Joe Abercrombie: Sharp Ends

‘Been wrong-footed, has he?’ Rews chuckled at his own joke, congratulating himself on it being just the sort of thing Glokta might have said.

‘His company’s a mess without him.’

‘Well, I suppose that’s their problem- Jab! Jab! Oooooh!’ As Glokta neatly dodged, kicked a man’s foot away and sent him rolling in the dirt.

‘It could turn into everyone’s problem pretty damn quickly,’ West was saying. ‘The men are exhausted. Moving slowly. And the supply train’s all tangled up-’

‘The supply train’s always tangled, it’s practically a standing order for them- Oh!’ Rews gasped with everyone else as Glokta dodged a thrust with consummate speed and kicked the man – he was hardly more than a boy, honestly – in the groin, folding him up with eyes bulging.

‘But if the Gurkish come now …’ West was saying, still frowning at the parched landscape beyond the river.

‘The Gurkish are miles away. Honestly, West, you’re always worried about something.’

‘Someone needs to be-’

‘Then complain to the Lord Marshal!’ Rews nodded at Varuz, who was almost tipping from his folding chair, so engrossed was he in the heady combination of swordsmanship and bullying. ‘I’ve no idea what you think I can do about it. Send in an order for more horse feed?’

There was a sharp snapping sound as Glokta caught the last man across the face with the flat of his sword and sent him reeling back with an agonised shriek, hand to his cheek.

‘Is that really your best?’ Glokta stepped forward and gave one of the others a resounding kick in the arse as he tried to get up, sending him face down in the dust to peels of merriment. Glokta soaked up the applause like some parasitic jungle flower absorbing the sap of its host, bowing, beaming, blowing kisses, and Rews smashed his palms together until they hurt.

What a bastard Colonel Glokta was. What a beautiful bastard.

As his three sparring partners hobbled from the enclosure, nursing injuries that would soon heal and humiliations that would accompany them to the grave, Glokta draped himself across the fence behind which the ladies were gathered. He gave particular attention to Lady Wetterlant – young, rich, beautiful if considerably over-powdered, and dressed in the elaborate height of fashion despite the heat. Recently married, but to an older husband kept in Adua by the politics of the Open Council. Rumour had it he fulfilled her financial needs but was otherwise not terribly interested in women.

Colonel Glokta’s interest in women, on the other hand, was infamous.

‘Might I borrow your handkerchief?’ he asked.

Rews had observed a special manner he had when speaking to a woman who interested him. A slight roughening of the voice. A loitering just that fraction closer than was strictly appropriate. A tunnel-like attentiveness, as though his eyes were stuck to them with glue. It hardly needed to be said that the moment he got what he wanted from his conquests, their setting themselves on fire could not persuade him to glance their way again.

And yet new objects of affection fell over themselves to be incinerated by the flames of scandal with the breathless buzzing of moths around a candle, unable to resist the challenge of being the special one to buck the trend.

Lady Wetterlant raised one carefully plucked brow. ‘Why ever not, Colonel?’ And she reached to take the handkerchief from her bodice. ‘I-’

She and her attendants gasped as, quick as lightning, Glokta flicked it from her dress with the blunted point of his long steel. The gauzy fabric floated gently through the air and straight into his waiting hand with all the assurance of a magic trick.

One of the ladies gave a croaky cough. Another fluttered her eyelashes. Lady Wetterlant was perfectly still, eyes wide, lips parted, hand frozen halfway to her chest. Perhaps they were wondering whether the colonel could have flicked the hooks and eyes of her bodice open as easily, had he so desired.

Rews never doubted that he could have.

‘My thanks,’ said Glokta, dabbing at his forehead.

‘By all means keep it,’ murmured Lady Wetterlant in a voice slightly hoarse. ‘Consider it a gift.’

Glokta smiled as he slipped it into his shirt, a waft of purple fabric still showing. ‘I shall keep it close to my heart.’ Rews snorted. As if he had one. Glokta dropped his voice, though still perfectly audible to everyone present. ‘And perhaps return it later?’

‘Whenever you have a moment,’ she whispered, and Rews was forced to wonder, once again, what was so damnably attractive about things that were obviously so very, very bad for you.

Glokta had already turned back to his audience, spreading his arms wide as though to give them all a crushing, dominating, loveless hug. ‘Is there no one among you clumsy dogs who can give our visitors a better show?’ Rews felt a breathless leaping in his chest as Glokta’s eyes met his. ‘Rews, how about you?’

There was a smattering of laughter and Rews joined in, loudest of all. ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly!’ he squeaked out. ‘I’d hate to embarrass you!’

He instantly realised he had gone too far. Glokta’s left eye faintly twitched. ‘I’m embarrassed whenever I find myself in a room with you. You’re supposed to be a soldier, aren’t you? How the hell do you stay so fat when the food is so bloody awful?’

More laughter, and Rews swallowed, plastering the smile to his face and feeling sweat tickle his spine beneath his uniform. ‘Well, sir, I’ve always been fat, I suppose. Even as a boy.’ His words plummeted into the sudden silence with the awful finality of victims into a mass grave. ‘Very … fat. Hugely fat. I’m a very fat man.’ He cleared his throat, praying that the ground would swallow him.

Glokta’s eyes drifted on, seeking a worthier adversary. His face brightened. ‘Lieutenant West!’ he called, with a flashing flourish of his practice steel. ‘How about you?’

West winced. ‘Me?’

‘Come now, you’re probably the best swordsman in the whole damn regiment.’ Glokta beamed even wider. ‘The best but one, that is.’

West blinked about at what might easily have been several hundred expectant faces. ‘But … I have no blunted steel with me-’

‘By all means use your battle steel.’

Lieutenant West looked down at the hilt of his sword. ‘That could be rather dangerous.’

The edge on Colonel Glokta’s smile was positively ferocious. ‘Only if you touch me with it.’ More laughter, more applause, a couple of whoops from the enlisted men, a couple of gasps from the ladies. When it came to making ladies gasp, Colonel Glokta was unmatched.

‘West!’ someone shouted. ‘West!’ And gradually it became a chant: ‘West! West! West!’ The ladies laughed as they joined in, clapping in time.

‘Go on!’ shouted Rews along with the others, a kind of bullying mania upon them all. ‘Go on!’

If anyone thought this was a bad idea, they kept it to themselves. Some men you simply don’t argue with. Some men you’d simply like to see run through. Glokta fell into both camps.

West took a long breath, then, to a smattering of applause, smoothly vaulted the fence, unbuttoned his jacket and draped it over the rail. With the faintest ringing of metal, and the faintest unhappy look, West drew his battle steel. It did not boast the jewelled quillons, gilded basketwork or engraved ricasso that many of the splendid young officers of his Majesty’s First affected. No man there would have called it a beautiful sword.

And yet there was a beautiful economy in the way West presented it, a studied precision in his stance, an elegant control in the twitch of the wrist that brought the blade as perfectly level as the surface of a still pool, the sun glinting on a point polished to murderous sharpness.