“Get off!” The man on his right kept shouldering him. He shoved with his elbow, shoved the best he could, tried to look round, and realised the fellow was dead. Or as near dead as made no difference, head flopping sideways with his helmet skewed across his face and his eyes rolled back and his tongue hanging out and a great crimson drool of blood down his chin.
Be a man.
Then everything jolted. Lake never saw why. There was a terrible pain in the side of his face. So terrible and so sudden he vomited. Spat sick. Something in his eye. Coughed and spluttered and groaned. His helmet had fallen off. He was on the ground. How’d that happen? The pain in his face. Boots kicking at him.
He started crawling through a forest of shuffling and stomping legs, light flickering, sound muffled. He pulled his glove off with his teeth, felt at his face with trembling fingers. Sticky. Was he wounded? Cries and snarls and yells. He clutched at a leg. Dead men down here. The pain of it. Was he wounded? Was it bad? He couldn’t see. Tried to open his eye but he couldn’t see.
“Help,” he whimpered. No one could hear him. Be a man.
He clutched at the mud, dragged himself back. Through the boots, through the legs. Something thudded into his ribs, rolled him over, a boot caught the side of his face as it came down and he shoved at it, punched at it, dragged himself on through the feet and the mud and the corpses.
Be a man. What did that even mean?
“Help!” he squealed, hands clutched to his bloody face, and he felt himself caught by the wrists and dragged back.
It took all her strength to pull him out from there. Grown men are heavy, let alone armoured ones. Ariss gritted her teeth and heaved on his wrists as hard as she could. This was no time to be gentle. Then her foot slipped and she went down in the mud with him half on top of her. Hardly mattered, she was filthy as a miner already, her apron spattered with dirt, spotted with blood.
“Up we get,” grunted Scalla, pulling the wounded man off her and dumping him onto the stretcher. She’d almost complained when she first saw how rough he was with them. Like he was hefting sacks of coal. She’d soon learned that delicacy did no one any good. She stumbled to the foot of the stretcher, caught hold of the handles. Scalla had undone the buckle on the wounded man’s helmet and tossed it bouncing away, turned around to grab his handles and looked over his shoulder to meet her eye. “One, two…”
She growled as she lifted the foot end and off they went, bones jolting, teeth rattling, shoulders burning with the effort as they jogged towards the outskirts of town. Chaos here, messengers dashing, other stretcher-bearers stumbling back and forth, boys scrambling with armfuls of flatbow bolts.
Ariss had wanted to do something before she married. Wanted to do something real. Something to be proud of. Her uncle had fought in Gurkhul, long ago. He’d tried to warn her.
“So a battle’s no place for a woman?” she’d snapped at him.
“A battle’s no place for anyone,” he’d said, and she’d walked out.
Now she forced herself to look at the man on the stretcher. There was a great long slash down his face to his throat. She couldn’t really see how bad it was for all the blood. She didn’t really want to see how bad it was. But the blood was not a good sign. It was pouring out of him. Pooling in the stretcher around his head. Soaking through the canvas. Dripping to the dirt where her feet mashed it into the mud. So much blood. You’d be amazed how much a man holds.
He made this long, dull groan with every outbreath. Not even pained. Half-witted. Mindless.
“Shush,” she crooned, but it came out panicked and jolting with her footfalls.
She’d fondly imagined a woman’s voice might help calm them, the way it had in Spillion Sworbreck’s book about that dauntless frontier girl that she’d found so inspiring. But nothing calmed them. Nothing but death, anyway. She’d pictured dabbing sweaty brows, and water gratefully received, and binding the odd wound. Discreet wounds. Neat wounds. Nicks and scratches. Instead she saw bodies peeled open, hacked into, bent backwards, leaking their contents. Bodies that could never heal. Bodies that hardly looked like bodies any more.
Her uncle had been right. She’d made a terrible mistake.
They came to the garden where the wounded were laid out, sending up an awful chorus of pain and despair. Better than the wet screams coming from the tent where they did the surgery, though.
She set the stretcher down and sagged on her knees beside it, utterly spent. Her legs were trembling. Her arms were trembling. Her eyelids fluttered. She knelt there in the mud, just breathing.
The wounded man had stopped his groans, at least. The surgeon’s assistant leaned down to press fingers against his throat, paused a moment, the battle roaring in the distance like a stormy sea. Like an irresistible tide coming in.
“He’s dead.”
Ariss wiped her forehead on the back of her wrist, realised she’d smeared blood all over her face.
Scalla dragged the corpse off the blood-soaked stretcher. “Let’s get another.”
Ariss wearily nodded. “I suppose.” She lurched up, stumbled as someone crashed into her. A boy who went sprawling next to the corpses, cap falling off to show a shock of blonde curls.
“Sorry! I’m sorry.” A girl, then, snatching her cap up and, with one last look back, running on.
Hildi limped for a few strides, rubbing at her bruised leg until the pain faded then upping the pace, ducking through an alley where a couple of men were getting wounds dressed by nurses. She upset a basket full of bandages as she plunged past but couldn’t stop, whipping some washing out of her way and leaving it flapping behind her.
Out of the town and she ran faster, breath cutting at her chest as she hit the grassy slope up the side of the hill. Kept her eyes on her feet. Kept her mind on the few strides in front of her. Orso was relying on her. She clenched her fist tighter around the message. Volunteered to carry it, hadn’t she? More or less insisted on carrying it.
Wanting to prove she was useful. Wanting to prove she was brave. She was the one always carried messages for Orso, so she’d carry this one. Realised her mistake soon as she ran from the town hall and into the madness in the street. She’d hated carrying Orso’s messages to that bitch Savine dan Glokta. Her affected elegance and her gaudy taste and her superior little smirks. But Hildi’s chances of getting killed carrying love letters had been very small.
“Hildi, you damn fool,” she hissed.
The sad fact was, if she was honest with herself… she loved Orso. Not loved loved. Not in love. She loved him like an older brother. Like a helpless, hopeless, hesitant older brother who just happened to be King of the Union. He was good to her. No one else ever had been. No one else had ever thought she was worth being good to. He was above everyone, but somehow he treated her, who was lower than dirt, like an equal. It would’ve been strange if she hadn’t loved him.
But she could’ve let someone else carry the bloody message.
She paused on the hillside to catch her breath. Paused, and prised her eyes away from the grass. Made herself turn to stare out across the valley.
“Oh, fuck,” she breathed.
From here she could see the whole battlefield. The whole grand insanity of it. Over beyond the town, the steep bluff was wreathed in smoke, little plumes and puffs stabbing out. There were fires in the orchards below it, dark columns drifting into the heavy sky. Fires in Stoffenbeck, too. The air was sharp with their smoke.
Curving away from her, the great crescent of the king’s lines. Glimmering metal where the fighting was. Flags limp over the press. Thickets of pikes. Blocks of dark-clothed Anglanders still crawled forward across the open fields. Horsemen moved and wheeled behind.
The lines had shifted, even she could see that, bowing back in the centre where the fighting was hottest, the massed Anglanders grinding ever so gradually in toward Stoffenbeck, weight of numbers starting to tell. Time was running out.
She turned back to the hill, forced her tired legs on.
She ran past a dead horse with two arrows sticking from its side, flies already busy at the blood in the grass. Northman’s arrows, long and slender, flights fluttering in the wind.
She ran past a man snarling, “Damn it!” again and again as he fiddled with the jammed crank of his flatbow, fussing with the bolt, trying to turn the handle, fussing with the bolt, trying to turn the handle, fussing with the bolt, over and over. “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!”
Someone clutched at her ankle, nearly dragged her over. “Help…” A man on a stretcher, blond hair turned brown with sweat stuck to his clammy pale face. “Help…” She kicked free and hurried on, half-running, half-clawing at the grass with one hand while the other stayed white-knuckle tight around Orso’s message.
She ran on. Up onto the brow of the hill. Breath wheezing. Legs aching. A big corporal got in her way, shoved her back so hard she bit her tongue and nearly fell. “Where the hell are you going?”
“I have to speak to Lord Marshal Forest!” she gasped out. “Message… from His Majesty.”
“That’s the king’s girl!” someone shouted. “Let her through!”
She gave the corporal almost as hard a shove as he’d given her, then nearly tripped over a corpse just behind him. A Northman’s corpse, fur around his shoulders matted with blood. He wasn’t alone. Lots of bodies, left where they fell.
It was plain things were as much of a mess up here as they were down in Stoffenbeck. Forest’s own staff had seen action. One officer’s arm was in a sling. Another stood with sword drawn, staring at the edge as if he could hardly believe there was blood on it. The lord marshal himself stood with fists clenched, frowning down towards the valley, an oasis of good-natured calm, snapping out orders, clapping men’s backs. Just seeing him was a reassurance. At last, someone in charge. Someone who could help.
She stumbled up, holding the message out to him, realised it was crumpled to a smudged mess in her sweaty fist. “The Anglanders… are pushing us back… towards Stoffenbeck.” She was breathing so hard, she was nearly sick. “His Majesty… needs support.”
Forest smiled, lines spreading across his leathery face. “Afraid I just sent a messenger to get support from him.”
“What?” she said.
“They’re coming again, Lord Marshal!” someone bellowed.
“’Course they’re bloody coming again!” Forest bellowed back. “It’s a battle!” He took Hildi by the shoulder and leaned close to whisper. “If I was you, I’d run.”
And he turned away, leaving her staring.
Forest strode towards the lines, sending one of his officers off with a thump on the shoulder.
“We can’t fail, Captain! Can’t fail!”
They’d been mauled when the Northmen first came. Only just pushed them back. Wounded everywhere. Morale in tatters. They needed something to believe in. Someone to give ’em courage. Forest had no idea how it had happened, but it looked like that someone would have to be him.
“The king’s counting on us, boys!”
Years back, when they first made him a sergeant, he’d imagined the officers must have all the answers. When he was given his commission, he’d imagined the generals must have all the answers. When King Orso made him a general, he’d imagined the Closed Council must have all the answers. Now, as a lord marshal, he finally knew it for an absolute fact. No one had the answers.
Worse. There weren’t any.
The best you could do was play a long con and act as if you had them. Never show fear. Never show doubt. Command was a trick. You had to spread the illusion that you knew what you were doing as deep and as wide through your men as you could. Spread the illusion and hope for the best.
“Steady, lads!” he roared. ’Course he was scared. Any sane man would be. But you push it down. You make yourself a rock. The king was counting on him. The king! Counting on him! He couldn’t fail.
“We need the reserves!” squeaked a panicky major.
“There are no reserves,” said Forest calmly, even if his stomach was trying to climb out of his mouth and run for the rear. “Everyone’s fighting. I suggest you join ’em.”
And he drew his sword. Felt like the moment to do it. He’d had it forty years. Ever since they made him a sergeant. Never swung it in anger. Never had to. A good soldier needs to march. Needs to keep discipline. Needs to stay cheerful. Needs, sometimes, to stand where he is. Actual fighting was down near the bottom of the list somewhere.
But rarely, very rarely, it has to be done.
“The king’s counting on us!” he roared. “We can’t fail!”
A young lieutenant stumbled past and Forest caught him by the collar with his free hand, near dragged him off his feet.
“Lord Marshal!” he stared with wide, wet eyes. “I was… I was…” Running for it, obviously. Forest hardly blamed him. But he had to stop him.
“Bravery’s not about feeling no fear,” he said, turning the man firmly around. “Bravery’s about standing anyway. The king’s counting on us, you understand? You going to let these Northern bastards bully us? On our ground? Now get back there.” He gripped the young lieutenant by the shoulder and marched him towards the line. “And stand.”
“Yes, sir!” muttered Stillman, hobbling on wobbly legs back to the lines. “’Course, sir. Stand.”
Stillman had meant to stand. He had been standing, indeed, but then, for some reason, his legs had carried him away up the hill. Bloody legs.
He’d dropped his sword, and clawed it up, and clawed up a handful of sheep droppings with it. Always been so keen on his presentation. Now he was all smeared with mud and spattered with dirt and literally left holding a handful of shit.
Always thought he’d be one of the brave ones. Congratulated himself on it when he was doing his jacket up that morning. You’re one of the brave ones, Stillman!
And then the Northmen had come, with their bloody horrible war cries, and they’d killed Corporal Bland. They’d killed him all to hell, and… did Stillman have that poor bastard’s brains on his breastplate? Was that brains? He wanted to be sick. He was sick a bit. Just a stinging tickle at the back of his throat.
He stared about him at the men he was supposed to command. Everything was a muddle now. He’d no idea where his company ended and the next began. Didn’t know half the faces. Or maybe it was the mad expressions that made them strangers. The filth and the blood and the bared teeth. Animals. Savages.
Then the war cries started up again. That high wolf howling, something out of the darkness beyond the edge of the map. Stillman went cold all over. Took a shuffling half-step back.
“I…” he muttered, “I…”
Was he crying? His eyes were swimming. Everything blurry. Bloody hell, was he a coward?
He realised he was pissing himself. Could feel the warmth of it spreading out down his trousers. Bloody bladder. Couldn’t trust it any more than his bloody legs.
He knew his father, and his uncles, and his grandfather, soldiers all, would have been thoroughly disgusted to see him now, a coward.
Aliz, his wife-to-be, whose eyes had glistened so very bewitchingly when she saw him in his uniform, what would she have thought to see his shitty sword hand and the dark stain spreading out across his trousers?
The truth was he didn’t care, as long as he didn’t have to fight.
A man stood, teeth gritted, one hand clapped to his bloody side while he gripped his spear with the other. There was bravery.
Another stood roaring insults at the very top of his lungs. “Fuckers! Fuckers! Come on, fuckers!” There was bravery.
Another lay shivering, staring, white as a sheet except for the red blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, one hand still weakly holding up the standard of their company. There was bravery.
But Stillman didn’t care.
He heard other officers around him shouting their encouragements. “Hold! Steady! Here they come! Stand your ground! For the Union! For the king!”
They were like phrases
in a foreign tongue. How could anyone be steady with red-handed murder rushing up the hill towards them? How could anyone be steady with the Northmen’s horrible yells, and the screams of dying comrades, and the endless clatter of metal, the thunder of the distant cannons echoing shrill in their ears?
Only the mad could be steady here. The already mad and the turned mad.
Arrows fluttered down. Gentle, almost. One stuck into the ground near him. Another bounced from a man’s shoulder and spun away.
“Help!” someone was squealing. Bloody hell, was it him? No. No. He had his mouth closed.
He could hear them coming. The whooping, wailing war cry and the rush of steel. Rain was spitting down now, pit-pattering on metal. He stood on trembling legs, his lower lip wobbling, as though he would give some order, as though he would shout some encouragement.
“Hold?” he croaked.
He saw the men ahead of him shuffling back, boots slipping and sliding on the slick grass, spears wavering. He heard snarling shouts in Northern, voices scarcely human. They were coming. They were coming.
He saw a flash of steel and blood went up in a black spurt. One of the Union soldiers fell, arms flung wide. A gap yawned in the line, and Northmen boiled out of it.
Northmen, with their bright mail and their bright blades and the bright paint on their shields and their bright eyes full of battle madness, battle hunger. Men fixed on his death. Men made of murder. Animals. Savages.
No game. No story. They meant to kill him. They meant to rip him open and spill his guts down the hillside. They meant to dash his brains out like they’d dashed out Corporal Bland’s brains, and him a very nice man with a sister in Holsthorm who’d just had a daughter.
Stillman made no decision.
Just those bloody legs of his again. He turned to run, tripped over a fallen spear and went sprawling on his face. There was an agonising pain and he realised he’d fallen on his sword and the point had gone right into his cheek.
He whimpered, trembling as he pushed himself up. Then something smashed him in the back and the ground hit him in the face again and everything was cold. His mouth was full of blood, and grass, and he coughed and gurgled and squirmed, clutching, clutching.
The Trouble with Peace Page 53