Sharp Ends

by Joe Abercrombie

  And Rews found himself wishing with a painful longing that West would stab Glokta right through his horrible, beautiful face, and make the ladies gasp for very different reasons.

  ‘Hah!’ Glokta sprang forward, jabbing, and West dodged the first but to everyone’s surprise came on to meet the second, steered it aside with a shrieking of steel, stepped inside Glokta’s guard and barged him heavily with his shoulder. For an instant Glokta lurched off balance and West growled, teeth bared, steel flashing as it darted out.

  ‘Gah!’ Glokta reeled back and Rews caught a delicious flash of his face stricken with shock. Glokta’s practice steel tumbled from his hand and skittered in the dirt, and Rews found that he was bunching his fists painfully tight in delight.

  West started forward at once. ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  Glokta touched one hand to his neck, stared down at his bloody fingertips in profound puzzlement. As if he could hardly believe that he could have been caught. As if he could hardly believe that, having been caught, he might bleed like other men.

  ‘Fancy that,’ he grunted.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Colonel,’ stammered West, lowering his steel.

  ‘For what?’ Glokta’s twisted grin looked as if it took every grain of effort he possessed. ‘A very fine touch. You’ve got a great deal better, West.’

  And the crowd began to clap, and then to whoop, and Rews noticed the muscles of Glokta’s jaw working, and his left eye twitching, and he held out one hand and sharply snapped his fingers.

  ‘Corporal Tunny, do you have my battle steel with you?’

  The young corporal, promoted only the day before, blinked. ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Bring it here, would you?’

  With shocking speed the atmosphere had turned decidedly ugly. The atmosphere around Glokta often did. Rews looked nervously for Varuz to put a stop to this deadly nonsense, but the Lord Marshal had left his seat and wandered off to stare down into the valley, Poulder and Kroy with him. There was to be no help from the grown-ups.

  With eyes on the ground, West carefully sheathed his own sword. ‘I think I’ve played with knives enough for one day, sir.’

  ‘But you really must give me the chance to pay you back in kind. Honour demands it, West, really it does.’ As if Glokta had the slightest idea what honour was, beyond a tool for manipulating people into doing stupid, dangerous things. ‘Surely you understand that, nobleman or no?’

  West’s jaw tightened. ‘Fighting one’s friends with sharpened steels while there is an enemy to face seems foolish rather than honourable, sir.’

  ‘Are you calling me a fool?’ whispered Glokta, whipping his battle steel from the sheath with an angry hiss as Corporal Tunny nervously offered it out.

  West stubbornly folded his arms. ‘No, sir.’

  The crowd were struck entirely silent, but there was some sort of hubbub rising just beyond them. Rews picked out muttered calls of, ‘Over there,’ and ‘The bridge,’ but was too fixed on the drama before him to pay much attention.

  ‘I advise you to defend yourself, Lieutenant West,’ snarled Glokta as he worked his heels into the dusty ground, baring his teeth and levelling his shining steel.

  And at that moment there was an ear-splitting scream, guttering away into a ragged moan.

  ‘She’s fainted!’ someone called.

  ‘Get her some air!’

  ‘Where from? I swear there isn’t a breath of air in the whole bloody country,’ followed by braying laughter.

  Rews hastened over to the civilian’s enclosure on the pretext of offering assistance. He knew even less about helping people from a faint than he did about being a quartermaster but there was always the possibility of catching a glimpse up the woman’s skirts while she was insensible. It was a sad fact that Rews was rarely if ever offered glimpses up the skirts of conscious ladies.

  But he froze before he came near the knot of well-wishers, the sight beyond them causing Rews the unpleasant sensation of his ample guts dropping right out of his arse. There, in the distant sweep of beige beyond the bridge, an infestation of black dots was gathering, plumes of dust rising from the swarm. He might not have been good for much, but Rews had always possessed an unerring sense for danger.

  He lifted a trembling arm. ‘The Gurkish!’ he wailed.

  ‘What?’ Someone laughed uncertainly.

  ‘There, to the west!’

  ‘That’s east, fool!’

  ‘Wait, you’re serious?’

  ‘We’ll be slaughtered in our beds!’

  ‘We’re not in our beds!’

  ‘Silence!’ roared Varuz. ‘This isn’t a damn finishing school.’ The hubbub died, the officers brought instantly to guilty quiet. ‘Major Mitterick, I want you to get down there now and hurry the men along.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Lieutenant Vallimir, would you be good enough to conduct the ladies and our civilian guests to safety?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘A few men could hold them at that bridge,’ Colonel Poulder was saying, tugging at his lustrous moustaches.

  ‘A few heroes,’ said Varuz.

  ‘A few dead heroes,’ said Colonel Kroy, under his breath.

  ‘Do you have fresh men?’ asked Varuz.

  Poulder shrugged. ‘Mine are blown.’

  ‘Mine, too,’ added Kroy. ‘Even more so.’ As though the whole war was a competition at exhausting your regiment.

  Colonel Glokta slapped his battle steel back into its sheath. ‘My men are fresh,’ he said, and Rews felt the fear creeping out from his stomach to every extremity. ‘They’ve been resting up after that last little jaunt of ours. Chomping at the bit to have at the enemy. I daresay his Majesty’s First would be willing to hold that bridge long enough to get the men clear, Lord Marshal.’

  ‘Chomping at the bit!’ brayed one of Glokta’s staff, clearly too drunk to realise what he was volunteering for.

  Another, a little less drunk, blinked nervously towards the valley. Rews wondered how many men in his Majesty’s First the colonel could be speaking of. The regiment’s quartermaster was in no hurry to give his life for the greater good, of that he was absolutely positive.

  But Lord Marshal Varuz had not become commander of the Union army by preventing people from sacrificing themselves to make up for his oversights. He slapped Glokta warmly on the arm. ‘I knew I could rely on you, my friend!’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  And Rews reflected, with mounting horror, that it was true. Glokta could always be relied upon to jump at the faintest hint of vainglorious showing off, regardless of how fatal it might be for those who followed him into the jaws of death.

  Varuz and Glokta, commander and favoured officer, fencing master and finest pupil, and as big a pair of bastards as one could find in a year of searching, drew themselves up and gave each other a salute vibrating with feigned emotion. Then Varuz swept away, snapping orders to Poulder and Kroy and his own gaggle of bastards, presumably to hurry the army to safety and make the sacrifice of his Majesty’s First worthwhile.

  Because, Rews realised as he looked towards the gathering Gurkish storm on the far side of the bridge, this was most certainly going to be a sacrifice.

  ‘This is suicide,’ he whispered to himself.

  ‘Corporal Tunny?’ called Glokta, buttoning his jacket.

  ‘Sir?’ The keenest of young soldiers snapped out the keenest of salutes.

  ‘Could you bring me my breastplate?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ And off he ran to get it. There were a lot of people running to get things. Officers to get soldiers. Men to get horses. Civilians to get away, Lady Wetterlant with a dewy-eyed glance over her shoulder. Rews was quartermaster of the regiment, wasn’t he? He should have some urgent business to be about. And yet he could only stand there, his own eyes very wi
de and more than a little dewy themselves, mouth and hands opening and closing to no purpose whatsoever.

  Two very different kinds of courage were on display. Lieutenant West was frowning towards the bridge, his face pale and his jaw clenched, determined to do his duty in spite of his very real fear. Colonel Glokta, meanwhile, smirked at death as though it were a jilted lover begging for more, entirely fearless in his certain knowledge that danger was something that applied only to the little people.

  Three kinds of courage were on display, Rews realised, because he was there, too, displaying what a total lack of it looked like.

  And, indeed, a fourth soon arrived in the form of young Corporal Tunny, sun gleaming on his highly polished strapping, Glokta’s breastplate in his eager hands, eyes bright with the courage of untried youth desperate to prove itself.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Glokta as Tunny did up the buckles, his narrowed eyes focused on the gathering body of Gurkish cavalry beyond the river, more horses appearing with frightening speed. ‘Now I’d like you to hop back to the tent and get my things squared away.’

  Tunny’s face was a picture of shocked disappointment. ‘I was hoping to ride down there with you, sir—’

  ‘Of course you were, and I’d like nothing better than to have you at my side. But if we both die down there, who’ll take my personal effects back to Mother?’

  The young corporal blinked away tears. ‘But, sir—’

  ‘Come, come.’ And Glokta slapped him on the shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t wish to cut short a glittering career. I’ve no doubt you’ll make Lord Marshal one of these days.’ Glokta turned his back on the stunned corporal and hence dismissed him utterly from his mind. ‘Captain Lackenhorm, would you mind going to the enlisted men and asking for volunteers?’

  The prominent lump on the front of Lackenhorm’s stringy neck bobbed uncertainly. ‘Volunteers for what duty, Colonel?’ Though the duty was obvious enough, set out clearly before them all in the valley below, a vast melodrama slowly unfolding on a grand stage.

  ‘Why, to clear the Gurkish from that bridge, you silly old goat. Quick now, and get them armed and ready, sharp as you like.’

  The man gave a nervous smile and hurried away, partly tangled with his sword.

  Glokta sprang up onto the fence, one boot on the lower rail and one on the upper. ‘I plan to teach these Gurkish a little lesson today, my proud boys of his Majesty’s First!’

  The young officers crowded eagerly about him, just as though they were ducks and Glokta’s heroic platitudes were crumbs.

  ‘I won’t order anyone to come – let the decision be on each man’s conscience!’ He curled his lip. ‘How about you, Rews? Will you be waddling after us?’

  Rews thought his conscience could probably bear the strain. ‘I would like nothing better than to join the charge, Colonel, but my leg—’

  Glokta snorted. ‘I understand entirely, carrying that body of yours around is a challenge for any leg. I wouldn’t want to inflict such a burden on some underserving horse.’ Widespread laughter. ‘Some men are made to do great things. Others to do … whatever it is you do. Of course you’re excused, Rews. How could you not be?’

  The crushing insult was altogether drowned in a giddy wave of relief. He who laughs last, after all, laughs loudest, and Rews doubted many of his tormentors would be laughing in an hour’s time.

  ‘Sir,’ West was saying as the colonel swung from the fence into his saddle with the agility of an acrobat. ‘Are you sure we have to do this?’

  ‘Who else do you suppose is going to?’ asked Glokta, jerking the reins and pulling his steed savagely about.

  ‘A lot of men will surely die. Men with families.’

  ‘Why, yes, I expect so. It is a war, Lieutenant.’ A scattering of obsequious laughter from the other officers. ‘That’s what we’re here for.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ West swallowed. ‘Corporal Tunny, would you be good enough to saddle my horse—’

  ‘No, Lieutenant West,’ said Glokta, ‘I need you to stay here.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘When this is all over I’ll require an officer or two who can tell his arse from a pair of melons.’ He directed a withering glance at Rews, who hitched his wrinkled trousers up a little. ‘Besides, I suspect that sister of yours will grow up to be quite a handful. Couldn’t rob her of your sobering influence, could I?’

  ‘But, Colonel, I should—’

  ‘Won’t hear of it, West. You’ll stay and that’s an order.’

  West opened his mouth as if to speak, then smartly shut it, drew himself up and gave a rigid salute. Corporal Tunny did the same, the shimmering of a tear at the corner of his eye. Rews crept guiltily to follow suit, light-headed with horror and delight at the thought of a Glokta-less universe.

  The colonel grinned at them, his full complement of perfect, brilliantly white teeth almost painful to look upon in the sun’s bright glare.

  ‘Come now, gentlemen, don’t be maudlin. I’ll be back before you know it!’

  With a jerk on the reins he caused his horse to rear, frozen for an instant against the bright sky like one of those heroic statues, and Rews wondered if there could ever have been a more beautiful bastard.

  Then the dust showered in his face as Glokta thundered down the hillside.

  Down towards the bridge.

  Westport, Autumn 573

  When Shev arrived to open up that morning, there were a pair of big, dirty, bare feet sticking out of the doorway of her Smoke House.

  That might once have caused her quite the shock, but over the last couple of years Shev had come to consider herself past shocking.

  ‘Oy!’ she shouted, striding up with her fists clenched.

  Whoever it was on their face in the doorway either chose not to move or was unable. She saw the long legs the feet were attached to, clad in trousers ripped and stained, then the ragged mess of a torn and filthy coat. Finally, wedged into the grubby corner against Shev’s door, a tangle of long red hair, matted with twigs and dirt.

  A big man, without a doubt. The one hand Shev could see was as long as her foot, netted with veins, filthy and scabbed across the knuckles. There was a strange shape to it, though. Slender.

  ‘Oy!’ She jabbed the toe of her boot into the coat around where she judged the man’s arse to be. Still nothing.

  She heard footsteps behind her. ‘Morning, boss.’ Severard turning up for the day. Never late, that boy. Not the most careful in his work but for punctuality you couldn’t knock him. ‘What’s this you’ve caught?’

  ‘A strange fish, all right, to wash up in my doorway.’ Shev scraped some of the red hair back, wrinkled her nose as she realised it was clotted with blood.

  ‘Is he drunk?’

  ‘She.’ It was a woman’s face under there. Strong-jawed and strong-boned, pale skin crowded with enough black scab, red graze and purple bruise to make Shev wince, even if she rarely saw anyone who wasn’t carrying a wound or two.

  Severard gave a soft whistle. ‘That’s a lot of she.’

  ‘And someone’s given her a lot of a beating, too.’ Shev leaned close to put her cheek near the woman’s battered mouth, heard the faintest wheezing of breath. ‘Alive, though.’ Then she rocked away and squatted there, wrists on her knees and her hands dangling, wondering what to do. There’d been a time she just dived into whatever messes presented themselves without a backward glance, but somehow the consequences always lurked nearer to hand than they used to. She puffed her cheeks out and gave the weariest of sighs.

  ‘Well, it happens,’ said Severard.

  ‘Sadly, yes.’

  ‘Not our problem, is it?’

  ‘Happily, no.’

  ‘Want me to drag her into the street?’

  ‘Yes, I want that quite a lot.’ And Shev rolled her eyes skywards and gave another sigh, maybe ev
en wearier than the last. ‘But we’d best drag her inside, I reckon.’

  ‘You sure, boss? You remember the last time we helped someone out—’

  ‘Sure? No.’ Shev didn’t know, after all the shit that had been done to her, why she still felt the need to do small kindnesses. Maybe because of all the shit that had been done to her. Maybe there was some stubborn stone in her, like the stone in a date, that refused to let all the shit that had been done to her make her into shit. She turned the key and elbowed the door wobbling open. ‘You get her feet.’

  When you run a Smoke House you’d better get good at shifting limp bodies, but the latest recipient of Shev’s half-arsed charity proved quite the challenge.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ grunted Severard, eyes popping as they manhandled the woman down the stale-smelling corridor, her backside scuffing the boards. ‘What’s she made of, anvils?’

  ‘Anvils are lighter,’ groaned Shev through her gritted teeth, waddling from side to side under the dead weight of her, bouncing off the peeling walls. She gasped as she kicked open the door to her office – or the broom-cupboard she called an office. She strained with every burning muscle as she hauled the woman up, knocked her limp head on the doorframe as she wrestled her through, then tripped on a mop and with a despairing squawk toppled back onto the cot with the woman on top of her.

  In bed under a redhead was nothing to object to, but Shev preferred them at least partly conscious. Preferred them sweeter-smelling, too, at least when they got into bed. This one stank like sour sweat and rot and the very end of things.

  ‘That’s where kindness gets you,’ said Severard, chuckling away to himself. ‘Wedged under a mighty weight of trouble.’

  ‘You going to giggle or help me out, you bastard?’ snarled Shev, slack springs groaning as she struggled from underneath, then hauled the woman’s legs onto the bed, feet dangling well off the end. It wasn’t a big bed, but it looked like a child’s with her on it. Her ragged coat had fallen open and the stained leather vest she wore beneath it had got dragged right up.