Joe Abercrombie - Half the World

“Mother Scaer wants a word with you,” said the Vansterman, showing his teeth, and far from a pretty set. “Be best if you came quietly.”

“Better yet, we’ll go our own way quietly,” said Brand, plucking at Thorn’s shoulder.

She shook him off, hot shame turned to chill rage in an instant. She needed to hurt someone, and these idiots had come along at just the right moment.

Right for her. Wrong for them.

“I’ll be doing nothing quietly.” And she flicked one of Father Yarvi’s silver coins to the holder of the nearest stall, covered in tools and timber.

“What’s this for?” he asked as he caught it.

“The damage,” said Thorn, and she snatched up a hammer, flung it underhand so it bounced from the Vansterman’s skull, sending him stumbling back, all amazement.

She grabbed a heavy jug from another stall and smashed it over his head before he could get his balance, spraying them both with wine. She caught him as he fell and dug the jagged remains of the handle into his face.

A knife came at her and she dodged it on an instinct, jerking back from the waist so the blade hissed by her, eyes wide as she followed the flashing metal. The rat-faced man stabbed again and she reeled sideways, lurched over a stall, its owner wailing about his goods. She came up clutching a bowl of spice, flung it at Rat-face in a sweet-smelling orange cloud. He coughed, spat, lunged at her blindly. She used the bowl like a shield, the knife-blade buried itself in the wood and she wrenched it from his hand.

He came at her with a clumsy punch but she got her arm inside it, felt his fist scuff her cheek as she stepped in and kneed him full in the gut, then again between the legs and made him squeal. She caught him around the jaw, arching back, and butted him with all her strength in his rat face. The jolt of it dizzied her for a moment, but not half as much as it did him. He flopped onto his hands and knees, drooling blood, and she stepped up with a wild swing of her boot and kicked him onto his back, a table going over and half-burying him in an avalanche of glistening fish.

She turned, saw Brand being forced backward over a stall stacked with fruit, the big Lowlander trying to push a knife into his face, Brand’s tongue wedged between his teeth, eyes crossed as he stared at the bright point.

When you’re training, fighting your oarmates, there’s always a little held back. Thorn held back nothing now. She caught the Lowlander’s thick wrist with one hand and hauled his arm straight behind him, screamed as she drove the heel of her other hand down into his elbow. There was a crunch and his arm bent the wrong way, knife tumbling from his flopping hand. He screamed until Thorn chopped him in the neck just the way Skifr taught her and he fell jerking onto the next stall, sending broken pottery flying.

“Come on!” she spat, but there was no one left to fight. Only the shocked stall-holders and the scared bystanders and a mother holding her hand over her daughter’s eyes. “Go quietly, will I?” she shrieked, lifting her boot to stomp on the Lowlander’s head.

“No!” Brand caught her under the arm and dragged her through the wreckage, folk scrambling to give them room as they half-walked, half-ran into the mouth of a side-street.

“Did you kill them?” he was squeaking.

“With any luck,” snarled Thorn, tearing herself free of him. “Why? Did you plan to buy ’em beads, did you?”

“What? We were sent to get meat, not make corpses!” They took a quick turn, past a group of surprised beggars and on through the shadows of a rotten alley, the commotion fading behind them. “Don’t want to cause trouble for Father Yarvi. Don’t want to see you crushed with rocks either if I can help it.”

She saw he was right, and that made her angrier than ever. “You’re such a coward,” she hissed, which surely wasn’t fair but she wasn’t feeling very fair right then. There was something tickling her eye, and she wiped it, and her hand came away red.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, reaching out, “here-”

“Get your hand off me!” She shoved him against the wall, then, when he bounced off, shoved him again even harder. He shrank back, one hand up as she stood over him with her fists clenched, and he looked confused, and hurt, and scared.

It was a look that gave her a tingle, all right, but not in a good way. In that look she saw her silly bloody hopes as twisted and broken as she’d left that Lowlander’s arm, and it was no one’s fault but her own. She shouldn’t have let herself hope, but hopes are like weeds: however often you root them out they keep on springing up.

She gave a growl of frustration, and stalked off down the alleyway.

He’d ruined it.

Brand leant against the crumbling wall of the courtyard between Rulf and Father Yarvi, watching Thorn give Fror a pasting. He’d spent half his time watching her, since they reached the First of Cities. But now he did it with the mournful longing of an orphan at a baker’s stall, taunting himself with the sight of treats he knows he’ll never have. A feeling Brand knew all too well. A feeling he’d hoped never to have again.

There’d been something good between them. A friendship, if nothing else. A friendship a long, hard time in the making.

Like the blundering oaf he was, he’d ruined it.

He’d come back to their room and her things were gone and she was sleeping with Safrit and Koll and she hadn’t said why. She hadn’t said one word to him since that day in the market. She must’ve seen how he was looking at her, guessed what he was thinking. Wasn’t as though he was any good at hiding it. But judging by the way she looked at him now, or rather the way she didn’t, the thought made her flesh crawl. Of course it did.

Why would someone like her-so strong, and sharp, and confident-want a dullard like him? Anyone could see at one glance she was something truly special and he was nothing, and would always be nothing, just like his father used to tell him. A cringing dunce who’d begged for scraps, and picked through rubbish, and dragged sacks around the docks for a pittance and been grateful to get it.

He wasn’t sure exactly how he’d done it, but he’d found a way to let everyone down. His crew. His family. Himself. Thorn. He’d ruined it.

Koll slid back the bolt on the door and Sumael stepped into the courtyard. She had two others with her: a small servant in a hooded cloak and a big-shouldered man with a watchful frown and a scar through one gray brow.

The servant pushed her hood back. She was slight and dark-haired, with quick eyes that missed no detail as she watched the fight. If you could call it a fight. Fror was one of the best warriors on the crew, but it only took Thorn a few more moments to put him down and she wasn’t even breathing hard afterward.

“I’m done,” he groaned, clutching at his ribs with one hand while he held the other up for mercy.

“Most encouraging,” said Skifr, catching the wooden blade of Thorn’s ax before she could hit him again regardless. “I delight in the way you are fighting today, my dove. No doubts, no conscience, no mercy. Who will be next to face you …?”

Dosduvoi and Koll found the corners of the courtyard suddenly fascinating. Brand held up helpless palms as Skifr’s eyes fell on him. The mood Thorn was in, he wasn’t sure he’d come through a bout alive. The old woman gave a sigh.

“I fear you have nothing left to learn from your oarmates. The time has come for stiffer opposition.” She pulled her coat off and tossed it over Fror’s back. “How did you get that scar, Vansterman?”

“I kissed a girl,” he grunted, crawling toward the wall, “with a very sharp tongue.”