Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

He remembered standing high up, on the side of the Great Northern library, looking out over the empty valley, the still lake like a great mirror beneath it. He remembered feeling the wind on his fresh-shaved jaw, and wondering whether a man could change.

Now he knew the answer.

“Master Ninefingers!”

Logen turned quickly, hissed through his teeth as the stitches down his side burned. The First of the Magi stepped through the doorway and out into the open air. He was changed, somehow. He looked young. Younger even than when Logen first met him. There was a sharpness to his movements, a gleam in his eye. It even seemed that there were a few dark hairs in the grey beard round his friendly grin. The first smile Logen had seen in a good while.

“You are hurt?” he asked.

Logen sucked sourly at his teeth. “Hardly the first time.”

“And yet it gets no easier.” Bayaz placed his meaty fists on the stone next to Logen’s and stared out happily at the view. Just as if it was a field of flowers instead of a sweep of epic ruin. “I hardly expected to see you again so soon. And to see you so very far advanced. I understand that your feud is over. You defeated Bethod. Threw him from his own walls, the way I heard it. A nice touch. Always thinking of the song they will sing, eh? And then you took his place. The Bloody-Nine, King of the Northmen! Imagine that.”

Logen frowned. “That wasn’t how it happened.”

“Details. The result is the same, is it not? Peace in the North, at last? Either way, I congratulate you.”

“Bethod had a few things to say.”

“Did he?” asked Bayaz, carelessly. “I always found his conversation rather drab. All about himself, his plans, his achievements. It is so very tiresome when men think never of others. Poor manners.”

“He said you’re the reason why he didn’t kill me. That you bargained for my life.”

“True, I must confess. He owed me, and you were the price I demanded. I like to keep one eye on the future. Even then, I knew I might have need of a man who could speak to the spirits. It was an unexpected bonus that you turned out to be such a winning travelling companion.”

Logen found he was talking through gritted teeth. “Would have been nice to know is all.”

“You never asked, Master Ninefingers. You did not want to know my plans, as I recall, and I did not want to make you feel indebted. ‘I saved your life once’ would have been a poor start to our friendship.”

All reasonable enough, like everything Bayaz ever said, but it left a sour taste still, to have been traded like a hog. “Where’s Quai? I’d like to—”

“Dead.” Bayaz pronounced the word smartly, sharp as a knife thrust. “We feel his loss most keenly.”

“Back to the mud, eh?” Logen remembered the effort he’d made to save that man’s life. The miles he’d slogged through the rain, trying to do the right thing. All wasted. Perhaps he should’ve felt more. But it was hard with so much death spread out in front of him. Logen was numb, now. Either that, or he really didn’t care a shit. It was hard to say which.

“Back to the mud,” he muttered again. “You carry on, though, don’t you.”

“Of course.”

“That’s the task that comes with surviving. You remember them, you say some words, then you carry on, and hope for better.”

“Indeed.”

“You have to be realistic about these things.”

“True.”

Logen worked at his sore side with one hand, trying to make himself feel something. But a scrap of extra pain helped no one. “I lost a friend yesterday.”

“It was a bloody day. But a victorious one.”

“Oh aye? For who?” He could see people moving among the ruins, insects picking at the rubble, searching for survivors and finding the dead. He doubted many of them were feeling the flush of victory right now. He knew he wasn’t. “I should be with my own kind,” he muttered, but without moving. “Helping with the burying. Helping with the wounded.”

“And yet you are here, looking down.” Bayaz’ green eyes were hard as stones. That hardness that Logen had noticed from the very start, and had somehow forgotten. Somehow grown to overlook. “I entirely understand your feelings. Healing is for the young. As one gets older, one finds one has less and less patience with the wounded.” He raised his eyebrows as he turned back towards the horrible view. “I am very old.”

He lifted his fist to knock, then paused, fingers rubbing nervously against his palm.

He remembered the sour-sweet smell of her, the strength of her hands, the shape of her frown in the firelight. He remembered the warmth of her, pressed up close to him in the night. He knew there had been something good between them, even if all the words they had said had been hard. Some people don’t have soft words in them, however much they try. He didn’t hold much hope, of course. A man like him was better off without it. But you get nothing out if you put nothing in.

So Logen gritted his teeth and knocked. No reply. He chewed at his lip, and knocked again. Nothing. He frowned, twitchy and suddenly out of patience, wrenched the knob round and shoved the door open.

Ferro spun about. Her clothes were rumpled and dirty, even more than usual. Her eyes were wide, wild even, her fists clenched. But her face quickly fell when she saw it was him, and his heart sank with it.

“It’s me, Logen.”

“Uh,” she grunted. She jerked her head sideways, frowning at the window. She took a couple of steps towards it, eyes narrowed. Then she snapped round suddenly the other way. “There!”

“What?” muttered Logen, baffled.

“Do you not hear them?”

“Hear what?”

“Them, idiot!” She crept over to one wall and pressed herself up against it.

Logen hadn’t been sure how it would go. You could never be sure of anything with her, he knew that. But he hadn’t been expecting this. Just plough ahead, he reckoned. What else could he do?

“I’m a king, now.” He snorted. “King of the Northmen, would you believe it?” He was thinking she’d laugh in his face, but she just stood, listening to the wall. “Me and Luthar, both. A pair of kings. Can you think of two more worthless bastards to put crowns on, eh?” No answer.

Logen licked his lips. No choice but to get straight to it, maybe. “Ferro. The way things turned out. The way we… left it.” He took a step towards her, and another. “I wish I hadn’t… I don’t know…” He put one hand on her shoulder. “Ferro, I’m trying to tell you—”

She turned, quickly, plastered her hand over his mouth. “Shhhhh.” She grabbed his shirt and pulled him down, down onto his knees. She pressed her ear against the tiles, eyes moving back and forward as if she was listening for something. “Do you hear that?” She let go of him and pushed herself into the corner. “There! Do you hear them?”

He reached out, slowly, and touched the back of her neck, ran his rough fingertips over her skin. She shook him off with a jerk of her shoulders, and he felt his face twist. Perhaps that good thing between them had been only in his mind, and never in hers. Perhaps he had wanted it so badly that he had let himself imagine it.

He stood up, cleared his dry throat. “Never mind. I’ll come back later, maybe.” She was still on her knees, her head against the floor. She did not even watch him leave.

Logen Ninefingers was no stranger to death. He’d walked among it all his days. He’d watched the bodies burned by the score after the battle at Carleon, long ago. He’d seen them buried by the hundred up in the nameless valley in the High Places. He’d walked on a hill of men’s bones under ruined Aulcus.

But even the Bloody-Nine, even the most feared man in the North, had never looked on anything like this.