Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

“Where?” snapped Bayaz, shading his eyes. “I don’t see anything.” Nor could Logen. Only the waving grass and the towering clouds.

Longfoot frowned. “I see no riders, and I am blessed with perfect vision. Why, I have often been told that—”

“You want to wait until you see them,” hissed Ferro, “or get off the road before they see us?”

“We’ll head into the ruins,” snapped Bayaz over his shoulder. “And wait for them to pass. Malacus! Turn the cart!”

The wreck of the winter palace was full of shadows, and stillness, and decay. The outsize ruins towered around them, all covered with old ivy and wet moss, streaked and crusted with the droppings of bird and bat. The animals had made the place their palace now. Birds sang from a thousand nests, high in the ancient masonry. Spiders had spun great glistening webs in leaning doorways, heavy with sparkling beads of dew. Tiny lizards sunned themselves in patches of light on the fallen blocks, swarming away as they came near. The rattling of the cart over the broken ground, the footfalls and the hoof beats echoed back from the slimy stones. Everywhere, water dripped, and ran, and plopped in hidden pools.

“Take this, pink.” Ferro slapped her sword into Logen’s hands.

“Where are you going?”

“You wait down here, and stay out of sight.” She jerked her head upwards. “I’ll watch them from up there.”

As a boy, Logen had never been out of the trees round the village. As a young man he’d spent days in the High Places, testing himself against the mountains. At Heonan in the winter, the hillmen had held the high pass. Even Bethod had thought that there was no way round, but Logen had found a way up the frozen cliff and settled that score. He could see no way up here, though. Not without an hour or two to spare. Cliffs of leaning blocks heavy with dead creeper, crags of tottering stonework slick with moss, seeming to lean and tip as the clouds moved fast above.

“How the hell you planning to get up…”

She was already halfway up one of the pillars. She didn’t so much climb as swarm like an insect, hand over hand. She paused at the top for a moment, found a footing she liked, then sprang through the air, right over Logen’s head, landed on the wall behind and scrambled up onto it, sending a shower of broken mortar down into his face. She squatted on the top and frowned down at him. “Just try not to make too much noise!” she hissed, then was gone.

“Did you see…” muttered Logen, but the others had already moved further into the damp shadows, and he hurried after them, not wanting to be left alone in this overgrown graveyard. Quai had pulled his cart up further on, and was leaning against it beside the restless horses. The First of the Magi was kneeling near him in the weeds, rubbing at the lichen-crusted wall with his palms.

“Look at this,” snapped Bayaz as Logen tried to edge past. “These carvings here. Masterpieces of the ancient world! Stories, and lessons, and warnings from history.” His thick fingers brushed gently at the scarred stone. “We might be the first men to look upon these in centuries!”

“Mmm,” muttered Logen, puffing out his cheeks.

“Look here!” Bayaz gestured at the wall. “Euz gives his gifts to his three oldest sons, while Glustrod looks on from the shadows. The birth of the three pure disciplines of magic. Some craftsmanship, eh?”

“Right.”

“And here,” grunted Bayaz, knocking some weeds away and shuffling along to the next mossy panel, “Glustrod plans to destroy his brother’s work.” He had to tear at a tangle of dead ivy to get at the one beyond. “He breaks the First Law. He hears voices from the world below, you see? He summons devils and sends them against his enemies. And in this one,” he muttered, tugging at the weight of brown creeper, “let me see now…”

“Glustrod digs,” muttered Quai. “Who knows? In the next one he might even have found what he’s looking for.”

“Hmm,” grumbled the First of the Magi, letting the ivy fall back across the wall. He glowered at his apprentice as he stood up, frowning. “Perhaps, sometimes, the past is better left covered.”

Logen cleared his throat and edged away, ducked quickly under a leaning archway. The wide space beyond was filled with small, knotty trees, planted in rows, but long overgrown. Great weeds and nettles, brown and sagging rotten from the rain, stood almost waist high around the mossy walls.

“Perhaps I should not say it myself,” came Longfoot’s cheerful voice, “but it must be said! My talent for navigation stands alone! It rises above the skills of every other Navigator as the mountain rises over the deep valley!” Logen winced, but it was Bayaz’ anger or Longfoot’s bragging, and that was no choice at all.

“I have led us across the great plain to the river Aos, without a deviation of even a mile!” The Navigator beamed at Logen and Luthar, as though expecting an avalanche of praise. “And without a single dangerous encounter, in a land reckoned among the most dangerous under the sun!” He frowned. “Perhaps a quarter of our epic journey is now safely behind us. I am not sure that you appreciate the difficulty involved. Across the featureless plain, as autumn turns to winter, and without even the stars to reckon by!” He shook his head. “Huh. Truly, the pinnacle of achievement is a lonely place.”

He turned away and wandered over to one of the trees. “The lodgings are a little past their best, but at least the fruit trees are still in working order.” Longfoot plucked a green apple from a low hanging branch and began to shine it on his sleeve. “Nothing like a fine apple, and from the Emperor’s orchard, no less.” He grinned to himself. “Strange, eh? How the plants outlast the greatest works of men.”

Luthar sat down on a fallen statue nearby, slid the longer of his two swords from its sheath and laid it across his knees. Steel glinted mirror-bright as he turned it over in his lap, frowned at it, licked a finger and scrubbed at some invisible blemish. He pulled out his whetstone, spat on it, and carefully set to work on the long, thin blade. The metal rang gently as the stone moved back and forward. It was soothing, somehow, that sound, that ritual, familiar from a thousand campfires of Logen’s past.

“Must you?” asked Brother Longfoot. “Sharpening, polishing, sharpening, polishing, morning and night, it makes my head hurt. It’s not as if you’ve even made any use of them yet. Probably find when you need them that you’ve sharpened them away to nothing, eh?” He chuckled at his own joke. “Where will you be then?”

Luthar didn’t even bother to look up. “Why don’t you keep your mind on getting us across this damn plain, and leave the swords to those who know the difference?” Logen grinned to himself. An argument between the two most arrogant men he had ever met was well worth watching, in his opinion.

“Huh,” snorted Longfoot, “show me someone who knows the difference and I’ll happily never mention blades again.” He lifted the apple to his mouth, but before he could bite into it, his hand was empty. Luthar had moved almost too fast to follow, and speared it on the glinting point of his sword. “Give me that back!”

Luthar stood up. “Of course,” he tossed it off the end of the blade with a practised flick of his wrist. Before Longfoot’s reaching hands could close around it, Luthar had snatched his short sword from its sheath and whipped it blurring through the air. The Navigator was left juggling with the two even halves for a moment before dropping them both in the dirt.

“Damn your showing off!” he snapped.

“We can’t all have your modesty,” muttered Luthar. Logen chuckled to himself while Longfoot stomped back over to the tree, staring up into the branches for another apple.