The Collected Joe Abercrombie (51 page)

‘Fuck your questions!’

Threetrees hit him on the side of his head, hard, where he couldn’t see it coming. When he turned round to look, Dow cracked him on the other side. Back and forth his head went, till he was soft enough to talk.

‘What’s the fight?’ asked Threetrees.

‘We ain’t fighting!’ spat the Mire through his broken teeth. ‘You might as well be dead, you bastards! You don’t know what’s happened, do yer?’ Dogman frowned. He didn’t like the sound of this. Sounded like things had changed while they were gone, and he’d never yet seen a change for the better.

‘I’ll do the questions here,’ said Threetrees. ‘You just keep your tiny mind on the answers to ’em. Who’s still fighting? Who won’t kneel to Bethod?’

The Mire laughed, even tied up like he was. ‘There’s no one left! The fighting’s over! Bethod’s King now. King of all the North! Everyone kneels to him—’

‘Not us,’ rumbled Tul Duru, leaning down. ‘What about Old Man Yawl?’

‘Dead!’

‘What about Sything, or Rattleneck?’

‘Dead and dead, you stupid fucks! The only fighting now’s down south! Bethod’s gone to war with the Union! Aye! And we’re giving ’em a beating too!’

The Dogman wasn’t sure whether to believe it. King? There’d never been a king in the North before. There’d never been a need for one, and Bethod was the last one he’d have chosen. And making war on the Union? That was a fool’s errand, surely. There were always more southerners.

‘If there’s no fighting here,’ asked the Dogman, ‘what you killing for?’

‘Fuck yourself!’

Tul slapped him in the face, hard, and he fell on his back. Dow put in a kick of his own, then dragged him up straight again.

‘What did you kill ’em for?’ asked Tul.

‘Taxes!’ shouted the Mire, with blood trickling out of his nose.

‘Taxes?’ asked the Dogman. A strange word alright, he barely knew the meaning of it.

‘They wouldn’t pay!’

‘Taxes for who?’ asked Dow.

‘For Bethod, who do you think? He took all this land, broke the clans up and took it for his own! The people owe him! And we collect!’

‘Taxes, eh? That’s a fucking southern fashion and no mistake!

And if they can’t pay?’ asked Dogman, feeling sick to his guts. ‘You hang ’em, do you?’

‘If they won’t pay we can do as we please with ’em!’

‘As you please?’ Tul grabbed him round the neck, squeezing with his great big hand ’til the Mire’s eyes were half popping out. ‘As you please? Does it please you to hang ’em?’

‘Alright, Thunderhead,’ said Dow, peeling Tul’s big fingers away, and pushing him gently back. ‘Alright, big lad, this ain’t for you, to kill a man tied up.’ And he patted him on the chest, pulling out his axe. ‘It’s for work like this you bring along a man like me.’

The Mire had more or less got over his throttling now. ‘Thunderhead?’ he coughed, looking round at them. ‘It’s the whole lot of you, ain’t it! You’re Threetrees, and Grim, and that’s the Weakest there! So you don’t kneel, eh? Good for fuckin’ you! Where’s Ninefingers? Eh?’ jeered the Mire. ‘Where’s the Bloody-Nine?’

Dow turned round, running his thumb down the edge of his axe. ‘Gone back to the mud, and you’re joining him. We’ve heard enough.’

‘Let me up, bastard!’ shouted the Mire, struggling at his ropes. ‘You’re no better’n me, Black Dow! You’ve killed more folk than the plague! Let me up and give me a blade! Come on! You scared to fight me, you coward? Scared to give a fair chance are yer?’

‘Call me coward, would you?’ growled Dow. ‘You who’s killed children for the sport of it? You had a blade and you let it drop. That was your chance and you should have took it. The likes o’ you don’t deserve another. If you’ve anything to say worth hearing you best say it now.’

‘Shit on yer!’ screamed the Mire, ‘Shit on the pack of—’

Dow’s axe cracked him hard between the eyes and knocked him on his back. He kicked a little then that was it. Not a one of them shed too big a tear for that bastard – even Forley gave no more than a wince when the blade went in. Dow leaned over and spat on his corpse, and the Dogman hardly blamed him. The boy was something more of a problem, though. He stared down at the body with big, wide eyes, then he looked up.

‘You’re them, ain’t ya,’ he said, ‘them as Ninefingers beat.’

‘Aye, boy,’ said Threetrees, ‘we’re them.’

‘I heard stories, stories about you. What you going to do with me?’

‘Well, there’s the question, ain’t it,’ Dogman muttered to himself. Shame was, he already knew the answer.

‘He can’t stay with us,’ said Threetrees. ‘We can’t take the baggage and we can’t take the risk.’

‘He’s just a lad,’ said Forley. ‘We could let him go.’ It was a nice thought, but it wasn’t holding much water, and they all knew it. The boy looked hopeful, but Tul put an end to that.

‘We can’t trust him. Not here. He’d tell someone we were back, and then we’d be hunted. Can’t do it. Besides, he had his part in that work at the farm.’

‘But what choice did I ’ave?’ asked the boy. ‘What choice? I wanted to go south! Go south and fight the Union, and earn myself a name, but they sent me here, to get taxes. My chief says do a thing, I got to do it, don’t I?’

‘You do,’ said Threetrees. ‘No one says you could’ve done different. ’

‘I didn’t want no part of it! I told him to let the young ones be! You got to believe me!’

Forley looked down at his boots. ‘We do believe you.’

‘But you’re going to fuckin’ kill me anyway?’

Dogman chewed at his lip. ‘Can’t take you with us, can’t leave you be.’

‘I didn’t want no part of it.’ The boy hung his head. ‘Don’t hardly seem fair.’

‘It ain’t,’ said Threetrees. ‘It ain’t fair at all. But there it is.’

Dow’s axe hacked into the back of the lad’s skull and he sprawled out on his face. The Dogman winced and looked away. He knew Dow did it that way so they wouldn’t have to look at the boy’s face. A good idea most likely, and he hoped it helped the others, but face up or face down was all the same to him. He felt almost as sick as he had back at the farm.

It wasn’t the worst day he’d ever had, not by a long way. But it was a bad one.

The Dogman watched ’em filing down the road from a good spot up in the trees where no one could see him. He made sure it was downwind from ’em too, cause being honest, he was smelling a bit ripe. It was a strange old procession. On the one hand they looked like fighting men, off to a weapon-take and then to battle. On the other hand they were all wrong. Old weapons mostly, and odds and sods of mixed up armour. Marching, but loose and ragged. Most of ’em too old to be prime fighters, grey hair and bald heads, and a lot of the rest too young for beards, hardly more than boys.

Seemed to the Dogman like nothing made sense in the North no more. He thought on what the Mire had said before Dow killed him. War with the Union. Were these lot off to war? If they were then Bethod must have been scraping the pot.

‘What’s to do, Dogman?’ asked Forley, as he stepped back into the camp. ‘What’s happening down there?’

‘Men. Armed, but none too well. Five score or more. Young and old mostly, heading south and west,’ and the Dogman pointed off down the road.

Threetrees nodded. ‘Towards Angland. He means it then, Bethod. He’s making war on the Union, all the way. No amount of blood’s enough for that one. He’s taking every man can hold a spear.’ That was no surprise, in its way. Bethod had never been one for half measures. He was all or nothing, and didn’t care who got killed along the road. ‘Every man,’ muttered Threetrees to himself. ‘If the Shanka come over the mountains now ...’

Dogman looked round. Frowning, worried, dirty faces. He knew what Threetrees was saying, they could all see it. If the Shanka came now, with no one left in the North to fight ’em, that business at the farm would be the best of it.

‘We got to warn someone!’ shouted Forley, ‘we got to warn them!’

Threetrees shook his head. ‘You heard the Mire. Yawl’s gone, and Rattleneck, and Sything. All dead and cold, and gone back to the mud. Bethod’s King now, King of the Northmen.’ Black Dow scowled and gobbed in the dirt. ‘Spit all you like Dow, but facts is facts. There’s no one left to warn.’

‘No one but Bethod himself,’ muttered the Dogman, miserable at having to say it.

‘Then we got to tell him!’ Forley looked round them all, desperate. ‘He may be a heartless bastard but at least he’s a man! He’s better than the Flatheads ain’t he? We got to tell someone!’

‘Hah!’ barked Dow. ‘Hah! You think he’ll listen to us, Weakest? You forgotten what he told us? Us and Ninefingers too? Never come back! You forgotten how close he come to killing us? You forgotten how much he hates each one of us?’

‘Fears us,’ said Grim.

‘Hates and fears us,’ muttered Threetrees, ‘and he’s wise to. Because we’re strong. Named men. Known men. The type of men that others will follow.’

Tul nodded his big head. ‘Aye, there’ll be no welcome for us at Carleon I’m thinking. No welcome without a spike on the end of it.’

‘I’m not strong!’ shouted Forley. ‘I’m the Weakest, everyone knows that! Bethod’s got no reason to fear me, nor to hate me neither. I’ll go!’

Dogman looked at him, surprised. They all did. ‘You?’ asked Dow.

‘Aye, me! I may be no fighter, but I’m no coward neither! I’ll go and talk to him. Maybe he’ll listen.’ Dogman stood and stared. It was so long since any one of them had tried to talk their way out of a fix he’d forgotten it could be done.

‘Might be he’ll listen,’ muttered Threetrees.

‘He might listen,’ said Tul. ‘Then he might bloody kill you, Weakest!’

Dogman shook his head. ‘It’s quite a chance.’

‘Maybe, but it’s worth the doing, ain’t it?’

They all looked at each other, worried. It was some bones that Forley was showing, no doubt, but the Dogman didn’t much like the sound of this for a plan. He was a thin thread to hang your hopes on, was Bethod. A mighty thin thread.

But like Threetrees said, there was no one else.

Words and Dust

K
urster pranced around the outside of the circle, his long golden hair bouncing on his shoulders, waving to the crowd, blowing kisses to the girls. The audience cheered and howled and whooped as the lithe young man made his flashy rounds. He was an Aduan, an officer of the King’s Own.
A local boy, and so very popular.

Bremer dan Gorst was leaning against the barrier, watching his opponent dance through barely open eyes. His steels were unusually heavy-looking, weighty and worn and well-used, too heavy to be quick perhaps. Gorst himself looked too heavy to be quick, come to that, a great thick-necked bull of a man, more like a wrestler than a swordsman. He looked the underdog in this bout. The majority of the crowd seemed to think so.
But I know better.

Nearby a bet-maker was shouting odds, taking money from the babbling people around him. Nearly all of the bets were for Kurster. Glokta leaned across from his bench. ‘What odds are you giving on Gorst now?’

‘On Gorst?’ asked the bet-maker, ‘evens.’

‘I’ll take two hundred marks.’

‘Sorry, friend, I can’t cover that.’

‘A hundred then, at five to four.’

The bet-maker thought about it for a moment, looking skywards as he worked out the sums in his head. ‘Done.’

Glokta sat back as the referee introduced the contestants, watching Gorst roll up his shirt-sleeves. The man’s forearms were thick as tree trunks, heavy cords of muscle squirming as he worked his meaty fingers. He stretched his thick neck to one side and the other, then he took his steels from his second and loosed a couple of practice jabs. Few in the crowd noticed. They were busy cheering Kurster as he took his mark. But Glokta saw.
Quicker than he looks. A lot, lot quicker. Those heavy steels no longer seem so clumsy.

‘Bremer dan Gorst!’ shouted the referee, as the big man trudged to his mark. The applause was meagre indeed. This lumbering bull was no one’s idea of a swordsman.

‘Begin!’

It wasn’t pretty. From the very start Gorst swung his heavy long steel in great heedless sweeps, like a champion woodsman chopping logs, giving throaty growls with every blow. It was a strange sight. One man was in a fencing contest, the other seemed to think he was fighting to the death.
You only have to touch him, man, not split him in half!
But as Glokta watched, he realised the mighty cuts were not nearly so clumsy as they seemed. They were well-timed, and highly accurate. Kurster laughed as he danced away from the first great swing, smiled as he dodged the third, but by the fifth his smile was long gone.
And it doesn’t look like coming back.

It wasn’t pretty at all.
But the power is undeniable.
Kurster ducked desperately under another great arcing cut.
That one was hard enough to take his head off, blunted steels or no.

The crowd’s favourite did his best to seize the initiative, jabbing away for all he was worth, but Gorst was more than equal to it. He grunted as he turned the jabs efficiently away with his short steel, then growled again as he brought his long whistling around and over. Glokta winced as it smashed into Kurster’s sword with a resounding crash, snapping the man’s wrist back and nearly tearing the steel from his fingers. He stumbled back from the force of it, grimacing with pain and shock.