Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

‘Peace,’ he said, ‘is when the feuds are all settled, and the blood debts are paid, and everyone is content with how things are. More or less content, anyway. Peace is when … when no one’s fighting any more.’

Scale thought about that, frowning. Bethod loved him, of course he did, but even he had to admit the boy wasn’t the quickest. ‘Then … who wins?’

‘Everyone,’ said Calder.

Bethod raised his brows. His younger son was as quick as his older was slow. ‘That’s right. Peace means everyone wins.’

‘But Rattleneck’s sworn there’ll be no peace ’til you’re dead,’ said Scale.

‘He has. But Rattleneck is one of those men who swears oaths quickly. Given time he may think better of it. Especially since I have his son in chains downstairs.’

‘ You have him?’ snapped out Ursi from the corner of the room, stopping brushing her hair long enough to train one eye on him. ‘I thought he was Ninefingers’ prisoner?’

‘Ninefingers will give him to me.’ Bethod tossed that breezily to his wife as if it was a thing done with a snap of his fingers, rather than a trial he was having to scrape together the courage for. What kind of a Chieftain feared to ask a favour of his own champion?

‘Order him to do it.’ The man’s words sounded strange in Calder’s high child’s voice. ‘Make him do it.’

‘I cannot order him in this. Rattleneck’s son is Ninefingers’ prisoner. He was taken in battle, and Named Men have their ways.’ Not to mention that Bethod wasn’t sure Ninefingers would obey, or what to do if he refused, and the thought of putting it to the test sank him in dread. ‘There are rules.’

‘Rules are for those who follow,’ said Calder.

‘Rules must be for all, and for those who lead most of all. Without rules, every man stands alone, owning only what he can tear from the world with one hand and grip with the other. Chaos.’

Calder nodded. ‘I see.’ And Bethod knew he did. So little alike, his two sons. Scale sturdy, blond and bullish. Calder slight, dark and cunning. Each so like their mothers, Bethod sometimes wondered whether there was anything of him in them.

‘What’ll we do with peace?’ asked Scale.

‘Build.’ Bethod smiled as he thought about his plans, turned over so often he could see them like things already done. ‘We’ll send the men back to their land, back to their trades, back to their families in time for the harvest. Then we’ll set them to pay us taxes.’

‘Taxes?’

‘They’re a Southern thing,’ said Calder. ‘Money.’

‘Each man gives his Chieftain some of what he has,’ said Bethod. ‘And we’ll use that money to clear forests, and dig mines, and put walls about our towns. Then we’ll build a great road from Carleon to Uffrith.’

‘A road?’ muttered Scale, not seeing the glamour in packed earth.

‘Men can travel twice as fast on it,’ snapped Calder, starting to lose patience.

‘Fighting men?’ asked Scale, hopefully.

‘If need be,’ said Bethod. ‘But also carts and goods, livestock and messages.’ He pointed towards the window, bright in the darkness, as though they might all glimpse a better future through it. ‘That road will be the spine of the nation we’ll build. That road will knit the North together. I might have won battles, but it’s that road I’ll be remembered for. It’s that road that will change the world.’

‘How can you change the world with a road?’ asked Scale.

‘You’re an idiot,’ said Calder.

Scale hit him on the side of the head and knocked him over, thus demonstrating the limits of cleverness. Bethod heard Ursi gasp, and he hit Scale in much the same way and knocked him over, too, thus demonstrating the limits of brute force. An ugly pattern, often acted out between the four of them.

‘Up, the pair of you,’ Bethod snapped.

Calder glared darkly at his brother as he stood, one hand to his bloody mouth, while Scale glared darkly back, one hand to his. Bethod took them each by one arm and drew them close with a grip not to be resisted.

‘We are family,’ he said. ‘If we’re not always for each other, who will be? Scale, one day you’ll be Chieftain. You must control your temper. Calder, one day you’ll be your brother’s right hand, and first councillor, and most trusted adviser. You must control your tongue. Between the two of you, you have all the best of me and plenty more besides. Between the two of you, you could make our clan the greatest in the North. Alone, you’re nothing. Remember that.’

‘Yes, Father,’ muttered Calder.

‘Yes, Father,’ grunted Scale.

‘Now go, and if I hear of more fighting, let it be of how the two of you beat someone else together.’ He stood with his hands on his hips as they barged each other in the doorway then tumbled out into the corridor, the door swinging shut behind them. ‘I can scarcely keep the peace between my own sons,’ he muttered, shaking his head. ‘How will I do it between the leaders of the North?’

‘One might hope the leaders of the North will act more like grown men’ said Ursi, her dress swishing against the floor as she walked up behind him, her hands slipping gently around his ribs.

Bethod snorted as he held her arms against his heart. ‘I fear that would be a rash hope. They like great warriors in the North, and great warriors rarely make great leaders. Men without fear are men without imagination. Men who use their heads for smashing through things rather than thinking. They celebrate spiteful, prideful, wrathful men here, and pick the most childish of the crowd for leaders.’

‘They’ve found a different kind of leader in you.’

‘I’ve made them listen. And I will make Rattleneck listen. And I will make Ninefingers listen, too.’ Though Bethod wondered whether it was his wife or himself he was trying to convince. ‘He can be a reasonable man.’

‘Perhaps he used to be.’ Ursi’s breath tickled his neck as she spoke softly in his ear. ‘But Ninefingers is blood-drunk. Murder-proud. Every day he is less your friend, less to be trusted, less a man at all and more an animal. Every day he is less Logen and more the Bloody-Nine.’

Bethod winced. He knew she had the right of it. ‘Some days he’s calm enough.’

‘And the others? Last week he killed a whole pen full of sheep, did you know that?’

Bethod’s wince twisted into a grimace. ‘I heard.’

‘Because their bleating bothered him, he said. He killed them with his hands, one by one, so calmly the others didn’t even stir.’

‘I heard.’

‘And when the sheepdog barked he crushed her head, and they found him sound asleep and snoring among the corpses. He is made of death, and he brings death wherever he goes. He scares me.’

Bethod turned in her arms to look down at her, laid one hand gently on her cheek. ‘You need never be scared. Not you.’ Though the dead knew, he was scared enough himself. How long had he been living in fear?

She put her hand on his. ‘I’m not scared of him. I’m scared of the trouble he might bring you. Will bring you.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper as she looked into his eyes. ‘You know I’m right. What if you can stitch a peace together? Ninefingers is not a sword you can hang over the fireplace and tell fond tales of after supper. He is the Bloody-Nine. If you stop finding fights for him, do you think he’ll stop fighting? No. He will find his own, and with whoever’s nearest. That’s what he is. Sooner or later he will find a fight with you.’

‘But I owe him,’ he muttered. ‘Without him, we never-’

‘The Great Leveller pays all debts,’ she said.

‘There are rules.’ But his voice was weak now, so weak he could hardly meet her dark eyes.