Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

“Second, never take an enemy lightly, however much the dullard he seems. Treat every man like he’s twice as clever, twice as strong, twice as fast as you are, and you’ll only be pleasantly surprised. Respect costs you nothing, and nothing gets a man killed quicker than confidence.”

“Never underestimate the foe. A wise precaution.” Jezal was beginning to realise that he had underestimated this Northman. He wasn’t half the idiot he appeared to be.

“Third, watch your opponent as close as you can, and listen to opinions if you’re given them, but once you’ve got your plan in mind, you fix on it and let nothing sway you. Time comes to act, you strike with no backward glances. Delay is the parent of disaster, my father used to tell me, and believe me, I’ve seen some disasters.”

“No backward glances,” muttered Jezal, nodding slowly to himself. “Of course.”

Ninefingers puffed out his pitted cheeks. “There’s no replacement for seeing it, and doing it, but master all that, and you’re halfway to beating anyone, I reckon.”

“Halfway? What about the other half?”

The Northman shrugged. “Luck.”

“I don’t like this,” growled Ferro, frowning up at the steep sides of the gorge. Jezal wondered if there was anything in the world she did like.

“You think we’re followed?” asked Bayaz. “You see anyone?”

“How could I see anyone from down here? That’s the point!”

“Good ground for an ambush,” muttered Ninefingers. Jezal looked around him, nervously. Broken rocks, bushes, scrubby trees, the ground was full of hiding places.

“Well, this is the route that Longfoot picked for us,” grumbled Bayaz. “and there’s no purpose in hiring a cleaner if you’re going to swab the latrines yourself. Where the hell is that damn Navigator anyway? Never around when you want him, only turns up to eat and boast for hours on end! If you knew how much that bastard cost me—”

“Damn it.” Ninefingers pulled his horse up and clambered stiffly down from his saddle. A fallen tree trunk, wood cracked and grey, lay across the gorge, blocking the road.

“I don’t like this.” Ferro shrugged her bow from her shoulder.

“Neither do I,” grumbled Ninefingers, taking a step towards the fallen tree. “But you have to be real—”

“That’s far enough!” The voice echoed back and forth around the valley, brash and confident. Quai hauled on the reins and brought the cart to a sudden halt. Jezal looked along the lip of the gorge, his heart thumping in his mouth. He saw the speaker now. A big man dressed in antique leather armour, sitting carelessly on the edge of the drop with one leg dangling, his long hair flapping softly in the breeze. A pleasant and a friendly-looking man, as far as Jezal could tell at this distance, with a wide smile on his face.

“My name is Finnius, a humble servant of the Emperor Cabrian!”

“Cabrian?” shouted Bayaz. “I heard he’d lost his reason!”

“He’s got some interesting ideas.” Finnius shrugged. “But he’s always seen us right. Let me explain matters—we’re all around you!” A serious-seeming man with a short sword and shield stepped out from behind the dead tree trunk. Two more appeared, and then three more, creeping out from behind the rocks, behind the bushes, all with serious faces and serious weapons. Jezal licked his lips. He would laugh in the face of danger, of course, but now it came to it nothing seemed at all amusing. He looked over his shoulder. More men had come from behind the rocks they had passed a few moments before, blocking the valley in the other direction.

Ninefingers folded his arms. “Just once,” he murmured, “I’d like to take someone else by surprise.”

“There’s a couple more of us,” shouted Finnius, “up here, with me! Good hands with bows, and ready with arrows.” Jezal saw their outlines now against the white sky, the curved shapes of their weapons. “So you see that you’ll be going no further down this road!”

Bayaz spread his palms. “Perhaps we can come to some arrangement that suits us both! You need only name your price and—”

“Your money’s no good to us, old man, and I’m deeply wounded by the assumption! We’re soldiers, not thieves! We have orders to find a certain group of people, a group of people wandering out in the middle of nowhere, far from the travelled roads! An old bald bastard with a sickly-looking boy, some stuck-up Union fool, a scarred whore, and an ape of a Northerner! You seen a crowd that might fit that description?”

“If I’m the whore,” shouted Ninefingers, “who’s the Northerner?”

Jezal winced. No jokes, please no jokes, but Finnius only chuckled. “They didn’t tell me you were funny. Reckon that’s a bonus. At least until we kill you. Where’s the other one, eh? The Navigator?”

“No idea,” growled Bayaz, “unfortunately. If anyone dies it should be him.”

“Don’t take it too hard. We’ll catch up with him later.” And Finnius laughed an easy laugh, and the men around them grinned and fingered their weapons. “So if you’d be good enough to give your arms to those fellows ahead of you, we can get you trussed up and start back towards Darmium before nightfall!”

“And when we get there?”

Finnius gave a happy shrug. “Not my business. I don’t ask questions of the Emperor, and you don’t ask questions of me. That way, no one gets skinned alive. Do you take my meaning, old man?”

“Your meaning is hard to miss, but I am afraid that Darmium is quite out of our way.”

“What are you,” called Finnius, “soft in the head?”

The nearest man stepped forward and grabbed hold of Bayaz’ bridle. “That’s enough of that,” he growled.

Jezal felt that horrible sucking in his guts. The air around Bayaz’ shoulders trembled, like the hot air above a forge. The foremost of the men frowned, opened his mouth to speak. His face seemed to flatten, then his head broke open and he was suddenly snatched away as though flicked by a giant, unseen finger. He had not even time to scream.

Nor had the four men who stood behind him. Their ruined bodies, the broken remnants of the grey tree trunk, and a great quantity of earth and rocks around them were ripped from the ground and flung through the air to shatter against the rocky wall of the gorge a hundred strides distant with a sound like a house collapsing.

Jezal’s mouth hung open. His body froze. It had taken only a terrifying instant. One moment five men had been standing there, the next they were slaughtered meat among a heap of settling debris. Somewhere behind him he heard the hum of a bowstring. There was a cry and a body dropped down into the valley, bounced from the sheer rocks and flopped rag-like, face down in the stream.

“Ride, then!” roared Bayaz, but Jezal could only sit in his saddle and gape. The air around the Magus was still moving, more than ever. The rocks behind him rippled and twisted like the stones on the bed of a stream. The old man frowned, stared down at his hands. “No…” he muttered, turning them over before him.

The brown leaves on the ground were lifting up into air, fluttering as though on a gust of wind. “No,” said Bayaz, his eyes opening wide. His whole body had begun to shake. Jezal gawped as the loose stones around them rose from the ground, drifting impossibly upwards. Sticks began to snap from the bushes, clods of grass began to tear themselves away from the rocks, his coat rustled and flapped, dragged upwards by some unseen force.

“No!” screamed Bayaz, then his shoulders hunched in a sudden spasm. A tree beside them split apart with a deafening crack and splinters of wood showered out into the whipping air. Someone was shouting but Jezal could scarcely hear them. His horse reared and he had not the wit to hold on. He crashed onto his back on the earth while the whole valley shimmered, trembled, vibrated around him.