Last Argument of Kings

by Joe Abercrombie

  A voice drifted over from the forest ahead. 'You with Bethod?' Whoever it was spoke Northern with some strange-sounding accent.

  Dow and Dogman looked at each other for a minute, then shrugged. 'No!' Dow roared back. 'And if you are, you'd best make ready to meet the dead!'

  A pause. 'We're not with that bastard, and never will be!'

  'Good enough!' shouted Dogman, putting his head up no more'n an inch, his bow full drawn and ready in his hands. 'Show yourselves, then!'

  A man stepped out from behind a tree maybe six strides distant. Dogman was that shocked he nearly fumbled the string and let the shaft fly. More men started sliding out of the woods all round. Dozens of 'em. Their hair was tangled, their faces were smeared with streaks of brown dirt and blue paint, their clothes were ragged fur and half-tanned hides, but the heads of their spears, and the points of their arrows, and the blades of their rough-forged swords all shone bright and clean.

  'Hillmen,' Dogman muttered.

  'Hillmen we are, and proud of it!' A great big voice, echoing out from the woods. A few of 'em started to shuffle to one side, like they were making way for someone. Dogman blinked. There was a child coming between them. A girl, maybe ten years old, with dirty bare feet. She had a huge hammer over one shoulder, a thick length of wood a stride long with a scarred lump of iron the size of a brick for a head. Far and away too big for her to swing. It was giving her some trouble even holding it up.

  A little boy came next. He had a round shield across his back, much too wide for him, and a great axe he was lugging along in both hands. Another boy was at his shoulder with a spear twice as high as he was, the bright point waving around above his head, gold twinkling under the blade in the strips of sunlight. He kept having to look up to make sure he didn't catch it on a branch.

  'I'm dreaming,' muttered the Dogman. 'Aren't I?'

  Dow frowned. 'If y'are it's a strange one.'

  They weren't alone, the three children. Some huge bastard was coming up behind. He had a ragged fur round his great wide shoulders, and some big necklace hanging down on his great fat belly. A load of bones. Fingerbones, the Dogman saw as he got closer. Men's fingers, mixed up with flat bits of wood, strange signs cut into them. He had a great yellow grin hacked out from his grey-brown beard, but that didn't put the Dogman any more at ease.

  'Oh shit,' groaned Dow, 'let's go back. Back south and enough o' this.'

  'Why? You know him?'

  Dow turned his head and spat. 'Crummock-i-Phail, ain't it.'

  Dogman almost wished it had turned out to be an ambush, now, rather than a chat. It was a fact that every child knew. Crummock-i-Phail, chief of the hillmen, was about the maddest bastard in the whole damn North.

  He pushed the spears and the arrows gently out of his way as he came. 'No need for that now, is there, my beauties? We're all friends, or got the same enemies, at least, which is far better, d'you see? We all have a lot of enemies up in them hills, don't we, though? The moon knows I love a good fight, but coming at them great big rocks, with Bethod and all his arse-lickers stuck in tight on top? That's a bit too much fight for anyone, eh? Even your new Southern friends.'

  He stopped just in front of them, fingerbones swinging and rattling. The three children stopped behind him, fidgeting with their great huge weapons and frowning up at Dow and the Dogman.

  'I'm Crummock-i-Phail,' he said. 'Chief of all the hillmen. Or all the ones as are worth a shit.' He grinned as though he'd just turned up to a wedding. 'And who might be in charge o' this merry outing?'

  Dogman felt that hollow feeling again, but there was nothing for it. 'That'd be me.'

  Crummock raised his brows at him. 'Would it now? You're a little fellow to be telling all these big fellows just what to be about, are you not? You must have quite some name on your shoulders, I'm thinking.'

  'I'm the Dogman. This is Black Dow.'

  'Some strange sort of a crew you got here,' said Dow, frowning at the children.

  'Oh it is! It is! And a brave one at that! The lad with my spear, that's my son Scofen. The one with my axe is my son Rond.' Crummock frowned at the girl with the hammer. 'This lad's name I can't remember.'

  'I'm your daughter!' shouted the girl.

  'What, did I run out of sons?'

  'Scenn got too old and you give him 'is own sword, and Sceft's too small to carry nothing yet.'

  Crummock shook his head. 'Don't hardly seem right, a bloody woman taking the hammer.'

  The girl threw the hammer down on the ground and booted Crummock in his shin. 'You can carry it yourself then, y'old bastard!'

  'Ah!' he squawked, laughing and rubbing his leg at once. 'Now I remember you, Isern. Your kicking's brought it all back in a rush. You can take the hammer, so you can. Smallest one gets the biggest load, eh?'

  'You want the axe, Da?' The smaller lad held the axe up, wobbling.

  'You want the hammer?' The girl dragged it up out the brush and shouldered her brother out the way.

  'No, my loves, all I need for now is words, and I've plenty of those without your help. You can watch your father work some murder soon, if things run smooth, but there'll be no need for axes or hammers today. We didn't come here to kill.'

  'Why did you come here?' asked Dogman, though he wasn't sure he even wanted the answer.

  'Right to business is it, and no time to be friendly?' Crummock stretched his neck to the side, his arms over his head, and lifted one foot and shook it around. 'I came here because I woke in the night, and I walked out into the darkness, and the moon whispered to me. In the forest, d'you see? In the trees, and in the voices of the owls in the trees, and d'you know what the moon said?'

  'That you're mad as fuck?' growled Dow.

  Crummock slapped his huge thigh. 'You've a pretty way of talking for an ugly man, Black Dow, but no. The moon said…' And he beckoned to the Dogman like he had some secret to share. 'You got the Bloody-Nine down here.'

  'What if we do?' Logen came up quiet from behind, left hand resting on his sword. Tul and Grim came with him, frowning at all the painted-face hillmen stood about, and at the three dirty children, and at their great fat father most of all.

  'There he is!' roared Crummock, sticking out one great sausage of a trembling finger. 'Take your fist off that blade, Bloody-Nine, before I piss my breaks!' He dropped down on his knees in the dirt. 'This is him! This is the one!' He shuffled forward through the brush and he clung to Logen's leg, pressing himself up against it like a dog to his master.

  Logen stared down at him. 'Get off my leg.'

  'That I will!' Crummock jerked away and dropped down on his fat arse in the dirt. Dogman had never seen such a performance. Looked like the rumours about him being cracked were right enough. 'Do you know a fine thing, Bloody-Nine?'

  'More'n one, as it goes.'

  'Here's another, then. I saw you fight Shama Heartless. I saw you split him open like a pigeon for the pot, and I couldn't have done it better my blessed self. A lovely thing to see!' Dogman frowned. He'd been there too, and he didn't remember much lovely about it. 'I said then,' and Crummock rose up to his knees, 'and I said since,' and he stood up on his feet, 'and I said when I came down from the hills to seek you out,' and he lifted up his arm to point at Logen. 'That you're a man more beloved of the moon than any other!'

  Dogman looked over at Logen, and Logen shrugged. 'Who's to say what the moon likes or doesn't? What of it?'

  'What of it, he says! Hah! I could watch him kill the whole world, and a thing of beauty it would be! The what of it is, I have a plan. It flowed up with the cold springs under the mountains, and was carried along in the streams under the stones, and washed up on the shore of the sacred lake right beside me, while I was dipping my toes in the frosty.'

  Logen scratched at his scarred jaw. 'We've got work to be about, Crummock. You got something worth saying you can get to it.'

  'Then I will. Bethod hates me, and the feeling's mutual, but he hates you more. Because you've stood against him, and
you're living proof a man of the North can be his own man, without bending on his knee and tonguing the arse of that golden-hat bastard and his two fat sons and his witch.' He frowned. 'Though I could be persuaded to take my tongue to her. D'you follow me so far?'

  'I'm keeping up,' said Logen, but Dogman weren't altogether sure that he was.

  'Just whistle if you drop behind and I'll come right back for you. My meaning's this. If Bethod were to get a good chance at catching you all alone, away from your Union friends, your crawling-like-ants sunny-weather lovers over down there yonder, then, well, he might give up a lot to take it. He might be coaxed down from his pretty hills for a chance like that, I'm thinking, hmmm?'

  'You're betting that he hates me a lot.'

  'What? Do you doubt that a man could hate you that much?' Crummock turned away, spreading his great long arms out wide at Tul and Grim. 'But it's not just you, Bloody-Nine! It's all of you, and me as well, and my three sons here!' The girl threw the hammer down again and planted her hands on her hips, but Crummock blathered on regardless. 'I'm thinking your boys join up with my boys and it might be we'll have eight hundred spears. We'll head up north, like we're going up into the High Places, to get around behind Bethod and play merry mischief with his arse end. I'm thinking that'll get his blood up. I'm thinking he won't be able to pass on a chance to put all of us back in the mud.'

  The Dogman thought it over. Chances were that a lot of Bethod's people were jumpy about now. Worried to be fighting on the wrong side of the Whiteflow. Maybe they were hearing the Bloody-Nine was back, and thinking they'd picked the wrong side. Bethod would love to put a few heads on sticks for everyone to look at. Ninefingers, and Crummock-i-Phail, Tul Duru and Black Dow, and maybe even the Dogman too. He'd like that, would Bethod. Show the North there was no future in anything but him. He'd like it a lot.

  'Supposing we do wander off north,' asked Dogman. 'How's Bethod even going to know about it?'

  Crummock grinned wider than ever. 'Oh, he'll know because his witch'll know.'

  'Bloody witch,' piped up the lad with the spear, his thin arms trembling as he fought to keep it up straight.

  'That spell-cooking, painted-face bitch Bethod keeps with him. Or does she keep him with her? There's a question, though. Either way, she's watching. Ain't she, Bloody-Nine?'

  'I know who you mean,' said Logen, and not looking happy. 'Caurib. A friend o' mine once told me she had the long eye.' Dogman didn't have the first clue about all that, but if Logen was taking it to heart he reckoned he'd better too.

  'The long eye, is it?' grinned Crummock. 'Your friend's got a pretty name for an ugly trick. She sees all manner of goings-on with it. All kind of things it'd be better for us if she didn't. Bethod trusts her eyes before he trusts his own, these days, and he'll have her watching for us, and for you in particular. She'll have both her long eyes open for it, that she will. I may be no wizard,' and he spun one of the wooden signs around and around on his necklace, 'but the moon knows I'm no stranger to the business neither.'

  'And what if it goes like you say?' rumbled Tul, 'what happens then? Apart from we give Bethod our heads?'

  'Oh, I like my head where it is, big lad. We draw him on, north by north, that's what the forest told me. There's a place up in the mountains, a place well loved by the moon. A strong valley, and watched over by the dead of my family, and the dead of my people, and the dead of the mountains, all the way back until when the world was made.'

  Dogman scratched his head. 'A fortress in the mountains?'

  'A strong, high place. High and strong enough for a few to hold off a many until help were to arrive. We lure him on up into the valley, and your Union friends follow up at a lazy distance. Far enough that his witch don't see 'em coming, she's so busy looking at us. Then, while he's all caught up in trying to snuff us out for good and all, the Southerners creep up behind, and—' He slapped his palms together with an echoing crack. 'We squash him between us, the sheep-fucking bastard!'

  'Sheep-fucker!' cursed the girl, kicking at the hammer on the ground.

  They all looked at each other for a moment. Dogman didn't much like the sound of this for a plan. He didn't much like the notion of trusting their lives to the say-so o' this crazy hillman. But it sounded like some kind of a chance. Enough that he couldn't just say no, however much he'd have liked to. 'We got to talk on this.'

  'Course you do, my new best friends, course you do. Don't take too long about it though, eh?' Crummock grinned wide. 'I been down from the High Places for way too long, and the rest o' my beautiful children, and my beautiful wives, and the beautiful mountains themselves will all of them be missing me. Think on the sunny side o' this. If Bethod don't follow, you get a few nights sat up in the High Places as the summer dies, warming yourselves at my fire, and listening to my songs, and watching the sun going down over the mountains. That sound so bad? Does it?'

  'You thinking of listening to that mad bastard?' muttered Tul, once they'd got out of earshot. 'Witches and wizards and all that bloody rubbish? He makes it up as he goes along!'

  Logen scratched his face. 'He's nowhere near as mad as he sounds. He's held out against Bethod all these years. The only one who has. Twelve winters is it now, he's been hiding, and raiding, and keeping one foot ahead? Up in the mountains maybe, but still. He'd have to be slippery as fishes and tough as iron to make that work.'

  'You trust him, then?' asked Dogman.

  'Trust him?' Logen snorted. 'Shit, no. But his feud with Bethod's deeper even than ours is. He's right about that witch, I seen her, and I seen some other things this past year… if he says she'll see us, I reckon I believe him. If she doesn't, and Bethod don't come, well, nothing lost is there?'

  Dogman had that empty feeling, worse'n ever. He looked over at Crummock, sitting on a rock with his children round him, and the madman smiled back a mouthful of yellow teeth. Hardly the man you'd want to hang all your hopes on, but Dogman could feel the wind changing. 'We'd be taking one bastard of a risk,' he muttered. 'What if Bethod caught up to us and got his way?'

  'We move fast, then, don't we!' growled Dow. 'It's a war. Taking risks is what you do if you reckon on winning!'

  'Uh,' grunted Grim.

  Tul nodded his big head. 'We've got to do something. I didn't come here to watch Bethod sit on a hill. He needs to be got down.'

  'Got down where we can set to work on him!' hissed Dow.

  'But it's your choice.' Logen clapped his hand down on the Dogman's shoulder. 'You're the chief.'

  He was the chief. He remembered them deciding on it, gathered round Threetrees' grave. Dogman had to admit, he'd much rather have told Crummock to fuck himself, then turned round and headed back, and told West they never found a thing except woods. But once you've got a task, you get it done. That's what Threetrees would've said.

  Dogman gave a long sigh, that feeling in his gut bubbling up so high he was right on the point of puking. 'Alright. But this plan ain't going to get us anything but dead unless the Union are ready to do their part, and in good time too. We'll take it to Furious, and let their chief Burr know what we're about.'

  'Furious?' asked Logen.

  Tul grinned. 'Long story.'

  * * *

  Flowers and Plaudits

  « ^ »

  Jezal still did not have the slightest idea why it was necessary for him to wear his best uniform. The damn thing was stiff as a board and creaking with braid. It had been designed for standing to attention in rather than riding, and, as a result, dug painfully into his stomach with every movement of his horse. But Bayaz had insisted, and it was surprisingly difficult to say no to the old fool, whether Jezal was supposed to be in command of this expedition or not. It had seemed easier, in the end, just to do as he was told. So he rode at the head of the long column in some discomfort, constantly tugging at his tunic and sweating profusely in the bright sun. The one consolation was that he got to breathe fresh air. Everyone else had to eat his dust.

  To further add
to his pain, Bayaz was intent on continuing the themes that had made Jezal so very bored all the way to the edge of the World and back.

  '… it is vital for a king to maintain the good opinion of his subjects. And it is not so very hard to do. The lowly have small ambitions, and are satisfied with small indulgences. They need not get fair treatment. They need only think that they do…'

  Jezal found that after a while he could ignore the droning of the old man's voice, in the same way that one could ignore the barking of an old dog that barked all the time. He slumped into his saddle and allowed his thoughts to wander. And where else would they find their way, but to Ardee?

  He had landed himself in quite a pickle, alright. Out on the plain, things had seemed so very simple. Get home, marry her, happily ever after. Now, back in Adua, back among the powerful, and back in his old habits, they grew more complicated by the day. The possibility of damage to his reputation and his prospects were issues that could not simply be dismissed. He was a Colonel in the King's Own, and that meant certain standards to uphold.

  '… Harod the Great always had respect for the common man. More than once, it was the secret of his victories over his peers…'

  And then Ardee herself was so much more complicated in person than she had been as a silent memory. Nine parts witty, clever, fearless, attractive. One part a mean and destructive drunk. Every moment with her was a lottery, but perhaps it was that sense of danger that struck the sparks when they touched, made his skin tingle and his mouth go dry… his skin was tingling now, even at the thought. He had never felt like this about a woman before, not ever. Surely it was love. It had to be. But was love enough? How long would it last? Marriage, after all, was forever, and forever was a very long time.