The Collected Joe Abercrombie (220 page)

Crummock pushed himself away from the wall and walked forward, finger bones clicking round his thick neck. ‘No, no, no, not me. I’ve relished our time together, so I have, but everything’s got an end, don’t it. I’ve been away from my mountains for far too long, and my wives’ll be missing me.’ The chief of the hillmen held his arms out wide, took a step forward, and hugged Logen tight. A little too tight for comfort, if he was being honest.

‘They can have a king if they want one,’ whispered Crummock in his ear, ‘but I can’t say I do. Especially not the man who killed my son, eh?’ Logen felt himself go cold, from the roots of his hair to the tips of his fingers. ‘What did you think? That I wouldn’t know?’ The hillman leaned back to look Logen in the eye. ‘You slaughtered him before the whole world, now, didn’t you? You butchered little Rond like a sheep for the pot, and him just as helpless as one.’

They were alone in that wide hall, just the two of them, and the shadows, and Skarling’s chair. Logen winced as Crummock’s arms squeezed tighter, round the bruises and the wounds the Feared’s arms had left him. Logen hadn’t the strength left now to fight a cat, and they both knew it. The hillman could’ve crushed him flat, and finished the job the Feared had started. But he only smiled.

‘Don’t you worry, now, Bloody-Nine. I’ve got what I wanted, haven’t I? Bethod’s dead and gone, and his Feared, and his witch, and his whole bastard notion of clans united, all back to the mud where they belong. With you in charge, I daresay it’ll be a hundred years before folk in the North stop killing each other. Meantime maybe we up in the hills can have some peace, eh?’

‘Course you can,’ croaked Logen, through his gritted teeth, grimacing as Crummock pressed him even tighter.

‘You killed my son, that’s true, but I’ve got plenty more. You have to weed the weak ones out, don’t you know? The weak and the unlucky. You don’t put a wolf amongst your sheep then cry when you find one eaten, do you?’

Logen could only stare. ‘You really are mad.’

‘Maybe I am, but there’s worse than me out there.’ He leaned close again, soft breath in Logen’s ear. ‘I’m not the one killed the boy, am I?’ He let Logen free, and he slapped him on the shoulder. The way a friend might, but there was no friendship in it. ‘Don’t ever come up in the High Places again, Ninefingers, that’s my advice. I might not be able to give you another friendly reception.’ He turned and walked away, slowly, waving one fat finger over his shoulder. ‘Don’t come up in the High Places again, Bloody-Nine! You’re beloved o’ the moon just a little too much for my taste!’

Leadership

J
ezal clattered through the cobbled streets astride a magnificent grey, Bayaz and Marshal Varuz just behind him, a score of Knights of the Body, led by Bremer dan Gorst, following in full war gear. It was strangely unsettling to see the city, usually so brimful with humanity, close to deserted. Only a scattering of threadbare urchins, of nervous city watchmen, of suspicious commoners remained to hurry out of the way of the royal party as they passed. Most of those citizens who had stayed in Adua were well barricaded in their bedrooms, Jezal imagined. He would have been tempted to do the same, had Queen Terez not beaten him to it.

‘When did they arrive?’ Bayaz was demanding over the clatter of hooves.

‘The vanguard appeared before dawn,’ Jezal heard Varuz shout back. ‘And more Gurkish troops have been pouring in down the Keln road all morning. There were a few skirmishes in the districts beyond Casamir’s Wall, but nothing to slow them significantly. They are already halfway to encircling the city.’

Jezal jerked his head round. ‘Already?’

‘The Gurkish always liked to come prepared, your Majesty.’ The old soldier urged his horse up beside him. ‘They have started to construct a palisade around Adua, and have brought three great catapults with them. The same ones that proved so effective in their siege of Dagoska. By noon we will be entirely surrounded.’ Jezal swallowed. There was something about the word ‘surrounded’ that caused an uncomfortable tightening in his throat.

The column slowed to a stately walk as they approached the city’s westernmost gate. It was, in an irony that gave Jezal little pleasure, the very same gate through which he had entered the city in triumph before he was crowned High King of the Union. A crowd had gathered in the shadow of Casamir’s Wall, larger even than the one that had greeted him after his strange victory over the peasants. Today, however, there was hardly a mood of celebration. Smiling girls had been replaced by frowning men, fresh flowers with old weapons. Polearms stuck up above the press at all angles in an unruly forest, points and edges glinting. Pikes and pitch forks, bill hooks and boat hooks, brooms with the twigs removed and knives nailed in their places.

There was a smattering of King’s Own padded out by some squinting members of the city watch, a few puffed-up tradesmen with leather jerkins and polished swords, some slouching labourers with antique flatbows and tough expressions. These were the very best of what was on offer. They were accompanied by a random assortment of citizens of both sexes and all ages, equipped with a bewildering range of mismatched armour and weapons. Or nothing at all. It was difficult to tell who was supposed to be a soldier and who a citizen, if, indeed, there was still a difference. Every one of them was looking at Jezal as he smartly dismounted, his golden spurs jingling. Looking to him, he realised, as he began to walk out among them, his well-armoured bodyguard clanking behind.

‘These are the defenders of this borough?’ murmured Jezal to Lord Marshal Varuz, following at his shoulder.

‘Some of them, your Majesty. Accompanied by some enthusiastic townsfolk. A touching spectacle.’

Jezal would happily have traded a touching crowd for an effective one, but he supposed a leader had always to appear indomitable before his followers. Bayaz had told him so often. How doubly, how triply true of a king before his subjects? Especially a king whose grip on his recently won crown might be thought of as slippery at best.

So he stood tall, pointed his scarred chin as high as he dared, flicked out his gilt-edged cloak with one gauntleted hand. He strode through the crowd with the confident swagger he had always used to have, one hand resting on the jewelled pommel of his sword, hoping with every step that no one caught an inkling of the cauldron of fear and doubt behind his eyes. The crowd muttered as he swept past, Varuz and Bayaz hurrying behind. Some made attempts at bows, others did not bother.

‘The king!’

‘I thought he’d be taller . . .’

‘Jezal the Bastard.’ Jezal snapped his head round, but there was no way of telling who spoke.

‘That’s Luthar!’

‘A cheer for ’is Majesty!’ Followed by a half-hearted murmur.

‘This way,’ said a pale-looking officer before the gate, indicating a staircase with one apologetic hand. Jezal climbed manfully, two stone steps at a time, spurs jingling. He came out onto the roof of the gatehouse and froze, his lip curling with distaste. Who should be standing there but his old friend Superior Glokta, bent over on his cane, his repulsive toothless smile on his face?

‘Your Majesty,’ he leered, voice heavy with irony. ‘What an almost overwhelming honour.’ He lifted his cane to point towards the far parapet. ‘The Gurkish are that way.’

Jezal was attempting to frame a suitably acidic reply as his eyes followed Glokta’s stick. He blinked, the muscles of his face going slack. He stepped past the cripple without saying a word. His scarred jaw crept gradually open, and stayed there.

‘The enemy,’ growled Varuz. Jezal tried to imagine what Logen Ninefingers would have said faced with the sight below him now.

‘Shit.’

In the patchwork of damp fields, over the roads and through the hedgerows, between the farms and villages and the few coppices of old trees beyond the city walls, Gurkish troops swarmed in their thousands. The wide paved road towards Keln, curving away southwards through the flat farmland, was a single crawling, glittering, heaving river of marching men. Gurkish soldiers, in column, flooding up and flowing smoothly out to encircle the city in a giant ring of men, wood, and steel. Tall standards stood out above the boiling throng, golden symbols flashing in the watery autumn sunlight. The standards of the Emperor’s legions. Jezal counted ten at his first glance.

‘A considerable body of men,’ said Bayaz, with awesome understatement.

Glokta grinned. ‘The Gurkish hate to travel alone.’

The fence that Marshal Varuz had referred to earlier was already rising, a dark line winding through the muddy fields a few hundred strides from the walls, a shallow ditch in front of it. More than adequate to prevent supplies or reinforcements reaching the city from outside. Further away several camps were taking shape: vast bodies of white tents erected in neatly ordered squares, several with tall columns of dark smoke already floating up into the white sky from cook-fires and forges. There was a deeply worrying feeling of permanence about the whole arrangement. Adua might still have been in Union hands, but even the most patriotic liar could not have denied that the city’s hinterland already belonged firmly to the Emperor of Gurkhul.

‘You have to admire their organisation,’ said Varuz grimly.

‘Yes . . . their organisation . . .’ Jezal’s voice was suddenly creaky as old floorboards. Putting a brave face on this seemed more like insanity than courage.

A dozen horsemen had detached themselves from the Gurkish lines and now rode forward at a steady trot. Two long flags streamed above their heads, red and yellow silk, worked with Kantic characters in golden thread. There was a white flag too, so small as to be barely noticeable.

‘Parleys,’ growled the First of the Magi, slowly shaking his head. ‘What are they but an excuse for old fools who love to hear their own voices to prattle about fair treatment before they start on the butchery?’

‘I suppose on the subject of old fools who love to hear their own voices, you are the absolute expert.’ That was what Jezal thought but he kept it to himself, watching the Gurkish party approach in brooding silence. A tall man came at their head, gold shining on his sharply pointed helmet and his polished armour, riding with that upright arrogance that shouts, even from a distance, of high command.

Marshal Varuz frowned. ‘General Malzagurt.’

‘You know him?’

‘He commanded the Emperor’s forces, during the last war. We grappled with each other for months. We parleyed more than once. A most cunning opponent.’

‘You got the better of him though, eh?’

‘In the end, your Majesty.’ Varuz looked far from happy. ‘But I had an army then.’

The Gurkish commander clattered up the road, through the jumble of deserted buildings scattered beyond Casamir’s wall. He reined in his horse before the gate, staring proudly upwards, one hand resting casually on his hip.

‘I am General Malzagurt,’ he called in a sharp Kantic accent, ‘the chosen representative of his magnificence, Uthman-ul-Dosht, Emperor of Gurkhul.’

‘I am King Jezal the First.’

‘Of course. The bastard.’

It was pointless to deny it. ‘That’s right. The bastard. Why don’t you come in, General? Then we can speak face to face, like civilised men.’

Malzagurt’s eyes flickered across to Glokta. ‘Forgive me, but the response of your government to unarmed emissaries of the Emperor has not always been . . . civilised. I think I will remain outside the walls. For now.’

‘As you wish. I believe you are already acquainted with Lord Marshal Varuz?’

‘Of course. It seems an age since we tussled in the dry wastelands. I would say that I have missed you . . . but I have not. How are you, my old friend, my old enemy?’

‘Well enough,’ grunted Varuz.

Malzagurt gestured towards the vast array of manpower deploying behind him. ‘Under the circumstances, eh? I do not know your other—’

‘He is Bayaz. First of the Magi.’ A smooth, even voice. It came from one of Malzagurt’s companions. A man dressed all in simple white, somewhat in the manner of a priest. He seemed hardly older than Jezal, and very handsome, with a dark face, perfectly smooth. He wore no armour, carried no weapon. There was no adornment on his clothes or his simple saddle. And yet the others in the party, even Malzagurt himself, seemed to look at him with great respect. With fear, almost.

‘Ah.’ The General peered up, stroking thoughtfully at his short grey beard. ‘So this is Bayaz.’

The young man nodded. ‘This is he. It has been a long time.’

‘Not long enough, Mamun, you damned snake!’ Bayaz clung to the parapet, teeth bared. The old Magus was so good at playing the kindly uncle that Jezal had forgotten how terrifying his sudden fury could be. He took a shocked step away, half raising a hand to shield his face. The Gurkish aides and flag-carriers cringed, one going so far as to be noisily sick. Even Malzagurt lost a sizeable chunk of his heroic bearing.

But Mamun gazed up just as levelly as before. ‘Some among my brothers thought that you would run, but I knew better. Khalul always said your pride would be the end of you, and here is the proof. It seems strange to me, now, that I once thought you a great man. You look old, Bayaz. You have dwindled.’

‘Things seem smaller when they are far above you!’ growled the First of the Magi. He ground the toe of his staff into the stones under his feet, his voice carrying now a terrible menace. ‘Come closer, Eater, and you can judge my weakness while you burn!’