Legends

by Joe Abercrombie

  “Did you see?”

  Thorkill’s eyes narrowed. “See what?”

  “The chain! The talisman! The beast is… was…” Jorm faltered, struggling to find the words, a part of him unable to believe the truth he was attempting to utter.

  “Sven of Skarrsgard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Once, maybe, but not anymore.” Thorkill’s words were like an icy dagger to the gut. “The corrupting power of the talisman has changed him. Now he is Nam’karill, ‘Who Walks With Death’.”

  Jorm looked from his mentor back to the enveloping mountain mists. If Sven was the beast, and it had been the dark power of Namarr that had changed him so horribly, reshaping his physical form, then had it been mere coincidence that caused the beast to arrive when it did, when they needed its brute strength and savagery the most? Or had Sven purposely led them to this place, at this time?

  Had Sven witnessed the massacre of the farmer and his family at the hands of the Namarrans? The injuries Thorkill had taken to have been caused by an animal’s claws could equally have been caused by the cultists’ bear-claw knives and sabre-fang weapons. Had the slaughter of those innocents in truth been the handiwork of the death-worshippers, as Jormungard had at first suspected?

  Clearly enough of the man the monster had once been remained for the Sven-Become-Beast to understand that it could not break the Namarrans’ power over it without the assistance of others, but also knowing that once that power was diminished, it might too have its revenge.

  But Jormungard knew he could not leave things like this between them. Sven had become a creature born of corruption, altered by the death-dealing power of Namarr. He would never be human again, and the longer he remained an animal the more like an animal he would become, losing whatever semblance of humanity currently remained within his magic-warped mind. It could only be a matter of time before the beast killed again, and next time Jorm could not be sure it would only be death-worshipping cultists that fell victim to its untamed wrath and savage hunger.

  No, he could not let his former friend go on like this. He owed him that much.

  A mournful howl cut through the chill air and an icy breezy shifted the inconstant mists again. And there, atop a rocky tor on an escarpment above the standing stones, the beast crouched, its misshapen head thrown back, howling its challenge to the skies.

  The Sven-Beast was waiting for them.

  Jormungard, with the assistance of his mentor Thorkill, would meet that challenge, so he now swore. And when the time came, they would not be found wanting.

  For to die in battle, meeting his end with honour and his soul shriven, that was what Sven Skarrsgard would have wished for. That was what every warrior of Farrhold wished for.

  “He who hunts his enemies with vengeance in his heart walks with death.

  And he who walks with death shall never find peace.”

  – old Farrmen saying

  Skipping Town

  Joe Abercrombie

  “Maybe we should just skip town.” said Javre.

  “Oh no, no, no, not this time,” Shev snapped back at her. “You can’t just career through life leaving the wreckage of your mistakes behind you.”

  A silence as they hurried on through the shadows, Shev having to half-jog to keep up as Javre ploughed ahead with immense strides, brow furrowed in thought. “What is it that we’ve been doing this past year, then?”

  “Well... we’ve... That’s just my point! We can’t keep doing it.”

  “I see. So we give Tumnor his jewel, and we collect the promised money, and we pay our gambling debts –”

  “Your gambling debts,” snapped Shev.

  “And then what, we put down roots here?” Javre raised one red brow at the crumbling buildings, the rubbish-strewn street, a fish-stinking beggar hacking out diseased coughs in a doorway.

  “Well, no. We move on.”

  “And what we left behind us tonight?” Javre jerked her head the way they’d come. “Would you call that wreckage?”

  “I would call that...” Shev wondered how much this particular truth would stretch before it tore to bits. “A series of mishaps.”

  “It looked like wreckage to me. I mean, once the front of the mansion collapsed, you’d have to call that wreckage, no?”

  Shev glanced quickly over her shoulder yet again to make sure no one was following. “I suppose an uncharitable speaker could describe it so.”

  “Then explain to me, if you would, Shevedieh, how your way differs from mine, except that we leave town with less money?”

  “We leave with less enemies as well!” snapped Shev. “I tire of dropping off a new score in every shit hole we pass through like a rabbit leaves droppings! Sooner or later I might need a good shit hole to pass through again. All the damn enemies. I wake up sweating, you know, in the night!”

  “That’s all that spicy food,” said Javre. “I don’t know how often I’ve warned you about your diet. And enemies are a good thing. Enemies show you make... an impression.”

  “Oh, you make an impression, all right, that I would never deny. You made a hell of an impression on those boys tonight.”

  Javre grinned a mass of white teeth as she punched one scabbed fist into one calloused palm with a smack like a door slamming. “I did, didn’t I?”

  “I’m a thief, Javre, not... whatever you are. I’m supposed to keep a low profile.”

  “Ah!” Javre raised that same red brow again as she glanced sideways. “Hence all the black.”

  “And it does look rather well on me, I think you’d have to agree.”

  “You certainly are a shadowy and seductive corruptor of innocent maidenhood!” Javre playfully jogged Shev in the ribs with an elbow and nearly sent her careering into the nearest wall, then caught her by the hand and dragged her into a crushing embrace, her cheek squashed into Javre’s armpit. “We’ll do it your way then, Shevedieh, my friend! Straight and true and morally upright, just the way a thief should be! We’ll pay your debts, then let’s get drunk and find some men.”

  Shev was still struggling to get a breath in after that elbow. “What is it exactly that you think I’d do with them?”

  Javre grinned. “The men would be for me. I am a woman of Thond, and have grand appetites. You can keep watch.”

  “My towering thanks for the immensity of that honour,” said Shev, slipping from under the weight of Javre’s mightily muscled arm.

  “It’s the least I could do. You’ve been a fine sidekick so far.”

  “I thought this was an equal partnership.”

  “All the best sidekicks think that,” said Javre, striding towards the front door of the Weeping Slaver, its sign hanging precariously from a rusting pole by one loop.

  Shev caught Javre’s arm and, by hanging off it with all her weight and digging her heels into the mud, managed to stop her taking the next step. “I have a feeling Tumnor will be expecting us.”

  “That was the arrangement.” Javre looked down at her, puzzled.

  “Given that he was less than entirely forthcoming about the job, it may be that he’ll try to double-cross us.”

  Javre frowned. “You think he might break the agreement?”

  “He didn’t mention the traps, did he?” asked Shev, still heaving at Javre’s arm. “Or the long drop? Or the wall? Or the dogs? And he said two guards, not twelve.”

  The muscles worked as Javre clenched her jaw. “He said nothing about that sorcerer either.”

  “Exactly,” Shev managed to gasp, every sinew trembling with effort

  “Breath of the Mother, you’re right.”

  Shev breathed a sigh of relief and slowly stood, patting Javre’s arm as she released it. “I’ll sneak in by the back and make sure that –”

  Javre gave her a huge smile. “The Lioness of Hoskopp never uses the back door!” And she sprang up the steps, raised one boot, kicked the front door splintering from its hinges and sprang inside, the filthy tails of her once-white coat flapping a
fter.

  Shevedieh gave brief but serious consideration to sprinting off down the street, then sighed and crept up the steps after her.

  The Weeping Slaver wasn’t the most auspicious of settings, though Shev had to admit she’d been in worse. Indeed she’d spent most of the last few years in worse.

  Size it had, big as a barn with a balcony at first floor level, ill-lit by a vast round chandelier with smoking candles in stained glass cups. The floor was covered in dirty straw and a mismatched jumble of chairs and tables, a warped counter down one side with the cheapest spirits of a dozen dozen cultures stacked on shelves behind.

  The place smelled of smoke and sweat, of spilled drinks and sprayed vomit, of desperation and wasted chances, and was very much as it had been three nights ago when they took the job, just before Javre lost half their promised earnings at dice. There was one clear difference, however. That night it had overflowed with scum of every kind. Tonight there appeared to be just the one patron.

  Tumnor sat at a table in the middle of the room, a fixed grin on his plump face and a sheen of sweat across his forehead. He looked extremely nervous, even for a man perpetrating a double-cross on a pair of notorious thieves. He looked in imminent fear of his life.

  “It’s a trap,” he grunted through his clenched teeth, without moving his hands from the table top.

  “That we had gathered, fiend!” said Javre.

  “No,” he grunted, eyes swivelling wildly sideways, then back to them, then sideways again. “A trap.”

  That was when Shev noticed that his hands were nailed to the table. She followed his glance, past a large brown stain on the floor that looked suspiciously like blood, and into the shadows. She saw a figure there. The glint of eyes. The glimmer of steel. A man poised and ready. Now she took in other tell-tale gleams in the dark corners of the inn – an axeman wedged behind a drinks cabinet, the nose of a flatbowman peeking into the light on a balcony above, a pair of boots sticking out from the door to the cellar which she deduced must still be attached to the dead legs of one of Tumnor’s hired men. Her heart sank. She hated fighting. She wasn’t bad at it, but she hated it, and she had the strong feeling she was going to be fighting very soon.

  “It would appear,” murmured Shev, leaning towards Javre, “that the scum who double-crossed us have been double-crossed by some other scum.”

  “Yes,” whispered Javre. Her whispers were louder than the usual speaking voice of most people. “I find myself conflicted. Who to kill first?”

  “Perhaps we could talk our way out?” Shev ventured hopefully. It was important to stay hopeful.

  “Shevedieh, we must face the possibility that there will be violence.”

  “Your prescience is uncanny.”

  “When things get underway, I would be ever so grateful if you could attend to the flatbowman on the balcony just there?”

  “Understood,” muttered Shev.

  “Most of the rest you can probably leave to me.”

  “Too kind.”

  And now the unmistakable tread of heavy boots and jingling metal echoed from the back of the inn, and Tumnor’s face grew even more drawn, beads of sweat rolling down his cheeks.

  Javre narrowed her eyes. “And the villain is revealed.”

  “Villains tend to love a bit of theatre, though, don’t they?” muttered Shev.

  When she emerged into the shifting candlelight she was lean and very tall. Almost as tall as Javre, perhaps, her black hair chopped short, one sinewy arm bare and covered in blue tattoos and the other in plates of battered steel, a gauntlet like a claw at the end, curving nails of sharpened metal clicking as she walked. Her green, green eyes glinted as she smiled towards them.

  “It has been a while, Javre.”

  Javre pushed her lips out. “Oh, arse of the Mother,” she said. “Well met, Weylen. Or badly met, at least.”

  “You know her?” muttered Shev.

  Javre winced. “I must admit she is not an entire stranger to me. She was Thirteenth of the Fifteen.”

  “I am tenth now,” said Weylen. “Since you killed Hanama and Birke.”

  “I offered them the same choice I will soon offer you.” Javre shrugged her broad shoulders. “They chose death.”

  “Er...” Shev held up one gloved finger. “If I may ask... What the hell are we talking about?”

  The woman’s emerald green eyes moved across to her. “She did not tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  Javre winced even more. “Those friends of mine, I mentioned, from the temple.”

  “The temple in Thond?”

  “Yes. They’re not so much friends.”

  “So... neutral towards you, then?” Shev ventured, hopefully. It was important to stay hopeful.

  “More enemies,” said Javre.

  “I see.”

  “The fifteen Knights Templar of the Golden Order are forbidden to leave the temple except on the orders of the High Priestess. On pain of death.”

  “And I’m guessing you had no such permission to go?” asked Shevedieh, looking around at all the sharpened steel on display.

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Not in so many?”

  “Not in any.”

  “Her life is forfeit,” said Weylen. “As is the life of anyone who offers her succour.” And she extended her steel-taloned forefinger and drove it into the top of Tumnor’s head. He made a sound like a fart, then dropped forward, blood bubbling from the neat wound in his pate.

  Shev held her empty palms up. “Well I’ve offered no succour, that I promise you. I like a succouring just as much as the next girl, if not a good deal more, but Javre?” She worked her hand gently, making sure the mechanism was engaged, hoping that it looked like nothing more than an expressive gesture. “No offence to her, I daresay she’ll make several men a wonderful husband some day, but she’s not my type at all.” Shev raised her brows at Weylen who, it had to be said, was much closer to her type, those eyes of hers really were something. “And, you know, not wanting to blow my own horn, but once I offer succour? I generally get all the succouring one woman can –”

  “She means help,” said Javre.

  “Eh?”

  “Succour. It’s not a sexual thing.”

  “Oh.”

  “Kill them,” said Weylen.

  The flatbowman raised his weapon, candlelight glinting on the sharpened tip of the loaded bolt, as several other thugs burst from the shadows, brandishing a selection of unpleasant-looking weapons. Though what weapons look pleasant, when brandished at you?

  Shev twisted her wrist, and the throwing knife sprang into her hand. Unfortunately, the spring was wound too tight, and it shot straight through her clutching fingers and thudded into the ceiling, neatly cutting the rope that held the chandelier. Pulleys whirred and the huge thing began to plummet towards them.

  The flatbowman smiled as he squeezed the trigger, aiming straight at Shev’s heart. A thug raised a great axe above his head. Then a great weight of wood, glass and wax crashed down upon him, crushing him flat, the flatbow bolt shuddering into the side of the chandelier an instant before it hit the ground with a shattering impact, taking two more thugs with it and sending dust, splinters, shards and candles flying.

  “Shit,” whispered Shev, standing stunned and blinking as the echoes faded. She and Javre stood together in the centre of the round chandelier’s circular wreckage, apparently entirely unhurt.

  He didn’t raise his hand too often, but when he did Blind Crin, the God of Small Chances, was a hell of a patron god to have.

  Shev gave a whoop of triumph which turned, as many of her triumphant whoops did, to a gurgle of horror as an uncrushed thug sprang over the ruins of the chandelier with his sword a blur of hard-swung steel. She leaped back, tripped over a table, fell over a chair, rolled, saw a blade flash past, scrambled under another table, dust filtering around as someone beat it with an axe. She heard crashes, clashes, loud swearing, and all the familiar noise o
f a fight in an inn.

  Bloody hell, Shev hated fights. Hated them. Considering how much she hated them, she got into a lot of them. Partnering up with Javre had not helped her record, in that regard or, at a brief assay, any other. She slid out from under the table, sprang up, was punched in the face and sprawled painfully against the counter, spluttering and wobbling and trying to blink the tears from her eyes.

  A snarling thug came at her overhand with a knife and she jerked back at the waist, steel flashing by her and thunking into the counter. She jerked forward and butted him in the face, knocked him staggering with his hands to his nose, snatched his knife from the wood and sent it whirling through the air in one smooth motion, burying itself in the flatbowman’s forehead as he levelled his reloaded weapon. His eyes rolled up and he toppled off the balcony and onto a table below, sending bottles and glasses flying.

  “What a knife thrower,” Shev muttered to herself, “I could have – urgh!” Her smugness was knocked out of her along with her breath as a man cannoned into her side and sent her reeling.

  He was a big man of surpassing ugliness, swinging this way and that with a mace almost as big and ugly as he was, smashing glasses and furniture, filling the air with splinters. Shev whimpered every swear she could think of as she weaved and dodged, scrambling and jumping desperately, not even getting the chance to look for an opening, running steadily out of space and time as she was herded towards a corner.

  He raised his mace to strike, broad face twisted with rage.

  “Wait!” she wailed, pointing over his shoulder.

  It was amazing how often that worked. He jerked his head to look, pausing just long enough for her to knee him in the fruits with all her strength. He gasped, tottered, dropped to his knees, and she whipped out her dagger and stabbed him sharply at the meeting of his neck and his shoulder. He groaned, tried to stand, then sprawled on his face, welling blood.

  “Sorry,” said Shev. “Damn it, I’m sorry.” And she was, just as she always was. But it was better to be sorry than dead, just as it always was. That lesson she had learned long ago.

  No further fights presented themselves. Javre stood by the chandelier’s wreckage, her dirty white coat spotted with blood and the twisted bodies of a dozen thugs scattered about her. She had another bent over with his head wedged in the crook of one arm, and yet another pinned against a table by his neck at arm’s length, kicking and struggling to absolutely no effect.