Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

The Eater with the golden hair winked at Temple again, and he felt the girl beside him trembling, and he felt himself trembling, too.

‘Or we can take you,’ said Mamun, ‘and they will be spared.’

‘All of them?’ asked Kahdia.

‘All of them.’

That was the time to step forward, Temple knew. To act as he would want to act. As he would want others to act. That was the moment for courage, for selflessness, for solidarity with the man who had saved his life, who had shown him mercy, who had given him a chance he did not deserve. To step forward, and offer himself in Kahdia’s place. Now was the time.

Temple did not move.

No one did.

The Haddish gave a smile, though. ‘You drive a poor bargain, Eater. I would happily have given my life for any one of them.’

The blonde woman raised her long arms, let her head fall back and began to sing. High and dazzlingly pure, her voice soared in the great spaces above, more beautiful than any music Temple had ever heard.

Mamun fell to his knees before Kahdia and pressed one hand to his heart. ‘All heaven rejoices in the finding of one righteous man. Wash him. Give him food and water. Convey him with honour to the Prophet’s table.’

‘God be with you,’ murmured Kahdia over his shoulder, the smile still on his face. ‘God be with you all.’ And he walked from the temple, an Eater on either side, their heads respectfully bowed as his was held high.

‘Shame,’ said the Eater with the blood-daubed face, her lips pushed out in a pout. She took the acolyte’s corpse by one ankle and dragged it after her, swaggering to the doors and leaving a bloody trail across the floor.

Mamun paused for a moment in the broken doorway. ‘The rest of you are free. Free from us, at least. From yourselves, there is no escape.’

How long did they stand in that sweating press, after the Eaters were gone? How long did they stand silent, staring towards the ruined gate? Frozen with terror. Rooted with guilt. Minutes? Hours? While outside, faintly, they heard the burning, the clash of steel, the screams, the sound of the sack of Dagoska. The sound of the end of the world.

Finally the girl beside Temple leaned close and asked in a broken whisper, ‘What do we do?’

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

God, it sounded hollow. But what else was there?

Somewhere in the North,Summer 576

‘This is hell,’ muttered Shev, peering over the brink of the canyon. ‘Hell.’ Rock shiny-dark with wet disappeared into the mist below, water rushing somewhere, a long way down. ‘God, I hate the North.’

‘Somehow,’ answered Javre, pushing back hair turned lank brown by the eternal damp, ‘I do not think God is listening.’

‘Oh, I’m abundantly aware of that. No one’s bloody listening.’

‘I am.’ Javre turned away from the edge and headed on down the rutted goat-track beside it with her usual mighty strides, head back, heedless of the rain, soaked cloak flapping at her muddy calves. ‘And, what is more, I am intensely bored by what I am hearing.’

‘Don’t toy with me, Javre.’ Shev hurried to catch her up, trying to find the least boggy patches to hop between. ‘I’ve had about as much of this as I can take!’

‘So you keep saying. And yet the next day you take some more.’

‘I’m bloody furious!’

‘I believe you.’

‘I mean it!’

‘If you have to tell someone you are furious, and then, furthermore, that you mean it, your fury has failed to achieve its desired effect.’

‘I hate the bloody North!’ Shev stamped at the ground, as though she could hurt anything but herself, succeeding only in showering wet dirt up her leg. Not that she could have made herself much wetter or dirtier. ‘The whole place is made of shit !’

Javre shrugged. ‘Everything is, in the end.’

‘How can anyone stand this cold?’

‘It is bracing. Do not sulk. Would you like to ride on my shoulders?’

Shev would have, in fact, very much, but her bruised pride insisted that she continue to squelch along on foot. ‘What am I, a bloody child?’

Javre raised her red brows. ‘Were you never told only to ask questions you truly want the answer to? Do you want the answer?’

‘Not if you’re going to try to be funny.’

‘Oh, come now, Shevedieh!’ Javre bent down to snake one huge arm about her shoulders and gave her a bone-crushing squeeze. ‘Where is that happy-go-lucky rascal I fell in love with back in Westport, always facing her indignities with a laugh, a caper and a twinkle in her eye?’ And her wriggling fingers crept towards Shev’s stomach.

Shev held up a knife. ‘Tickle me and I will fucking stab you.’

Javre puffed out her cheeks, took her arm away and squelched on down the track. ‘Do not be so overdramatic. It is exhausting. We just need to get you dry and find some pretty little farmgirl for you to curl up with and it will all feel better by morning.’

‘There are no pretty farmgirls out here! There are no girls! There are no farms!’ She held out her arms to the endless murk, mud and blasted rock. ‘There isn’t even any bloody morning!’

‘There is a bridge,’ said Javre, pointing into the gloom. ‘See? Things are looking up!’

‘I never felt so encouraged,’ muttered Shev.

It was a tangle of fraying rope strung from ancient posts carved with runes and streaked with bird-droppings, rotten-looking slats tied to make a precarious walkway. It sagged deep as Shev’s spirits as it vanished into the vertiginous unknown above the canyon and shifted alarmingly in the wind, planks rattling.

‘Bloody North,’ said Shev as she picked her way towards it and had a tentative drag at the ropes. ‘Even their bridges are shit.’

‘Their men are good,’ said Javre, clattering out with no fear whatsoever. ‘Far from subtle, but enthusiastic.’

‘Great,’ said Shev as she edged after, exchanging a mutually suspicious glance with a crow perched atop one of the posts. ‘Men. The one thing that interests me not at all.’

‘You should try them.’

‘I did. Once. Bloody useless. Like trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t even speak your language, let alone understand the topic.’

‘Some are certainly more horizontally fluent than others.’

‘No. Just no . The hairiness, and the lumpiness, and the great big fumbling fingers and … balls . I mean, balls . What’s that about? That is one singularly unattractive piece of anatomy. That is just … that is bad design, is what that is.’

Javre sighed. ‘It is the great shame of creation that we cannot all be so perfectly formed as you, Shevedieh, springy little string of sinew that you are.’

‘There’d be more bloody meat on me if we weren’t living on high hopes and the odd rabbit. I may not be perfect but I don’t have a sock of bloody gravel swinging around my knees, you’d have to give me … Hold on.’ They had reached the sagging middle of the bridge now, and Shev could see neither rock face. Only the ropes fading up into the grey in both directions.

‘What?’ muttered Javre, clattering to a stop.

The bridge kept on bouncing. A heavy tread, and coming towards them.

‘There’s someone heading the other way,’ muttered Shev, twisting her wrist and letting the dagger drop from her sleeve into her waiting palm. A fight was the last thing she ever wanted, but she’d reluctantly come to find there was no downside to having a good knife ready. It made a fine conversation point, if nothing else.

A figure started to form. At first just a shadow, shifting as the wind drove the fog in front of them. First a short man, then a tall one. Then a man with a rake over his shoulder. Then a half-naked man with a huge sword over his shoulder.