Joe Abercrombie: Sharp Ends

A breathless silence settled on the crowd. Commoner he might have been, but even the most ignorant observer could have told that the young Lieutenant West was no bumpkin when it came to handling a sword.

‘You’ve been practising,’ said Glokta, tossing his short steel to his servant, Corporal Tunny, leaving him with just the long.

‘Lord Marshal Varuz has been good enough to give me a few pointers,’ said West.

Glokta raised a brow at his old fencing master. ‘You never told me we were seeing other people, sir.’

The Lord Marshal smiled. ‘You won a Contest already, Glokta. It is the tragedy of the fencing master that he must always find new pupils to lead to victory.’

‘So nice that you’re sniffing at my crown, West. But you may find I’m not quite ready to abdicate.’ Glokta sprang forward with lightning quickness, jabbed, jabbed. West parried, steel scraping, flickering in the sun. He gave ground, but carefully, watchfully, eyes fixed on Glokta’s. Again Glokta came on, cut, cut, thrust, almost too fast for Rews to follow. But West followed well enough, turning the slashes efficiently away, shuffling cautiously back, the crowd giving ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ with every contact.

Glokta grinned. ‘You really have been practising. When will you learn, West, that work is no substitute for talent!’ And he laid into West faster and more ferociously than ever, steel ringing, clattering. He came close and dealt the young lieutenant a savage knee in the ribs, made him wince and stumble, but West found his balance instantly, parried once, twice, reeled away and was ready once more, breathing hard.

And Rews found himself wishing with a painful longing that West would stab Glokta right through his horrible, beautiful face, and make the ladies gasp for very different reasons.

‘Hah!’ Glokta sprang forward, jabbing, and West dodged the first but to everyone’s surprise came on to meet the second, steered it aside with a shrieking of steel, stepped inside Glokta’s guard and barged him heavily with his shoulder. For an instant Glokta lurched off balance and West growled, teeth bared, steel flashing as it darted out.

‘Gah!’ Glokta reeled back and Rews caught a delicious flash of his face stricken with shock. Glokta’s practice steel tumbled from his hand and skittered in the dirt, and Rews found that he was bunching his fists painfully tight in delight.

West started forward at once. ‘Are you all right, sir?’

Glokta touched one hand to his neck, stared down at his bloody fingertips in profound puzzlement. As if he could hardly believe that he could have been caught. As if he could hardly believe that, having been caught, he might bleed like other men.

‘Fancy that,’ he grunted.

‘I’m so sorry, Colonel,’ stammered West, lowering his steel.

‘For what?’ Glokta’s twisted grin looked as if it took every grain of effort he possessed. ‘A very fine touch. You’ve got a great deal better, West.’

And the crowd began to clap, and then to whoop, and Rews noticed the muscles of Glokta’s jaw working, and his left eye twitching, and he held out one hand and sharply snapped his fingers.

‘Corporal Tunny, do you have my battle steel with you?’

The young corporal, promoted only the day before, blinked. ‘Of course, sir.’

‘Bring it here, would you?’

With shocking speed the atmosphere had turned decidedly ugly. The atmosphere around Glokta often did. Rews looked nervously for Varuz to put a stop to this deadly nonsense, but the Lord Marshal had left his seat and wandered off to stare down into the valley, Poulder and Kroy with him. There was to be no help from the grown-ups.

With eyes on the ground, West carefully sheathed his own sword. ‘I think I’ve played with knives enough for one day, sir.’

‘But you really must give me the chance to pay you back in kind. Honour demands it, West, really it does.’ As if Glokta had the slightest idea what honour was, beyond a tool for manipulating people into doing stupid, dangerous things. ‘Surely you understand that, nobleman or no?’

West’s jaw tightened. ‘Fighting one’s friends with sharpened steels while there is an enemy to face seems foolish rather than honourable, sir.’

‘Are you calling me a fool?’ whispered Glokta, whipping his battle steel from the sheath with an angry hiss as Corporal Tunny nervously offered it out.

West stubbornly folded his arms. ‘No, sir.’

The crowd were struck entirely silent, but there was some sort of hubbub rising just beyond them. Rews picked out muttered calls of, ‘Over there,’ and ‘The bridge,’ but was too fixed on the drama before him to pay much attention.

‘I advise you to defend yourself, Lieutenant West,’ snarled Glokta as he worked his heels into the dusty ground, baring his teeth and levelling his shining steel.

And at that moment there was an ear-splitting scream, guttering away into a ragged moan.

‘She’s fainted!’ someone called.

‘Get her some air!’

‘Where from? I swear there isn’t a breath of air in the whole bloody country,’ followed by braying laughter.

Rews hastened over to the civilian’s enclosure on the pretext of offering assistance. He knew even less about helping people from a faint than he did about being a quartermaster but there was always the possibility of catching a glimpse up the woman’s skirts while she was insensible. It was a sad fact that Rews was rarely if ever offered glimpses up the skirts of conscious ladies.

But he froze before he came near the knot of well-wishers, the sight beyond them causing Rews the unpleasant sensation of his ample guts dropping right out of his arse. There, in the distant sweep of beige beyond the bridge, an infestation of black dots was gathering, plumes of dust rising from the swarm. He might not have been good for much, but Rews had always possessed an unerring sense for danger.

He lifted a trembling arm. ‘The Gurkish!’ he wailed.

‘What?’ Someone laughed uncertainly.

‘There, to the west!’

‘That’s east, fool!’

‘Wait, you’re serious?’

‘We’ll be slaughtered in our beds!’

‘We’re not in our beds!’

‘Silence!’ roared Varuz. ‘This isn’t a damn finishing school.’ The hubbub died, the officers brought instantly to guilty quiet. ‘Major Mitterick, I want you to get down there now and hurry the men along.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Lieutenant Vallimir, would you be good enough to conduct the ladies and our civilian guests to safety?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘A few men could hold them at that bridge,’ Colonel Poulder was saying, tugging at his lustrous moustaches.

‘A few heroes,’ said Varuz.

‘A few dead heroes,’ said Colonel Kroy, under his breath.

‘Do you have fresh men?’ asked Varuz.

Poulder shrugged. ‘Mine are blown.’

‘Mine, too,’ added Kroy. ‘Even more so.’ As though the whole war was a competition at exhausting your regiment.

Colonel Glokta slapped his battle steel back into its sheath. ‘My men are fresh,’ he said, and Rews felt the fear creeping out from his stomach to every extremity. ‘They’ve been resting up after that last little jaunt of ours. Chomping at the bit to have at the enemy. I daresay his Majesty’s First would be willing to hold that bridge long enough to get the men clear, Lord Marshal.’

‘Chomping at the bit!’ brayed one of Glokta’s staff, clearly too drunk to realise what he was volunteering for.

Another, a little less drunk, blinked nervously towards the valley. Rews wondered how many men in his Majesty’s First the colonel could be speaking of. The regiment’s quartermaster was in no hurry to give his life for the greater good, of that he was absolutely positive.