Beyond The Stars. Sarah Webb

      “When they speak of this day, they will speak of loyalty! Of duty! Of …”

      The last word was lost to Corporal Fleece as Tua sped further away, but he was relatively sure it was ‘honour’. Tua was big on honour.

      Men jostled him from all sides, and despite the cold winter wind, Fleece felt uncomfortably hot. It stank here too. Bathing was not high on the list of requirements for the foot soldiers of the Hibernian Army. Being big, brutish and ugly, however, seemingly were, and as such Fleece reckoned himself to be a soldier lacking. He couldn’t even see the valley where they were going to be fighting – couldn’t even see the Fomorian Army amassed on the other side. Although this was probably a good thing.

      General Tua rode back into range.

      “Here, on the fields and in the valleys of Drumree, we will send these demons back to the seas where they were spawned! Then they will learn what it means to encroach on the lands of Man! They will …” And off he went again, up the line in the other direction.

      Fleece turned his head, got a blast of foul breath and wrinkled his nose. He saw Iron Guts, his best friend in the whole of Hibernia, and tried to squeeze through the throng of men towards him. Failing miserably, he resorted to waving and shouting over the soldiers’ heads.

      “Iron Guts! Iron Guts! I missed that last bit! What did he say? What did he say after ‘encroaching on our lands’?”

      Iron Guts looked back, and scowled. “Shut,” he said, “up.” Then he paused a moment before adding, “You idiot.”

      Fleece smiled weakly, and did as he was told. He didn’t want to antagonise his only friend, the only man in the army who had not yet threatened to kill him. He was sweating beneath his chain mail and his shoulders ached from its weight.

      He sighed; he was already exhausted and it wasn’t mid-morning yet – the battle hadn’t even started and he needed a lie-down. This did not bode well for any heroics he might later be required to perform. Not that he was ever required to perform any heroics, unlike the men around him with their glorious names. Ranfield the Raging. Wolftooth the Cruel. Iron Guts the Bloody. If anyone would ever be suitably motivated to come up with a name for Fleece, it would probably be something along the lines of Fleece the Thoroughly Unsuited to Battle, or Fleece the Far Too Pretty to Be Hit, or, the most likely option, Fleece the Where the Hell Has He Run Off to Now?

      Bravery was not one of his strong points. It wasn’t even one of his weak points. The fact of the matter was that bravery just wasn’t one of his points. During armed conflict, Fleece liked to pick a little section of the battlefield, somewhere along the edge, and pretend to be dead. He kept some fresh cow’s blood in a pouch inside his tunic, and he’d give himself a healthy splatter when he got comfortable. Then, when all the fuss was over, he would miraculously recover, and hurry back to camp with all the other survivors. It was a tricky business, and once or twice he had come close to actually encountering a living enemy, but his luck had held. So far.

      He didn’t like the turn this day was taking, however. He was jammed right in the middle of ten thousand Hibernian soldiers. When Tua gave the order to advance, he’d have to slip sideways to the edge, which wasn’t going to be easy. He looked up, trying to peek over the brutish, ugly, stinking men in front of him, and saw the top of Tua’s head as he rode back towards them.

      “For freedom!” Tua roared, and Fleece winced as the troops bellowed, “For Hibernia!” and then, in another bellow, even more animalistic than the first, “For the king!”

      Swords were drawn and held aloft and the roaring went on and on. Fleece didn’t know how anyone could have drawn their swords when they were this tightly packed in. Leaving his in the sheath by his leg, he instead waved his little knife and shouted a bit. It was all fairly ridiculous. Getting worked up about freedom and Hibernia was one thing, but the king? The king was a fat slug who’d had his golden throne shipped over just so he could sit back in the camp and eat and drink while his loyal subjects fought and died for him. Naturally, Fleece didn’t count himself among their number.

      “Advance!” General Tua roared, and the troops surged ahead violently.

      Fleece was thrown forward, his face squashed against the man in front. Trying to regain his balance, his feet were clipped by the man behind so he had to take tiny quick steps. He got an elbow in the face and howled as he reached out to steady himself. His knife nicked someone as he did so and they cursed at him.

      “Sorry!” he called. He could feel his face already starting to swell. He tried to slip sideways, to the edge of the throng, but there were no gaps between the hulking, shouting, grunting soldiers.

      Suddenly they were moving faster, jogging, but Fleece’s feet were no longer touching the snow-covered ground. He was being carried along with them, held aloft by the huge shoulders squashing in on either side. Now he could see over the heads of the men in front. Now he could see the Fomorians, their green skins covered in armour and leathers and furs, as they sprinted towards them. He started shrieking.

      The front line of Hibernian soldiers clashed with the Fomorians and Fleece jerked to a painful halt. He watched as swords cleaved skulls in two. Axes hacked at necks and arms and legs. Spears skewered. Arrows pierced. Knives sliced.

      “Let me down!” Fleece screamed, but nobody heard him above the roar of their own insanity.

      He struck out in desperation, heaved himself higher. Somehow he managed to clamber over the heads of his comrades-in-arms, terrified, trembling like a leaf on the surface of a fast-flowing and ill-tempered stream. Hands reached up, redirecting him, sending him straight to the front line.

      “Wrong way!” he screamed. “Wrong way!”

      A spear was pressed into the chest of the man beneath him and Fleece tumbled down. He was kicked and kneed and thrown about by soldiers bizarrely eager to get at the enemy. Through the gaps he could see the Fomorians – one in particular, the biggest he’d ever seen, stood out, his green skin slimy beneath burnished-red armour that was already splattered with human blood. His left foot was missing but that didn’t seem