The Blade Itself

by Joe Abercrombie

  But Jezal did not feel safe. He felt alone, weak, helpless, and terribly afraid. His skin was tingling, his mouth was dry. He felt a sudden urge to run, and hide, and never come out again.

  And this strange effect was not limited to him, or even to those around the high table. Angry laughs turned to shocked gurgles as the painted monster turned slowly around in the centre of the circular floor, flickering eyes running over the crowd. Meed shrank back onto his bench, anger all leached out of him. A couple of worthies on the front row actually scrambled over the backs of their benches and into the row behind. Others looked away, or covered their faces with their hands. One of the soldiers dropped his spear, and it clattered loudly to the floor.

  Fenris the Feared turned slowly to the high table, raising his great tattooed fist, opening his chasm of a mouth, a hideous spasm running over his face. ‘Angland!’ he screamed, louder and more terrible by far than the Lord Chamberlain had ever been. The echoes of his voice bounced off the domed ceiling high above, resounded from the curved walls, filling the great space with piercing sound.

  One of the Knights of the Body stumbled back and slipped, his armoured leg clanking against the edge of the high table.

  The King shrank back and covered his face with his hand, one terrified eye staring out from between his fingers, crown teetering on his head.

  The quill of one of the clerks dropped from his nerveless fingers. The hand of the other moved across the paper by habit while his mouth fell open, scrawling a messy word diagonally through the neat lines of script above.

  Angland.

  The Lord Chamberlain’s face had turned waxy pale. He reached slowly for his goblet, raised it to his lips. It was empty. He placed it carefully back down on the table, but his hand was trembling, and the base rattled on the wood. He paused for a moment, breathing heavily through his nose. ‘Plainly, this offer is not acceptable.’

  ‘That is unfortunate,’ said White-Eye Hansul, ‘but there is still the gift.’ Every eye turned towards him. ‘In the North we have a tradition. On occasion, when there is bad blood between two clans, when there is the threat of war, champions come forward from each side, to fight for all their people, so that the issue might be decided . . . with only one death.’

  He slowly opened the lid of the wooden box. There was a long knife inside, blade polished mirror-bright. ‘His Greatness, Bethod, sends the Feared not only as his envoy, but as his champion. He will fight for Angland, if any here will face him, and spare you a war you will not win.’ He held the box up to the painted monster. ‘This is my master’s gift to you, and there could be none richer . . . your lives.’

  Fenris’ right hand darted out and snatched the knife from the box. He raised it high, blade flashing in the coloured light from the great windows. The knights should have jumped forward. Jezal should have drawn his sword. All should have rushed to the defence of the King, but nobody moved. Every mouth was agape, every eye fastened on that glinting tooth of steel.

  The blade flashed down. Its point drove easily through skin and flesh until it was buried right to the hilt. The point emerged, dripping blood, from the underside of Fenris’ own tattooed left arm. His face twitched, but no more than usual. The blade moved grotesquely as he stretched out his fingers, raised his left arm high for all to see. The drops of blood made a steady patter on the floor of the Lords’ Round.

  ‘Who will fight me?’ he screamed, great cords of sinew bulging from his neck. His voice was almost painful to the ear.

  Utter silence. The Announcer, who was closest to the Feared, and already on his knees, swooned and collapsed on his face.

  Fenris turned his goggling eyes on the biggest knight before the table, a full head shorter than he was. ‘You?’ he hissed. The unfortunate man’s foot scraped on the floor as he backed away, no doubt wishing he had been born a dwarf.

  A puddle of dark blood had spread across the floor beneath Fenris’ elbow. ‘You?’ he snarled at Fedor dan Meed. The young man turned slightly grey, teeth rattling together, no doubt wishing he was someone else’s son.

  Those blinking eyes swept across the ashen faces on the high table. Jezal’s throat constricted as Fenris’ eyes met his. ‘You?’

  ‘Well I would, but I’m terribly busy this afternoon. Perhaps tomorrow?’ The voice hardly sounded like his own. He certainly hadn’t meant to say any such thing. But who else’s could it be? The words floated confidently, breezily up towards the gilded dome above.

  There was scattered laughter, a shout of ‘Bravo!’ from somewhere at the back, but the eyes of the Feared did not leave Jezal’s for an instant. He waited for the sounds to die, then his mouth twisted into a hideous leer.

  ‘Tomorrow then,’ he whispered. Jezal’s guts gave a sudden painful shift. The seriousness of the situation pressed itself upon him like a ton of rocks. Him? Fight that?

  ‘No.’ It was the Lord Chamberlain. He was still pale, but his voice had regained much of its vigour. Jezal took heart, and fought manfully for control of his bowels. ‘No!’ barked Hoff again. ‘There will be no duel here! There is no issue to decide! Angland is a part of the Union, by ancient law!’

  White-Eye Hansul chuckled softly. ‘Ancient law? Angland is part of the North. Two hundred years ago there were Northmen there, living free. You wanted iron, so you crossed the sea, and slaughtered them and stole their land! It must be, then, that most ancient of laws: that the strong take what they wish from the weak?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘We have that law also!’

  Fenris the Feared ripped the knife from his arm. A few last drops of blood spattered onto the tiles, but that was all. There was no wound on the tattooed flesh. No mark at all. The knife clattered onto the tiles and lay there in the pool of blood at his feet. Fenris swept the assembly with his bulging, blinking, crazy eyes one last time, then he turned and strode across the floor and up the aisle, Lords and proxies scrambling away down their benches as he approached.

  White-Eye Hansul bowed low. ‘Perhaps the time will come when you wish that you had accepted our offer, or our gift. You will hear from us,’ he said quietly, then he held up three fingers to the Lord Chamberlain. ‘When it is time, we will send three signs.’

  ‘Send three hundred if you wish,’ barked Hoff, ‘but this pantomime is over!’

  White-Eye Hansul nodded pleasantly. ‘You will hear from us.’ And he turned and followed Fenris the Feared out of the Lords’ Round. The great doors clapped shut. The quill of the nearest clerk scratched weakly against the paper.

  You will hear from us.

  Fedor dan Meed turned towards the Lord Chamberlain, jaw locked tight, handsome features contorted with fury. ‘And this is the good news you would have me convey to my father?’ he screamed. The Open Council erupted. Bellowing, shouting, abuse directed toward anyone and everyone, chaos of the worst kind.

  Hoff jumped up, chair toppling over behind him, mouthing angry words, but even he was drowned out by the uproar. Meed turned his back on him and stormed out. Other delegates from the Angland side of the room rose grimly and followed the son of their Lord Governor. Hoff stared after them, livid with anger, mouth working silently.

  Jezal watched the King slowly take his hand from his face and lean down toward his Lord Chamberlain. ‘When are the Northmen getting here?’ he whispered.

  The King of the Northmen

  Logen breathed in deep, enjoying the unfamiliar feel of the cool breeze on his fresh-shaved jaw, and took in the view. It was the beginning of a clear day. The dawn mist was almost gone, and from the balcony outside Logen’s room, high up on the side of one of the towers of the library, you could see for miles. The great valley was spread out before him, split into stark layers. On top was the grey and puffy white of the cloudy sky. Then there was the ragged line of black crags that ringed the lake, and the dim brown suggestion of others beyond. Next came the dark green of the wooded slopes, then the thin, curving line of grey shingle on the beach. All was repeated in the still mirror of the lake below—another, shado
wy world, upside down beneath his own.

  Logen looked down at his hands, fingers spread out on the weathered stone of the parapet. There was no dirt, no dried blood under his cracked fingernails. They looked pale, soft, pinkish, strange. Even the scabs and scrapes on his knuckles were mostly healed. It was so long since Logen had been clean that he’d forgotten what it felt like. His new clothes were coarse against his skin, robbed of its usual covering of dirt and grease and dry sweat.

  Looking out at the still lake, clean and well fed, he felt a different man. For a moment he wondered how this new Logen might turn out, but the bare stone of the parapet stared back at him where his missing finger used to be. That could never heal. He was Ninefingers still, the Bloody-Nine, and always would be. Unless he lost any more fingers. He did smell better though, that had to be admitted.

  ‘Did you sleep well, Master Ninefingers?’ Wells was in the doorway, peering out onto the balcony.

  ‘Like a baby.’ Logen didn’t have the heart to tell the old servant that he’d slept outside. The first night he’d tried the bed, rolling and wriggling, unable to come to terms with the strange comfort of a mattress and the unfamiliar warmth of blankets. Next he’d tried the floor. That had been an improvement. But the air had still seemed close, flat, stale. The ceiling had hung over him, seeming to creep ever lower, threatening to crush him with the weight of stone above. It was only when he’d lain down on the hard flags of the balcony, with his old coat spread over him and just the clouds and the stars above, that sleep had come. Some habits are hard to break.

  ‘You have a visitor,’ said Wells.

  ‘Me?’

  Malacus Quai’s head appeared around the door frame. His eyes were a little less sunken, the bags underneath them a little less dark. There was some colour to his skin, and some flesh on his bones. He no longer looked like a corpse, just gaunt and sick, as he had done when Logen first met him. He guessed that was about as healthy as Quai ever looked.

  ‘Hah!’ laughed Logen. ‘You survived!’

  The apprentice gave a series of tired nods as he shambled across the room. He was swathed in a thick blanket which trailed on the floor and made it difficult for him to walk properly. He shuffled out of the door to the balcony and stood there, sniffing and blinking in the chill morning air.

  Logen was more pleased to see him than he’d expected. He clapped him on the back like an old friend, perhaps a little too warmly. The apprentice stumbled, blanket tangled round his feet, and would have fallen if Logen hadn’t put out an arm to steady him.

  ‘Still not quite in fighting shape,’ muttered Quai, with a weak grin.

  ‘You look a deal better than when I last saw you.’

  ‘So do you. You lost the beard I see, and the smell too. A few less scars and you’d look almost civilised.’

  Logen held his hands up. ‘Anything but that.’

  Wells ducked through the doorway into the bright morning light. He had a roll of cloth and a knife in his hand. ‘Could I see your arm, Master Ninefingers?’

  Logen had almost forgotten about the cut. There was no new blood on the bandage, and when he unwound it there was a long, red-brown scab underneath, running almost all the way from wrist to elbow, surrounded by fresh pink skin. It hardly hurt any more, just itched. It crossed two other, older scars. One, a jagged grey effort near his wrist, he thought he might have got in the duel with Threetrees, all those years ago. Logen grimaced as he remembered the battering they’d given each other. The second scar, fainter, higher up, he wasn’t sure about. Could’ve come from anywhere.

  Wells bent down and tested the flesh round the wound while Quai peered cautiously over his shoulder. ‘It’s mending well. You’re a fast healer.’

  ‘Lots of practice.’

  Wells looked up at Logen’s face, where the cut on his forehead had already faded to one more pink line. ‘I can see. Would it be foolish to advise you to avoid sharp objects in the future?’

  Logen laughed. ‘Believe it or not, I always did my best to avoid them in the past. But they seem to seek me out, despite my efforts.’

  ‘Well,’ said the old servant, cutting off a fresh length of cloth and winding it carefully round Logen’s forearm, ‘I hope this is the last bandage you ever need.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Logen, flexing his fingers. ‘So do I.’ But he didn’t think it would be.

  ‘Breakfast will be ready soon.’ And Wells left the two of them alone on the balcony.

  They stood there in silence for a moment, then the wind blew up cold from the valley. Quai shivered and pulled his blanket tight around him. ‘Out there . . . by the lake. You could have left me. I would have left me.’

  Logen frowned. Time was he’d have done it and never given it a second thought, but things change. ‘I’ve left a lot of people, in my time. Reckon I’m sick of that feeling.’

  The apprentice pursed his lips and looked out at the valley, the woods, the distant mountains. ‘I never saw a man killed before.’

  ‘You’re lucky.’

  ‘You’ve seen a lot of death, then?’

  Logen winced. In his youth, he would have loved to answer that very question. He could have bragged, and boasted, and listed the actions he’d been in, the Named Men he’d killed. He couldn’t say now when the pride had dried up. It had happened slowly. As the wars became bloodier, as the causes became excuses, as the friends went back to the mud, one by one. Logen rubbed at his ear, felt the big notch that Tul Duru’s sword had made, long ago. He could have stayed silent. But for some reason, he felt the need to be honest.

  ‘I’ve fought in three campaigns,’ he began. ‘In seven pitched battles. In countless raids and skirmishes and desperate defences, and bloody actions of every kind. I’ve fought in the driving snow, the blasting wind, the middle of the night. I’ve been fighting all my life, one enemy or another, one friend or another. I’ve known little else. I’ve seen men killed for a word, for a look, for nothing at all. A woman tried to stab me once for killing her husband, and I threw her down a well. And that’s far from the worst of it. Life used to be cheap as dirt to me. Cheaper.

  ‘I’ve fought ten single combats and I won them all, but I fought on the wrong side and for all the wrong reasons. I’ve been ruthless, and brutal, and a coward. I’ve stabbed men in the back, burned them, drowned them, crushed them with rocks, killed them asleep, unarmed, or running away. I’ve run away myself more than once. I’ve pissed myself with fear. I’ve begged for my life. I’ve been wounded, often, and badly, and screamed and cried like a baby whose mother took her tit away. I’ve no doubt the world would be a better place if I’d been killed years ago, but I haven’t been, and I don’t know why.’

  He looked down at his hands, pink and clean on the stone. ‘There are few men with more blood on their hands than me. None, that I know of. The Bloody-Nine they call me, my enemies, and there’s a lot of ’em. Always more enemies, and fewer friends. Blood gets you nothing but more blood. It follows me now, always, like my shadow, and like my shadow I can never be free of it. I should never be free of it. I’ve earned it. I’ve deserved it. I’ve sought it out. Such is my punishment.’

  And that was all. Logen breathed a deep, ragged sigh and stared out at the lake. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the man beside him, didn’t want to see the expression on his face. Who wants to learn he’s keeping company with the Bloody-Nine? A man who’s wrought more death than the plague, and with less regret. They could never be friends now, not with all those corpses between them.

  Then he felt Quai’s hand clap him on the shoulder. ‘Well, there it is,’ he said, grinning from ear to ear, ‘but you saved me, and I’m right grateful for it!’

  ‘I’ve saved a man this year, and only killed four. I’m born again.’ And they both laughed for a while, and it felt good.

  ‘So, Malacus, I see you are back with us.’

  They turned, Quai stumbling on his blanket and looking a touch sick. The First of the Magi was standing in the doo
rway, dressed in a long white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He still looked more like a butcher than a wizard to Logen.

  ‘Master Bayaz . . . er . . . I was just coming to see you,’ stuttered Quai.

  ‘Indeed? How fortunate for us both then, that I have come to you.’ The Magus stepped out onto the balcony. ‘It occurs to me that a man who is well enough to talk, and laugh, and venture out of doors, is doubtless well enough to read, and study, and expand his tiny mind. What would you say to that?’

  ‘Doubtless . . .’

  ‘Doubtless, yes! Tell me, how are your studies progressing?’

  The wretched apprentice looked utterly confused. ‘They have been somewhat . . . interrupted?’

  ‘You made no progress with Juvens’ Principles of Art while you were lost in the hills in bad weather?’

  ‘Er . . . no progress . . . no.’

  ‘And your knowledge of the histories. Did that develop far, while Master Ninefingers was carrying you back to the library?’

  ‘Er . . . I must confess . . . it didn’t.’

  ‘Your exercises and meditations though, surely you have been practising those, while unconscious this past week?’

  ‘Well, er . . . no, the unconsciousness was . . . er . . .’

  ‘So, tell me, would you say that you are ahead of the game, so to speak? Or have your studies fallen behind?’

  Quai stared down at the floor. ‘They were behind when I left.’

  ‘Then perhaps then you could tell me where you plan to spend the day?’

  The apprentice looked up hopefully. ‘At my desk?’

  ‘Excellent!’ Bayaz smiled wide. ‘I was about to suggest it, but you have anticipated me! Your keenness to learn does you much credit!’ Quai nodded furiously and hurried towards the door, the hem of his blanket trailing on the flags.