Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

One of them got the idea now, took a cautious step away from the group. When no one struck him dead, he started running. Soon enough the others followed him. Dogman watched the last of them shamble off. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “Good luck to ’em, then, I guess.”

“Aye,” muttered Logen. “Good luck.” Then, so quiet that no one could hear, “Still alive, still alive, still alive…”

Glokta limped through the reeking gloom, down a fetid walkway half a stride across, his tongue squirming into his empty gums with the effort of staying upright, wincing all the way as the pain in his leg grew worse and worse, doing his best not to breathe through his nose. I thought when I lay crippled in bed after I came back from Gurkhul I could sink no lower. When I presided over the brutality of a stinking prison in Angland I thought the same again. When I had a clerk slaughtered in an abattoir I imagined I had reached the bottom. How wrong I was.

Cosca and his mercenaries formed a single file with Glokta in their midst, their cursing, grumbling, slapping footfalls echoing up and down the vaulted tunnel, the light from their swinging lamps casting swaying shadows over the glistening stone. Rotten black water dripped from above, trickled down the mossy walls, gurgled in slimy gutters, rushed and churned down the reeking channel beside him. Ardee shuffled along behind with his instruments clasped under one arm. She had abandoned any attempt to hold up the hem of her dress and the fabric was well stained with black slurry. She looked up at him, damp hair hanging across her face, and made a weak effort at a smile. “You certainly do take a girl to the very best places.”

“Oh, indeed. My knack for finding romantic settings no doubt explains my continuing popularity with the fairer sex.” Glokta winced at a painful twinge. “Despite being a crippled monstrosity. Which way are we heading, now?”

Longfoot hobbled along in front, tethered by a rope to one of the mercenaries. “North! Due north, give or take. We are just beside the Middleway.”

“Huh.” Above us, not ten strides distant, are some of the most fashionable addresses in the city. The shimmering palaces and a river of shit, so much closer together than most would ever like to believe. Everything beautiful has a dark side, and some of us must dwell there, so that others can laugh in the light. His snort of laughter turned to a squeak of panic as his toeless foot slid on the sticky walkway. He flailed at the wall with his free hand, fumbled his cane and it clattered to the slimy stones. Ardee caught his elbow before he fell and pulled him upright. He could not stop a girlish whimper of pain hissing out from the gaps in his teeth.

“You’re really not enjoying yourself, are you?”

“I’ve had better days.” He smacked the back of his head against the stone as Ardee leaned down to retrieve his cane. “To be betrayed by both,” he found himself muttering. “That hurts. Even me. One I expected. One I could have taken. But both? Why?”

“Because you’re a ruthless, plotting, bitter, twisted, self-pitying villain?” Glokta stared at her, and she shrugged. “You asked.” They set off once again through the nauseating darkness.

“The question was meant to be rhetorical.”

“Rhetoric? In a sewer?”

“Wait up, there!” Cosca held up his hand and the grumbling procession shuffled to a halt again. A sound filtered down from above, softly at first, then louder—the rhythmic boom of tramping feet, seeming to come, disconcertingly, from everywhere at once. Cosca pressed himself to the sticky wall, stripes of daylight falling across his face from a grate above, the long feather on his cap drooping with slime. Voices settled through the murk. Kantic voices. Cosca grinned, and jabbed one finger up towards the roof. “Our old friends the Gurkish. Those bastards don’t give up, eh?”

“They’ve moved quickly,” grunted Glokta as he tried to catch his breath.

“No one much fighting in the streets any more, I imagine. All pulled back to the Agriont, or surrendered.”

Surrendering to the Gurkish. Glokta winced as he stretched out his leg. Rarely a good idea, and not one a man I would ever consider twice. “We must hurry, then. Move along there, Brother Longfoot!”

The Navigator hobbled on. “Not much further, now! I have not led you wrong, oh no, not I! That would not have been my way. We are close now, to the moat, very close. If there is a way inside the walls, I will find it, on that you may depend. I will have you inside the walls in a—”

“Shut your mouth and get on with it,” growled Glokta.

One of the workmen shook the last of the wood shavings from his barrel, another raked the heap of pale powder smooth, and they were done. The whole Square of Marshals, from the towering white walls of the Halls Martial on Ferro’s right to the gilded gates of the Lords’ Round on her left, was entirely covered in sawdust. It was as if snow had come suddenly, only here, and left a thin blanket across the smooth flags. Across the dark stone, and across the bright metal.

“Good.” Bayaz nodded with rare satisfaction. “Very good!”

“Is that all, my Lord?” called their foreman from the midst of their cringing group.

“Unless any of you wish to stay, and witness the destruction of the indestructible Hundred Words?”

The foreman squinted sideways at one of his fellows with some confusion. “No. No, I think we’ll just… you know…” He and the rest of the workmen began to back off, taking their empty barrels with them. Soon they were away between the white palaces. Ferro and Bayaz were left alone in all that flat expanse of dust.

Just the two of them, and the Maker’s box, and the thing that it contained.

“So. The trap is set. We need merely wait for our quarry.” Bayaz tried his knowing grin, but Ferro was not fooled. She saw his gnarled hands fussing with each other, the muscles clenching and unclenching on the side of his bald head. He was not sure if his plans would work. However wise he was, however subtle, however cunning, he could not be sure. The thing in the box, the cold and heavy thing that Ferro longed to touch, was an unknown. The only precedent for its use was far away, in the empty wastes of the Old Empire. The vast ruin of blighted Aulcus.

Ferro frowned, and loosened her sword in its scabbard.

“If they come, that will not save you.”

“You can never have too many knives,” she growled back. “How do you know they will even come this way?”

“What else can they do? They must come to wherever I am. That is their purpose.” Bayaz pulled in a ragged breath through his nose, and blew it out. “And I am here.”

Dogman squeezed through the gate along with a rush of others, some Northmen and an awful lot of Union boys, all pouring into the city after that excuse for a battle outside. There were a few folk scattered on the walls over the archway, cheering and whooping like they were at a wedding. A fat man in a leather apron was standing on the other side of the tunnel, clapping folk on the back as they came past. “Thank you, friend! Thank you!” He shoved something into Dogman’s hand, grinning like a madman all the way. A loaf of bread.

“Bread.” Dogman sniffed at it, but it smelled alright. “What the hell’s all that about?” The man had a whole heap of loaves on a cart. He was handing them out to any soldier that came past, Union or Northman. “Who’s he, anyway?”

Grim shrugged. “A baker?”

There weren’t much time to think on it. They were all getting shoved together into a big space full of men pushing, and grumbling, and making mess. All kind of soldiers and some old men and women round the edge, starting to get tired of cheering. A well-clipped lad in a black uniform was standing on top of a cart in the midst of this madness and screeching like a lost goat.