Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

A few men came out from the front, where they were digging, started walking up towards the wall. Five of ’em, all in good armour, the one at the front with his arms spread out wide.

“Jawing time,” muttered Dow, then gobbed down into the ditch. They came up close, the five, up in front of the patched-up gate, mail coats shining dull in the brightening sun. The first of ’em had long white hair and one white eye, and weren’t too hard to remember. White-Eye Hansul. He looked older than he used to, but didn’t they all? He’d been the one to ask Threetrees to surrender, at Uffrith, and been told to piss off. He’d had shit thrown down on him at Heonan. He’d offered duels to Black Dow, and to Tul Duru, and to Harding Grim. Duels against Bethod’s champion. Duels against the Bloody-Nine. He’d done a lot of talking for Bethod, and he’d told a lot o’ lies.

“That Shite-Eye Hansul down there?” jeered Black Daw at him. “Still sucking on Bethod’s cock, are you?”

The old warrior grinned up at them. “Man’s got to feed his family somehow, don’t he, and one cock tastes pretty much like another, if you ask me! Don’t pretend like your mouths ain’t all tasted salty enough before!”

He had some kind of point there, the Dogman had to admit. They’d all fought for Bethod themselves, after all. “What’re you after, Hansul?” he shouted. “Bethod want to surrender to us, does he?”

“You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you, outnumbered like he is, but that’s not why I’m here. He’s ready to fight, just like always, but I’m more of a talker than a fighter, and I talked him into giving you all a chance. I got two sons down there, in with the rest, and call me selfish but I’d rather not have ’em in harm’s way. I’m hoping we can maybe talk our way clear of this.”

“Don’t seem too likely!” shouted Dogman, “but give it a go if you must, I’ve got nothing else pressing on today!”

“Here’s the thing, then! Bethod don’t particularly want to waste time, and sweat, and blood on climbing your little shit-pile of a wall. He’s got business with the Southerners he wants to get settled. It’s scarcely worth the breath of pointing out the bastard of a fix you’re in. We’ve got the numbers more’n ten to one, I reckon. Much more, and you’ve no way out. Bethod says any man wants to give up now can go in peace. All he has to do is give over his weapons.”

“And his head soon afterwards, eh?” barked Dow.

Hansul took a big breath in, like he hardly expected to be believed. “Bethod says any man wants to can go free. That’s his word.”

“Fuck his word!” Dow sneered at him, and down the walls men jeered and spat their support. “D’you think we ain’t all seen him break it ten times before? I done shits worth more!”

“Lies, o’ course,” chuckled Crummock, “but it’s traditional, no? To get a bit o’ lying done, before we get started on the hard work. You’d feel insulted if he didn’t give it some kind of a try at least. Any man, is it?” he called down. “What about Crummock-i-Phail, can he go free? What about the Bloody-Nine?”

Hansul’s face sagged at the name. “It’s true then? Ninefingers is up there, is he?”

Dogman felt Logen come up beside and show himself on the wall. White-Eye turned pale, and his shoulders slumped. “Well,” Dogman heard him saying quiet, “it has to be blood, then.”

Logen leaned lazily on the parapet, and he gave Hansul and his Carls a look. That hungry, empty look, like he was picking which one of a herd o’ sheep to slaughter first. “You can tell Bethod we’ll come out.” He left a pause. “Once we’ve killed the fucking lot o’ you.”

A ripple of laughter went down the walls, and men jeered and shook their weapons in the air. Not funny words, particularly, but hard ones, which was what they all needed to hear, Dogman reckoned. Good way to get rid of their fear, for a moment. He even managed half a smile himself.

White-Eye just stood there, in front of their rickety gate, and he waited for the boys to go quiet. “I heard you was chief of this crowd now, Dogman. So you don’t have to take your orders from this blood-mad butcher no more. That your answer as well? That the way it is?”

Dogman shrugged. “Just what other way did you think it’d be? We didn’t come here to talk, Hansul. You can piss off back, now.”

Some more laughter, and some more cheers, and one lad down at Shivers’ end of the wall pulled his trousers down and stuck his bare arse over the parapet. So that was that for the negotiations.

White-Eye shook his head. “Alright, then. I’ll tell him. Back to the mud with the lot o’ you, I reckon, and well earned. You can tell the dead I tried, when you meet ’em!” He started picking his way back down the valley, the four Carls behind him.

Logen loomed forward, all of a sudden. “I’ll be looking for your sons, Hansul!” he screamed, spit flying out his snarling, grinning mouth and away into the wind, “When the work begins! You can tell Bethod I’m waiting! Tell ’em all I’ll be waiting!”

A strange stillness fell on the wall and the men upon it, on the valley and the men within it. That kind of stillness that comes sometimes, before a battle, when both sides know what to expect. The same stillness that Logen had felt at Carleon, before he drew his sword and roared for the charge. Before he lost his finger. Before he was the Bloody-Nine. Long ago, when things were simpler.

Bethod’s ditch was deep enough for him, and the Thralls had put away their shovels and moved behind it. The Dogman had climbed the steps back to the tower, no doubt taken up his bow beside Grim and Tul, and was waiting. Crummock was behind the wall with his Hillmen, lined up fierce and ready. Dow was with his lads on the left. Red Hat was with his boys on the right. Shivers wasn’t far from Logen, both of them stood above the gate, waiting.

The standards down in the valley flapped and rustled gently in the wind. A hammer clanged once, twice, three times in the fortress behind them. A bird called, high above. A man whispered, somewhere, then was still. Logen closed his eyes, and tipped his face back, and he felt the hot sun and the cool breeze of the High Places on his skin. All as quiet as if he’d been alone, and there were no ten thousand men about him eager to set to killing one another. So still, and calm, he almost smiled. Was this what life would have been, if he’d never held a blade?

For the length of three breaths or so, Logen Ninefingers was a man of peace.

Then he heard the sound of men moving, and he opened his eyes. Bethod’s Carls shuffled to the sides of the valley, rank after rank of them, with a crunching of feet and a rattling of gear. They left a rocky path, an open space through their midst. Out of that gap black shapes came, swarming over the ditch like angry ants from a broken nest, boiling up the slope towards the wall in a formless mass of twisted limbs, and snarling mouths and scraping claws.

Shanka, and even Logen had never seen half so many in one place. The valley crawled with them—a gibbering, clattering, squawking infestation.

“By the fucking dead,” someone whispered.

Logen wondered if he should shout something to the men on the walls around him. If he should cry, “Steady!”, or “Hold!”. Something to help put some heart in his lads, the way a leader was meant to. But what would have been the point? Every one of them had fought before and knew his business. Every one of them knew that it was fight or die, and there was no better spur to a man’s courage than that.

So Logen gritted his teeth, and he curled his fingers tight round the cold grip of the Maker’s sword, and he slid the dull metal from its scarred sheath, and he watched the Flatheads come. A hundred strides away now, maybe, the front runners, and coming on fast.