Joe Abercrombie - Half a War

‘Can’t hurt, my king. I wanted to congratulate you on your betrothal.’ Though few betrothals could’ve delighted him less. ‘Skara will be the envy of the world as a queen, and she brings all of Throvenland for a dowry-’

‘Great prizes indeed.’ Gorm raised an arm and swept it towards the warriors that encircled them on every side. ‘But there is the small matter of defeating the High King before I claim them. Your disloyalty has forced me to gamble everything on Father Yarvi’s cunning, rather than bartering a peace with Grandmother Wexen, as I and Mother Scaer had planned.’

Raith glanced at Rakki, but his eyes were on the ground. ‘I didn’t think-’

‘I do not keep dogs to think. I keep them to obey. I have no use for a cur who does not come when he is whistled for. Who does not bite who I tell him to bite. There is no place in my household for such a wretched thing as that. I warned you that I saw a grain of mercy in you. I warned you it might crush you. Now it has.’ Gorm shook his head as he turned away. ‘All those eager boys who would have killed a hundred times for your place, and I chose you.’

‘Disappointing,’ said Soryorn, then with a parting sneer he followed his master down the walkway.

Raith stood there in silence. There’d been a time he admired Grom-gil-Gorm beyond all other men. His strength. His ruthlessness. He used to dream of being like him. ‘Hard to believe I ever looked up to that bastard.’

‘There’s one difference between us,’ muttered Rakki. ‘I’ve always hated him. Here’s another, though. I know I still need him. What’s your plan now?’

‘Can’t say I’ve been working to a plan.’ Raith frowned at his brother. ‘Ain’t easy, killing someone who’s done you no harm.’

‘No one said it was easy.’

‘Well it’s easier if you’re not the one has to do it. Seems it’s always you that wants the hard thing done,’ snapped Raith, trying to keep his voice down, and his fists down too, ‘but it’s me has to do it!’

‘Well you can’t help me now, can you?’ Rakki stabbed towards Bail’s Hall with one finger. ‘Since you chose that little bitch over your own-’

‘Don’t talk about her that way!’ snarled Raith, bunching his fists. ‘All I chose was not to kill her!’

‘And now look where we are. Some time to sprout a conscience.’ Rakki looked back to the graves. ‘I’ll pray for you, brother.’

Raith snorted. ‘Those folk on the border, I reckon they prayed when we came in the night. I reckon they prayed hard as anyone can.’

‘So?’

‘Their prayers didn’t save them from me, did it? Why would yours save me from some other bastard?’ And Raith stalked off down the walls, back to Blue Jenner.

‘Problem?’ asked the old raider.

‘Hatful of ’em.’

‘Well, family’s family. Daresay your brother will come around.’

‘He might. I doubt the Breaker of Swords will be so giving.’

‘He doesn’t strike me as a giver.’

‘I’m done with him.’ Raith spat over the walls. ‘I’m done with me too, the way I was.’

‘Did you like what you were?’

‘Plenty at the time. Now it seems I was more than a bit of a bastard.’ That woman’s face wouldn’t leave him alone, and he swallowed and looked down at the old stones under his feet. ‘How does a man know what’s right to do?’

Jenner puffed out his cheeks. ‘I’ve spent half my life doing the wrong thing. Most of the rest trying to work out the least wrong thing. The few times I’ve done the right thing it’s mostly been by accident.’

‘And you’re about the best man I know.’

Blue Jenner’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I thank you for the compliment. And I pity you.’

‘So do I, old man. So do I.’ Raith watched the little figures moving in Bright Yilling’s camp. Men crawling from their beds, gathered about their fires, picking at their breakfasts, maybe somewhere an old man and a young, looking up to where they stood on the walls and talking about nothing. ‘Reckon they’ll come again today?’

‘Aye, and that concerns me somewhat.’

‘They’ll never get over these walls with ladders. Not ever.’

‘No, and Yilling must know it. So why waste his strength trying?’

‘Keep us nervous. Keep us worried. It’s a siege, isn’t it? He wants to get in somehow.’

‘And in such a way as will burnish his fame.’ Jenner nodded out towards the graves. ‘After a battle, do you dig big howes for every man?’

‘Most of ’em we’d burn in a heap, but these One God-worshippers got odd ways with their dead.’

‘Why so close to our walls, though? You hide your hurts from an enemy. You don’t shove your losses under his nose, even if you can afford them.’

Raith reached up and rubbed at that old notch out of his ear. ‘I’m taking it you’ve got some clever explanation?’

‘You’re getting to know and admire me, I see.’ Jenner pushed his chin forward to scratch at his neck. ‘It had occurred to me Yilling might be ordering these mad attacks just so he’s got bodies to bury.’

‘He’s what?’

‘Worships Death, don’t he? And he’s got men to spare.’

‘Why kill men just to bury them?’

‘So we’d think that’s all he’s doing. But I don’t reckon Bright Yilling’s digging graves all night, just out of bowshot from where we’re weakest.’

Raith stared at him a moment, and then out towards those brown humps, and felt a cold shiver up his back. ‘They’re digging under the walls.’

For a boy who was reluctantly starting to consider himself a man, Koll had seen a few cities. Stern Vulsgard in spring and sprawling Kalyiv in summer, majestic Skekenhouse in its elf-walls and beautiful Yaletoft before they burned it. He’d made the long journey down the winding Divine, over the tall hauls and across the open steppe, finally to gape in wonder at the First of Cities, greatest settlement of men.

Beside the elf-ruins of Strokom they were all pinpricks.

He followed Skifr and the two ministers down black roads as wide as the market square in Thorlby, bored into the ground in echoing tunnels or stacked one upon the other on mighty pillars of stone, tangled up into giant madman’s knots while broken eyes of glass peered sadly down on the ruin. In silence they walked, each of them alone with their own worries. For the world, for those they knew, for themselves. Nothing lived. No plant, no bird, no crawling insect. There was only silence and slow decay. All around them, for mile upon mile, the impossible achievements of the past crumbled into dust.

‘What was this place like when the elves lived?’ whispered Koll.

‘Unimaginable in its scale and its light and its noise,’ said Skifr, leading the way with her head high, ‘in its planned confusion and its frenzied competition. All thousands of years silent.’

She let her fingertips trail along a crooked rail then lifted them, peered at the grey dust that coated them, tasted it, rubbed it against her thumb, frowned off down the cracked and buckled roadway.

‘What do you see?’ asked Koll.

Skifr raised one burned brow at him. ‘Only dust. There are no other omens here, for there is no future to look into but dust.’

From a high perch between two buildings a great snake of metal had fallen to lie twisted across the road.

‘The elves thought themselves all-powerful,’ said Skifr, as they picked their way over it. ‘They thought themselves greater than God. They thought they could remake all things according to a grand design. Look now upon their folly! No matter how great and glorious the making, time will unmake it. No matter how strong the word, strong the thought, strong the law, all must return to chaos.’