Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

Javre looked over at the one with his hands rammed in his pockets, whose mouth had just dropped open. ‘No need to feel embarrassed,’ she said. ‘If I had a cock I would play with it all the time, too.’

He jerked his hands out and flung a knife. Shev saw the metal flicker, heard the blade twitter.

Javre caught it. She made no big show of it, like the jugglers in that travelling show used to. She simply plucked it from the air as easily as you might catch a coin you’d tossed yourself.

‘Thank you,’ she said. She tossed it back and it thudded into the man’s thigh. He gave a great spitty screech as he staggered back through the doorway and into the street.

Mason had just pulled his own knife out, a monster of a thing you could’ve called a sword without much fear of correction. Javre planted her hands on her hips again. ‘Are you sure this is the way you want it?’

‘Can’t say I want it,’ said Mason, drifting into a fighting crouch. ‘But there’s no other way for it to be.’

‘I know.’ Javre shook her shoulders again and raised those big empty hands. ‘But it is always worth asking.’

He sprang at her, knife a blur, and she whipped out of the way. He slashed at her and she dodged again, watching as he lumbered towards the door, tearing the curtain from its hooks. He lunged at her, feathers spewing up in a fountain as he hacked a cushion open, splinters flying as he smashed the counter over with his flailing boot, cloth ripping as he slashed one of the hangings in half.

Mason gave a bellow like a hurt bull and charged at her once more. Javre caught his wrist as the knife blade flashed towards her, big vein popping from her arm as she held it, straining, the trembling point just a finger’s width from her forehead.

‘Got you now!’ Mason sprayed spit through his clenched teeth as he caught Javre by her thick neck, forced her back a step-

She snatched the big Prayer Bell from the shelf and smashed him over the head with it, the almighty clang so loud it rattled the teeth in Shev’s head. Javre hit him again, twisting free of his clutching hand, and he gave a groan and dropped to his knees, blood pouring down his face. Javre raised her arm high and smashed him onto his back, bell breaking from handle and clattering away into the corner, the ringing echoes gradually fading.

Javre looked up at Crandall, her face all spotted with Mason’s blood. ‘Did you hear that?’ She raised her red brows. ‘Time for you to pray.’

‘Oh, hell,’ croaked Crandall. He let the hatchet clatter to the boards and held his open palms up high. ‘Now look here,’ he stammered out, ‘I’m Horald’s son. Horald the Finger!’

Javre shrugged as she stepped over Mason’s body. ‘I am new in town. One name strikes me no harder than another.’

‘My father runs things here! He gives the orders!’

Javre grinned as she stepped over Big-Coat’s corpse. ‘He does not give me orders.’

‘He’ll pay you! More money than you can count!’

Javre poked Pock-Face’s fallen knife aside with the toe of her boot. ‘I do not want it. I have simple tastes.’

Crandall’s voice grew shriller as he shrank away from her. ‘If you hurt me, he’ll catch up to you!’

Javre shrugged again as she took another step. ‘We can hope so. It would be his last mistake.’

‘Just … please!’ Crandall cringed. ‘Please! I’m begging you!’

‘It really is not me you have to beg,’ said Javre, nodding over his shoulder.

Shev whistled and Crandall turned around, surprised. He looked even more surprised when she buried the blade of Mason’s hatchet in his forehead with a sharp crack.

‘Bwurgh,’ he said, tongue hanging out, then he toppled backwards, his limp hand catching the stand and knocking it and the tin bowl flying, showering hot coals across the wall.

‘Shit,’ said Shev as flames shot up the flimsy hangings. She grabbed the water jug but its meagre contents made scarcely any difference. Fire had already spread to the next curtain, shreds of burning ash fluttering down.

‘Best vacate the premises,’ said Javre, and she took Shev under the arm with a grip that was not to be resisted and marched her smartly out through the door, leaving four dead men scattered about the burning room.

The one who’d had his hands in his pockets was leaning against the wall in the street, clutching at his own knife stuck in his thigh.

‘Wait-’ he said as Javre caught him by the collar, and with a flick of her wrist sent him reeling across the street to crash head first into a wall.

Severard was running up, staring at the building, flames already licking around the doorframe. Javre caught him and guided him away. ‘Nothing to be done. Bad choice of décor in a place with naked flames.’ As if to underscore the point, the window shattered, fire gouting into the street, and Severard ducked with his hands over his head.

‘What the hell happened?’ he moaned.

‘Went bad,’ whispered Shev, clutching at her side. ‘Went bad.’

‘You call that bad?’ Javre scraped the dirty red hair out of her battered face and grinned at the ruin of Shev’s hopes as though it looked a good enough day’s work to her. ‘I say it could have been far worse!’

‘How?’ snapped Shev. ‘How could it be fucking worse?’

‘We might both be dead.’ She gave a sharp little laugh. ‘Come out alive, it is a victory.’

‘This is what happens,’ said Severard, his eyes shining with reflected fire as the building burned brighter. ‘This is what happens when you do a kindness.’

‘Ah, stop crying, boy. Kindness brings kindness in the long run. The Goddess holds our just rewards in trust! I am Javre, by the way.’ And she clapped him on the shoulder and near knocked him over. ‘Do you have an older brother, by any chance? Fighting always gets me in the mood.’

‘What?’

‘Brothers, maybe?’

Shev clutched at her head. Felt like it was going to burst. ‘I killed Crandall,’ she whispered. ‘I bloody killed him. They’ll come after me now! They’ll never stop coming!’

‘Pffffft.’ Javre put one great, muscled, bruised arm around Shev’s shoulders. Strangely reassuring and smothering at once. ‘You should see the bastards coming after me. Now, about stealing back this sword of mine …’

East of the Crinna, Autumn 574

Craw chewed the hard skin around his nails, just like he always did. They hurt, just like they always did. He thought to himself that he really had to stop doing that. Just like he always did.

‘Why is it,’ he muttered under his breath, and with some bitterness too, ‘I always get stuck with the fool jobs?’

The village squatted in the fork of the river, a clutch of damp thatch roofs, scratty as an idiot’s hair, a man-high fence of rough-cut logs ringing it. Round wattle huts and three long halls dumped in the muck, ends of the curving wooden uprights on the biggest badly carved like dragons’ heads, or wolves’ heads, or something that was meant to make men scared but only made Craw nostalgic for decent carpentry. Smoke limped up from chimneys in muddy smears. Half-bare trees still shook browning leaves. In the distance the reedy sunlight glimmered on the rotten fens, like a thousand mirrors stretching off to the horizon. But without the romance.

Wonderful stopped scratching at the long scar through her shaved-stubble hair long enough to make a contribution. ‘Looks to me,’ she said, ‘like a confirmed shit-hole.’

‘We’re way out east of the Crinna, no?’ Craw worked a speck of skin between teeth and tongue and spat it out, wincing at the pink mark left beside his nail, way more painful than it had any right to be. ‘Nothing but hundreds of miles of shit-hole in every direction. You sure this is the place, Raubin?’