The Collected Joe Abercrombie (209 page)

But the Bloody-Nine cares for nothing.

Rude Awakenings

J
ezal was smiling when he began to wake. They were done with this madcap mission, and soon he would be back in Adua. Back in Ardee’s arms. Warm and safe. He snuggled down into his blankets at the thought. Then he frowned. There was a knocking sound coming from somewhere. He opened his eyes a crack. Someone hissed at him from across the room, and he turned his head.

He saw Terez’ face, pale in the darkness, glaring from between the bed curtains, and the last few weeks came back in a horrible rush. She looked just as she had the day he married her, surely, and yet the perfect face of his queen seemed now ugly and hateful to him.

The royal bedchamber had become a battlefield. The border, watched with iron determination, was an invisible line between door and fireplace which Jezal crossed at his peril. The far side of the room was Styrian territory, and the mighty bed itself was Terez’ strongest citadel, its defences apparently impregnable. On the second night of their marriage, hoping perhaps that there had been some misunderstanding on the first, he had mounted a half-hearted assault which had left him with a bloody nose. Since then he had settled in hopelessly for a long and fruitless siege.

Terez was the very mistress of deception. He would sleep on the floor, or on some item of furniture never quite long enough, or wherever he pleased as long as it was not with her. Then at breakfast she would smile at him, and speak of nothing, sometimes even place her hand fondly on his when she knew they were being watched. Occasionally she would even have him believing that all was now well, but as soon as they were alone she would turn her back on him, and bludgeon him with silence, and stab him with looks of such epic scorn and disgust that he wanted to be sick.

Her ladies-in-waiting behaved towards him with scarcely less contempt whenever he had the misfortune to find himself in their whispering presence. One in particular, the Countess Shalere, apparently his wife’s closest friend since a tender age, eyed him always with a murderous hatred. On one occasion he had blundered into the salon where all dozen of them were sitting arranged around Terez, muttering in Styrian. He had felt like a peasant boy stumbling upon a coven of extremely well-presented witches, chanting some dark curse. Probably one directed towards himself. He was made to feel like the lowest, most repulsive animal alive. And he was a king, in his own palace.

For some reason he lived in inexplicable horror that somebody would realise the truth, but if any of the servants noticed they kept it to themselves. He wondered if he should have told someone, but who? And what? Lord Chamberlain, good day. My wife refuses to fuck me. Your Eminence, well met. My wife will not look at me. High Justice, how are you? The Queen despises me, by the way. Most of all, he feared telling Bayaz. He had warned the Magus away from his personal affairs in no uncertain terms, and could scarcely go crawling for his help now.

And so he went along with the fiction, miserable and confused, and with every day that he pretended at marital bliss it became more and more impossible to see his way clear of it. His whole life stretched away before him – loveless, friendless, and sleeping on the floor.

‘Well?’ hissed Terez.

‘Well what?’ he snarled back.

‘The door!’

As if on cue there was a brutal banging at the door, making it rattle in its frame. ‘Nothing good ever comes from Talins,’ Jezal whispered under his breath, as he flung back his blankets and struggled up from the carpet, stumbled angrily across the room and turned the key in the lock.

Gorst stood in the hallway outside, clad in full armour and with his sword drawn, a lantern held up in one hand, harsh light across one side of his heavy, worried face. From somewhere down the hall came the sound of echoing footsteps, of confused shouting, the flickering of distant lamps. Jezal frowned, suddenly wide awake. He did not like the feel of this.

‘Your Majesty,’ said Gorst.

‘What the hell is going on?’

‘The Gurkish have invaded Midderland.’

Ferro’s eyes snapped open. She sprang up from the settle, her feet planted wide in a fighting stance, the torn-off table leg gripped tight in her fist. She cursed under her breath. She had fallen asleep, and nothing good ever happened when she did that. But there was no one in the room.

All dark and silent.

No sign of the cripple, or his black-masked servants. No sign of the armoured guards who watched her through narrowed eyes whenever she took a step down the tiled halls of this cursed place. Only the slightest chink of light under the panelled door that led through to Bayaz’ room. That and a quiet murmuring of voices. She frowned, and padded over, kneeling silently beside the keyhole.

‘Where have they landed?’ Bayaz’ voice, muffled through the wood.

‘Their first boats came ashore in the grey dusk, on the empty beaches at the southwestern tip of Midderland, near to Keln.’ Yulwei. Ferro felt a tingling thrill, her breath coming fast and cold in her nostrils. ‘Are you prepared?’

Bayaz snorted. ‘We could scarcely be less so. I was not expecting Khalul to move so soon, or so suddenly. They landed in the night, eh? Unannounced. Did Lord Brock not see them come?’

‘My guess is that he saw them all too well, and welcomed them by previous arrangement. No doubt he has been promised the throne of the Union, once the Gurkish have crushed all resistance and hung your bastard from the gates of the Agriont. He will be king – subject to the might of Uthman-ul-Dosht, of course.’

‘Treachery.’

‘Of an unremarkable kind. It should hardly shock such as we, eh, brother? We have seen worse, I think, and done worse too, perhaps.’

‘Some things must be done.’

She heard Yulwei sigh. ‘I never denied it.’

‘How many Gurkish?’

‘They never come in ones and twos. Five legions, perhaps, so far, but they are only the vanguard. Many more are coming. Thousands. The whole South moves to war.’

‘Is Khalul with them?’

‘Why would he be? He stays in Sarkant, in his sunny gardens upon the mountain terraces, and waits for news of your destruction. Mamun leads them. Fruit of the desert, thrice blessed and thrice—’

‘I know the names he calls himself, the arrogant worm!’

‘Whatever he calls himself, he is grown strong, and the Hundred Words are with him. They are here for you, brother. They are come. If I walked in your footsteps I would be away. Away to the cold North, while there is still time.’

‘And then what? Will they not follow me? Should I flee to the edge of the World? I was there, not long ago, and it holds little appeal. I have yet a few cards left to play.’

A long pause. ‘You found the Seed?’

‘No.’

Another pause. ‘I am not sorry. To tinker with those forces . . . to bend the First Law, if not to break it. The last time that thing was used it made a ruin of Aulcus and came near to making a ruin of the whole world. It is better left buried.’

‘Even if our hopes are buried with it?’

‘There are greater things at risk than my hopes, or yours.’

Ferro did not care a shit for Bayaz’ hopes, or Yulwei’s either if it came to that. They had both deceived her. She had swallowed a bellyful of their lies, and their secrets, and their promises. She had done nothing but talk, and wait, and talk again for far too long. She stood up, and lifted her leg, and gave a fighting scream. Her heel caught the lock and tore it from the frame, sent the door shuddering open. The two old men sat at a table nearby, a single lamp throwing light over the dark face, and the pale. A third figure sat in the shadows of the far corner. Quai, silent and sunk in darkness.

‘Could you not have knocked?’ asked Bayaz.

Yulwei’s smile was a bright curve in his dark skin. ‘Ferro! It is good to see you still—’

‘When are the Gurkish coming?’

His grin faded, and he gave a long sigh. ‘I see that you have not learned patience.’

‘I learnt it, then ran out of it. When are they coming?’

‘Soon. Their scouts are already moving through the countryside of Midderland, taking the villages and laying the fortresses under siege, making the country safe for the rest who will come behind.’

‘Someone should stop them,’ muttered Ferro, her nails digging into her palms.

Bayaz sat back in his chair, the shadows collecting in his craggy face. ‘You speak my very thoughts. Your luck has changed, eh, Ferro? I promised you vengeance, and now it drops ripe and bloody into your lap. Uthman’s army has landed. Thousands of Gurkish, and ready for war. They might be at the city gates within two weeks.’

‘Two weeks,’ whispered Ferro.

‘But I have no doubt some Union soldiers will be going out to greet them sooner. I could find you a place with them, if you cannot wait.’

She had waited long enough. Thousands of Gurkish, and ready for war. The smile tugged at one corner of Ferro’s mouth, then grew, and grew, until her cheeks were aching.

PART II

‘Last Argument of Kings’

Inscribed on his cannons by Louis XIV

The Number of the Dead

I
t was quiet in the village. The few houses, built from old stone with roofs of mossy slate, seemed deserted. The only life in the fields beyond, mostly fresh-harvested and ploughed over, were a handful of miserable crows. Next to Ferro the bell in the tower creaked softly. Some loose shutters on a window swung and tapped. A few curled-up leaves fell on a gust of wind and fluttered gently to the empty square. On the horizon three columns of dark smoke rose up just as gently into the heavy sky.

The Gurkish were coming, and they always had loved to burn.

‘Maljinn!’ Major Vallimir was below, framed by the trapdoor, and Ferro scowled down. He reminded her of Jezal dan Luthar when she had first met him. A plump, pale face stuffed with that infuriating mixture of panic and arrogance. It was plain enough that he had never set an ambush for a goat before, let alone for Gurkish scouts. But still he pretended he knew best. ‘Do you see anything?’ he hissed at her, for the fifth time in an hour.

‘I see them coming,’ Ferro growled back.

‘How many?’

‘Still a dozen.’

‘How far off?’

‘Perhaps quarter of an hour’s ride, now, and your asking will not make them come quicker.’

‘When they are in the square, I will give the signal with two claps.’

‘Make sure you do not miss one hand with the other, pink.’

‘I told you not to call me that!’ A brief pause. ‘We must take one of them alive, to question.’

Ferro wrinkled her nose. Her taste did not lean towards taking Gurkish alive. ‘We will see.’

She turned back to the horizon, and soon enough she heard the sound of Vallimir whispering orders to some of his men. The rest were scattered around the other buildings, hiding. An odd crowd of left-over soldiers. A few were veterans, but most of them were even younger and more twitchy than Vallimir himself. Ferro wished, and not for the first time, that they had Ninefingers with them. Like him or not, no one could have denied that the man knew his business. With him, Ferro had known what she would get. Solid experience or, on occasion, murderous fury. Either one would have been useful.

But Ninefingers was not there.

So Ferro stood in the wide window of the bell tower, alone, frowning out across the rolling fields of Midderland, and watched the riders come closer. A dozen Gurkish scouts, trotting in a loose group down a track. Wriggling specks on a pale streak between patchworks of dark earth.

They slowed as they passed the first wood-built barn, spreading out. A great Gurkish host would number soldiers from all across the Empire, fighters from a score of different conquered provinces. These twelve scouts were Kadiris, by their long faces and narrow eyes, their saddle-bags of patterned cloth, lightly armed with bows and spears. Killing them would not be much vengeance, but it would be some. It would fill the space for now. A space that had been empty far too long.

One of them startled as a crow flapped up from a scraggy tree. Ferro held her breath, sure that Vallimir or one of his blundering pinks would choose that moment to trip over one another. But there was only silence as the horsemen eased carefully into the village square, their leader with one hand raised for caution. He looked right up at her, but saw nothing. Arrogant fools. They saw only what they wanted to see. A village from which everyone had fled, crushed with fear of the Emperor’s matchless army. Her fist clenched tight around her bow. They would learn.

She would teach them.

The leader had a square of floppy paper out in his hands, peering at it as though it was a message in a language he did not understand. A map, maybe. One of his men reined his horse in and slid from the saddle, took its bridle and led it towards a mossy trough. Two more sat loose on their mounts, talking and grinning, moving their hands, telling jokes. A fourth cleaned his fingernails with a knife. Another rode slowly round the edge of the square, leaning from his saddle and peering in through the windows of the houses. Looking for something to steal. One of the joke-tellers burst into a deep peal of laughter.