Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

Dogman winced, sure as sure they’d set to killing one another, and how the hell he’d stop ’em once they started he hadn’t the faintest clue. A tense moment all round, it seemed to last for ever. He wouldn’t have taken that from any other man, alive or dead, Black Dow, not even Threetrees, but in the end he just split a yellow grin.

“Nah. One lesson’s all I need.” And he turned his head sideways, hawked up and spat onto the ground. Then he backed off, no hurry, that grin still on his face, like he was saying he’d take a telling this time, maybe, but he might not the next.

Once he was gone, and no blood spilled, Tul blew out hard like they’d got away with murder. “Right then. North, was it? Someone better get the lads ready to move.”

“Uh,” said Grim, sliding the last arrow into his quiver and following him off through the trees.

Logen stood there for a moment, watching ’em walk. When they’d got away out of sight he turned round, and he squatted down by the fire, hunched over with his arms resting on his knees and his hands dangling. “Thank the dead for that. I nearly shit myself.”

Dogman realised he’d been holding onto his breath the whole while, and he let it rush out in a gasp. “I think I might’ve, just a bit. Did you have to do that?”

“You know I did. Let a man like Dow take liberties and he won’t ever stop. Then all the rest of these lads will get the idea that the Bloody-Nine ain’t anything like so frightening as they heard, and it’ll be a matter of time before someone with a grudge decides to take a blade to me.”

Dogman shook his head. “That’s a hard way of thinking about things.”

“That’s the way they are. They haven’t changed any. They never do.”

True, maybe, but they weren’t ever going to change if no one gave ’em half a chance. “Still. You sure all that’s needful?”

“Not for you maybe. You got that knack that folk like you.” Logen scratched at his jaw, looking sadly off into the woods. “Reckon I missed my chance at that about fifteen years ago. And I ain’t getting another.”

The woods were warm and familiar. Birds twittered in the branches, not caring a damn for Bethod, or the Union, or any o’ the doings of men. Nowhere had ever seemed more peaceful, and Dogman didn’t like that one bit. He sniffed at the air, sifting it through his nose, over his tongue. He was double careful these days, since that shaft came over and killed Cathil in the battle. Might have been he could’ve saved her, if he’d trusted his own nose a mite more. He wished he had saved her. But wishing don’t help any.

Dow squatted down in the brush, staring off into the still forest. “What is it, Dogman? What d’you smell?”

“Men, I reckon, but kind of sour, somehow.” He sniffed again. “Smells like—”

An arrow flitted up out of the trees, clicked into the tree trunk just beside Dogman and stuck there, quivering.

“Shit!” he squealed, sliding down on his arse and fumbling his own bow off his shoulder, much too late as always. Dow slithered down cursing beside him and they got all tangled up with each other. Dogman nearly got his eye poked out on Dow’s axe before he managed to push him off. He shoved his palm out at the men behind to say stop, but they were already scattering for cover, crawling for trees and rocks on their bellies, pulling out weapons and staring into the woods.

A voice drifted over from the forest ahead. “You with Bethod?” Whoever it was spoke Northern with some strange-sounding accent.

Dow and Dogman looked at each other for a minute, then shrugged. “No!” Dow roared back. “And if you are, you’d best make ready to meet the dead!”

A pause. “We’re not with that bastard, and never will be!”

“Good enough!” shouted Dogman, putting his head up no more’n an inch, his bow full drawn and ready in his hands. “Show yourselves, then!”

A man stepped out from behind a tree maybe six strides distant. Dogman was that shocked he nearly fumbled the string and let the shaft fly. More men started sliding out of the woods all round. Dozens of ’em. Their hair was tangled, their faces were smeared with streaks of brown dirt and blue paint, their clothes were ragged fur and half-tanned hides, but the heads of their spears, and the points of their arrows, and the blades of their rough-forged swords all shone bright and clean.

“Hillmen,” Dogman muttered.

“Hillmen we are, and proud of it!” A great big voice, echoing out from the woods. A few of ’em started to shuffle to one side, like they were making way for someone. Dogman blinked. There was a child coming between them. A girl, maybe ten years old, with dirty bare feet. She had a huge hammer over one shoulder, a thick length of wood a stride long with a scarred lump of iron the size of a brick for a head. Far and away too big for her to swing. It was giving her some trouble even holding it up.

A little boy came next. He had a round shield across his back, much too wide for him, and a great axe he was lugging along in both hands. Another boy was at his shoulder with a spear twice as high as he was, the bright point waving around above his head, gold twinkling under the blade in the strips of sunlight. He kept having to look up to make sure he didn’t catch it on a branch.

“I’m dreaming,” muttered the Dogman. “Aren’t I?”

Dow frowned. “If y’are it’s a strange one.”

They weren’t alone, the three children. Some huge bastard was coming up behind. He had a ragged fur round his great wide shoulders, and some big necklace hanging down on his great fat belly. A load of bones. Fingerbones, the Dogman saw as he got closer. Men’s fingers, mixed up with flat bits of wood, strange signs cut into them. He had a great yellow grin hacked out from his grey-brown beard, but that didn’t put the Dogman any more at ease.

“Oh shit,” groaned Dow, “let’s go back. Back south and enough o’ this.”

“Why? You know him?”

Dow turned his head and spat. “Crummock-i-Phail, ain’t it.”

Dogman almost wished it had turned out to be an ambush, now, rather than a chat. It was a fact that every child knew. Crummock-i-Phail, chief of the hillmen, was about the maddest bastard in the whole damn North.

He pushed the spears and the arrows gently out of his way as he came. “No need for that now, is there, my beauties? We’re all friends, or got the same enemies, at least, which is far better, d’you see? We all have a lot of enemies up in them hills, don’t we, though? The moon knows I love a good fight, but coming at them great big rocks, with Bethod and all his arse-lickers stuck in tight on top? That’s a bit too much fight for anyone, eh? Even your new Southern friends.”

He stopped just in front of them, fingerbones swinging and rattling. The three children stopped behind him, fidgeting with their great huge weapons and frowning up at Dow and the Dogman.

“I’m Crummock-i-Phail,” he said. “Chief of all the hillmen. Or all the ones as are worth a shit.” He grinned as though he’d just turned up to a wedding. “And who might be in charge o’ this merry outing?”

Dogman felt that hollow feeling again, but there was nothing for it. “That’d be me.”

Crummock raised his brows at him. “Would it now? You’re a little fellow to be telling all these big fellows just what to be about, are you not? You must have quite some name on your shoulders, I’m thinking.”

“I’m the Dogman. This is Black Dow.”

“Some strange sort of a crew you got here,” said Dow, frowning at the children.

“Oh it is! It is! And a brave one at that! The lad with my spear, that’s my son Scofen. The one with my axe is my son Rond.” Crummock frowned at the girl with the hammer. “This lad’s name I can’t remember.”