Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

“Course. Doing better next time. That’s what life is.”

Logen climbed back into the saddle, stiff and sore. Stiff from all the riding, sore from the fight in the gorge. Some bit of rock had cracked him on the back, that and he’d got a good punch on the side of his head. Could have been a lot worse.

He looked round at the others. They were all mounted up, staring at him. Four faces, as different as could be, but all with the same expression, more or less. Waiting for his say. Why did anyone ever think he had the answers? He swallowed, and dug his heels in.

Let’s go.

“You really should spend less time in here, Colonel West.” Pike set down his hammer for a moment, the orange light from his forge reflecting in his eyes, shining bright on his melted face. “People will start to talk.”

West cracked a nervous grin. “It’s the only warm place in the whole damn camp.” It was true enough, but a long way from the real reason. It was the only place in the whole damn camp where no one would look for him. Men who were starving, men who were freezing, men who had no water, or no weapon, or no clue what they were doing. Men who’d died of cold or illness and needed burying. Even the dead couldn’t manage without West. Everyone needed him, day and night. Everyone except Pike and his daughter, and the rest of the convicts. They alone seemed self-sufficient, and so their forge had become his refuge. A noisy, and a crowded, and a smoky refuge, no doubt, but no less sweet for that. He preferred it immeasurably to being with the Prince and his staff. Here among the criminals it was more… honest.

“You’re in the way, Colonel. Again.” Cathil shoved past him, a knife-blade glowing orange in the tongs in one gloved hand. She shoved it into the water, frowning, turning it this way and that while steam hissed up around her. West watched her move, quick and practised, beads of moisture on her sinewy arm, the back of her neck, hair dark and spiky with sweat. Hard to believe he’d ever taken her for a boy. She might handle the metal as well as any of the men, but the shape of her face, not to mention her chest, her waist, the curve of her backside, all unmistakably female…

She glanced over her shoulder and caught him looking. “Don’t you have an army to run?”

“They’ll last ten minutes without me.”

She drew the cold, black blade from the water and tossed it clattering onto the heap beside the whetstone. “You sure?”

Maybe she was right at that. West took a deep breath, sighed, turned with some reluctance, and ventured out through the door of the shed and into the camp.

The winter air nipped at his cheeks after the heat of the smithy, and he pulled up the collars of his coat, hugged himself as he struggled down the camp’s main road. It was deathly quiet out here at night, once he had left the rattling of the forge behind him. He could hear the frozen mud sucking at his boots, his breath rasping in his throat, the faint cursing of some distant soldier, grumbling his way through the darkness. He stopped a moment and looked up, arms folded round himself for warmth. The sky was perfectly clear, the stars prickling bright, spread across the blackness like shining dust.

“Beautiful,” he murmured to himself.

“You get used to it.”

It was Threetrees, picking his way between the tents with the Dogman at his shoulder. His face was in shadow, all dark pits and white angles like a cliff in the moonlight, but West could tell there was some ill news coming. The old Northman could hardly have been described as a figure of fun at the best of times, but now his frown was grim indeed.

“Well met,” said West in the Northern tongue.

“You think? Bethod is inside five days’ march of your camp.”

The cold seemed suddenly to cut through West’s coat and make him shiver. “Five days?”

“If he’s stayed put since we saw him, and that ain’t likely. Bethod was never one for staying put. If he’s marching south, he could be three days away. Less even.”

“What are his numbers?”

The Dogman licked his lips, breath smoking round his lean face in the chill air. “I’d guess at ten thousand, but he might have more behind.”

West felt colder yet. “Ten thousand? That many?”

“Around ten, aye. Mostly Thralls.”

“Thralls? Light infantry?”

“Light, but not like this rubbish you have here.” Threetrees scowled around at the shabby tents, the badly built camp fires, close to guttering out. “Bethod’s Thralls are lean and bloody from battles and tough as wood from marching. Those bastards can run all day and still fight at the end of it, if it’s needed. Bowmen, spearmen, all well-practised.”

“There’s no shortage of Carls and all,” muttered the Dogman.

“That there ain’t, with strong mail and good blades, and plenty of horses into the bargain. There’ll be Named Men too, no doubt. It’s the pick of the crop Bethod’s brought with him, and some sharp war leaders in amongst ’em. That and some strange folk from out east. Wild men, from beyond the Crinna. Must have left a few boys dotted about up north, for your friends to chase around after, and brought his best fighters south with him, against your weakest.” The old warrior stared grimly round at the slovenly camp from under his thick eyebrows. “No offence, but I don’t give you a shit of a chance if it comes to a battle.”

The worst of all outcomes. West swallowed. “How fast could such an army move?”

“Fast. Their scouts might be with us day after tomorrow. Main body a day later. If they’ve come right on, that is, and it’s hard to say if they will. Wouldn’t put it past Bethod to try and cross the river lower down, come round behind us.”

“Behind us?” They were scarcely equipped for a predictable enemy. “How could he have known we were here?”

“Bethod always had a gift for guessing out his enemies. Good sense for it. That and he’s a lucky bastard. Loves to take chances. Ain’t nothing more important in war than a good slice o’ luck.”

West looked around him, blinking. Ten thousand battle-hardened Northmen, descending on their ramshackle camp. Lucky, unpredictable Northmen. He imagined trying to turn the ill-disciplined levies, up to their ankles in mud, trying to get them to form a line. It would be a slaughter. Another Black Well in the making. But at least they had a warning. Three days to prepare their defences, or better still, to begin to retreat.

“We must speak to the Prince at once,” he said.

Soft music and warm light washed out into the chill night air as West jerked back the tent flap. He stooped through, reluctantly, with the two Northmen close behind him.

“By the dead…” muttered Threetrees, gaping round.

West had forgotten how bizarre the Prince’s quarters must appear to a newcomer, especially one who was a stranger to luxury. It was less a tent than a huge hall of purple cloth, ten strides or more in height, hung with Styrian tapestries and floored with Kantic carpets. The furniture would have been more in keeping in a palace than a camp. Huge carved dressers and gilt chests held the Prince’s endless wardrobe, enough to clothe an army of dandies. The bed was a gargantuan four-poster, bigger than most tents in the camp on its own. A highly polished table in one corner sagged under the weight of heaped-up delicacies, silver and gold plate twinkling in the candlelight. One could hardly imagine that only a few hundred strides away, men were cramped, and cold, and had not enough to eat.

Crown Prince Ladisla himself sat sprawled in a huge chair of dark wood, a throne, one could have said, upholstered in red silk. An empty glass dangled from one hand, while the other waved back and forth to the music of a quartet of expert musicians, plucking, fiddling, and blowing gently at their shining instruments in the far corner. Around his Highness were four of his staff, impeccably dressed and fashionably bored, among them the young Lord Smund, who had perhaps become, over the past few weeks, West’s least favourite person in the entire world.