Sharp Ends: Stories from the World of The First Law (34 page)

‘Walk with me, then.’ Bethod set off through the tents and the mud towards the holdfast. ‘And I can spare you a moment.’

‘Sulfur is my name.’ And the man bowed humbly, even while hurrying after. A touch of fancy Southern manners, which Bethod quite liked to see. ‘I am an emissary.’

Bethod snorted. Emissaries rarely brought good news. New challenges, new insults, new threats, new feuds, but rarely good news. ‘From what clan?’

‘From no clan, my Lord. I come from Bayaz, the First of the Magi.’

‘Huh,’ grunted Craw, unhappily, sword still halfway drawn.

And Bethod realised what most bothered him about this man. He carried no weapon. As strange as to be travelling without a head in these bloody times.

‘What does a wizard want with me?’ asked Bethod, frowning. He did not care for magic in the least. He liked what could be touched, and predicted, and relied upon.

‘It is not what he wants that he wishes to discuss, but what
you
want. My master is a most wise and powerful man. The wisest and most powerful who yet lives in these latter days, perhaps. Doubtless he can help you, with your …’ Sulfur waved one long-fingered hand about as he sought the word. ‘Difficulties.’

‘I appreciate all offers of help, of course.’ They squelched between the guards and back through the gate of the holdfast. ‘But my difficulties end today.’

‘My master will be overjoyed to learn it. But, if I may, the trouble with difficulties solved is that, so often, new difficulties present themselves soon after.’

Bethod snorted at that, too, as he took up a place on the steps, frowning towards the gate, Craw at his shoulder. ‘That much is true enough.’

Sulfur continued to talk in his ear, voice soft and subtle. ‘Should your difficulties ever weigh too heavy to bear alone, my master’s door is always open. You may pay him a visit whenever you wish, at the Great Northern Library.’

‘Thank your master for me, but tell him I have no need of—’ Bethod turned, but the man was gone.

‘Rattleneck’s on his way, Chief.’ Pale-as-Snow was hurrying across the yard, cloak spattered with mud from hard riding. ‘You’ve got his son, aye?’

‘I do.’

‘Ninefingers agreed to give him up?’

‘He did.’

Pale-as-Snow raised his white brows. ‘Well done.’

‘Why wouldn’t he? I’m his Chief.’

‘Of course. And mine. But it’s getting how I don’t know what that mad bastard’ll do one day to the next. Sometimes I look at him and …’ He shivered. ‘I think he might kill me out of pure meanness.’

‘Hard times call for hard men,’ said Craw.

‘That they do, Craw,’ said Pale-as-Snow, ‘and no doubt these times qualify. The dead know I’ve faced some hard men. Fought beside ’em, fought against ’em. Big names. Dangerous bastards.’ He leaned forward, white hair stirred in the breeze, and spat. ‘I never met one scared me like the Bloody-Nine, though. Have you?’

Craw swallowed, and said nothing.

‘Do you trust him?’

‘With my life,’ said Bethod. ‘We all have, haven’t we? More than once. And each time he’s come through.’

‘Aye, and I guess he came through again taking Rattleneck’s son.’ Pale-as-Snow gave a grin. ‘Peace, eh, Chief?’

‘Peace,’ said Bethod, rolling the word around his mouth and savouring the taste of it.

‘Peace,’ muttered Craw. ‘Think I’ll go back to carpentry.’

‘Peace,’ said Pale-as-Snow, shaking his head like he could hardly believe such a thing might happen. ‘Shall I tell Littlebone and Whitesides to stand down, then?’

‘Tell them to stand up,’ said Bethod. He thought he could hear the sound of hooves outside the gates. ‘Get their men ready to fight. All their men.’

‘But—’

‘The wise leader hopes he won’t need his sword. But he keeps it sharp even so.’

Pale-as-Snow smiled. ‘So he does, Chief. Ain’t no point in a blunt one.’

Riders came thundering through the gate. Battle-worn men on battle-ready horses. Men with well-used armour and weapons. Men who wore their frowns like swords. Rattleneck was at the front, balding and running to fat but a big man still, with gold links in his chain-mail shirt and gold rings in his hair and gold at the hilt of his heavy sword.

He spattered mud across the yard and everyone in it as he pulled his horse up savagely and glowered down at Bethod, teeth bared.

Bethod only smiled. He held the upper hand after all. He could afford to. ‘Well met, Rattleneck—’

‘I don’t think so,’ he snapped. ‘Shitly met, I’d say. Shitly fucking met! Curnden bloody Craw, is that you?’

‘Aye,’ said Craw, mildly, hands folded over his sword-belt.

Rattleneck shook his head. ‘Never expected a good man like you to stand for the likes of this.’

Craw only shrugged. ‘There’s always good men on both sides of a good fight.’ Bethod was starting to like him more and more. A reassuring presence. A straight edge in a crooked time. If there’d ever been an opposite of the Bloody-Nine, there he stood.

‘I don’t see too many good men here,’ snapped Rattleneck.

Bethod had told his wife they liked spiteful, prideful, wrathful men in the North, and picked the most childish of the crowd for leaders, and here was the best example one could have asked for, or perhaps the worst, booming away with nostrils flaring wider than his blown horse’s.

Bethod amused himself with the thought but filled his tone to the brim with deep respect. ‘You honour my holdfast with your presence, Rattleneck.’

‘
Your
holdfast?’ he frothed. ‘Last winter it was Hallum Brownstaff’s!’

‘Yes. But Hallum was rash and he lost it to me, along with his life. I’m glad you came to it, anyway.’

‘Only for my son. Where’s my son?’

‘He’s here.’

The old man worked his mouth. ‘I heard he fought the Bloody-Nine.’

‘And lost.’ Bethod saw the flicker of fear across Rattleneck’s lined face. ‘The folly of youth, to think you’ll win where a hundred better men have gone in the mud.’ He let that hang for a moment. ‘But Ninefingers only knocked him on the head and that’s your family’s least vulnerable spot, eh? He hardly got worse than a scratch. We aren’t the blood-mad bastards you may think.’ Not all of them, anyway. ‘He’s safe. He’s well treated. A perfect guest. He’s down below us now, in my cellar.’ And because it would not do to give him things all his own way, Bethod added, ‘In chains.’

‘I want him back,’ said Rattleneck, and his voice was rough, and his cheek trembled.

‘So would I, in your position. I have sons myself. Get down from your horse, and let’s talk about it.’

They stared at each other across the table. Rattleneck and his Named Men on one side, glaring as if they were about to start a battle rather than make a peace. Bethod on the other, with Pale-as-Snow and Curnden Craw beside him.

‘Will you have wine?’ asked Bethod, gesturing to the jug.

‘Fuck your wine!’ shouted Rattleneck, slapping the cup away so it skittered down the table and shattered against the wall. ‘And fuck your maps, and fuck your talk! I want my son!’

Bethod took a long breath and sighed. How much time did he waste sighing? ‘You can have him.’

As he had hoped, that caught Rattleneck and his men well and truly off guard. They blinked at each other, frowned and grumbled, cast him dark glances, trying to work out the ruse.

‘Eh?’ was the best Rattleneck could manage.

‘What use is he to me? Take him, with my blessing.’

‘And what do you want in return?’

‘Nothing.’ Bethod sat forward, staring into Rattleneck’s grizzled face. ‘I want peace, Rattleneck. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.’ That was a lie, he knew, he’d sought more battles than any man alive, but a good lie’s better than a bad truth, his mother always used to tell him.

‘Peace?’ snorted Blacktoe, one of Rattleneck’s Named Men and a fierce one at that. ‘Did you give peace to them five villages you burned up the valley?’

Bethod met his bright eye, calm and even. He was a rock. ‘We’ve had a war, and in a war folk do things they regret. Folk on both sides. I want no more regrets. So yes, Blacktoe, I want peace, whatever you believe. That’s all I want.’

‘Peace,’ murmured Rattleneck. Bethod was watching his scarred face, and caught it. That twitch of need. That softening of his mouth. That misting of his eye. He recognised it from his own face and knew Rattleneck wanted peace, too. After the blood that had been spilled these last few years, what sane man wouldn’t?

Bethod clasped his hands on the table. ‘Peace now, and the Thralls can go back to their farms, the Carls to their halls. Peace now, and their wives and mothers and children need not struggle with the harvest alone. Peace now, and let us
build
something.’ And Bethod thumped the table. ‘I’ve seen enough waste, how about you?’

‘I never wanted this,’ snapped Rattleneck.

‘Believe it or not, nor did I. So let us end the fighting. Here. Now. We have the power.’

‘You listening to this?’ Blacktoe asked his Chief, voice squealing up high with disbelief. ‘Old Man Yawl won’t have no peace, not ever, and nor will I!’

‘Shut your mouth!’ snarled Rattleneck, glaring Blacktoe into a sullen silence then glancing back to Bethod, combing thoughtfully at his beard. Most of his other men had softened up, too. Thinking it over. Thinking what peace might mean. ‘Blacktoe’s got a point, though,’ said Rattleneck. ‘Old Man Yawl won’t have it, and there’s Black Dow to think on, too, and plenty of others on my side with scores to settle. They might not take to peace.’

‘Most will. For the others, it’s our job to make them take to it.’

‘They won’t let go their hate of you,’ said Blacktoe.

Bethod shrugged. ‘That they can keep. As long as they hate me in peace.’ He leaned forward and put the iron into his voice. ‘But if they fight me, I’ll crush them. Like I did Threetrees, and Beyr, and all the rest.’

‘What about the Bloody-Nine?’ asked Rattleneck. ‘You’ll be making a farmer of that animal, will you?’

Bethod gave away no hint of his doubts in that direction. ‘Maybe I will. My man. My business.’

‘He’ll just do what you tell him, will he?’ sneered Blacktoe.

‘This is bigger than one man,’ said Bethod, holding Rattleneck’s eye. ‘This is bigger than you, or me, or your son, or the Bloody-Nine. This is something we owe our people. Talk to the other clans. Call off your dogs. Tell them the land I’ve taken in battle belongs to me and my sons and their sons. What you still hold is yours. Yours and your sons’. I don’t want it.’ He stood and held out his hand, making sure it was neither palm up nor palm down, but perfectly level. Perfectly fair. A hand that took no liberties and gave no favours. A hand that could be trusted. ‘Take my hand, Rattleneck. Let’s end this.’

Rattleneck’s shoulders slumped. He looked a tired man as he slowly rose. An old man. A man with no fight left in him.

‘All I want is my son,’ he croaked, and he reached out and took Bethod’s hand, and by the dead his grip felt fine. ‘Give me my son, you can have a thousand years of peace, far as I care.’

Bethod walked with a spring in his step and an unfamiliar joy in his heart. As though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and why not? How many enemies made, how much blood spilled, how many times had he beaten impossible odds, just to survive? How long had he been living in fear?

Peace. They had told him he would never have peace.

But it was as his father had always said. Swords are well enough, but the only true victories are won with words. Now he would set to building. Building something to be proud of. Something his father would have been proud of. Something his sons—

And then he saw the Dogman, lurking at the head of the steps with the strangest guilty look on his pointed face, and Bethod felt a horror flood up in him, cold as ice, and freeze all his dreams dead.

‘What are you doing here?’ he managed to whisper.

The Dogman only shook his head, tangle of long hair swaying across his face.

‘Is Ninefingers down there?’

The Dogman’s eyes were wide and wet, and his mouth opened, but he said nothing.

‘I told you not to let him do anything stupid,’ Bethod forced through his gritted teeth.

‘You didn’t tell me how.’

‘You want me to come down there with you?’ But Craw looked far from keen, and Bethod hardly blamed him.

‘Best I go alone,’ he whispered.

Reluctantly as a man digging his own grave, Bethod edged sideways down the steps, one at a time into the buried dark. The tunnel stretched away, torchlight shining on the damp rock at the far end, shadows shifting across the moss-streaked wall as something moved.

He wanted only to run, but he forced himself towards it, step by reluctant step, breath by wheezing breath. He started to hear strange noises over the thudding of his heart. A squelching and a crunching. A humming and a whistling. Growling and grunting and occasionally full-sung phrases, and badly sung at that.

The breath crawled in Bethod’s throat as he forced himself around the corner, and looked through the wide-open door and into the cell, and he went cold from the tips of his toes to the roots of his hair. Cold as the dead.

Ninefingers stood, naked still, lips pursed as he tunelessly whistled, twisted muscles knotting and flexing as he worked, eyes shining with happiness, skin dashed and spattered black from head to toe.

There was something hanging all around the cell, glistening rope in swags and festoons like decorations for some mad festival. Guts, Bethod realised. Guts, unwound and nailed up.

‘By the dead,’ he whispered, putting one hand across his mouth at the stink.

‘That’s got it!’ And Ninefingers buried the big knife in the table and held the head dangling by one ear, blood still trickling from the hacked-off neck and spattering the floor. The head of Rattleneck’s son. He grabbed the slack jaw with his other hand and moved it clumsily up and down while he spoke through his clenched teeth in a piping mockery of a voice.

‘I want to go back to my daddy.’ And Ninefingers laughed. ‘Take me back to Daddy.’ And he chuckled. ‘I’m scared.’ And he sighed, and tossed the head away, and frowned at it as it rolled into the corner.

‘Thought that’d be funnier.’ And he looked around for something to wipe his hands on, blood-slick to the elbows, but couldn’t find anything. ‘You reckon Rattleneck’ll still want him?’