Sharp Ends

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘You should take a holiday.’

  ‘With every job I say so, and when every job ends, I find I get … twitchy.’ Carcolf sighed as she fastened the buttons. ‘I’m just not made for sitting still.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Let’s not pretend you’re any different.’

  ‘Let’s not pretend. I’ve been considering a move myself. Adua, perhaps, or back to the South—’

  ‘I’d much rather you stayed here,’ Carcolf found she had said, then tried to pass it off with a carefree wave. ‘Who else would get me out of messes when I visit? You’re the one person in this whole damn city I trust.’ That was a complete lie, of course, she didn’t trust Shev in the least. A good courier trusts no one, and Carcolf was the very best. But she was a great deal more comfortable with lies than with truth.

  She could see in Shev’s smile that she understood the whole situation perfectly. ‘So sweet.’ She caught Carcolf’s wrist as she turned to leave with a grip that was not to be ignored. ‘My money?’

  ‘How silly of me.’ Carcolf handed her the purse.

  Without even looking inside, Shev said, ‘And the rest.’

  Carcolf sighed once more and tossed the other purse on the bed, gold flashing in the lamplight as coins spilled across the white sheet. ‘You’d be upset if I didn’t try.’

  ‘Your care for my delicate feelings is touching. I daresay I’ll see you next time you’re here?’ she asked as Carcolf put her hand on the lock.

  ‘I shall count the moments.’

  Just then she wanted a kiss more than anything, but she was not sure her resolve was strong enough for only one, so though it was a wrench she blew a kiss instead and pulled the door to behind her. She slipped swiftly across the shadowed court and out through the heavy gate onto the street, hoping it would be a while before Shevedieh took a closer look at the coins inside the first purse. Perhaps a cosmic punishment was thus incurred, but it was worth it just for the thought of the look on her face.

  The day had been a bloody fiasco, but she supposed it could have been a great deal worse. She still had ample time to make it to the ship before they lost the tide. Carcolf pulled up her hood, wincing at the pain from that freshly stitched scratch, and from that entirely unreasonable ulcer, and from that cursed chafing seam, then strode off through the misty night, neither too fast nor too slow, entirely inconspicuous.

  Damn, but she hated Sipani.

  Carleon, Summer 570

  ‘What’s peace, Father?’

  Bethod blinked down at his older son. Eleven years, and Scale had scarcely seen peace in his lifetime. Moments of it, maybe. Glimpses through a haze of blood. As he struggled to answer, Bethod realised he hardly remembered what peace felt like himself any more.

  How long had he been living in fear?

  He squatted before Scale and thought of his own father squatting before him, twisted with sickness and old beyond his years. ‘Some men will break a thing just because they can,’ he had whispered. ‘But war must be a leader’s last resort. Fight a war, you’ve lost already.’

  In spite of all his victories, all the odds beaten and the enemies put in the mud, all the ransoms claimed and the land taken, Bethod had been losing for years. He saw that now.

  ‘Peace,’ he said, ‘is when the feuds are all settled, and the blood debts are paid, and everyone is content with how things are. More or less content, anyway. Peace is when … when no one’s fighting any more.’

  Scale thought about that, frowning. Bethod loved him, of course he did, but even he had to admit the boy wasn’t the quickest. ‘Then … who wins?’

  ‘Everyone,’ said Calder.

  Bethod raised his brows. His younger son was as quick as his older was slow. ‘That’s right. Peace means everyone wins.’

  ‘But Rattleneck’s sworn there’ll be no peace ’til you’re dead,’ said Scale.

  ‘He has. But Rattleneck is one of those men who swears oaths quickly. Given time he may think better of it. Especially since I have his son in chains downstairs.’

  ‘You have him?’ snapped out Ursi from the corner of the room, stopping brushing her hair long enough to train one eye on him. ‘I thought he was Ninefingers’ prisoner?’

  ‘Ninefingers will give him to me.’ Bethod tossed that breezily to his wife as if it was a thing done with a snap of his fingers, rather than a trial he was having to scrape together the courage for. What kind of a Chieftain feared to ask a favour of his own champion?

  ‘Order him to do it.’ The man’s words sounded strange in Calder’s high child’s voice. ‘Make him do it.’

  ‘I cannot order him in this. Rattleneck’s son is Ninefingers’ prisoner. He was taken in battle, and Named Men have their ways.’ Not to mention that Bethod wasn’t sure Ninefingers would obey, or what to do if he refused, and the thought of putting it to the test sank him in dread. ‘There are rules.’

  ‘Rules are for those who follow,’ said Calder.

  ‘Rules must be for all, and for those who lead most of all. Without rules, every man stands alone, owning only what he can tear from the world with one hand and grip with the other. Chaos.’

  Calder nodded. ‘I see.’ And Bethod knew he did. So little alike, his two sons. Scale sturdy, blond and bullish. Calder slight, dark and cunning. Each so like their mothers, Bethod sometimes wondered whether there was anything of him in them.

  ‘What’ll we do with peace?’ asked Scale.

  ‘Build.’ Bethod smiled as he thought about his plans, turned over so often he could see them like things already done. ‘We’ll send the men back to their land, back to their trades, back to their families in time for the harvest. Then we’ll set them to pay us taxes.’

  ‘Taxes?’

  ‘They’re a Southern thing,’ said Calder. ‘Money.’

  ‘Each man gives his Chieftain some of what he has,’ said Bethod. ‘And we’ll use that money to clear forests, and dig mines, and put walls about our towns. Then we’ll build a great road from Carleon to Uffrith.’

  ‘A road?’ muttered Scale, not seeing the glamour in packed earth.

  ‘Men can travel twice as fast on it,’ snapped Calder, starting to lose patience.

  ‘Fighting men?’ asked Scale, hopefully.

  ‘If need be,’ said Bethod. ‘But also carts and goods, livestock and messages.’ He pointed towards the window, bright in the darkness, as though they might all glimpse a better future through it. ‘That road will be the spine of the nation we’ll build. That road will knit the North together. I might have won battles, but it’s that road I’ll be remembered for. It’s that road that will change the world.’

  ‘How can you change the world with a road?’ asked Scale.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ said Calder.

  Scale hit him on the side of the head and knocked him over, thus demonstrating the limits of cleverness. Bethod heard Ursi gasp, and he hit Scale in much the same way and knocked him over, too, thus demonstrating the limits of brute force. An ugly pattern, often acted out between the four of them.

  ‘Up, the pair of you,’ Bethod snapped.

  Calder glared darkly at his brother as he stood, one hand to his bloody mouth, while Scale glared darkly back, one hand to his. Bethod took them each by one arm and drew them close with a grip not to be resisted.

  ‘We are family,’ he said. ‘If we’re not always for each other, who will be? Scale, one day you’ll be Chieftain. You must control your temper. Calder, one day you’ll be your brother’s right hand, and first councillor, and most trusted adviser. You must control your tongue. Between the two of you, you have all the best of me and plenty more besides. Between the two of you, you could make our clan the greatest in the North. Alone, you’re nothing. Remember that.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ muttered Calder.

  ‘Yes, Father,’ grunted Scale.

&
nbsp; ‘Now go, and if I hear of more fighting, let it be of how the two of you beat someone else together.’ He stood with his hands on his hips as they barged each other in the doorway then tumbled out into the corridor, the door swinging shut behind them. ‘I can scarcely keep the peace between my own sons,’ he muttered, shaking his head. ‘How will I do it between the leaders of the North?’

  ‘One might hope the leaders of the North will act more like grown men’ said Ursi, her dress swishing against the floor as she walked up behind him, her hands slipping gently around his ribs.

  Bethod snorted as he held her arms against his heart. ‘I fear that would be a rash hope. They like great warriors in the North, and great warriors rarely make great leaders. Men without fear are men without imagination. Men who use their heads for smashing through things rather than thinking. They celebrate spiteful, prideful, wrathful men here, and pick the most childish of the crowd for leaders.’

  ‘They’ve found a different kind of leader in you.’

  ‘I’ve made them listen. And I will make Rattleneck listen. And I will make Ninefingers listen, too.’ Though Bethod wondered whether it was his wife or himself he was trying to convince. ‘He can be a reasonable man.’

  ‘Perhaps he used to be.’ Ursi’s breath tickled his neck as she spoke softly in his ear. ‘But Ninefingers is blood-drunk. Murder-proud. Every day he is less your friend, less to be trusted, less a man at all and more an animal. Every day he is less Logen and more the Bloody-Nine.’

  Bethod winced. He knew she had the right of it. ‘Some days he’s calm enough.’

  ‘And the others? Last week he killed a whole pen full of sheep, did you know that?’

  Bethod’s wince twisted into a grimace. ‘I heard.’

  ‘Because their bleating bothered him, he said. He killed them with his hands, one by one, so calmly the others didn’t even stir.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘And when the sheepdog barked he crushed her head, and they found him sound asleep and snoring among the corpses. He is made of death, and he brings death wherever he goes. He scares me.’

  Bethod turned in her arms to look down at her, laid one hand gently on her cheek. ‘You need never be scared. Not you.’ Though the dead knew, he was scared enough himself. How long had he been living in fear?

  She put her hand on his. ‘I’m not scared of him. I’m scared of the trouble he might bring you. Will bring you.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper as she looked into his eyes. ‘You know I’m right. What if you can stitch a peace together? Ninefingers is not a sword you can hang over the fireplace and tell fond tales of after supper. He is the Bloody-Nine. If you stop finding fights for him, do you think he’ll stop fighting? No. He will find his own, and with whoever’s nearest. That’s what he is. Sooner or later he will find a fight with you.’

  ‘But I owe him,’ he muttered. ‘Without him, we never—’

  ‘The Great Leveller pays all debts,’ she said.

  ‘There are rules.’ But his voice was weak now, so weak he could hardly meet her dark eyes.

  ‘Tell that to the children, by all means,’ she whispered. ‘But we know otherwise. There are only judgements – what is better, what is worse.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ he said again, knowing how feeble it sounded even in his own ear. He broke free of her and strode to the window. ‘He’ll give up Rattleneck’s son. He will see the sense of it. He must.’ He planted his fists on the sill and hung his head. ‘By the dead, I’m sick of this. So sick of the blood.’

  She came close again, kneading at his shoulder, at the back of his neck, and he heaved a sigh at her touch. ‘You never looked for blood.’

  He had to laugh at that, though there was little joy in it. ‘I did. I demanded it. Not this much, I never thought it could be this much, but that’s the trouble with blood. Wounds are so easy to open, so difficult to close. And I opened them eagerly. I needed a man to fight for me. I needed a man who’d stop at nothing. I needed a monster.’

  ‘And you found one.’

  ‘No,’ he whispered, shrugging off her hand. ‘I made one.’

  It was one of those days at the very start of summer when, like a clever general, the warm sun draws you out then catches you unawares with a downpour of sudden violence. The straw eaves of the buildings dripped with the latest shower, the yard of the holdfast churned to slop and pocked with glistening puddles.

  ‘A bad day for attacking,’ said Craw, following watchfully at Bethod’s shoulder with one hand slack on his sword’s pommel. ‘A good day for holding a good position.’

  ‘There are no bad days for holding good positions,’ said Bethod as he squelched across the yard, trying and failing to find firm ground to step on.

  ‘A good leader holds positions whenever he can, I reckon. Lets less prudent men do the attacking.’

  ‘So he does,’ said Bethod. ‘How good is my position, do you think?’

  Craw scratched at his brown beard. ‘Couldn’t say, Chief.’

  A quarter of Bethod’s army was camped outside the gates. Men sat clustered around their tents, cooking and drinking, picking scabs and dicing for trophies from yesterday’s battle, lazing in the sunshine. They took up notched weapons to clash on their battered shields as he passed and roared out praise.

  ‘The Chief! It’s the Chief!’

  ‘Bethod!’

  ‘One more victory!’

  He wondered how long the cheers would keep flowing if they went on fighting but the victories dried up. Not long, was his guess. He shook his head at the thought. By the dead, was there no success he couldn’t look at like it was a failure?

  Logen’s tent was at a distance from the others. Whether he chose to pitch it away from them, or he pitched it where he pleased and everyone else chose to keep away, it was hard to say. But it was at a distance, anyway. Nothing from the outside said it belonged to the most feared man in the North. A big, shapeless, stained thing, mildewed canvas flapping with the breeze.

  The Dogman sat at a dead fire near the stirring flap, trimming flights for arrows. Sitting as faithfully as any dog at his master’s doorway. Bethod had pity in him, whatever men might say, and he felt a touch of pity then. He was bound tight to Ninefingers, surely, but nowhere near as tight as this poor fool.

  ‘Where’s the rest of the flotsam?’ asked Bethod.

  ‘Threetrees took ’em out scouting.’ said the Dogman.

  ‘Took them where they didn’t have to face their shame, you mean.’

  The Dogman looked up for a moment, not awed in the least. ‘Maybe, Chief. We all got our shame, I reckon.’

  ‘Wait here,’ Bethod grunted at Craw, wishing he was staying with him as he stooped towards the tent’s flap.

  ‘I wouldn’t go in there right now,’ said the Dogman, starting to get up.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ snapped Bethod, with no intention of working up the courage to squelch all the way over here again later. He was the master, and he would act like it. He ripped back the tent’s flap, shouting, ‘Ninefingers!’

  It took a moment for his eyes to get used to the fusty dimness. A moment in which he smelled the sharp stink of unwashed bodies, and heard a scuffling and a grunting and a slapping of skin.

  Then he saw Ninefingers, naked on his knees on a heap of bald old furs, muscles knotted in his back, head twisted to glare over his great slab of a shoulder. There was a new scar on his cheek, glistening black in a track of twisted stitches. His eyes were starting wide and his teeth bared in an animal snarl and for a moment Bethod thought he’d come flying at him with murder in mind.

  Then his fresh-scarred face broke out in a jaunty smile. ‘Well, either come in or go out, Chief, but don’t loiter, there’s a breeze on my arse.’

  Bethod saw the woman then, on her knees beyond Ninefingers, the daylight harsh on her greasy hair and the sweaty side of he
r face.

  For a thousand reasons, Bethod would have very much liked to leave. But Rattleneck was on his way. It had to be done, and done now.

  ‘Get out,’ said Bethod to the woman. Instead of leaping to obey, she twisted about for Ninefingers’s say.

  He shrugged. ‘You heard the Chief.’

  Bethod might have been Chieftain of Carleon and Uffrith both, winner of two dozen battles, acknowledged by all the greatest war leader since Skarling Hoodless. But Logen Ninefingers had gathered an aura of fear about him the past few years. An aura of death. Like the one Shama Heartless used to have, but worse, and with every duel won and every man killed, it grew worse yet.

  Within reach of his hand, the Bloody-Nine was master.

  The woman wriggled up and hurried past Bethod, snatching her clothes on the way and not even bothering to put them on. The dead knew the relief she felt. Bethod only had to talk to Ninefingers and his bowels felt weak. He dreaded to imagine what having to fuck him might be like. He took one last, longing glance into the daylight and let the flap drop, sealing him in the darkness with his old friend. His old enemy.

  Ninefingers had rolled onto his back on the greasy furs, fully as careless as if he was alone, legs and arms wide and his half-hard cock flopped over to one side.

  ‘Nothing like a fuck in the afternoon, is there?’ he asked the tent’s ceiling.

  ‘What?’ Bethod prided himself on never being taken by surprise. These days Ninefingers’s every utterance seemed to catch him off balance.

  ‘A fuck.’ He propped himself up on his elbows. ‘You been fucking, Chief?’

  ‘I’ve been laying plans.’

  Ninefingers wrinkled his nose. ‘Well, it smells like fucking.’

  ‘That’s you.’

  ‘Uh.’ Ninefingers sniffed at one armpit and raised a scarred brow in acknowledgement. ‘Well, you should fuck. Afternoon. Whenever. You look worried.’

  ‘I’m worried because half the North wants me dead.’

  Logen grinned. ‘All the North wants me dead. Don’t see me frowning, do you? Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he looks on the sunny side o’ the case.’ Bethod ground his teeth. If he never heard that phrase again it would be too damn soon. ‘Your wife looked worried, too, when I saw her t’other day. Was it yesterday? Day before? Marriage won’t come to nothing without fucking, will it? Whole point o’ the exercise.’