Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

He managed to yell one audible word, voice shrill with terror.

‘Northmen!’

As if to add drama to his exclamation, an arrow looped over from behind him, narrowly missing his shoulder and vanishing into the crops. Kerns felt his face go hot. Time seemed perceptibly to slow. He stood as if in a dream, his limbs heavy, his mind sluggishly struggling to catch up with reality. He gawped at Pendel. He gawped at the column. He gawped at Gorst, who was already rushing forwards, drawing his heavy steels. He gawped at the treeline, from which men had now started to appear, running, shrill cries echoing over the silent field.

‘Bloody hell,’ Kerns whispered, flinging his pen away and tearing at his sword hilt. Bloody thing wouldn’t come free. He realised the securing thong was looped over the grip, started fumbling with it, failed, ripped his gloves off in a fury, fumbled again, finally loosening the hilt. He looked up. Northmen, undoubtedly Northmen, some of them with painted shields on their arms, bright weapons in their fists, whooping and shouting as they bounded towards the largely unguarded wagons.

He cast about for his helmet, knocking his ink bottle over and sending a spray of black across his banal fragment of a letter. Probably should’ve had his helmet on all the time but his men had mocked him mercilessly, and when he found it filled with dung that morning it had been the final straw. If he ever discovered who-

As he finally got his sword drawn and looked up, he realised it hardly mattered now. There were things moving in the air. Arrows. Arrows from kneeling Northmen, before the trees, bows raised. His wide eyes darted over the dark background of the woods, drawn by flickers of movement. He ducked uselessly, the arrows whispering past him and dropping among the carts. He saw one thud into wood and lodge there, quivering. Another stuck into a horse’s flank and it reared up, screaming.

‘With me!’ he bellowed, no idea who he was bellowing at, not bothering to check if anyone was with him or not, doing his best to lift his feet over the barley as he floundered on, all the silly frustrations of being assigned supply duty suddenly banished. Action! Here was action!

Gorst was up ahead in combat with two Northmen. His long steel hit a shield with a loud crack and sent one stumbling back. Gorst dodged a two-handed axe-blow, the heavy blade missing him by a terrifying whisker. Even as it thudded into the earth Gorst was spinning around, swift as lightning in spite of his bulk, long steel feathering the crops. It took the axeman’s right leg off cleanly at the knee and snatched the other out from under him, sending the unfortunate man cartwheeling in a spray of blood. His friend was just struggling to get up when Gorst’s long steel left a great dent in the front of his helmet and knocked him back, mouth silently gaping, arms spread, sword tumbling from one nerveless hand.

Kerns felt a shock run through him as he realised that he had seen two men killed before his eyes. Shock, and disbelief, and breathless excitement. Here was most definitely action! To stand alongside Colonel Gorst, a man who had been the king’s First Guard! To be smilingly acknowledged by him after the engagement, to be clapped on the shoulder and greeted as a brother! It was everything Kerns had dreamed of when he first tried on the uniform. Three more Northmen were jumping through the crops towards Gorst now, and Kerns hurried up to his side, raising his sword.

‘Colonel Gorst!’

He saw a flash of movement at the corner of his eye, jerked his head away on an instinct, and-

Gorst felt his long steel crunch into something at the very end of his swing, twisting the grip in his fist as the Northman before him toppled back, blood squirting from his neatly slit throat. But he had no time to think on it. I have other business.

Namely a short man in tarnished chain mail, ageing and running somewhat to fat, roaring as lustily as he could after a charge through the crops, ruddy cheeks full of broken veins. Those cheeks. They surprised Gorst with a stray memory of his father, shortly before his death when he had been confined to his bed, unable to speak properly and eternally surprised by the animal noises that emerged from his twisted mouth. Fussing with the tassels on his nightgown, shrivelled to a ghostly prune of his former self. A ghostly prune with prune-coloured cheeks.

How many years did I put up with that old fool’s disappointment, and his rebukes, and his jokes about ladies’ voices, and smile and nod like a dutiful son? Gorst’s lips curled back in an animal snarl. A passing resemblance to a close relative was not about to break his stride. Rather it urged him on. After all, Father, I never could shut you up in life …

The Northman swung his sword in an overhead arc as Gorst came close, a clumsy motion, easily anticipated. One would think these fools had never drawn a sword before. Not really my job to show them how it’s done, but … Gorst deflected it effortlessly with his long steel, blades scraping, closed and stabbed once with his short, getting it tangled with the rim of the painted shield. There was enough force behind it to twist its prune-faced owner sideways, though. Gorst stabbed again and felt the blade slide through mail and into flesh, the man’s mouth opening wide to scream. Quiet, now, Father. Gorst stabbed once more and cut that scream off in a last twisted gurgle. He shouldered the Northman away and chopped one ruddy cheek wide open with a swing of the long steel, showering blood and making another man check in his charge, check enough that Gorst could split his head, too, on the backswing and snatch him off his feet before he had time to remind Gorst of any other dead relatives.

No more enemies in easy reach, he spun about. There was fighting near the column. He saw a guard running, throwing his spear away as a wild-haired Northman bounded after him. Another was on his knees with an arrow in his shoulder. Dark shapes darted between the wagons. Someone had tossed a lit torch into a cart full of hay and quickly turned the cargo into a hearty fireball, rolls of oily smoke pouring up into the grey sky, horses screaming and plunging, harnesses tangling, dragging carts over in their terror.

‘The horses!’ Gorst squealed, not even bothering to deepen his voice. ‘The horses!’ Not that I really give a damn about horses. Or anything else. And he sprang over one of the corpses he had made and charged back towards the column, eager to make more.

Wrongside had never actually killed a man. Strange thing for a Thrall six years in the black business to take pride in, perhaps, and it wasn’t like he was advertising the fact, but take pride in it he did. More’n once he’d had an arrow nocked and beaded on an enemy, or a side or back turned to him in a fight, and it had come to him at that moment what his mother’s face would’ve looked like when he told her. She was long dead, o’ course, plague took her a dozen winters since, but still. That same look she’d had when he’d got up to some mischief or other, all hurt. Wrongside didn’t want to let his mother down. So he was proud he could say he’d never killed a man, even if he was only saying it to himself. Pale-as-Snow had said kill the horses, though, and when his Chief said a thing, Wrongside tried to do it.

So he squeezed his face into a wince and sank his spear into the nearest flank, keeping well clear of the thrashing hooves. Nothing the poor horse could do about it, harnessed as it was to three others. He dragged his spear clear as it fell and moved on to the next. Shit business, killing horses. But war’s a steady stream of shit business, and Wrongside always did have bad luck with his jobs. Ended up on the wrong side of every case, hence the name. Was only a week ago he’d taken part in another of Pale-as-Snow’s raids, just as the sun was going down and in the pissing rain, and a right bloody mess it had become, as usual. He’d ended up getting all turned around, splashing across a stream and well and truly onto the wrong side, with Union scouts crashing about everywhere looking for him.