Best Served Cold

Andiche turned away, frowning, and beckoned over one of his sergeants. Cosca settled back with a satisfied sigh, stretched his legs out and crossed one highly polished boot over the other. Good boots. How long had it been since he’d last worn good boots? The front rank of Foscar’s men were in the river. Wading forwards with grim determination, no doubt, up to their knees in cold water, looking without relish at the considerable body of soldiers drawn up in good order on the high ground to their front. Waiting for the arrows to start falling. Waiting for the charge to come. An unenviable task, forcing that ford. He had to admit to being damn pleased he had talked his way clear of it.

He raised Morveer’s flask and wet his lips, just a little.

– 

S hivers heard the faint cries of the orders, the rattling rush of a few hundred shafts loosed together. The first volley went up from Rogont’s archers, black splinters drifting, and rained down on the Talinese as they waded on through the shallows.

Shivers shifted in his saddle, rubbed gently at his itching scar as he watched the lines twist and buckle, holes opening up, flags drooping. Some men slowing, wanting to get back, others moving faster, wanting to press on. Fear and anger, two sides to the same coin. No one’s favourite job, trying to march tight over bad terrain while men shoot arrows at you. Stepping over corpses. Friends, maybe. The horrible chance of it, knowing a little gust might be the difference between an arrow in the earth by your boot or an arrow through your face.

Shivers had seen battles enough, of course. A lifetime of ’em. He’d watched them play out or listened to the sounds in the distance, waiting to hear the call and take his own part, fretting on his chances, trying to hide his fear from those he led and those he followed. He remembered Black Well, running through the mist, heart pounding, startling at shadows. The Cumnur, where he’d screamed the war cry with five thousand others as they thundered down the long slope. Dunbrec, where he’d followed Rudd Threetrees in a charge against the Feared, damn near given his life to hold the line. The battle in the High Places, Shanka boiling up out of the valley, mad Easterners trying to climb the wall, fighting back to back with the Bloody-Nine, stand or die. Memories sharp enough to cut himself on-the smells, the sounds, the feel of the air on his skin, the desperate hope and mad anger.

He watched another volley go up, watched the great mass of Talinese coming on through the water, and felt nothing much but curious. No kinship with either side. No sorrow for the dead. No fear for himself. He watched men dropping under the hail of fire, and he burped, and the mild burning up his throat gave him a sight more worry than if the river had suddenly flooded and washed every one of those bastards down there out to the ocean. Drowned the fucking world. He didn’t care a shit about the outcome. It wasn’t his war.

Which made him wonder why he was ready to fight in it, and more’n likely on the losing side.

His eye twitched from the brewing battle to Monza. She clapped Rogont on the shoulder and Shivers felt his face burn like he’d been slapped. Each time they spoke it stung at him. Her black hair blew back for a moment, showed him the side of her face, jaw set hard. He didn’t know if he loved her, or wanted her, or just hated that she didn’t want him. She was the scab he couldn’t stop picking, the split lip he couldn’t stop biting at, the loose thread he couldn’t stop tugging ’til his shirt came all to pieces.

Down in the valley the front rank of the Talinese had worse troubles, floundering from the river and up onto the bank, lost their shape from slogging across the ford under fire. Monza shouted something at Rogont, and he called to one of his men. Shivers heard the cries creep up from the slopes below. The order to charge. The Osprian foot lowered their spears, blades a glittering wave as they swung down together, then began to move. Slow at first, then quicker, then breaking into a jog, pouring away from the archers, still loading and firing fast as they could, down the long slope towards the sparkling water, and the Talinese trying to form some kind of line on the bank.

Shivers watched the two sides come together, merge. A moment later he heard the contact, faint on the wind. That rattling, clattering, jangling din of metal, like a hailstorm on a lead roof. Roars, wails, screams from nowhere floating with it. Another volley fell among the ranks still struggling through the water. Shivers watched it all, and burped again.