Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

Jezal saw Brother Longfoot, standing higher up on the steps with his arms folded, give him a worried glance. “You are, of course, my employer, and it is scarcely my place to disagree—”

“Don’t then,” growled Bayaz.

“But Ninefingers and the woman Maljinn,” persisted the Navigator, “are most decidedly dead. Master Luthar quite specifically saw them slide into a chasm. A chasm of very great depth. My grief is immeasurable, and I am a patient man, few more, it is one among my many admirable qualities but… well… were we to wait until the end of time, I fear that it would make no—”

“As long…” snarled the First of the Magi, “as it takes.”

Jezal took a deep breath and frowned into the wind, looking down from the hill towards the city, eyes scanning over the expanse of flat nothing, pocked with tiny creases where streams ran, the grey stripe of a ruined road creeping out towards them from the far-off walls, between the streaky outlines of ruined buildings: inns, farms, villages, all long fallen.

“They’re down there,” came Quai’s emotionless voice.

Jezal stood up, weight on his good leg, shading his hand and staring at where the apprentice was pointing. He saw them suddenly, two tiny brown figures in a brown wasteland, down near the base of the rock.

“What did I tell you?” croaked Bayaz.

Longfoot shook his head in amazement. “How in God’s name could they have survived?”

“They’re a resourceful pair, alright.” Jezal was already starting to grin. A month before he could not have dreamed that he would ever be glad to see Logen again, let alone Ferro, but here he was, smiling from ear to ear almost to see them still alive. Somehow, a bond was formed out here in the wilderness, facing death and adversity together. A bond that strengthened quickly, regardless of all the great differences between them. A bond that left his old friendships weak, and pale, and passionless by comparison.

Jezal watched the figures come closer, trudging along the crumbling track that led up through the steep rocks to the temple, a great deal of space between the two of them, almost as if they were walking separately. Closer still, and they began to look like two prisoners that had escaped from hell. Their clothes were ripped, and torn, and utterly filthy, their dirty faces were hard as a pair of stones. Ferro had a scabbed-over gash across her forehead. Logen’s jaw was a mass of grazes, the skin round his eyes stained with dark bruising.

Jezal took a hopping step towards them. “What happened? How did—”

“Nothing happened,” barked Ferro.

“Nothing at all,” growled Ninefingers, and the two of them scowled angrily at each other. Plainly, they had both gone through some awful ordeal that neither one wished to discuss. Ferro stalked straight to the cart without the slightest greeting and started rooting through the back. Logen stood, hands on his hips, frowning grimly after her.

“So…” mumbled Jezal, not quite sure what to say, “are you alright?”

Logen’s eyes swivelled to his. “Oh, I’m grand,” he said, with heavy irony. “Never better. How the hell did you get that cart out of there?”

The apprentice shrugged. “The horses pulled it out.”

“Master Quai has a gift for understatement,” chuckled Longfoot nervously. “It was a most exhilarating ride to the city’s South Gate—”

“Fight your way out, did you?”

“Well, not I, of course, fighting is not my—”

“Didn’t think so.” Logen leaned over and spat sourly onto the mud.

“We should at least consider being grateful,” croaked Bayaz, the air sighing and crackling in his throat as he breathed in. “There is much to be grateful for, after all. We are all still alive.”

“You sure?” snapped Ferro. “You don’t look it.” Jezal found himself in silent agreement there. The Magus could not have looked worse if he had actually died in Aulcus. Died, and already begun to decompose.

She ripped off her rag of a shirt and flung it savagely on the ground, sinews shifting across her scrawny back. “Fuck are you looking at?” she snarled at Jezal.

“Nothing,” he muttered, staring down at the dirt. When he dared to look up she was buttoning a fresh one up the front. Well, not entirely fresh. He had been wearing it himself a few days ago.

“That’s one of mine…” Ferro looked up at him with a glare so murderous that Jezal found himself taking a hesitant step back. “But you’re welcome to it… of course…”

“Ssss,” she hissed, jamming the hem violently down behind her belt, frowning all the while as if she was stabbing a man to death. Probably him. All in all, it was hardly the tearful reunion that Jezal might have hoped for, even if he did now feel somewhat like crying.

“I hope I never see this place again,” he muttered wistfully.

“I’m with you there,” said Logen. “Not quite so empty as we thought, eh? Do you think you could dream up a different way back?”

Bayaz frowned. “That would seem prudent. We will return to Calcis down the river. There are woods on this side of the water, further downstream. A few sturdy tree trunks lashed together, and the Aos will carry us straight to the sea.”

“Or to a watery grave.” Jezal remembered with some clarity the surging water in the canyon of the great river.

“My hope is better. In any case, there are still long miles to cover westward before we think about the return journey.”

Longfoot nodded. “Indeed there are, including a pass through a most forbidding range of mountains.”

“Lovely,” said Logen. “I can hardly wait.”

“Nor I. Unfortunately, not all the horses survived.” The Navigator raised his eyebrows. “We have two to pull the cart, two to ride… that leaves us two short.”

“I hate those fucking things anyway.” Logen strode to the cart and clambered up opposite Bayaz in the back.

There was a long pause as they all considered the situation. Two horses, three riders. Never a happy position. Longfoot was the first to speak. “I will need, of course, to scout forward as we come close to the mountains. Scouting, alas, is an essential part of any successful journey. One for which, unfortunately, I will require one of the horses…”

“I should probably ride,” murmured Jezal, shifting painfully, “what with my leg…”

Ferro looked at the cart, and Jezal saw her eyes meet Logen’s for a brief and intensely hostile moment.

“I’ll walk,” she barked.

It was raining as Superior Glokta hobbled back into Adua. A mean, thin, ugly sort of rain on a hard wind off the sea, that rendered the treacherous wood of the gangplank, the squealing timbers of the wharf, the slick stones of the quay, all slippery as liars. He licked at his sore gums, rubbed at his sore thigh, swept his grimace up and down the grey shoreline. A pair of surly-looking guardsmen were leaning against a rotten warehouse ten paces away. Further on a party of dockers were involved in a bitter dispute over a heap of crates. A shivering beggar nearby took a couple of paces towards Glokta, thought better of it, and slunk away.

No crowds of cheering commoners? No carpet of flower petals? No archway of drawn swords? No bevy of swooning maidens? It was hardly too great a surprise. There had been none the last time he returned from the South. Crowds rarely cheer too loudly for the defeated, no matter how hard they fought, how great their sacrifices, how long the odds. Maidens might wet themselves over cheap and worthless victories, but they don’t so much as blush for “I did my best”. Nor will the Arch Lector, I fear.

A particularly vicious wave slapped at the sea wall and threw a cloud of sullen spray all over Glokta’s back. He stumbled forward, cold water dripping from his cold hands, slipped and almost fell, tottered gasping across the quay and clung to the slimy wall of a crumbling shed at the far side. He looked up and saw the two guards staring at him.