Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

“What’s Bethod planning for today, do we reckon?” he murmured to himself. “What’s he got planned?”

“A massacre?” grunted Grim.

Dogman gave him a hard look. “Attack is the word I might’ve picked, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we get it your way, before the day’s out.” He narrowed his eyes and stared down into the shadowy valley, hoping to see what he’d been hoping for all the last seven long days. Some sign that the Union were coming. But there was nothing. Below Bethod’s wide camp, his tents, and his standards, and his masses of men, there was nothing but the bare and empty land, mist clinging in the shady hollows.

Tul nudged him in the ribs with a great big elbow, and managed to make a grin. “I don’t know about this plan. Waiting for the Union, and all that. Sounds a bit risky, if you ask me. Any chance I can change my mind now?”

The Dogman didn’t laugh. He hadn’t any laughter left. “Not much.”

“No.” The giant puffed out a weighty sigh. “I don’t suppose there is.”

Seven days, since the Shanka first came at the walls. Seven days, and it felt like seven months. Logen hardly had a muscle that didn’t ache from hard use. He was covered in a legion of bruises, a host of scratches, an army of grazes, and knocks, and burns. He had the long cut down his leg bandaged, his ribs all bound up tight from getting kicked in them, a pair of good-sized scabs under his hair, his shoulder stiff as wood from where he’d got battered with a shield, his knuckles scraped and swollen from punching at an Easterner and catching stone instead. He was one enormous sore spot.

The rest of the crowd were little better off. There was hardly a man in the whole fortress without some kind of an injury. Even Crummock’s daughter had picked up a scratch from somewhere. One of Shivers’ boys had lost himself a finger the day before yesterday. Little one, on his left hand. He was looking at it now, wrapped up tight in dirty, bloody cloth, wincing.

“Burns, don’t it?” he said, looking up at Logen, bunching up the rest of his fingers and opening them again.

Logen should’ve felt sorry for him, probably. He remembered the pain, and the disappointment even worse. Hardly able to believe that you wouldn’t have that finger any more, for the whole rest of your life. But he’d got no pity left for anyone beyond himself. “It surely does,” he grunted.

“Feels like it’s still there.”

“Aye.”

“Does that feeling go away?”

“In time.”

“How much time?”

“More than we’ve got, most likely.”

The man nodded, slow and grim. “Aye.”

Seven days, and even the cold stone and wet wood of the fortress itself seemed to have had enough. The new parapets were crumbled and sagging, shored up as best they could be, and crumbled again. The gates were chopped to rotten firewood, daylight showing through the hacked-out gaps, boulders piled in behind. A firm knock might have brought them down. A firm knock might have brought Logen down, for that matter, the way he was feeling.

He took a mouthful of sour water from his flask. They were getting to the rank stuff at the bottom of the barrels. Low on food too, and on everything else. Hope, in particular, was in short and dwindling supply. “Still alive,” he whispered to himself, but there wasn’t much triumph in it. Even less than usual. Civilisation might not have been all to his taste, but a soft bed, a strange place to piss, and a bit of scorn from some skinny idiots didn’t seem like such a bad option right then. He was busy asking himself for the thousandth time why he came back at all when he heard Crummock-i-Phail’s voice behind him.

“Well, well, Bloody-Nine. You look tired, man.”

Logen frowned up. The hillman’s mad blather was starting to grate on him. “It’s been hard work these past days, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I have, and I’ve had my part in it, haven’t I, my beauties?” His three children looked at each other.

“Aye?” said the girl in a tiny voice.

Crummock frowned down at them. “Don’t like the way the game’s played no more, eh? How about you, Bloody-Nine? The moon stopped smiling, has it? You scared, are you?”

Logen gave the fat bastard a long, hard look. “Tired is what I am, Crummock. Tired o’ your fortress, your food, and most of all I’m tired of your fucking talk. Not everyone loves the sound o’ your fat lips flapping as much as you. Why don’t you piss off and see if you can fit the moon up your arse.”

Crummock split a grin, a curve of yellow teeth standing out from his brown beard. “That’s the man I love, right there.” One of his sons, the one that carried the spear with him, was tugging at his shirt. “What the hell is it, boy?”

“What happens if we lose, Da?”

“If we what?” growled Crummock, and he cuffed his son round the head with a great hand and knocked him on his face in the dirt. “On your feet! There’ll be no losing here, boy!”

“Not while the moon loves us,” muttered his sister, but not that loud.

Logen watched the lad struggling up, holding a hand to his bloody mouth and looking like he wanted to cry. He knew that feeling. Probably he should’ve said something about treating a child that way. Maybe he would’ve, on the first day, or the second even. Not now. He was too tired, and too sore, and too scared to care much about it.

Black Dow ambled up, something not too far from a smile across his face. The one man in the whole camp who might’ve been said to be in a better mood than usual, and you know you’re in some sorry shit when Black Dow starts smiling.

“Ninefingers,” he grunted.

“Dow. Run out of men to burn, have you?”

“Reckon Bethod’ll be sending me some more presently.” He nodded towards the wall. “What d’you think he’ll send today?”

“After what we gave ’em last night, I reckon those Crinna bastards are just about done.”

“Bloody savages. I reckon they are at that.”

“And there’ve been no Shanka for a few days now.”

“Four days, since he sent the Flatheads at us.”

Logen squinted up at the sky, slowly getting lighter. “Looks like good weather today. Good weather for armour, and swords, and men walking shoulder to shoulder. Good weather to try and finish us. Wouldn’t be surprised if he sends the Carls today.”

“Nor me.”

“His best,” said Logen, “from way back. Wouldn’t be surprised to see Whitesides, and Goring, and Pale-as-Snow, and fucking Littlebone and all the rest come strolling up to the gate after breakfast.”

Dow snorted. “His best? Right crowd o’ cunts, those.” And he turned his head and spat onto the mud.

“You’ll get no argument from me.”

“That so? Didn’t you fight alongside ’em, all those hard and bloody years?”

“I did. But I can’t say I ever much liked ’em.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I doubt they think too much o’ you these days.” Dow gave him a long look. “When did Bethod stop suiting you, eh, Ninefingers?”

Logen stared back at him. “Hard to say. Bit by bit, I reckon. Maybe he got to be more of a bastard as time went on. Or maybe I got to be less of one.”

“Or maybe there ain’t room on one side for two bastards as big as the pair o’ you.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Logen got up. “You and me work real sweet together.” He stalked away from Dow, thinking about what easy work Malacus Quai, and Ferro Maljinn, and even Jezal dan Luthar had been.

Seven days, and they were all at each other’s throats. All angry, all tired. Seven days. The one consolation was that there couldn’t be many more.

“They’re coming.”

Dogman’s eyes flicked sideways. Like most of the few things Grim said, it hardly needed saying. They could all see it as clearly as the sun rising. Bethod’s Carls were on the move.