Last Argument of Kings tfl-3

by Joe Abercrombie

  Vallimir gave her a long frown, then he turned to one of his men, a heavy-built veteran with a scar on his cheek. “There is a village just east of here, is there not, Sergeant Forest?”

  “Yes, sir. Marlhof is no more than ten miles distant.”

  “Will that suit you?” asked Vallimir, raising one eyebrow at Ferro.

  “Dead Gurkish suit me. That is all.”

  Leaves on the Water

  “Carleon,” said Logen. “Aye,” said Dogman. It squatted there, in the fork of the river, under the brooding clouds. Hard shapes of tall walls and towers on the sheer bluff above the fast-flowing water, up where Skarling’s hall used to stand. Slate roofs and stone buildings squashed in tight on the long downward slope, clustered in round the foot of the hill and with another wall outside, everything leant a cold, sharp shine from the rain just finished falling. Dogman couldn’t say he was glad to see the place again. Every visit yet had turned out badly.

  “It’s changed some, since the battle, all them years ago.” Logen was looking down at his spread-out hand, waggling the stump of his missing finger.

  “There weren’t no walls like that round it then.”

  “No. But there weren’t no Union army round it neither.”

  Dogman couldn’t deny it was a comforting fact. The Union pickets worked their way through the empty fields about the city, a wobbly line of earthworks, and stakes, and fences, with men moving behind ’em, dull sunlight catching metal now and then. Thousands of men, well-armed and vengeful, keeping Bethod penned up.

  “You sure he’s in there?”

  “Don’t see where else he’s got to go. He lost most of his best boys up in the mountains. No friends left, I reckon.”

  “We’ve all got less than we used to,” Dogman muttered. “I guess we just sit here. We got time, after all. Lots of it. We sit here and watch the grass grow, and we wait for Bethod to give up.”

  “Aye.” But Logen didn’t look like he believed it.

  “Aye,” said Dogman. But just giving up didn’t sound much like the Bethod he knew.

  He turned his head at the sound of hooves fast on the road, saw one of those messengers with a helmet like an angry chicken race from the trees and towards West’s tent, horse well-lathered from hard riding. He reined up in a fumbling hurry, near fell out of his saddle in his rush to get down, wobbled past a few staring officers and in through the flap. Dogman felt that familiar weight of worry in his gut. “That’s got the taste o’ bad news.”

  “What other kind is there?”

  There was some flutter down there now, soldiers shouting, throwing their arms around. “Best go and see what’s happened,” muttered Dogman, though he’d much rather have walked the other way. Crummock was stood near the tent, frowning at the commotion.

  “Something’s up,” said the hillman. “But I don’t understand a thing these Southerners say or do. I swear, they’re all mad.”

  Mad chatter came surging out of that tent alright, when Dogman pushed back the flap. There were Union officers all around the place and in a bastard of a muddle. West was in the midst of it, face pale as fresh milk, his fists clenched tight around nothing.

  “Furious!” Dogman grabbed him by the arm. “What the hell’s happening?”

  “The Gurkish have invaded Midderland.” West pulled his arm free and took to shouting.

  “The who have done what now?” muttered Crummock.

  “The Gurkish.” Logen was frowning deep. “Brown folk, from way down south. Hard folk, by all accounts.”

  Pike had come up now, his burned face grim. “They landed an army by sea. They might have reached Adua already.”

  “Hold on, now.” Dogman didn’t know a thing about Gurkish, or Adua, or Midderland, but his bad feeling was getting worse every moment. “What’re you telling us, exactly?”

  “We’ve been ordered home. Now.”

  Dogman stared. He should’ve known all along it couldn’t be this simple. He grabbed West by the arm again, stabbing down towards Carleon with his dirty finger. “We’ve nothing like the men we need to carry on a siege o’ this place without you!”

  “I know,” said West, “and I’m sorry. But there’s nothing I can do. Get over to General Poulder!” he snapped at a young lad with a squint. “Tell him to get his division ready to march for the coast at once!”

  Dogman blinked, feeling sick to his stomach. “So we fought seven days in the High Places for nothing? Tul died, and the dead know how many more, for nothing?” It always took him by surprise, how fast something could fall apart once you were leaning on it. “That’s it, then. Back to woods, and cold, and running, and killing. No end to it.”

  “Might be another way,” said Crummock.

  “What way?”

  The chief of the hillmen had a sly grin. “You know, don’t you Bloody-Nine?”

  “Aye. I know.” Logen had a look like a man who knows he’s about to hang, and he’s staring at the tree they’re going to do it from. “When have you got to leave, Furious?”

  West frowned. “We have a lot of men and not a lot of road. Poulder’s division tomorrow, I imagine, and Kroy’s the day after.”

  Crummock’s grin got a shade wider. “So all day tomorrow, there’ll be piles o’ men sat here, dug in round Bethod, looking like they’re never going nowhere, eh?”

  “I suppose there could be.”

  “Give me tomorrow,” said Logen. “Give me just that and maybe I can settle things. Then I’ll come south with you if I’m still alive, and bring who I can. That’s my word. We’ll help you with the Gurkish.”

  “What difference can one day make?” asked West.

  “Aye,” muttered Dogman, “what’s one day?” Trouble was, he could already guess the answer.

  Water trickled under the old bridge, past the trees and off down the green hillside. Down towards Carleon. Logen watched a few yellow leaves carried on it, turning round and round, dragged past the mossy stones. He wished that he could just float away, but it didn’t seem likely.

  “We fought here,” said the Dogman. “Threetrees and Tul, Dow and Grim, and me. Forley’s buried in them woods somewhere.”

  “You want to go up there?” asked Logen. “Give him a visit, see if—”

  “What for? I doubt a visit’ll do me any good, and I’m damn sure it won’t do him any. Nothing will. That’s what it is to be dead. You sure about this, Logen?”

  “You see another way? The Union won’t stick. Might be our last chance to finish with Bethod. Not that much to lose, is there?”

  “There’s your life.”

  Logen took a long breath. “Can’t think of too many people who place much value on that. You coming down?”

  Dogman shook his head. “Reckon I’ll stay up here. I had a belly full o’ Bethod.”

  “Alright then. Alright.” It was as if all the moments of Logen’s life, things said and things done, choices he hardly remembered making, had led him to this. Now there was no choice at all. Maybe there never had been. He was like the leaves on the water—carried along, down towards Carleon, and nothing he could do about it. He gave his heels to his horse and off down the slope alone, down the dirt track, beside the gurgling stream.

  Everything seemed picked out clearer than usual, as the day wore down. He rode past trees, damp leaves getting ready to fall— golden yellow, burning orange, vivid purple, all the colours of fire. Down towards the valley bottom through the heavy air, just a trace of autumn mist to it, sharp in his throat. The sounds of saddle creaking, harness rattling, hoofbeats in the soft ground all came muffled. He trotted through the empty fields, turned mud pocked with weeds, past the Union pickets, a ditch and a line of sharpened stakes, three times bowshot from the walls. Soldiers there, in studded jackets and steel caps, watched him pass with frowns on their faces.

  He pulled on the reins and slowed his horse to a walk. He clattered over a wooden bridge, one of Bethod’s new ones, the river underneath surging with the autumn rain. Up the gentl
e rise, the wall looming over him. High, sheer, dark and solid looking. A threatening piece of wall if ever there’d been one. He couldn’t see men at the slots in the battlements, but he guessed they had to be there. He swallowed, spit moving awkward in his throat, then made himself sit up tall, pretending he wasn’t cut and aching all over from seven days of battle in the mountains. He wondered if he was about to hear a flatbow click, feel the stab of pain then drop into the mud, dead. Some kind of an embarrassing song that would make.

  “Well, well, well!” came a deep voice, and Logen knew it right away. Who else would it be but Bethod?

  The strange thing was that he was glad to hear it, for the quickest moment. Until he remembered all the blood between them. Until he remembered they hated each other. You can have enemies you never really meet, Logen had plenty. You can kill men you don’t know, he’d done it often. But you can’t truly hate a man without loving him first, and there’s always a trace of that love left over.

  “I’m taking a look down from my gates and who should ride up out of the past?” Bethod called to him. “The Bloody-Nine! Would you believe it? I’d organise a feast, but we’ve no food to spare in here!” He stood there, at the parapet, high up above the doors, fists on the stone. He didn’t sneer. He didn’t smile. He didn’t do much of anything.

  “If it ain’t the King o’ the Northmen!” Logen shouted up. “Still got your golden hat, then?”

  Bethod touched the ring round his head, the big jewel on his brow glittering with the setting sun. “Why wouldn’t I have?”

  “Let me see…” Logen looked left and right, up and down the bare walls. “Just that you’ve got shit all left to be King of, far as I can tell.”

  “Huh. I reckon we’re both feeling lonely. Where are your friends, Bloody-Nine? Those killers you liked around you. Where’s the Thunderhead, and Grim, and the Dogman, and that bastard Black Dow?”

  “All done with, Bethod. Dead, up in the mountains. Dead as Skarling. Them and Littlebone, and Goring, and Whitesides, and plenty more besides.”

  Bethod looked grim at that. “Not much to cheer about, if you’re asking me. That’s some useful men gone back to the mud, one way or another. Some friends of mine, and some of yours. There never is a happy outcome with we two, is there? Bad as friends, and worse as enemies. What did you come here for, Ninefingers?”

  Logen sat there, for a moment, thinking of all the other times he’d done what he had to do now. The challenges he’d made, and their outcomes, and there were no happy memories among that lot. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s reluctant. But there was no other way. “I’m here to make a challenge!” he bellowed, and the sound of it echoed back from the damp, dark walls and died a slow death in the misty air.

  Bethod tipped back his head and laughed. A laugh without much joy in it, Logen reckoned. “By the dead, Ninefingers, but you never change. You’re like some old dog no one can stop from barking. Challenge? What have we got left to fight over?”

  “I win, you open the gates and belong to me. My prisoner. I lose, the Union pack up and sail for home, and you’re free.”

  Bethod’s smile slowly faded and his eyes narrowed, suspicious. Logen knew that look from way back. Turning over the chances, sorting through the reasons why. “That sounds like a golden offer, considering the fix I’m in. Hard to believe it. What’s in it for your Southern friends up there?”

  Logen snorted. “They’ll wait, if they have to, but they don’t much care about you, Bethod. You’re nothing to them, for all your bluster. They kicked your arse across the North already and they reckon you’ll not be bothering them again either way. If I win, they get your head. If I lose, they can go home early.”

  “I’m nothing to them, eh?” Bethod split a sad smile. “Is that what it’s come to, after all my work, and sweat, and pain? Are you happy, Ninefingers? To see all I’ve fought for put in the dust?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be? You’ve no one but yourself to blame for it. It was you brought us to this. Take my challenge, Bethod, then maybe one of us can have peace!”

  The King of the Northmen gaped down, eyes wide. “No one else to blame? Me? How soon we all forget!” He grabbed the chain round his shoulders and rattled it. “You think I wanted this? You think I asked for any of it? All I wanted was a strip more land to feed my people, to stop the big clans squeezing me. All I wanted was to win a few victories to be proud of, to pass on something better to my sons than I got from my father.” He leaned forward, his hands clutching at the battlements. “Who was it always had to push a step further? Who was it would never let me stop? Who was it had to taste blood, and once he’d tasted it got drunk on it, went mad with it, could never get enough?” His finger stabbed down. “Who else but the Bloody-Nine?”

  “That’s not how it was,” growled Logen.

  Bethod’s laughter echoed harsh on the wind. “Is it not? I wanted to talk with Shama Heartless, but you had to kill him! I tried to strike a deal at Heonan, but you had to climb up and settle your score, and start a dozen more! Peace, you say? I begged you to let me make peace at Uffrith, but you had to fight Threetrees! On my knees I begged you, but you had to have the biggest name in all the North! Then once you’d beaten him, you broke your word to me and let him live, as though there was nothing bigger to think about than your damn pride!”

  “That’s not how it was,” said Logen.

  “There’s not a man in the North that doesn’t know the truth of it! Peace? Hah! What about Rattleneck, eh? I would have ransomed his son back to him, and we could all have gone home happy, but no! What did you say to me? Easier to stop the Whiteflow than to stop the Bloody-Nine! Then you had to nail his head to my standard for the whole world to see, so the vengeance would never find an end! Every time I tried to stop, you dragged me on, deeper and deeper into the mire! Until there could be no stopping any longer! Until it was kill or be killed! Until I had to put down the whole North! You made me King, Ninefingers. What other choices did you leave me?”

  “That’s not how it was,” whispered Logen. But he knew it had been.

  “Tell yourself that I’m the cause of all your woes if it makes you happy! Tell yourself I’m the merciless one, the murderous one, the bloodthirsty one, but ask yourself who I learned it from. I had the best master! Play at being the good man if you please, the man with no choices, but we both know what you really are. Peace? You’ll never have peace, Bloody-Nine. You’re made of death!”

  Logen would’ve liked to deny it, but it would just have been more lies. Bethod truly knew him. Bethod truly understood him. Better than anyone. His worst enemy, and still his best friend. “Then why not kill me, when you had the chance?”

  The King of the Northmen frowned, as though he couldn’t understand something. Then he started to laugh again. He shrieked with it. “You don’t know why? You stood right beside him and you don’t know? You learned nothing from me, Ninefingers! After all these years, you still let the rain wash you any way it pleases!”

  “What’re you saying?” snarled Logen.

  “Bayaz!”

  “Bayaz? What of him?”

  “I was ready to put the bloody cross in you, sink your carcass in a bog with all the rest of your misfit idiots and was happy to do it, until that old liar came calling!”

  “And?”

  “I owed him, and he wanted you let go. It was that meddling old fuck that saved your worthless hide, and nothing else!”

  “Why?” growled Logen, not knowing what to make of it, but not liking that he was learning about it so long after everyone else.

  But Bethod only chuckled. “Maybe I didn’t grovel low enough for his taste. You’re the one he saved, you ask him the whys, if you live long enough. But I don’t think you will. I take your challenge! Here. Tomorrow. At sunrise.” He rubbed his palms together. “Man against man, with the future of the North hanging bloody on the outcome! Just as it used to be, eh, Logen? In the old days? In the sunny valleys of the past? Roll the dice tog
ether one more time, shall we?” The King of the Northmen stepped slowly back, away from the battlements. “Some things have changed, though. I’ve a new champion now! If I was you, I’d say your goodbyes tonight, and get ready for the mud! After all… what was it you used to tell me…?” His laughter faded slowly into the dusk. “You have to be realistic!”

  “Good piece o’ meat,” said Grim.

  A warm fire and a good piece of meat were two things to be thankful for, and there’d been times enough when Dogman had a lot less, but watching the blood drip from that chunk of mutton was making him feel sick. Reminded him of the blood that came out of Shama Heartless when Logen split him open. Years ago, maybe, but the Dogman could see it fresh as yesterday. He could hear the roars from the men, the shields crashing together. He could smell the sour sweat and the fresh blood on the snow.

  “By the dead,” grunted Dogman, mouth watering like he was about to puke. “How can you think about eating now?”

  Dow gave a toothy grin. “Us going hungry ain’t going to help Ninefingers any. Nothing is. That’s the point of a duel, ain’t it? All about one man.” He poked at the meat with his knife and made the blood run sizzling into the fire. Then he sat back, thoughtful. “You reckon he can do it? Really? You remember that thing?” Dogman felt a ghost of the sick fear he’d had in the mist, and he shuddered to his boots. He weren’t likely ever to forget the sight of that giant coming through the murk, the sight of his painted fist rising, the sound of it crunching into Threetrees’ ribs and crushing the life out of him.

  “If anyone can do it,” he growled through his gritted teeth, “I reckon Logen can.”

  “Uh,” grunted Grim.

  “Aye, but do you think he will? That’s my question. That, and what happens if he don’t?” It was a question that Dogman could hardly bear to think up an answer to. Logen would be dead, for a first thing. Then there’d be no siege of Carleon anymore. Dogman had too few men left after the mountains to keep a piss-pot surrounded, let alone the best walled city in the North. Bethod could do as he pleased—seek out help, and find new friends, and set to fighting again. There was no one tougher in a tight corner.