Joe Abercrombie: Last Argument of Kings

Jezal knelt there, clinging to the curtains like a child to his mother. He thought about how happy he had once been, and how little he had realised it. Playing cards, surrounded by friends, a bright future ahead of him. He dragged in a heavy breath, the tightness of tears creeping up his throat, spreading out around his eyes. Never in his life had he felt so alone. Son of Kings? He had no one and nothing. He spluttered and sniffed. His vision grew blurry. He shook with hopeless sobs, his scarred lip trembling, the tears dripping down and spattering on the tiles.

He wept with pain and fear, with shame and anger, with disappointment and helplessness. But Bayaz had been right. He was a coward. So most of all he wept with relief.

Grey morning time, out in the cold, wet gardens, and the Dogman was just stood there, thinking about how things used to be better. Stood there, in the middle of that circle of brown graves, staring at the turned earth over Harding Grim. Strange, how a man who said so little could leave such a hole.

It was a long journey that Dogman had taken, the last few years, and a strange one. From nowhere to nowhere, and he’d lost a lot of friends along the way. He remembered all those men gone back to the mud. Harding Grim. Tul Duru Thunderhead. Rudd Threetrees. Forley the Weakest. And what for? Who was better off because of it? All that waste. It was enough to make a man sick to the soles of his boots. Even one who was famous for having a flat temper. All gone, and left Dogman lonely. The world was a narrower place without ’em.

He heard footsteps through the wet grass. Logen, walking up through the misty rain, breath smoking round his scarred face. Dogman remembered how happy he’d been, that night, when Logen had stepped into the firelight, still alive. It had seemed like a new beginning, then. A good moment, promising better times. Hadn’t quite worked out that way. Strange, how the Dogman didn’t feel so happy at the sight of Logen Ninefingers no more.

“The King o’ the Northmen,” he muttered. “The Bloody-Nine. How’s the day?”

“Wet is how it is. Getting late in the year.”

“Aye. Another winter coming.” Dogman picked at the hard skin on his palm. “They come quicker and quicker.”

“Reckon it’s high time I got back to the North, eh? Calder and Scale still loose, making mischief, and the dead know what type o’ trouble Dow’s cooked up.”

“Aye, I daresay. High time we left.”

“I want you to stay.”

Dogman looked up. “Eh?”

“Someone needs to talk to the Southerners, make a deal. You’ve always been the best man I knew for talking. Other than Bethod, maybe, but… he ain’t an option now, is he?”

“What sort of a deal?”

“Might be we’ll need their help. There’ll be all kind o’ folk in the North not too keen about the way things have gone. Folk don’t want a king, or don’t want this one, leastways. The Union on our side’ll be a help. Wouldn’t hurt if you brought some weapons back with you too, when you come.”

Dogman winced. “Weapons, is it?”

“Better to have ’em and not want ’em, than to need ’em but—”

“I know the rest. What happened to one more fight, then we’re done? What happened to making things grow?”

“They might have to grow without us, for now. Listen, Dogman, I never looked for a fight, you know that, but you have to be—”

“Don’t. Even. Bother.”

“I’m trying to be a better man, here, Dogman.”

“That so? I don’t see you trying that hard. Did you kill Tul?”

Logen’s eyes went narrow. “Dow been talking, has he?”

“Never mind who said what. Did you kill the Thunderhead or did you not? Ain’t a hard one to come at. It’s just a yes or a no.”

Logen made a kind of snort, like he was about to start laughing, or about to start crying, but didn’t do either one. “I don’t know what I did.”

“Don’t know? What use is don’t know? Is that what you’ll say after you’ve stabbed me through the back, while I’m trying to save your worthless life?”

Logen winced down at the wet grass. “Maybe it will be. I don’t know.” His eyes slid back up to the Dogman’s, and stuck there, hard. “But that’s the price, ain’t it? You know what I am. You could have picked a different man to follow.”

Dogman watched him go, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to think even. Just standing there, in the midst of the graves, getting wetter. He felt someone come up beside him. Red Hat, looking off into the rain, watching after Logen’s black shape growing fainter and fainter. He shook his head, mouth pursed up tight.

“I never believed the stories they told about him. About the Bloody-Nine. All bluster, I thought. But I believe ’em now. I heard he killed Crummock’s boy, in that fight in the mountains. Carved him careless as you’d crush a beetle, no reason. That’s a man there cares for nothing. No man worse, I reckon, ever, in all the North. Not even Bethod. That’s an evil bastard, if ever there was one.”

“That so?” Dogman found he was right up in Red Hat’s face, and shouting. “Well piss on you, arsehole! Who made you the fucking judge?”

“Just saying, is all.” Red Hat stared at him. “I mean… I thought we had the same thing in mind.”

“Well, we don’t! You need a mind bigger’n a pea to hold something in it and you’re lacking the equipment, idiot! You wouldn’t know a good man from an evil if he pissed on you!”

Red Hat blinked. “Right y’are. I see I got the wrong notion.” He backed off a stride, then walked away through the drizzle, shaking his head.

Dogman watched him go, teeth gritted, thinking how he wanted to hit someone, but not sure who. There was no one here but him, now, anyway. Him and the dead. But maybe that’s what happens once the fighting stops, to a man who knows nothing but fighting. He fights himself.

He took a long breath of the cold, wet air, and he frowned down at the earth over Grim’s grave. He wondered if he’d know a good man from an evil, any more. He wondered what the difference was.

Grey morning time, out in the cold, wet gardens, and the Dogman was just stood there, thinking about how things used to be better.

Glokta woke to a shaft of soft sunlight spilling through the hangings and across his wrinkled bed-clothes, full of dancing dust-motes. He tried to turn over, winced at a click in his neck. Ah, the first spasm of the day. The second was not long coming. It flashed through his left hip as he wrestled his way onto his back and snatched his breath away. The pain crept down his spine, settled in his leg, and stayed there.

“Ah,” he grunted. He tried, ever so gently, to turn his ankle round, to work his knee. The pain instantly grew far worse. “Barnam!” He dragged the sheet to one side and the familiar stink of ordure rose up to his nostrils. Nothing like the stench of your own dung to usher in a productive morning.

“Ah! Barnam!” He whimpered, and slobbered, and clutched at his withered thigh, but nothing helped. The pain grew worse, and worse. The fibres started from his wasted flesh like metal cables, toeless foot flopping grotesquely on the end, entirely beyond his control.

“Barnam!” he screamed. “Barnam, you fucker! The door!” Spit dribbled from his toothless mouth, tears ran down his twitching face, his hands clawed, clutching up fistfuls of brown-stained sheet.

He heard hurried footsteps in the corridor, the lock scraping. “Locked you fool!” he squealed through his gums, thrashing with pain and anger. The knob turned and the door opened, much to his surprise. What the…