Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

So he stood in his doorway, and watched the Union ruin his crop.

First had come the scouts, hooves pounding. Then the soldiers, row upon row of ’em, boots tramping. Then the wagons, creaking and groaning like the dead in hell, wheels ripping up Tinder’s land. Dozens. Hundreds. They’d churned the track to knee-deep slop, then they’d spilled off it and onto the verge and churned that to slop, then they’d spilled off that and into his crops and made slop of an ever-widening strip of them, too.

There’s war for you. You start with something worth something, you end up with slop.

The morning after the first scouts passed through they’d come for his chickens, a dozen jumpy Union soldiers and a Northman to make ’em understood. Tinder understood well enough without words. He knew when he was being robbed. The Northman had looked sorry about it, but a sorry look was all he’d got in trade. What could you do, though? Tinder was no hero. He’d been to war, and he’d seen no heroes there, either.

He gave a long, rough sigh. Probably he deserved it, for the misdeeds of his youth, but deserving it made the thought of a hungry winter no sweeter. He shook his head and spat out into the yard. Bloody Union. Though it was no worse’n when Ironhead and Golden had their last little disagreement, and both came through here robbing whatever they could get their fat hands on. Put a few men with swords together, even men with usually pleasant manners, and it’s never long before they’re all acting like animals. It was like old Threetrees always said – a sword’s a shitty thing to give a man. Shitty for him, and shitty for everyone around him.

‘Are they gone yet?’ asked Riam, creeping up close beside him to peer out, sunlight turning one half of her face white while the other was in shadow. She looked more like her mother with every day.

‘I’ll tell you when they’re gone!’ he growled at her, blocking the door with his body. He’d been on that march, down through Angland with Bethod. He’d done things, and he’d seen things done. Tinder knew how narrow the line was between folk in their house just minding their business and black bones in a burned-out shell. Tinder knew every moment those Union men were at the bottom of his field, him and his children were only just on the right side of that line. ‘Stay inside!’ he called after her as she made sulkily for the back room. ‘And keep the shutters closed!’

When he looked outside again, Cowan was coming around the side of the house, milking pail in one hand, plain as day, just like it was any old morning.

‘You soft in the head, boy?’ Tinder snapped at him as he slipped through the doorway. ‘Thought I told you to stay out o’ sight?’

‘You didn’t say how. They’re crawling everywhere. If they see me creeping they’ll just think we’ve got something to hide.’

‘We have got something to hide! You want ’em to take the goat as well?’

Cowan hung his head. ‘She ain’t giving much.’

Now Tinder felt guilty as well as scared. He reached out and ruffled his son’s hair. ‘No one’s giving much right now. There’s a war on. You just need to keep low and move quick, you hear?’

‘Aye.’

Tinder took the pail from Cowan and put it down beside the door. ‘Get back there with your sister, eh?’ Then he snatched a quick peek around the frame and cursed under his breath.

A Union man was walking up to the house, and one Tinder liked the look of even less than most. Big, with too little neck and too much armour, a long sword sheathed on one side and a shorter on the other. Tinder might not have been the hardest, but he’d seen enough to spot a killer in a crowd, and something in the set of this big man got the back of his neck to tingling.

‘What is it?’ asked Cowan.

‘Just get inside like I told you!’ Tinder slid the hatchet from the table and let it fall down behind his leg, working his fist around the cool, smooth handle, mouth suddenly dry.

He might not be the fighter he once was, and he might never have been the hardest, but a man’s no man who won’t die for his children.

Tinder had been half-expecting the neckless bastard to draw one of those swords and kick the door right down and Tinder along with it. But all he did was take two slow steps up to the porch, Tinder’s poor carpentry creaking under his big boots, and smile. An unconvincing, almost sorry-looking smile, slow to come, like doing it took an effort. Like he was smiling in spite of some burning wound.

‘Hello,’ he said, in Northern. Tinder felt his brows go up. He’d never heard such a strange, high little voice on a man, ’specially one big as this. Closer up his eyes were sad, not fierce. He had a satchel over his shoulder, a golden sun stamped into it.

‘Hello.’ Tinder tried to keep his face slack. Not angry. Not scared. Nothing and nobody. Certainly nobody who needed killing.

‘My name is Gorst.’ Tinder didn’t see a need to reply to that. Like anything else, a name’s a thing you share when you need to. Silence stretched out. An ugly, dangerous silence with the faint bad-tempered calls of men and animals floating over from the bottom of the field. ‘Did I see your son with milk?’

Tinder narrowed his eyes. Here was a tester. Deny what this Gorst had already seen and risk riling him up, maybe put Tinder and his children in deeper danger? Or admit it and risk losing his goat along with all the rest? The Union man shifted in the doorway and the light caught the pommel of one of his swords, brought a steely glint to it.

‘Aye,’ croaked Tinder. ‘A little.’

Gorst reached into his satchel, Tinder’s eye following that big hand all the way, and came out with a wooden cup. ‘Might I trouble you for some?’

Tinder had to put the axe down so he could pick up the bucket, but he didn’t see much choice. Never seemed to have any choice these days, no more’n a leaf on the wind can pick its path. That’s what it is to be ordinary folk with a war at the doorstep, he guessed.

The Union man dipped his cup, held it so a couple of drips fell, then looked up. They looked at each other for a long moment. No anger in the big man’s eyes, or spite, or even much of anything. Tired eyes, and slow, and Tinder swallowed, sure he was looking his death in its face, and far from a pretty face, too. But in the end Gorst only nodded his balding rock of a head towards the trees, where a little smoke from the forge was smudging the iron-grey sky. ‘Can you tell me the name of that village?’

‘It’s called Barden.’ Tinder cleared his croaky throat, desperate to get his hand on the axe again but not sure how he could do it without the big man noticing. ‘Ain’t much there, though.’

‘I was not planning a visit. But thank you.’ The big man looked at him, mouth half-open as though he’d say something more. Then he turned and trudged off, shoulders hunched like he had a great weight on him. Greater even than all the weight of steel he was wearing. He sat down on the stump of that old fir Tinder had a bastard of a time cutting down in the spring. The one that nearly fell on him when he finally got through the trunk.

‘What did he want?’ came Riam’s voice in his ear.

‘By the dead, can’t you stay out of sight?’ Tinder nearly puked on the words, his throat was so tight, struggling to bundle his daughter away from the door with one arm.

But the big man showed no sign of ordering Tinder’s goat seized, or his children, either. He pulled some papers from his satchel, placed them on the wood between his legs, uncorked a bottle of ink, dipped a pen in and wrote something. He took a sip of his milk – or Tinder’s milk, in fact – frowned over towards the trees, then up at the sky, then towards the scarcely moving column of horses and carts, dipped his pen again and wrote something else.