Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

The Haddish smiled. As though he saw it all. Saw it all, and forgave him even so.

‘I must stay,’ he said. ‘But you should go, Temple. If you feel you need my permission, I give it gladly.’

Temple cursed. He had been forgiven too often. He wanted to be raged at, to be blamed, to be beaten. He wanted a reason to take the easy way and run, but Kahdia would not let him take the easy way. It was why Temple had always loved him. There were tears in his eyes. He cursed. But he stayed.

‘What do we do?’ croaked Temple.

‘We care for the wounded. We give comfort to the weak. We bury the dead. We pray.’

He did not say fight, but that was clearly on some minds. Five acolytes had gathered uncertainly beside one wall, shifty as children about some secret game. Temple saw the glint of a blade. An axe hanging in the fold of a robe.

‘Set down those weapons!’ called Kahdia, striding over to them. ‘This is a temple!’

‘Do you think the Gurkish will respect our holy ground?’ one of them screeched, a madness of fear in his eyes. ‘Do you think they’ll put aside their weapons?’

Kahdia was calm as still water. ‘God will judge them for their crimes. He will judge us for ours. Set down your weapons.’

The men glanced at each other, shifted their weight uncertainly, but armed though they were, none of them had the courage to meet Kahdia’s unwavering eye. One by one they set their weapons down.

The Haddish put his hand on the shoulder of the man who had challenged him. ‘You are on the wrong side as soon as you pick one, my son. We must act as we would want to act. We must act as we would want others to act. Now more than ever.’

‘How will that help us?’ Temple found he had muttered.

‘In the end, what else is there?’ And Kahdia looked towards the great doors, and drew himself up, and set his shoulders.

Temple realised that a silence had fallen outside. In the square that had once echoed with the priests’ calls to prayer. Then with the merchants’ calls to buy. Then with the cries of the wounded, and the orphaned, and the helpless. Silence could only mean one thing.

They were here.

‘Do you remember what you were when we first met?’ asked Kahdia.

‘A thief.’ Temple swallowed. ‘A fool. A boy with no code and no purpose.’

‘And see what you have become!’

He hardly felt any different than he had. ‘What will I become now, without you?’

Kahdia smiled and set his hand on Temple’s shoulder. ‘That is in your hands. And in the hands of God.’ He came a little closer, to whisper. ‘Do nothing foolish, do you understand? You must live.’

‘Why?’

‘Like a storm, like a plague, like a swarm of locusts, the Gurkish will pass. When they do, Dagoska will have need of good men.’

Temple was about to point out that he was no better than the next thief when there was a booming blow on the gates. The great doors shook, dust filtering down as the lamps wildly flickered. A gasp went through the people and they shrank back, back into the shadows at the far end of the temple.

Another blow, and the doors, and the crowd, and Temple all shuddered at it.

Then a word was spoken. Spoken in a voice of thunder, impossibly, deafeningly loud, mighty as the tolling of a great bell. Temple did not know the tongue and yet he saw the letters of it burned into the door in blinding light. The heavy gate burst apart in a cloud of splinters, chunks of wood tumbling across the marble floor and scattering wide.

A figure stepped between the twisted hinges. A figure in white armour, marked with letters of gold, a smile upon his face, a face as perfect as if it was cast from dark glass.

‘Greetings from the Prophet Khalul!’ he called out, warm and friendly, and the people whimpered and crowded back further.

The letters of fire were still written across Temple’s swimming sight in the darkness, holy letters, unholy letters, his ears still humming with their echoes. A girl whimpered beside him, hands over her face. And Temple put his on her shoulder, clutched at it, trying to calm her, trying to calm himself. More figures sauntered into the temple. Figures in white armour.

They were only five but the crowd shrank back as though they were sheep and these were wolves, crushing each other in their fear. Close to Temple came a woman, beautiful, awful, tall and thin as a spear, a light to her pale face like the glistening of a pearl, golden hair floating as if she carried her own breeze with her.

‘Hello, my pretties.’ She smiled wide at Temple and ran the tip of a long, pointed tongue down one long, pointed tooth, then shut her mouth with a snap and winked at him. His guts were water.

There was a cry. Someone jumped from the crowd. One of the acolytes. Temple saw a flash of metal in the darkness, was jerked sideways by another sudden ripple of fear through the crowd.

‘No!’ shouted Kahdia.

Too late. One of the Eaters moved. As fast as lightning and just as deadly. She caught the man’s wrist, snatched him from his feet, whirled him around with impossible strength and flung him flailing through the air across the full width of the temple, as a sulking child might fling away a broken doll, his fallen dagger skittering across the tiles.

His scream was cut off as he crunched into the wall perhaps ten strides up, flopped bonelessly to the ground in a shower of blood and cracked marble. His head was flattened, twisted all the way around, his face thankfully turned to the wall.

‘God,’ whispered Temple. ‘Oh, God.’

‘Still, all of you!’ called Kahdia, one arm out.

‘You are their leader?’ asked the foremost of the Eaters, raising one brow. His dark face was young, and smooth, and beautiful, but his eyes were old.

‘I am Kahdia, Haddish of this temple.’

‘A priest, then. A man of the book. Dagoska has been the birthplace of many holy men. Of revered philosophers, admired theologists. Men who heard the voice of God. Are you one such, Haddish Kahdia?’

Temple did not know how, but Kahdia showed no fear. He spoke as he might to one of his congregation. Even this devil born of hell, this eater of the flesh of men, he treated as if he was no lesser or greater than himself. ‘I am but a man. I struggle to be righteous.’

‘Believe it or not, so do we all.’ The Eater frowned down at his hand, and made a fist of it, and let the fingers slowly open again as if allowing sand to drain from his palm. ‘And here is where the road to righteousness has led me. Do you know who I am?’ There was no mocking triumph in his perfect face. Only a sadness.

‘You are Mamun,’ said Haddish Kahdia. ‘The fruit of the desert. Thrice Blessed and Thrice Cursed.’

‘Yes. Though with every year the curses weigh heavier, and the blessings seem more dust.’

‘You have only yourself to blame,’ said Kahdia, calmly. ‘You broke God’s law and ate the flesh of men.’

‘And of women, and of children, and of everything that breathes.’ Mamun frowned over towards the acolyte’s ruined corpse. One of the Eaters had squatted beside the body, and she put one finger in the pooling blood and began to smear it on her blandly smiling face. ‘If only I had known then what I know now things might have been different.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘But it is easy to speak of the past, impossible to go there. I am powerful in ways you can only dream, yet I am still a prisoner of what I have done. I can never escape the cell I have made for myself. Things are what they are.’

‘We always have a choice,’ said Kahdia.

Mamun smiled at him. A strange smile, it was. Almost … hopeful. ‘Do you think so?’

‘God tells us so.’

‘Then I offer you yours. We can take them.’ He glanced towards the crowd, and as his glassy eyes passed over Temple he felt the hairs rise on his neck. ‘We can take all of them, but you will be spared.’