Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself

It was as ancient as the road, coated with creepers, simple and slender, arching maybe twenty strides across a dizzying gorge. Far below a river surged over jagged rocks, filling the air with noise and shining spray. On the far side a high wall had been built between towering faces of mossy stone, made with such care it was difficult to say where the natural cliff ended and the man-made one began. A single ancient door was set into it, faced with beaten copper, turned streaky green by the wet and the years.

As Logen picked his way carefully across the slippery stone he found himself wondering, through force of habit, how you could storm this place. You couldn’t. Not with a thousand picked men. There was only a narrow shelf of rock before the door, no room to set a ladder or swing a ram. The wall was ten strides high at least, and the gate had a dreadful solid look. And if the defenders were to bring down the bridge… Logen peered over the edge, and swallowed. It was a long way down.

He took a deep breath and thumped on the damp green copper with his fist. Four big, booming knocks. He’d beat on the gates of Carleon like that, after the battle, and its people had rushed to surrender. No one rushed to do anything now.

He waited. He knocked again. He waited. He became wetter and wetter in the mist from the river. He ground his teeth. He raised his arm to knock again. A narrow hatch snapped open, and a pair of rheumy eyes stared at him coldly from between thick bars.

“Who’s this now?” snapped a gruff voice.

“Logen Ninefingers is my name. I’ve—”

“Never heard of you.”

Hardly the welcome Logen had been hoping for. “I’ve come to see Bayaz.” No reply. “The First of the—”

“Yes. He’s here.” But the door didn’t open. “He isn’t taking visitors. I told that to the last messenger.”

“I’m no messenger, I have Malacus Quai with me.”

“Malaca what?”

“Quai, the apprentice.”

“Apprentice?”

“He’s very ill,” said Logen slowly. “He may die.”

“Ill, you say? Die, was it?”

“Yes.”

“And what was your name again—”

“Just open the fucking door!” Logen shook his fist pointlessly at the slot. “Please.”

“We don’t let just anyone in… hold up. Show me your hands.”

“What?”

“Your hands.” Logen held his hands up. The watery eyes moved slowly across his fingers. “There are nine. There’s one missing, see?” He shoved the stump at the hatch.

“Nine, is it? You should have said.”

Bolts clanked and the door creaked slowly open. An elderly man, bent under an old-fashioned suit of armour, was staring at him suspiciously from the other side. He was holding a long sword much too heavy for him. Its point wobbled around wildly as he strained to keep it upright.

Logen held up his hands. “I surrender.”

The ancient gatekeeper was not amused. He grunted sourly as Logen stepped past him, then he wrestled the door shut and fumbled with the bolts, turned and trudged away without another word. Logen followed him up a narrow valley lined with strange houses, weathered and mossy, half dug into the steep rocks, merging with the mountainside.

A dour-faced woman was working at a spinning wheel on a doorstep, and she frowned at Logen as he walked past with the unconscious apprentice over his shoulder. Logen smiled back at her. She was no beauty, that was sure, but it had been a very long time. The woman ducked into her house and kicked the door shut, leaving the wheel spinning. Logen sighed. The old magic was still there.

The next house was a bakery with a squat, smoking chimney. The smell of baking bread made Logen’s empty stomach rumble. Further on, a couple of dark-haired children were laughing and playing, running round a scrubby old tree. They reminded Logen of his own children. They didn’t look anything like them, but he was in a morbid frame of mind.

He had to admit to being a little disappointed. He’d been expecting something cleverer-looking, and a lot more beards. These folk didn’t seem so very wise. They looked just like any other peasants. Not unlike his own village had looked before the Shanka came. He wondered if he was in the right place. Then they rounded a bend in the road.

Three great, tapering towers were built into the mountainside ahead, joined at their bases but separating higher up, covered in dark ivy. They seemed far older even than the ancient bridge and road, as old as the mountain itself. A jumbled mess of other buildings crowded around their feet, straggling around the sides of a wide courtyard in which people were busy with everyday chores. A thin woman was churning some milk on a stoop. A stocky blacksmith was trying to shoe a restless mare. An old, bald butcher in a stained apron had finished chopping up some animal and was washing his bloody forearms in a trough.

And on a set of wide steps before the tallest of the three towers sat a magnificent old man. He was dressed all in white, with a long beard, a hook nose, and white hair spilling from under a white skull-cap. Logen was impressed, finally. The First of the Magi surely looked the part. As Logen shuffled towards him he started up from the steps and hurried over, white coat flapping behind him.

“Set him down here,” he muttered, indicating a patch of grass by the well, and Logen knelt and dumped Quai on the ground, as gently as he could with his back aching so much. The old man bent over him, laid a gnarled hand on his forehead.

“I brought your apprentice back,” muttered Logen pointlessly.

“Mine?”

“Aren’t you Bayaz?”

The old man laughed. “Oh no, I am Wells, head servant here at the Library.”

“I am Bayaz,” came a voice from behind. The butcher was walking slowly toward them, wiping his hands on a cloth. He looked maybe sixty but heavily built, with a strong face, deeply lined, and a close-cropped grey beard around his mouth. He was entirely bald, and the afternoon sun shone brightly off his tanned pate. He was neither handsome nor majestic, but as he came closer there did seem to be something about him. An assurance, an air of command. A man used to giving orders, and to being obeyed.

The First of the Magi took Logen’s left hand in both of his and pressed it warmly. Then he turned it over and examined the stump of his missing finger.

“Logen Ninefingers, then. The one they call the Bloody-Nine. I have heard stories about you, even shut up here in my library.”

Logen winced. He could guess what sort of stories the old man might have heard. “That was a long time ago.”

“Of course. We all have a past, eh? I make no judgements on hearsay.” And Bayaz smiled. A broad, white, beaming smile. His face lit up with friendly creases, but a hardness lingered around his eyes, deep-set and glistening green. A stony hardness. Logen grinned back, but he reckoned already that he wouldn’t want to make an enemy of this man.

“And you have brought our missing lamb back to the fold.” Bayaz frowned down at Malacus Quai, motionless on the grass. “How is he?”

“I think he will live, sir,” said Wells, “but we should get him out of the cold.”

The First of the Magi snapped his fingers and a sharp crack echoed from the buildings. “Help him.” The smith hurried forward and took Quai’s feet, and together he and Wells carried the apprentice through the tall door into the library.

“Now, Master Ninefingers, I have called and you have answered, and that shows good manners. Manners might be out of fashion in the North, but I want you to know that I appreciate them. Courtesy should be answered with courtesy, I have always thought. But what’s this now?” The old gatekeeper was hurrying back across the yard, greatly out of breath. “Two visitors in one day? Whatever next?”