The Collected Joe Abercrombie (426 page)

And there was Brock. He did not seem badly injured at a first glance. His face was streaked with blood, but not smashed to pulp as Gorst might have hoped. One leg was folded underneath him at an unnatural angle, but his limbs were all attached.

Gorst bent over him, placed a hand over his mouth. Breath.
Still alive.
He felt a surge of disappointment so strong that his knees nearly buckled, closely followed by a sobering rage.
Cheated. Gorst, the king’s squeaking clown, why should he have what he wants? What he needs? What he deserves? Dangle it in his fat face and laugh! Cheated. Just as I was in Sipani. Just as I was at the Heroes. Just as I always am.

Gorst raised one brow, and he blew out a long, soft breath, and he shifted his hand down, down to Brock’s neck. He slid his thumb and his middle finger around it, feeling out the narrowest point, then gently, firmly squeezed.

What’s the difference? Fill a hundred pits with dead Northmen, congratulations, have a parade! Kill one man in the same uniform as you? A crime. A murder. Worse than despicable. Are we not all men? All blood and bone and dreams?

He squeezed a little harder, impatient to be done. Brock did not complain. Did not so much as twitch. He was so nearly dead anyway.
Nothing more than nudging fate in the right direction.

So much easier than all the others. No steel and screams and mess, just a little pressure and a little time. So much more point than all the others. They had nothing I needed, they simply faced the other way. I should be ashamed of their deaths. But this? This is justice. This is righteous. This is—

‘Have you found anything?’

Gorst’s hand sprang open and he shifted it slightly so two fingers were pressed up under Brock’s jaw, as if feeling for a pulse. ‘He’s alive,’ he croaked.

Finree leaned down beside him, touched Brock’s face with a trembling hand, the other pressed to her mouth, gave a gasp of relief that might as well have been a dagger in Gorst’s face. He slid one arm under Brock’s knees, the other under his back, and scooped him up.
I have failed even at killing a man. It seems my only choice is to save him.

A surgeon’s tent stood near the south gate, canvas turned muddy grey by the falling ash. Wounded waited outside for attention, clutching at assorted injuries, moaning, or whimpering, or silent, eyes empty. Gorst stomped through them and up to the tent.
We can jump the queue, because
I
am the king’s observer, and she is the marshal’s daughter, and the wounded man is a colonel of the most noble blood, and so it is only fitting that any number of the rank and file can die before bastards like us are inconvenienced.

Gorst pushed through the flap and set Brock down ever so gently on a stained table, and a tight-faced surgeon listened at his chest and proclaimed him alive.
And all my silly, pretty little hopes strangled. Again.
Gorst stepped back as the assistants crowded in, Finree bending over her husband, holding his sooty hand, looking eagerly down into his face, her eyes shining with hope, and fear, and love.

Gorst watched.
If it was me dying on that table, would anyone care? They would shrug and tip me out with the slops. And why shouldn’t they? It would be better than I deserve.
He left them to it, trudged outside and stood there, frowning at the wounded, he did not know how long for.

‘They say he is not too badly hurt.’

He turned to look at her. Forcing the smile onto his face was harder work than climbing the Heroes had been. ‘I am … so glad.’

‘They say it is amazing luck.’

‘Too true.’

They stood there in silence a moment longer. ‘I don’t know how I can ever repay you …’

Easy. Abandon that pretty fool and be mine. That’s all I want. That one little thing. Just kiss me, and hold me, and give yourself to me, utterly and completely. That’s all.
‘It’s nothing,’ he whispered.

But she had already turned and hurried into the tent, leaving him alone. He stood for a moment as the ash gently fluttered down, settled across the ground, settled across his shoulders. Beside him a boy lay on a stretcher. On the way to the tent, or while waiting for the surgeon, he had died.

Gorst frowned down at the body.
He is dead and I, self-serving coward that I am, still live.
He sucked in air through his sore nose, blew it out through his sore mouth.
Life is not fair. There is no pattern. People die at random.
Obvious, perhaps. Something that everyone knows.
Something that everyone knows, but no one truly believes. They think when it comes to them there will be a lesson, a meaning, a story worth telling. That death will come to them as a dread scholar, a fell knight, a terrible emperor.
He poked at the boy’s corpse with a toe, rolled it onto its side, then let it flop back.
Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit.

He stepped over the corpse and walked back towards Osrung, past the shambling grey ghosts that clogged the road. He was no more than a dozen steps inside the gate when he heard a voice calling to him.

‘Over here! Help!’ Gorst saw an arm sticking from a heap of charred rubbish. Saw a desperate, ash-smeared face. He clambered carefully up, undid the buckle under the man’s chin, removed his helmet and tossed it away. The lower half of his body was trapped under a splintered beam. Gorst took one end, heaved it up and swung it away, lifted the soldier as gently as a father might a sleeping child and carried him back towards the gate.

‘Thank you,’ he croaked, one hand pawing at Gorst’s soot-stained jacket. ‘You’re a hero.’

Gorst said nothing.
But if only you knew, my friend. If only you knew.

Desperate Measures

T
ime to celebrate.

No doubt the Union would have their own way of looking at it, but Black Dow was calling this a victory and his Carls were minded to agree. So they’d dug new fire-pits, and cracked the kegs, and poured the beer, and every man was looking forward to a double gild, and most of ’em to heading home to plough their fields, or their wives, or both.

They chanted, laughed, staggered about in the gathering darkness, tripping through fires and sending sparks showering, drunker’n shit. All feeling twice as alive for facing death and coming through. They sang old songs, and made up new ones with the names of today’s heroes where yesterday’s used to be. Black Dow, and Caul Reachey, and Ironhead and Tenways and Golden raised up on high while the Bloody-Nine, and Bethod, and Threetrees and Littlebone and even Skarling Hoodless sank into the past like the sun sinking in the west, the midday glory of their deeds dimming just to washed-out memories, a last flare among the stringy clouds before night swallowed ’em. You didn’t hear much about Whirrun of Bligh even. About Shama Heartless, not a peep. Names turned over by time, like the plough turning the soil. Bringing up the new while the old were buried in the mud.

‘Beck.’ Craw lowered himself stiffly down beside the fire, a wooden ale cup in one hand, and gave Beck’s knee an encouraging pat.

‘Chief. How’s your head?’

The old warrior touched a finger to the fresh stitches above his ear. ‘Sore. But I’ve had worse. Very nearly had a lot worse today, in fact, as you might’ve noticed. Scorry told me you saved my life. Most folk wouldn’t place a high value on that particular article but I must admit I’m quite attached to it. So. Thanks, I guess. A lot of thanks.’

‘Just trying to do the right thing. Like you said.’

‘By the dead. Someone was listening. Drink?’ And Craw offered out his wooden mug.

‘Aye.’ Beck took it and a good swallow too. Taste of beer, sour on his tongue.

‘You did good today. Bloody good, far as I’m concerned. Scorry told me it was you put that big bastard down. The one who killed Drofd.’

‘Did I kill him?’

‘No. He’s alive.’

‘Didn’t kill no one today, then.’ Beck wasn’t sure whether he should be disappointed by that or glad. He wasn’t up to feeling much about anything either way. ‘I killed a man yesterday,’ he found he’d said.

‘Flood said you killed four.’

Beck licked his lips. Trying to lick away the sour taste, but it was going nowhere. ‘Flood got it wrong and I was too much the coward to put him right. Lad called Reft killed those men.’ He took another swallow, too fast, made his voice spill out breathless. ‘I hid in a cupboard while they were fighting. Hid in a cupboard and pissed my pants. There’s Red Beck for you.’

‘Huh.’ Craw nodded, his lips pressed thoughtfully together. He didn’t seem all that bothered. He didn’t seem all that surprised. ‘Well, it don’t change what you did today. There’s far worse a man can do in a battle than hide in a cupboard.’

‘I know,’ muttered Beck, and his mouth hung open, ready to let it spill. It was like his body needed to say it, to spit out the rot like a sick man might need to puke. His mouth had to do it, however much he might want to keep it hid. ‘I need to tell you something, Chief,’ his dried-out tongue wrestling with the words.

‘I’m listening,’ said Craw.

He cast about for the best way to put it, like the sick man casting about for the best thing to spew into. As though there were words pretty enough to make it less ugly. ‘The thing is—’

‘Bastard!’ someone shouted, knocked Beck so bad he spilled the dregs of the cup into the fire.

‘Oy!’ growled Craw, wincing as he got up, but whoever it was had already gone. There was a current through the crowd, of a sudden. A new mood, angry, jeering at someone being dragged through their midst. Craw followed on and Beck followed him, more relieved than upset at the distraction, like the sick man realising he don’t have to puke into his wife’s hat after all.

They shouldered through the crowd to the biggest fire-pit, in the centre of the Heroes, where the biggest men were. Black Dow sat in the midst of ’em in Skarling’s Chair, one dangling hand twisting the pommel of his sword round and round. Shivers was there, on the far side of the fire, pushing someone down onto his knees.

‘Shit,’ muttered Craw.

‘Well, well, well.’ And Dow licked his teeth and sat back, grinning. ‘If it ain’t Prince Calder.’

*

Calder tried to look as comfortable as he could on his knees with his hands tied and Shivers looming over him. Which wasn’t all that comfortable. ‘The invitation was hard to refuse,’ he said.

‘I’ll bet,’ answered Dow. ‘Can you guess why I made it?’

Calder took a look around the gathering. All the great men of the North were there. All the bloated fools. Glama Golden, sneering over from the far side of the fire. Cairm Ironhead, watching, one brow raised. Brodd Tenways, a bit less scornful than usual, but a long way from friendly. Caul Reachey, with a ‘my hands are tied’ sort of a wince, and Curnden Craw, with a ‘why didn’t you run?’ sort of a one. Calder gave the pair of them a sheepish nod. ‘I’ve an inkling.’

‘For anyone who hasn’t an inkling, Calder here tried to prevail on my new Second to kill me.’ Some muttering ran through the firelit crowd, but not that much. No one was overly surprised. ‘Ain’t that right, Craw?’

Craw looked at the ground. ‘That’s right.’

‘You going to deny it, even?’ asked Dow.

‘If I did, could we forget the whole thing?’

Dow grinned. ‘Still joking. I like that. Not that the faithlessness surprises me, you’re known for a schemer. The stupidity does, though. Curnden Craw’s a straight edge, everyone knows that.’ Craw winced even harder, and looked away. ‘Stabbing men in the back ain’t his style.’

‘I’ll admit it wasn’t my brightest moment,’ said Calder. ‘How about we notch it up to youthful folly and let it slide?’

‘Don’t see how I can. You’ve pushed my patience too far, and it’s got a spike on the end. Haven’t I treated you like a son?’ A few chuckles ran along both sides of the fire-pit. ‘I mean, not a favourite son. Not a firstborn or nothing. A runty one, down near the end o’ the litter, but still. Didn’t I let you take charge when your brother died, though you haven’t the experience or the name for it? Didn’t I let you have your say around the fire? And when you said too much didn’t I clear you off to Carleon with your wife to cool your head rather than just cut your head off and worry later on the details? Your father weren’t so forgiving to those who disagreed with him, as I recall.’

‘True,’ said Calder. ‘You’ve been generosity itself. Oh. Apart from trying to kill me, of course.’

Dow’s forehead wrinkled. ‘Eh?’

‘Four nights past, at Caul Reachey’s weapontake? Bringing anything back? No? Three men tried to murder me, and when I put one to the question he dropped Brodd Tenways’ name. And everyone knows Brodd Tenways wouldn’t do a thing without your say-so. You denying it?’

‘I am, in fact.’ Dow looked over at Tenways and he gave a little shake of his rashy head. ‘And Tenways too. Might be he’s lying, and has his own reasons, but I can tell you one thing for a fact – any man here can tell I had no part in it.’