Joe Abercrombie: Before They Are Hanged

“What are they waiting for?” he hissed. “When did bloody Flatheads learn to wait?”

“When did they learn to fight for Bethod?” growled Tul, wiping his sword clean. “There’s a lot that’s changing, and none of it for the better.”

“When did anything change for the better?” snarled Dow from further down the line.

Dogman frowned. There was a new smell in his nose, like damp. There was something pale, down in the trees, getting paler while he watched. “What is that? That mist?”

“Mist? Up here?” Dow chuckled harsh as a crow calling. “This time of day? Hah! Hold on, though…” They could all see it now—a trace of white, clinging to the wet slope. Dogman swallowed. His mouth was dry. He was feeling uneasy, all of a sudden, and not just from the Shanka waiting down there. Something else. The mist was creeping up through the trees, curling round the trunks, rising while they watched. The Flatheads were starting to move, dim shapes shifting in the grey murk.

“Don’t like this,” he heard Dow saying. “This ain’t natural.”

“Steady, lads!” Threetrees’ deep voice. “Steady, now!” Dogman took heart from that, but his heart didn’t last long. He rocked back and forth, feeling sick.

“No, no,” whispered Shivers, his eyes sliding around like he was looking for a way out. Dogman could feel the hairs on his own arms rising, his skin prickling, his throat closing up tight. A nameless sort of a fear was taking him, flowing up the hillside along with the mist—creeping through the forest, swirling round the trees, sliding under the trunk they were using as cover.

“It’s him,” whispered Shivers, his eyes open wide as a pair of boot-tops, squashing himself down like he was scared of being heard. “It’s him!”

“Who?” croaked Dogman.

Shivers just shook his head and pressed himself to the cold earth. The Dogman felt a powerful need to do the same, but he forced himself to rise up, forced himself to take a look over the tree. A Named Man, scared as a child in the dark, and not knowing why? Better to face it, he thought. Big mistake.

There was a shadow in the mist, too tall and too straight for a Shanka. A great, huge man, big as Tul. Bigger even. A giant. Dogman rubbed his sore eyes, thinking it must be some trick of the light in all that gloom, but it wasn’t. He came on closer, this shadow, and he took on more shape, and more, and the clearer he got, the worse grew the fear.

He’d been long and far, the Dogman, all over the North, but he’d never seen so strange and unnatural a thing as this giant. One half of him was covered in great plates of black armour—studded and bolted, beaten and pointed, spiked and hammered and twisted metal. The other half was mostly bare, apart from the straps and belts and buckles that held the armour on. Bare foot, bare arm, bare chest, all bulging out with ugly slabs and cords of muscle. A mask was on his face, a mask of scarred black iron.

He came on closer, and he rose from the mist, and the Dogman saw the giant’s skin was painted. Marked blue with tiny letters. Scrawled across with writing, every inch of him. No weapon, but he was no less terrible for that. He was more, if anything. He scorned to carry one, even on a battlefield.

“By the fucking dead,” breathed the Dogman, and his mouth hung wide with horror.

“Steady, lads,” growled Threetrees. “Steady.” The old boy’s voice was the only thing stopping the Dogman from running for it, and never coming back.

“It’s him!” squealed one of the Carls, voice shrill as a girl’s. “It’s the Feared!”

“Shut your fucking hole!” came Shivers’ voice, “We know what it is!”

“Arrows!” shouted Threetrees.

Dogman’s hands were trembling as he took an aim on the giant. It was hard somehow, to do it, even from this distance. He had to make his hand let go the string, and then the arrow pinged off the armour and away into the trees, harmless. Grim’s shot was better. His shaft sank clean into the giant’s side, buried deep in his painted flesh. He seemed not even to notice. More arrows shot over from the Carls’ bows. One hit him in the shoulder, another stuck right through his huge calf. The giant made not a sound. He came on, steady as the grass growing, and the mist, and the Flatheads, and the fear came with him.

“Fuck,” muttered Grim.

“It’s a devil!” one of the Carls screeched. “A devil from hell!” Dogman was starting to think the same thing. He felt the fear growing up all round him, felt the men starting to waver. He felt himself edging backwards, almost without thinking about it.

“Alright, now!” bellowed Threetrees, voice deep and steady as if he felt no fear at all. “On the count of three! On the count of three, we charge!”

Dogman stared over as if the old boy had lost his reason. At least they had a tree to hide behind up here. He heard a couple of the Carls muttering, no doubt thinking much the same. They didn’t much like the sound of this for a plan, charging down a hill into a great crowd of Shanka, some unnatural giant at the heart of ’em.

“You sure about this?” Dogman hissed.

Threetrees didn’t even look at him. “Best thing for a man to do when he’s afeared is charge! Get the blood up, and turn the fear to fury. The ground’s on our side, and we ain’t waiting here for ’em!”

“You sure?”

“We’re going,” said Threetrees, turning away.

“We’re going,” growled Dow, glaring round at the Carls, daring ’em to back down.

“On three!” rumbled the Thunderhead.

“Uh,” said Grim. Dogman swallowed, still not sure whether he’d be going or not. Threetrees peered over the trunk, his mouth a hard, flat line, watching the figures in the mist, and the great big one in the midst of ’em, his hand down flat behind him to say wait. Waiting for the right distance. Waiting for the right time.

“Do I go on three?” whispered Shivers, “or after three?”

Dogman shook his head. “Don’t hardly matter, as long as you go.” But his feet felt like they were two great stones.

“One!”

One already? Dogman looked over his shoulder, saw Cathil’s body lying stretched out under his blanket near the dead fire. Should have made him feel angry maybe, but it only made him feel more scared. Fact was, he’d no wish to end up like her. He swallowed and turned away, clutched tight to the handle of his knife, to the grip of the sword he’d borrowed off the dead. Iron felt no fear. Good weapons, ready to do bloody work. He wished he was halfway as ready himself, but he’d done this before, and he knew no one was ever really ready. You don’t have to be ready. You just have to go.

“Two!”

Almost time. He felt his eyes opening wide, his nose sucking in cold air, his skin tingling cold. He smelled men and sharp pine trees, Shanka and damp mist. He heard quick breath behind, slow footsteps down below, shouts from along the line, his own blood thumping in his veins. He saw every bit of everything, all going slow as dripping honey. Men moved around him, hard men with hard faces, shifting their weight, pushing forward against the fear and the mist, making ready. They were going to go, he’d no doubt left of it. They were all going to go. He felt the muscles in his legs begin to squeeze, pushing him up.

“Three!”

Threetrees was first over the trunk and the Dogman was just behind, men all round him charging, and the air full of their shouts and their fury and their fear, and he was running, and screaming, feet pounding and shaking his bones, breath and wind rushing, black trees and white sky crashing and wobbling, mist flying up at him and dark shapes inside the mist, waiting.

He swung his sword at one as he roared past and the blade chopped deep into it and threw it back, turned the Dogman half round and he went along, spinning, falling, shouting. The blade hacked deep into a Shanka’s leg and snatched it off its feet, and Dogman spilled down the slope, slithering around in the slush, trying to right himself. The sounds of fighting were all round, muffled and strange. Men bellowing curses, and Shanka snarling, and the rattles and thuds of iron on iron and iron in flesh.