradictory replies, questions, orders and occasional musings on life.

‘On the right, on the right, of course!’ to one officer. ‘Tell him not to worry, worrying solves nothing!’ to another. ‘Move them up, Marshal Kroy wants them all up by lunch!’ A large body of infantry were obliged to shuffle exhausted from the road, watch the officers pass, then chew on their dust. ‘Beef, then,’ bellowed Jalenhorm with a regal wave, ‘or mutton, whichever, we have more important business! Will you come up the hill with me, Colonel Gorst? Apparently one gets quite the view from the Heroes. You are his Majesty’s observer, are you not?’