Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

“What happened to him?” asked West.

“To Littlebone?” The great fat hillman, Crummock-i-Phail, was one of the crowd. “He got cut down in the battle, fighting to the last man, over yonder.”

“That he did,” said Dow, and he gave West a grin even bigger than usual. “But that’s no kind of a reason not to hang him now, I reckon.”

Crummock laughed. “No kind of a reason!” And he smiled at the three bodies turning round and round, the ropes creaking. “They make a pretty picture, don’t they, hanging there? They say you can see all the beauty in the world in the way a hanged man swings.”

“Who does?” asked West.

Crummock shrugged his great shoulders. “Them.”

“Them, eh?” West swallowed his nausea and pushed his way between the hanging bodies into the fortress. “They surely are a bloodthirsty crowd.”

Dogman took another pull at the flask. He was getting good and drunk now. “Alright. Let’s get it done then.”

He winced as Grim stuck the needle in, curled his lips back and hissed through his teeth. A nice pricking and niggling to add to the dull throb. The needle went through the skin and dragged the thread after, and Dogman’s arm started burning worse and worse. He took another swig, rocking back and forward, but it didn’t help.

“Shit,” he hissed. “Shit, shit!”

Grim looked up at him. “Don’t watch, then.”

Dogman turned his head. The Union uniform jumped out at him straight away. Red cloth in the midst of all that brown dirt. “Furious!” shouted the Dogman, feeling a grin on his face even through the pain. “Glad you could make it! Real glad!”

“Better to come late than not to come at all.”

“You’ll get no trace of an argument from me. That is a fact.”

West frowned down at Grim sewing his arm up. “You alright?”

“Well, you know. Tul’s dead.”

“Dead?” West stared at him. “How?”

“It’s a battle, ain’t it? Dead men are the point o’ the fucking exercise.” He waved the flask around. “I’ve been sat here, thinking about what I could’ve done differently. Stopped him going down them steps, or gone down with him to watch his back, or made the sky fall in, or all kind o’ stupid notions, none of ’em any help to the dead nor the living. Seems I can’t stop thinking, though.”

West frowned down at the rutted earth. “Might be’s a game with no winners.”

“Ah, fuck!” Dogman snarled as the needle jabbed into his arm again, and he flung the empty flask bouncing away. “The whole fucking business has no winners, though, does it! Shit on it all, I say.”

Grim pulled his knife out and cut the thread. “Move your fingers.” It burned all the way up Dogman’s arm to make a fist, but he forced the fingers closed, growling at the pain as they bunched up tight.

“Looks alright,” said Grim. “You’re lucky.”

The Dogman stared round miserably at the carnage. “So this is what luck looks like, is it? I’ve often wondered.” Grim shrugged his shoulders, ripped a piece of cloth for a bandage.

“Do you have Bethod?”

Dogman looked up at West, his mouth open. “Don’t you?”

“A lot of prisoners, but he wasn’t among them.”

Dogman turned his head and spat his disgust out into the mud. “Nor his witch, nor his Feared, nor neither one of his swollen up sons, I’ll be bound.”

“I imagine they’ll be riding for Carleon as swiftly as possible.”

“More’n likely.”

“I imagine he’ll try to raise new forces, to find new allies, to prepare for a siege.”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

“We should follow him as soon as the prisoners are secure.”

Dogman felt a sudden wave of hopelessness, enough almost to knock him over. “By the dead. Bethod got away.” He laughed, and felt tears prickling his eyes the next moment. “Will there ever be an end to it?”

Grim finished wrapping the bandage and tied it up tight. “You’re done.”

Dogman stared back at him. “Done? I’m starting to think I won’t ever be done.” He held his hand out. “Help me up, eh, Furious? I got a friend to bury.”

The sun was getting low when they put Tul in the ground, just peering over the tops of the mountains and touching the edges of the clouds with gold. Good weather, to bury a good man. They stood round the grave, all packed in tight. There were plenty of others being buried, the sad words for them wept and whispered all around, but Tul had been well-loved, no man more, so there was quite the crowd. Even so, all round Logen there was a gap. An empty space a man wide. That space he used to have around him in the old days, where no one would dare to stand. Logen hardly blamed them. He’d have run away himself, if he could.

“Who wants to speak?” asked the Dogman, looking at them, one by one. Logen stared down at his feet, not even able to meet his eye, let alone say a word. He wasn’t sure what had happened, in the battle, but he could guess. He could guess well enough, from the bits he did remember. He glanced around, licking at his split lips, but if anyone else guessed, they kept it to themselves.

“No one going to say a word?” asked Dogman again, his voice cracking.

“Guess it best be fucking me, then, eh?” And Black Dow stepped forward. He took a long look round at the gathering. Took a long look at Logen in particular, it seemed to him, but that was most likely just his own worries playing tricks.

“Tul Duru Thunderhead,” said Dow. “Back to the mud. The dead know, we didn’t always see things the same way, me and him. Didn’t often agree on nothing, but maybe that was my fault, as I’m a contrary bastard at the best o’ times. I regret it now, I reckon. Now it’s too late.” He took a ragged breath.

“Tul Duru. Every man in the North knew his name, and every man said it with respect, even his enemies. He was the sort o’ man… that gave you hope, I reckon. That gave you hope. You want strength, do you? You want courage? You want things done right and proper, the old way?” He nodded down at the new-turned earth. “There you go. Tul Duru Thunderhead. Look no fucking further. I’m less, now that he’s gone, and so are all o’ you.” And Dow turned and stalked off away from the grave and into the dusk, his head down.

“We’re all less,” muttered Dogman, staring down at the earth with the glimmer of a tear in his eye. “Good words.” They all looked broken up, every one of them stood around the grave. West, and his man Pike, and Shivers, and even Grim. All broken up.

Logen wanted to feel as they did. He wanted to weep. For the death of a good man. For the fact that he might’ve been the one to cause it. But the tears wouldn’t come. He frowned down at the fresh-turned earth, as the sun sank behind the mountains, and the fortress in the High Places grew dark, and he felt less than nothing.

If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person? You have to be realistic. He’d played at being a different man, but it had all been lies. The hardest kind to see through. The kind you tell yourself. He was the Bloody-Nine. That was the fact, and however he twisted, and squirmed, and wished to be someone else, there was no escaping it. Logen wanted to care.

But the Bloody-Nine cares for nothing.

Jezal was smiling when he began to wake. They were done with this madcap mission, and soon he would be back in Adua. Back in Ardee’s arms. Warm and safe. He snuggled down into his blankets at the thought. Then he frowned. There was a knocking sound coming from somewhere. He opened his eyes a crack. Someone hissed at him from across the room, and he turned his head.