The Collected Joe Abercrombie (495 page)

‘Savages,’ he whispered, wrinkling his nose at the smell of their fires, of their burned food, of their unwashed bodies. No sign of the men, though, no doubt all deep in drunken sleep, unready in their arrogance, shutters and doors all fastened tight, light spilling from cracks and out into the blue dawn.

‘You damned fool!’ Uto slipped up, breathing hard from the run, breath puffing before her face. But Scarlaer’s blood was up too hot to worry at her carping. ‘Wait!’ This time he dodged her hand and was across the street and into the shadow of another shack. He glanced over his shoulder, saw Uto beckoning and the others following, spreading out through the camp, silent shadows.

Scarlaer smiled, hot all over with excitement. How they would make these Outsiders pay.

‘This is no game!’ snarled Uto, and he only smiled again, rushed on towards the iron-bound door of the largest building, feeling the folk behind him in a rustling group, strong in numbers and strong in resolve—

The door opened and Scarlaer was left frozen for a moment in the lamplight that spilled forth.

‘Morning!’ A wispy-haired old man leaned against the frame in a bedraggled fur with a gilded breastplate spotted with rust showing beneath. He had a sword at his side, but in his hand only a bottle. He raised it now to them, spirit sloshing inside. ‘Welcome to Beacon!’

Scarlaer lifted his blade and opened his mouth to make a fighting scream, and there was a flash at the top of the tower, a pop in his ears and he was shoved hard in the chest and found himself on his back.

He groaned but could not hear it. He sat up, head buzzing, and stared into oily smoke.

Isarult helped with the cooking at the slab and smiled at him when he brought the kill home blooded, and sometimes, if he was in a generous mood, he smiled back. She had been ripped apart. He could tell it was her corpse by the shield on her arm but her head was gone, and the other arm, and one leg so that it hardly looked like it could ever have been a person but just lumps of stuff, the snow all around specked, spattered, scattered with blood and hair and splinters of wood and metal, other friends and lovers and rivals flung about and torn and smouldering.

Tofric, who was known to be the best skinner anywhere, staggered two stiff-legged steps and dropped to his knees. A dozen wounds in him turned dark the furs he wore and one under his eye dripped a black line. He stared, not looking pained, but sad and puzzled at the way the world had changed so suddenly, all quiet, all in silence, and Scarlaer wondered,
What sorcery is this?

Uto lay next to him. He put a hand under her head and lifted it. She shuddered, twitched, teeth rattling, red foam on her lips. She tried to pass the blessed pouch to him but it was ripped open and the sacred dust of Ashranc spilled across the bloodied snow.

‘Uto? Uto?’ He could not hear his own voice.

He saw friends running down the street to their aid, Canto in the lead, a brave man and the best to have beside you in a fix. He thought how foolish he had been. How lucky he was to have such friends. Then as they passed one of the barrows smoke burst from its mouth and Canto was flung away and over the roof of the shack beside. Others tumbled sideways, spun about, reeled blinking in the fog or strained as if into a wind, hands over their faces.

Scarlaer saw shutters open, the glint of metal. Arrows flitted silently across the street, lodged in wooden walls, dropped harmlessly in snow, found tottering targets, brought them to their knees, on their faces, clutching, calling, silently screaming.

He struggled to his feet, the camp tipping wildly. The old man still stood in the doorway, pointing with the bottle, saying something. Scarlaer raised his sword but it felt light, and when he looked at his hand his bloody palm was empty. He tried to search for it and saw there was a short arrow in his leg. It did not hurt, but it came upon him like a shock of cold water that he might fail. And then that he might die. And suddenly there was a fear upon him like a weight.

He tottered for the nearest wall, saw an arrow flicker past and into the snow. He laboured on, chest shuddering, floundering up the slope. He snatched a look over his shoulder. The camp was shrouded in smoke as the Gathering was in the Seeing Steam, giant shadows moving inside. Some of his people were running for the trees, stumbling, falling, desperate. Then shapes came from the whirling fog like great devils – men and horses fused into one awful whole. Scarlaer had heard tales of this obscene union and laughed at its foolishness but now he saw them and was struck with horror. Spears and swords flashed, armour glittered, towering over the runners, cutting them down.

Scarlaer struggled on but his arrow-stuck leg would hardly move, a trail of blood following him up the slope and a horse-man following that, his hooves mashing the snow, a blade in his hand.

Scarlaer should have turned and shown his defiance, at least, proud hunter of the Dragon People that he was. Where had his courage gone? Once there had seemed no end to it. Now there was only the need to run, as desperate as a drowning man’s need to breathe. He did not hear the rider behind him but he felt the jarring blow across his back and the snow cold, cold on his face as he fell.

Hooves thumped about him, circling him, showering him with white dust. He fought to get up but he could get no further than his hands and knees, trembling with that much effort. His back would not straighten, agony, all burning, and he whimpered and raged and was helpless, his tears melting tiny holes in the snow beneath his face, and someone seized him by the hair.

Brachio put his knee in the lad’s back and forced him down into the snow, pulled a knife out and, taking care not to make a mess of it, which was something of a challenge with the lad still struggling and gurgling, cut his ears off. Then he wiped the knife in the snow and slipped it back into his bandolier, reflecting that a bandolier of knives was a damn useful thing to have in his business and wondering afresh why it hadn’t caught on more widely. Might be the lad was alive when Brachio winced and grunted his bulk back up into his saddle, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Not with that sword-cut in him.

Brachio chuckled over his trophies and, riding down to the camp, thought they’d be the perfect things to scare his daughters with when Cosca had made him rich and he finally came home to Puranti. Genuine Ghost ears, how about that? He imagined the laughter as he chased them around the parlour, though in his imaginings they were little girls still, and it made him sad to think they would be nearly women grown when he saw them again.

‘Where does the time go?’ he muttered to himself.

Sworbreck was standing at the edge of the camp, staring, mouth open as the horsemen chased the last few savages up into the woods. He was a funny little fellow but Brachio had warmed to him.

‘You’re a man of learning,’ he called as he rode up, holding high the ears. ‘What do you think I should do? Dry them? Pickle them?’ Sworbreck did not answer, only stood there looking decidedly bilious. Brachio swung down from his saddle. There was riding to do but damn it if he’d be hurrying anywhere, he was out of breath already. No one was as young as they used to be, he supposed. ‘Cheer up,’ he said. ‘We won, didn’t we?’ And he clapped the writer on his scrawny back.

Sworbreck stumbled, put out a hand to steady himself, felt a warmth, and realised he had sunk his fingers into a savage’s steaming guts, separated by some distance from the ruined body.

Cosca took another deep swallow from his bottle – if Sworbreck had read in print the quantity of spirits the Old Man was currently drinking each day he would have cursed it for an outrageous lie – and rolled the corpse over with his boot, then, wrinkling his pinked nose, wiped the boot on the side of the nearest shed.

‘I have fought Northmen, Imperials, Union men, Gurkish, every variety of Styrian and plenty more whose origin I never got to the bottom of.’ Cosca gave a sigh. ‘And I am forced to consider the Dragon Person vastly overrated as an opponent. You may quote me on that.’ Sworbreck only just managed to swallow another rush of nausea while the Old Man burbled on. ‘But then courage can often be made to work against a man in a carefully laid ambuscade. Bravery, as Verturio had it, is the dead man’s virtue— Ah. You are . . . discomfited. Sometimes I forget that not everyone is familiar with such scenes as this. But you came to witness battle, did you not? Battle is . . . not always glorious. A general must be a realist. Victory first, you understand?’

‘Of course,’ Sworbreck found he had mumbled. He had reached the point of agreeing with Cosca on instinct, however foul, ridiculous or outrageous his utterances. He wondered if he had ever come close to hating anyone as much as he did the old mercenary. Or relying on anyone so totally for everything. No doubt the two were not unrelated. ‘Victory first.’

‘The losers are always the villains, Sworbreck. Only winners can be heroes.’

‘You are absolutely right, of course. Only winners.’

‘The one good way to fight is that which kills your enemy and leaves you with the breath to laugh . . .’

Sworbreck had come to see the face of heroism and instead he had seen evil. Seen it, spoken with it, been pressed up against it. Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods.

He watched Inquisitor Lorsen move eagerly among the bodies, turning them to see their faces, waving away the thinning, stinking smoke, tugging up sleeves in search of tattoos. ‘I see no sign of rebels!’ he rasped at Cosca. ‘Only these savages!’

The Old Man managed to disengage lips from bottle for long enough to shout back, ‘In the mountains, our friend Cantliss told us! In their so-called sacred places! In this town they call Ashranc! We will begin the pursuit right away!’

Sweet looked up from the bodies to nod. ‘Crying Rock and the rest’ll be waiting for us.’

‘Then it would be rude to delay! Particularly with the enemy so denuded. How many did we kill, Friendly?’

The sergeant wagged his thick index finger as he attempted to number the dead. ‘Hard to say which pieces go with which.’

‘Impossible. We can at least tell Superior Pike that his new weapon is a great success. The results scarcely compare to when I blew up that mine beneath the fortress of Fontezarmo but then neither does the effort involved, eh? It employs explosive powders, Sworbreck, to propel a hollow ball which shatters upon detonation sending splinters— boom!’ And Cosca demonstrated with an outward thrusting of both hands. An entirely unnecessary demonstration, since the proof of its effectiveness was distributed across the street in all directions, bloody and raw and in several cases barely recognisable as human.

‘So this is what success looks like,’ Sworbreck heard Temple murmur. ‘I have often wondered.’

The lawyer saw it. The way he took in the charnel-house scene with his black eyes wide and his jaw set tight and his mouth slightly twisted. It was some small comfort to know there was one man in this gang who, in better company, might have approached decency, but he was just as helpless as Sworbreck. All they could do was watch and, by doing nothing more, participate. But how could it be stopped? Sworbreck cowered as a horse thundered past, showering him with gory snow. He was one man, and that one no fighter. His pen was his only weapon and, however highly the scribes might rate its power, it was no match for axe and armour in a duel. If he had learned nothing else the past few months, he had learned that.

‘Dimbik!’ shrieked Cosca, and took another swig from his bottle. He had abandoned the flask as inadequate to his needs and would no doubt soon graduate to sucking straight from the cask. ‘Dimbik? There you are! I want you to lead off, root out any of these creatures left in the woods. Brachio, get your men ready to ride! Master Sweet will show us the way! Jubair and the others are waiting to open the gates! There’s gold to be had, boys, and no time to waste! And rebels!’ he added hastily. ‘Rebels, too, of course. Temple, with me, I want to be certain on the terms of the contract as regard plunder. Sworbreck, it might be better if you were to remain here. If you haven’t the stomach for this, well . . .’

‘Of course,’ said Sworbreck. He felt so very tired. So very far from home. Adua, and his neat office with the clean walls and the new Rimaldi printing press of which he had been so particularly proud. All so far away, across an immeasurable gulf in time and space and thinking. A place where straightening the collar seemed important and a bad review was a disaster. How could such a fantastical realm occupy the same world as this slaughter-yard? He stared at his hands: calloused, blood-daubed, dirt-scraped. Could they be the same ones that had so carefully set the type, inky at the fingertips? Could they ever do so again?

He let them drop, too tired to ride let alone write. People do not realise the crushing effort of creation. The pain of dragging the words from a tortured mind. Who read books out here, anyway? Perhaps he would lie down. He began to shamble for the fort.

‘Take care of yourself, author,’ said Temple, looking grimly down from horseback.

‘You too, lawyer,’ said Sworbreck, and patted him on the leg as he passed.