The Blade Itself

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘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

  Kurster 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.

  Now I realise why Gorst’s steels seem so worn. Kurster dodged around the circle, trying to escape the onslaught, but the big man was too quick. Far too quick. Gorst had the measure of him now, anticipating every movement, harrying his opponent with relentless blows. There was no escape.

  Two heavy thrusts drove the hapless officer back towards the edge of the circle, then a scything cut ripped his long steel from his hand and embedded it, wobbling wildly back and forth, in the turf. He staggered for a moment, eyes wide, his empty hand trembling, then Gorst was on him, letting go a roar and ramming full-tilt into his defenceless ribs with a heavy shoulder.

  Glokta spluttered with laughter. I never saw a swordsman fly before. Kurster actually turned half a somersault, shrieking like a girl as he tumbled through the air, crashing to the ground with his limbs flopping and sliding away on his face. He finally came to rest in the sand outside the circle, a good three strides from where Gorst had hit him, groaning weakly.

  The crowd was in shock, so quiet that Glokta’s cackling had to be audible on the back row. Kurster’s trainer rushed from his enclosure and gently turned his stricken student over. The young man kicked weakly, whimpered and clutched at his ribs. Gorst watched for a moment, emotionless, then shrugged and strolled back to his mark.

  Kurster’s trainer turned to the referee. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but my pupil cannot continue.’

  Glokta could not help himself. He had to clamp his mouth shut with his hands. His whole body was shaking with laughter. Each gurgle caused a painful spasm in his neck, but he didn’t care. It seemed the majority of the
crowd had not found the spectacle quite so amusing. Angry mutterings sprang up all around him. The grumbling turned to boos as Kurster was helped from the circle, draped between his trainer and his second, then the boos to a chorus of angry shouts.

  Gorst swept the audience with his lazy, half-open eyes, then shrugged again and trudged slowly back to his enclosure. Glokta was still sniggering as he limped from the arena, his purse a good deal heavier than when he arrived. He hadn’t had that much fun in years.

  The University stood in a neglected corner of the Agriont, directly in the shadow of the House of the Maker, where even the birds seemed old and tired. A huge, ramshackle building, coated in half-dead ivy, its design plainly from an earlier age. It was said to be one of the oldest buildings in the city. And it looks it.

  The roofs were sagging in the middle, a couple of them close to outright collapse. The delicate spires were crumbling, threatening to topple off into the unkempt gardens below. The render on the walls was tired and grimy, and in places whole sections had fallen away to reveal the bare stones and crumbling mortar beneath. In one spot a great brown stain flared out down the wall from a section of broken guttering. There had been a time when the study of sciences had attracted some of the foremost men in the Union, when this building had been among the grandest in the city. And Sult thinks the Inquisition is out of fashion.

  Two statues flanked the crumbling gate. Two old men, one with a lamp, one pointing at something in a book. Wisdom and progress or some such rubbish. The one with the book had lost his nose some time during the past century, the other was leaning at an angle, his lamp stuck out despairingly as though clutching for support.

  Glokta raised his fist and hammered on the ancient doors. They rattled, moved noticeably, as if they might at any moment drop from their hinges. Glokta waited. Waited some time.

  There was a sudden clatter of bolts being drawn back, and one half of the door wobbled open a few inches. An ancient face wedged itself into the gap and squinted out at him, lit underneath by a meagre taper clutched in a withered hand. Dewy old eyes peered up and down. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Inquisitor Glokta.’

  ‘Ah, from the Arch Lector?’

  Glokta frowned, surprised. ‘Yes, that’s right.’ They cannot be half so cut off from the world as they appear. He seems to know who I am.

  It was perilously dark within. Two enormous brass candelabras stood on either side of the door, but they were stripped of candles and had long gone unpolished, shining dully in the weak light from the porter’s little taper. ‘This way, sir,’ wheezed the old man, shambling off, bent nearly double. Even Glokta had little trouble keeping up with him as he crept away through the gloom.

  They shuffled together down a shadowy hallway. The windows on one side were ancient, made with tiny panes of glass so dirty that they would have let in little enough light on the sunniest of days. They let in none whatever as the sullen evening came on. The flickering candleflame danced over dusty paintings on the opposite wall, pale old men in dark gowns of black and grey, gazing wild-eyed from their flaking frames, flasks and cog-wheels and pairs of compasses clutched in their aged hands.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Glokta, after they had shambled through the murk for several minutes.

  ‘The Adepti are at dinner,’ wheezed the porter, glancing up at him with eyes infinitely tired.

  The University’s dining hall was an echoing cavern of a room, lifted one degree above total darkness by a few guttering candles. A small fire flickered in an enormous fireplace, casting dancing shadows among the rafters. A long table stretched the length of the floor, polished by long years of use, flanked by rickety chairs. It could easily have accommodated eighty but there were only five there, crowded up at one end, huddled in around the fireplace. They looked over as the taps of Glokta’s cane echoed through the hall, pausing in their meals and peering over with great interest. The man at the head of the table got to his feet and hurried over, holding the hem of his long black gown up with one hand.

  ‘A visitor,’ wheezed the porter, waving his candle in Glokta’s direction.

  ‘Ah, from the Arch Lector! I am Silber, the University Administrator!’ And he shook Glokta’s hand. His companions had meanwhile lurched and tottered to their feet as though the guest of honour had just arrived.

  ‘Inquisitor Glokta.’ He stared round at the eager old men. A good deal more deference than I was expecting, I must say. But then, the Arch Lector’s name opens all kinds of doors.

  ‘Glokta, Glokta,’ mumbled one of the old men, ‘seems that I remember a Glokta from somewhere.’

  ‘You remember everything from somewhere, but you never remember where,’ quipped the administrator, to half-hearted laughter. ‘Please let me make the introductions.’

  He went round the four black-gowned scientists, one by one. ‘Saurizin, our Adeptus Chemical.’ A beefy, unkempt old fellow with burns and stains down the front of his robe and more than one bit of food in his beard. ‘Denka, the Adeptus Metallic.’ The youngest of the four by a considerable margin, though by no means a young man, had an arrogant twist to his mouth. ‘Chayle, our Adeptus Mechanical.’ Glokta had never seen a man with so big a head but so small a face. His ears, in particular, were immense, and sprouting grey hairs. ‘And Kandelau, the Adeptus Physical.’ A scrawny old bird with a long neck and spectacles perched on his curving beak of a nose. ‘Please join us, Inquisitor,’ and the administrator indicated an empty chair, wedged in between two of the Adepti.

  ‘A glass of wine then?’ wheedled Chayle, a prim smile on his tiny mouth, already leaning forward with a decanter and sloshing some into a glass.

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘We were just discussing the relative merits of our various fields of study,’ murmured Kandelau, peering at Glokta through his flashing spectacles.

  ‘As always,’ lamented the Administrator.

  ‘The human body is, of course, the only area worthy of true scrutiny,’ continued the Adeptus Physical. ‘One must appreciate the mysteries within, before turning one’s attention to the world without. We all have a body, Inquisitor. Means of healing it, and of harming it, are of paramount interest to us all. It is the human body that is my area of expertise.’

  ‘Bodies! Bodies!’ whined Chayle, pursing his little lips and pushing food around his plate. ‘We are trying to eat!’

  ‘Quite so! You are unsettling the Inquisitor with your ghoulish babble!’

  ‘Oh, I am not easily unsettled.’ Glokta leered across the table, giving the Adeptus Metallic a good view of his missing teeth. ‘My work for the Inquisition demands a more than passing knowledge of anatomy.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence, then Saurizin took hold of the meat plate and offered it out. Glokta looked at the red slices, glistening on the plate. He licked at his empty gums. ‘Thank you, no.’

  ‘Is it true?’ asked the Adeptus Chemical, peering over the meat, voice hushed. ‘Will there be more funds? Now that this business with the Mercers is settled, that is?’

  Glokta frowned. Everyone was staring at him, waiting for his reply. One of the old Adepti had his fork frozen halfway to his mouth. So that’s it. Money. But why would they be expecting money from the Arch Lector? The heavy meat plate was beginning to wobble. Well . . . if it gets them listening. ‘Money might be made available, depending, of course, on results.’

  A hushed murmur crept around the table. The Adeptus Chemical carefully set down the plate with a trembling hand. ‘I have been having a great deal of success with acids recently . . .’

  ‘Hah!’ mocked the Adeptus Metallic. ‘Results, the Inquisitor asked for, results! My new alloys will be stronger than steel when they are perfected!’

  ‘Always the alloys!’ sighed Chayle, turning his tiny eyes towards the ceiling. ‘No one appreciates the importance of sound mechanical thinking!’

  The other three Adepti rounded fiercely on him, but the Administrator jumped in first. ‘Gentlemen, please! The Inquisitor is no
t interested in our little differences! Everyone will have time to discuss their latest work and show its merits. This is not a competition, is it Inquisitor?’ Every eye turned toward Glokta. He looked slowly round at those old, expectant faces, and said nothing.

  ‘I have developed a machine for—’

  ‘My acids—’

  ‘My alloys—’

  ‘The mysteries of the human body—’

  Glokta cut them off. ‘Actually, it is in the area of . . . I suppose you would call them explosive substances, that I am currently taking a particular interest—’

  The Adeptus Chemical jumped from his seat. ‘That would be my province!’ he cried, staring in triumph at his colleagues. ‘I have samples! I have examples! Please follow me, Inquisitor!’ And he tossed his cutlery onto his plate and set off towards one of the doors.

  Saurizin’s laboratory was precisely as one would have expected, almost down to the last detail. A long room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, blackened in places with circles and streaks of soot. Shelves covered most of the wall-space, brimming with a confusion of boxes, jars, bottles, each filled with its own powders, fluids, rods of strange metal. There was no apparent order to the positions of the various containers, and most had no labels. Organisation does not appear to be a priority.

  The benches in the middle of the room were even more confused, covered in towering constructions of glass and old brown copper: tubes, flasks and dishes, lamps—one with a naked flame burning. All gave the appearance of being ready at any moment to collapse, dousing anyone unfortunate enough to stand nearby with lethal, boiling poisons.

  The Adeptus Chemical rummaged in amongst this mess like a mole in its warren. ‘Now then,’ he mumbled to himself, pulling at his dirty beard with one hand, ‘blasting powders are somewhere here . . .’

  Glokta limped into the room after him, glancing suspiciously around at the mess of tubing that covered every surface. He wrinkled his nose. There was a revolting, acrid smell to the place.