Last Argument of Kings tfl-3

by Joe Abercrombie

  “That good enough?” asked Dogman.

  “What, you want to say a few words for the dead, do you?”

  “You know what I mean, if someone—”

  “No time for clever, now.” Dow grabbed him by the arm and pulled him through the gate. “Let’s kill us a witch.”

  The sole of the Feared’s metal boot thudded into Logen’s chest, ripped his breath out and rammed him into the earth, the sword tumbling from his clawing hand, puke burning at the back of his throat. Before he knew where he was a great shadow fell across him. Metal snapped shut round his wrist, tight as a vice. His legs were kicked away and he was on his face, arm twisted behind him and a mouthful of dirt to think about. Something pressed against his cheek. Cold at first, then painful. The Feared’s great foot. His wrist was wrenched round, dragged up. His head was crushed further into the damp ground, short grass prickling up his nose.

  The tearing pain in his shoulder was awful. Soon it was a lot worse. He was caught fast and helpless, stretched out like a rabbit for skinning. The crowd had fallen breathlessly silent, the only sound the battered flesh round Logen’s mouth squelching, the air squeaking in one squashed nostril. He would’ve screamed if his face hadn’t been so squeezed that he could scarcely wheeze in half a breath. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say that he’s finished. Back to the mud, and no one could’ve said he hadn’t earned it. A fitting end for the Bloody-Nine, torn apart in the circle.

  But the great arms didn’t pull any further. Out the corner of one flickering eye, Logen could just see Bethod leaning against the battlements. The King of the Northmen waved his hand, round and round, in a slow wheel. Logen remembered what it meant.

  Take your time. Make it last. Show them all a lesson they’ll never forget.

  The Feared’s great boot slid off his jaw and Logen felt himself dragged into the air, limbs flopping like a puppet with the strings cut. The tattooed hand went up, black against the sun, and slapped Logen across the face. Open-handed, as a father might cuff a troublesome child. It was like being hit with a pan. Light burst open in Logen’s skull, his mouth filled with blood. Things drew into focus just in time for him to see the painted hand swing back the other way. It came down with a terrible inevitability and cracked him a backhand blow, as a jealous husband might crack his helpless wife.

  “Gurgh—” he heard himself say, and he was flying. Blue sky, blinding sun, yellow grass, staring faces, all meaningless smears. He crashed into the shields at the edge of the circle, flopped half-senseless to the earth. Far away men were shouting, screaming, hissing, but he couldn’t hear the words, and hardly cared. All he could think about was the cold feeling in his stomach. As if his guts were stuffed with swelling ice.

  He saw a pale hand, smeared with pink blood, white tendons starting from the scratched skin. His hand, of course. There was the stump. But when he tried to make the fingers open they only clutched tighter at the brown earth.

  “Yes,” he whispered, and blood drooled out of his numb mouth and trickled into the grass. The ice spread out from his stomach, out to the very tips of his fingers and turned every part of him numb. It was well that it did. It was high time.

  “Yes,” he said. Up, up onto one knee, his bloody lips curling back from his teeth, his bloody right hand snaking through the grass, seeking out the hilt of the Maker’s sword, closing tight around it.

  “Yes!” he hissed, and Logen laughed, and the Bloody-Nine laughed, together.

  West had not expected Ninefingers to get up, not ever again, but he did, and when he did, he was laughing. It sounded almost like weeping at first, a slobbering giggle, shrill and strange, but it grew louder, sharper, colder as he rose. As if at a cruel joke that no one else could see. A fatal joke. His head fell sideways like a hanged man’s, livid face all slack around a hacked-out grin.

  Blood stained his teeth pink, trickled from the cuts on his face, seeped from his torn lips. The laughter gurgled up louder, and louder, ripping at West’s ears, jagged as a saw-blade. More agonised than any scream, more furious than any war-cry. Awfully, sickeningly wrong. Chuckling at a massacre. Slaughterhouse giggling.

  Ninefingers lurched forwards like a drunken man, swaying, wild, sword dangling from his bloody fist. His dead eyes glittered, wet and staring, pupils swollen to two black pits. His mad laughter cut, and grated, and hacked around the circle. West felt himself edging back, mouth dry. All the crowd edged back. They no longer knew who scared them more: Fenris the Feared, or the Bloody-Nine.

  The world burned.

  His skin was on fire. His breath was scalding steam. The sword was a brand of molten metal in his fist.

  The sun stamped white-hot patterns into his prickling eyes, and the cold grey shapes of men, and shields, and walls, and of a giant made from blue words and black iron. Fear washed out from him in sickly waves, but the Bloody-Nine only smiled the wider. Fear and pain were fuel on the fire, and the flames surged high, and higher yet.

  The world burned, and at its centre the Bloody-Nine burned hottest of all. He held out his hand, and he curled the three fingers, and he beckoned.

  “I am waiting,” he said.

  The great fists lashed at the Bloody-Nine’s face, the great hands snatched at his body. But all the giant caught was laughter. Easier to strike the flickering fire. Easier to catch the rolling smoke.

  The circle was an oven. The blades of yellow grass were tongues of yellow flame beneath it. The sweat, spit, blood dripped onto it like gravy from cooking meat.

  The Bloody-Nine made a hiss, water on coals. The hiss became a growl, iron spattering from the forge. The growl became a great roar, the dry forest in flames, and he let the sword go free.

  The grey metal made searing circles, hacked bloodless holes in blue flesh, rang on black iron. The giant faded away and the blade bit into the face of one of the men holding the shields. His head burst apart and sprayed blood across another, a hole torn from the wall around the circle. The others shuffled back, shields wavering, the circle swelling with their fear. They feared him more even than the giant, and they were wise to. Everything that lived was his enemy, and when the Bloody-Nine had made pieces of this devil-thing, he would set to work on them.

  The circle was a cauldron. On the walls above the crowd surged like angry steam. The ground shifted and swelled under the Bloody-Nine’s feet like boiling oil.

  His roar became a scalding scream, the sword flashed down and clashed from spiked armour like a hammer on the anvil. The giant pressed his blue hand to the pale side of his head, face squirming like a nest of maggots. The blade had missed his skull, but stolen away the top half of his ear. Blood bubbled out from the wound, ran down the side of his great neck in two thin lines, and did not stop.

  The great eyes went wide and the giant sprang forward with a thundering bellow. The Bloody-Nine rolled under his flailing fist and slid round behind him, saw the black iron on his leg flap away, the bright buckle dangling. The sword snaked out and slid into the gap, ate deep into the great pale calf inside it. The giant roared in pain, spun, lurched on his wounded leg and fell to his knees.

  The circle was a crucible. The screaming faces of the men around its edge danced like smoke, swam like molten metal, their shields melting together.

  Now was the time. The morning sun blazed down, glinted bright on the heavy chest-plate, marking the spot. Now was the beautiful moment.

  The world burned, and like a leaping flame the Bloody-Nine reared up, arching back, raising high the sword. The work of Kanedias, the Master Maker, no blade forged sharper. Its bitter edge scored a long gash in the black armour, through the iron and into the soft flesh beneath, striking sparks and spattering blood, the shriek of tortured metal mingling with the wail of pain torn from the Feared’s twisted mouth. The wound it left in him was deep.

  But not deep enough.

  The giant’s great arms slid round the Bloody-Nine’s back, folding him in a smothering embrace. The edges of the black metal pierced his flesh in a do
zen places. Closer the giant drew him, and closer, and a ragged spike slid into the Bloody-Nine’s face, cut through his cheek and scraped against his teeth, bit into the side of his tongue and filled his mouth with salt blood.

  The Feared’s grip was the weight of mountains. No matter how hot the Bloody-Nine’s rage, no matter how he squirmed, and thrashed, and screamed in fury, he was held as tightly as the cold earth holds the buried dead. The blood trickling from his face, and from his back, and from the great gash in the Feared’s armour soaked into his clothes and spread out blazing hot over his skin.

  The World burned. Above the oven, the cauldron, the crucible, Bethod nodded, and the giant’s cold arms squeezed tighter.

  Dogman followed his nose. It rarely led him wrong, his nose, and he hoped to hell that it didn’t fail him now. It was a sickly kind of a smell—like sweet cakes left too long in the oven. He led the others along an empty hallway, down a shadowy stair, creeping through the damp darkness in the knotty bowels of Skarling’s Hill. He could hear something now, as well as smell it, and it sounded as bad as it smelled. A woman’s voice, singing soft and low. A strange kind of singing, in no tongue the Dogman could understand.

  “That must be her,” muttered Dow.

  “Don’t like the sound o’ that one bit,” Dogman whispered back. “Sounds like magic.”

  “What d’you expect? She’s a fucking witch ain’t she? I’ll go round behind.”

  “No, wait on—” But Dow was already creeping off the other way, boots padding soft and silent.

  “Shit.” Dogman followed the smell, creeping down the passageway with Grim at his back, the chanting coming louder and louder. A streak of light slunk out from an archway and he eased towards it, pressed his side to the wall and took a peer round the corner.

  The room on the other side had about as witchy a look as a room could ever have. Dark and windowless, three other black doorways round the walls. It was lit just by one smoky brazier up at the far end, sizzling coals shedding a dirty red light on it all, giving off a sick sweet stink. There were jars and pots scattered all round, bundles of twigs, and grass, and dried-out flowers hanging from the greasy rafters, casting strange shadows into the corners, like the shapes of hanged men swinging.

  There was a woman standing over the brazier with her back to the Dogman. Her long, white arms were spread out wide, shining with sweat. Gold glinted round her thin wrists, black hair straggled down her back. The Dogman might not have known the words she was singing but he could guess it was some dark work she was up to.

  Grim held up his bow, one eyebrow raised. Dogman shook his head, silently drew his knife. Tricky to kill her right off with a shaft, and who knew what she might do once she was shot? Cold steel in the neck left nothing to chance.

  Together they crept into the room. The air was hot in there, thick as swamp water. Dogman sneaked forward, trying not to breathe, sure the reek would throttle him if he did. He sweated, or the room did, leastways his skin was beaded up with dew in no time. He picked his steps, finding a path between all the rubbish strewn across the floor—boxes, bundles, bottles. He worked his damp palm round the grip of his knife, fixed his eyes on the point between her shoulders, the point he’d stab it into—

  His foot caught a jar and sent it clattering. The woman’s head jerked round, the chant stopped dead on her lips. A gaunt, white face, pale as a drowned man’s, black paint round her narrow eyes—blue eyes, cold as the ocean.

  The circle was silent. The men around its edge were still, their faces and their shields hanging limp. The crowd at their backs, the people pressed to the parapet above, all held motionless, all quiet as the dead.

  For all of Ninefingers’ mad rage, for all his twisting and his struggling, the giant had him fast. Thick muscles squirmed under blue skin as the Feared’s great arms tightened and slowly crushed the life from him. West’s mouth was bitter with helpless disappointment. All that he had done, all that he had suffered, all those lives lost, for nothing. Bethod would go free.

  Then Ninefingers gave an animal growl. The Feared held him still, but his blue arm was trembling with the effort. As if he was suddenly weakened, and could squeeze no further. Every sinew of West’s own body was rigid as he watched. The thick strap of the shield bit into his palm. His jaw was clenched so tight that his teeth ached. The two fighters were locked together, straining against each other with every fibre and yet entirely still, frozen in the centre of the circle.

  The Dogman sprang forward, knife raised and ready.

  “Stop.”

  He froze solid in a moment. He’d never heard a voice like it. One word and there was no thought in his head. He stared at the pale woman, his mouth open, his breath hardly moving, wishing that she’d say another.

  “You too,” she said, glancing over at Grim, and his face went slack, and he grinned, halfway through drawing his bow.

  She looked Dogman up and down, then pouted as if she was all disappointment. “Is that any way for guests to behave?”

  Dogman blinked. What the hell had he been thinking barging in here with a drawn blade? He couldn’t believe he’d done such a thing. He blushed to the roots of his hair. “Oh… I’m sorry… by the dead…”

  “Gugh!” said Grim, throwing his bow into the corner of the room as if he’d suddenly realised he had a turd in his hand, then staring down at the arrow, baffled.

  “That’s better.” She smiled, and the Dogman found he was grinning like an idiot. Some spit might’ve come out of his mouth maybe, just a bit, but he weren’t that bothered. As long as she kept talking nothing else seemed o’ too much importance. She beckoned to them, long white fingers stroking at the thick air. “No need to stand so far away from me. Come closer.”

  Him and Grim stumbled towards her like eager children, Dogman near tripping over his feet in his hurry to please, Grim barging into a table on the way and coming close to falling on his face.

  “My name is Caurib.”

  “Oh,” said Dogman. Most beautiful name ever, no doubt about it. Amazing, that a single word could be so beautiful.

  “Harding Grim’s my name!”

  “Dogman, they call me, ’count of a sharp sense o’ smell, and… er…” By the dead, but it was hard to think straight. There’d been something important he was meant to be doing, but for the life of him he couldn’t think what.

  “Dogman… perfect.” Her voice was soothing as a warm bath, as a soft kiss, as milk and honey… “Don’t sleep yet!” Dogman’s head rolled, Caurib’s painted face a black and white blur, swimming in front of him.

  “Sorry!” he gurgled, blushing again and trying to hide the knife behind his back. “Right sorry about the blade… no idea what—”

  “Don’t worry. I am glad that you brought it. I think it would be best if you used it to stab your friend.”

  “Him?” Dogman squinted at Grim.

  Grim grinned and nodded back at him. “Aye, definitely!”

  “Right, right, good idea.” Dogman lifted up the knife, seeming to weigh a ton. “Er… anywhere you’d like him stabbed, in particular?”

  “In the heart will do nicely.”

  “Right you are. Right. The heart it is.” Grim turned front on to give him a better go at it. Dogman blinked, wiped some sweat from his forehead. “Here we go, then.” Damn it but he was dizzy. He squinted at Grim’s chest, wanting to make sure he got it right first time, and didn’t embarrass himself again. “Here we go…”

  “Now!” she hissed at him. “Just get it—”

  The axe blade made a clicking sound as it split her head neatly down the middle, all the way to her chin. Blood sprayed out and spattered in Dogman’s gawping face, and the witch’s thin body slumped down on the stones like it was made of nothing but rags.

  Dow frowned as he twisted the haft of his axe this way and that, until the blade came free of Caurib’s ruined skull with a faint sucking sound. “That bitch talks too much,” he grunted.

  The Bloody-Nine felt the change
. Like the first green shoot of spring. Like the first warmth on the wind as the summer comes. There was a message in the way the Feared held him. His bones were no longer groaning, threatening to burst apart. The giant’s strength was less, and his was more.

  The Bloody-Nine sucked in the air and his rage burned hot as ever. Slowly, slowly, he dragged his face away from the giant’s shoulder, felt the metal slide out from his mouth. He twisted, twisted until his neck was free. Until he was staring into the giant’s writhing face. The Bloody-Nine smiled, then he darted forward, fast as a shower of sparks, and sank his teeth deep into that big lower lip.

  The giant grunted, shifted his arms, tried to drag the Bloody-Nine’s head away, tear the biting teeth out of his mouth. But he could more easily have shaken off the plague. His arms loosened and the Bloody-Nine twisted the hand that held the Maker’s sword. He twisted it, as the snake twists in its nest, and slowly he began to work it free.

  The giant’s blue left arm uncoiled from the Bloody-Nine’s body, his blue hand seized hold of the Bloody-Nine’s wrist, but there could be no stopping it. When the sapling seed finds a crack in the mountain, over long years its deep roots will burst the very rock apart. So the Bloody-Nine strained with every muscle and let the slow time pass, hissing out his hatred into the Feared’s twitching mouth. The blade crept onwards, slowly, slowly, and its very point bit into painted flesh, just below the giant’s bottom rib.

  The Bloody-Nine felt the hot blood trickling down the grip and over his bunched fist, trickling out of the Feared’s mouth and into his, running down his neck, leaking from the wounds across his back, dripping to the ground, just as it should be. Softly, gently, the blade slid into the Feared’s tattooed body, sideways, upwards, onwards.

  The great hands clawed at the Bloody-Nine’s arm, at his back, seeking desperately for some hold that might stop the terrible easing forward of that blade. But with every moment the giant’s strength melted away, like ice before a furnace. Easier to stop the Whiteflow than to stop the Bloody-Nine. The movement of his hands was the growing of a mighty tree, one hair’s breadth at a time, but no flesh, no stone, no metal could stop it.