The Collected Joe Abercrombie (32 page)

Then everything was a mess of plunging and snorting beasts, clashing and scraping metal, curses and cries. Battle. A familiar place, but no less terrifying for that. Logen clung to the reins with his right hand as his horse bucked and thrashed, swinging the sword wildly round his head, more to scare his enemies than hurt them. Every moment he expected the jolt and searing pain as he was stuck through with a spear, then the ground to rush up and smack him in the face.

He saw Quai and Bayaz galloping away down the road, hotly pursued by the tall man, his spear couched under his arm. He saw Blacktoe rolling to his feet, spitting blood, scrambling for his axe. He saw the two men who’d come from behind fighting for control of their own twisting horses, spears waving in their hands. He saw the body of the one he’d just killed loll in half and topple slowly out of the saddle, blood pouring out over the muddy ground.

Logen squawked as he felt a spear-point dig into the back of his shoulder, and he was shoved forward, almost over his horse’s head. Then he realised he was facing down the road, and still alive. He dug his heels into the flanks of his horse and it sped away, sending mud flying from its hooves and into the faces of the men behind. He fumbled the sword across into his right hand, nearly dropping the reins and falling into the road. He shrugged his shoulder but the wound didn’t feel too bad – he could still move the arm alright.

‘I’m still alive. Still alive.’ The road flashed by beneath him, the wind stinging his eyes. He was making ground on the tall man – the rags on his horse’s hooves were slowing him down now, slipping on the muddy ground. Logen gripped the hilt of the sword as hard as he could, raised it behind him. The head of his enemy snapped round, but too late. There was a hollow bonk of metal on metal as sword smashed into helmet, leaving a deep dent and sending the tall man sprawling. His head bounced once against the road, foot still caught in one stirrup, then he came free and tumbled over and over on the grass, arms and legs flopping. His riderless horse galloped on, eyes rolling at Logen as he passed.

‘Still alive.’ Logen looked over his shoulder. Blacktoe was back in the saddle and galloping after him, axe raised above his head, tangled hair flying out behind. The two other spearmen were with him, urging their horses forwards, but there was still some distance between them. Logen laughed. Perhaps he’d make it after all. He waved his sword at Blacktoe as the road entered a wood in the valley’s bottom.

‘I’m still alive!’ he screamed at the top of his voice, and then his horse pulled up so suddenly that Logen was almost flung over its head. It was only by throwing one arm round its neck that he kept his seat at all. As soon as he fell back into the saddle he saw the problem, and it was a bad one.

Several tree trunks had been hauled across the road, their branches chopped off and the stumps filed down to vicious points, sticking out in all directions. Two more mailed Carls stood in front, spears at the ready. Even the best of horsemen couldn’t have jumped that barrier, and Logen wasn’t the best of horsemen. Bayaz and his apprentice had reached the same decision. Both sat still on their horses before the barricade, the old man looking puzzled, the young one simply scared.

Logen fingered the grip of his sword and cast desperately around, peering into the trees for some way out. He saw more men now. Archers. One, then two, then three of them, creeping slowly forward on both sides of the road, arrows nocked and strings drawn back.

Logen turned round in the saddle, but Blacktoe and his two companions were trotting up, there was no escape that way. They reined in a few strides away, well out of reach of Logen’s sword. His shoulders slumped. The chase was done. Blacktoe leaned over and spat some blood onto the ground. ‘Alright, Bloody-Nine, that’s as far as you go.’

‘Funny thing,’ muttered Logen, looking down at the long grey blade of the sword, dashed and spattered with red. ‘All that time I fought for Bethod against you, and now you fight for him against me. Seems we’re never on the same side, and he’s the only winner. Funny thing.’

‘Aye,’ mumbled Blacktoe through his bloody lips, ‘funny.’ But no one was laughing. Blacktoe and his Carls had faces hard as death, Quai looked on the verge of tears. Only Bayaz, for reasons beyond understanding, still had his customary good humour. ‘Alright, Ninefingers, get off the horse. Bethod wants you alive, but he’ll take you dead, if he has to. Down! Now!’

Logen’s thoughts began to turn to how they might escape, once he’d given up. Blacktoe wasn’t like to make a mistake once he had them. Logen would likely be kicked half to death for the fight he’d given them already, if they didn’t take his kneecaps off. They’d be trussed up tight like chickens for the slaughter. He pictured himself flung down on the stones with half a mile of chain around him, Bethod smiling down from his throne, Calder and Scale laughing, probably poking at him with something sharp.

Logen looked around. He looked at the cold arrowheads and the cold spear-points, and the cold eyes of the men pointing them. There was no way out of this little spot.

‘Alright, you win.’ Logen threw his sword down, point first. He had it in mind that it would bite into the soil and stand there, swaying back and forth, but it toppled over and clattered against the dirt. It was that sort of day. He slowly swung one leg over the saddle and slid down into the road.

‘That’s better. Now the rest of you.’ Quai instantly slithered off his horse and stood there, glancing nervously up at Bayaz, but the Magus made no move. Blacktoe frowned and hefted his axe. ‘You too, old man.’

‘I prefer to ride.’ Logen winced. That was not the right answer. Any moment now Blacktoe would give the order. The bowstrings would sing and the First of the Magi would drop into the road, stuck full of arrows, probably still with that infuriating smile on his dead face.

But the order never came. There was no word of command, no strange incantation, no arcane gestures. The air around Bayaz’ shoulders seemed to shimmer, like the air above the land on a hot day, and Logen felt a strange tugging at his guts.

Then the trees exploded in a wall of searing, blinding, white hot flame. Trunks burst and branches snapped with deafening cracks, venting plumes of brilliant fire and scalding steam. One burning arrow shot high up into the air over Logen’s head, and then the archers were gone, boiled away into the furnace.

Logen choked and gasped, reeled back in shock and terror, arm up to ward his face from the blistering heat. The barricade was sending up great gouts of fire and blinding sparks, the two men who had been standing near were rolling and thrashing, wreathed in hungry flames, their screams lost in the deafening roar.

The horses plunged and reeled, snorting with mad fear. Blacktoe was flung to the ground for the second time, his flaming axe flying from his hands, and his horse stumbled and fell, crashing down on top of him. One of his companions was even less lucky – thrown straight into the sheets of fire by the road, his despairing cry quickly cut off. Only one stayed upright, and he was lucky enough to be wearing gloves. By some miracle he kept hold of the burning shaft of his spear.

How he had the presence of mind to charge with the world on fire around him, Logen would never know. Strange things can happen in a fight. He chose Quai as his target, bearing down on him with a snarl, the flaming spear aimed at his chest. The witless apprentice stood there helpless, rooted to the spot. Logen barrelled into him, snatching up his sword, sending Quai rolling across the road with his hands over his head, then he chopped mindlessly at the horse’s legs as it flashed past him.

The blade was torn from his fingers and went skittering away, then a hoof slammed into Logen’s injured shoulder and clubbed him into the dirt. The breath was knocked from him and the burning world span crazily around. His blow had its effect though. A few strides further down the road the horse’s hacked front legs gave way and it stumbled, carried helplessly forward, tumbled and pitched into the flames, horse and rider vanishing together.

Logen cast about on the ground for the sword. Sizzling leaves whipped across the road, stinging his face and his hands. The heat was a great weight pressing down on him, pulling the sweat out of his skin. He found the bloody grip of the sword, seized hold of it with his torn fingers. He lurched up, staggered round, shouting meaningless sounds of fury, but there was no one left to fight. The flames were gone, as suddenly as they’d arrived, leaving Logen coughing and blinking in the curling smoke.

The silence seemed complete after the roaring noise, the gentle breeze felt icy cold. A wide circle of the trees around them had been reduced to charred and shattered stumps, as though they had burned for hours. The barricade was a sagging heap of grey ash and black splinters. Two corpses lay sprawled nearby, barely recognisable as men, burned down to the bones. The blackened blades of their spears lay in the road, the shafts vanished. Of the archers there was no sign at all. They were soot blown away on the wind. Quai lay motionless on his face with his hands over his head, and beyond him Blacktoe’s horse lay sprawled out on its side, one leg silently twitching, the others still.

‘Well,’ said Bayaz, the muffled noise making Logen jump. He’d somehow expected there would never be another sound again. ‘That’s that.’ The First of the Magi swung a leg over his saddle and slid down into the road. His horse stood there, calm and obedient. It hadn’t moved the whole time. ‘There now, Master Quai, do you see what can be achieved with a proper understanding of plants?’

Bayaz sounded calm, but his hands were trembling. Trembling badly. He looked haggard, ill, old, like a man who’d dragged a cart ten miles. Logen stared at him, swaying silently back and forth, the sword dangling from his hand.

‘So that’s Art, is it?’ His voice sounded very small and far away.

Bayaz wiped the sweat from his face. ‘Of a sort. Hardly very subtle. Still,’ and he poked at one of the charred bodies with his boot, ‘subtlety is wasted on the Northmen.’ He grimaced, rubbed at his sunken eyes and peered up the road. ‘Where the hell did those horses get to?’

Logen heard a ragged groan from the direction of Blacktoe’s fallen mount. He stumbled towards it, tripped and fell to his knees, stumbled towards it again. His shoulder was a ball of pain, his left arm numb, his fingers ripped and bleeding, but Blacktoe was in worse shape. Much worse. He was propped up on his elbows, legs crushed under his horse right to the hips, hands burned to swollen tatters. He had a look of profound puzzlement on his bloody face as he tried, unsuccessfully, to drag himself from under the horse.

‘You’ve fucking killed me,’ he whispered, staring open-mouthed at the wreckage of his hands. ‘I’m all done. I’ll never make it back, and even if I could, what for?’ He gave a despairing laugh. ‘Bethod ain’t half so merciful as he used to be. Better you kill me now, before it starts to hurt. Better all round.’ And he slumped back and lay in the road.

Logen looked up at Bayaz, but there was no help there. ‘I’m not much at healing,’ snapped the wizard, glancing round at the circle of blasted stumps. ‘I told you we tend to specialise.’ He closed his eyes and bent over, hands resting on his knees, breathing hard.

Logen thought of the floor in Bethod’s hall, and the two princes, laughing and poking. ‘Alright,’ he muttered, standing up and hefting the sword. ‘Alright.’

Blacktoe smiled. ‘You were right, Ninefingers. I never should have knelt to Bethod. Never. Shit on him and his Feared. It would have been better to die up in the mountains, fighting him to the last. There might have been something fine in that. I just had enough. You can see that, can’t you?’

‘I can see that,’ muttered Logen. ‘I’ve had enough myself.’

‘Something fine,’ said Blacktoe, staring far up into the grey skies, ‘I just had enough. So I reckon I earned this. Fair is fair.’ He lifted his chin. ‘Well then. Get it done, lad.’

Logen raised the sword.

‘I’m glad it’s you, Ninefingers,’ hissed Blacktoe through gritted teeth, ‘for what it’s worth.’

‘I’m not.’ Logen swung the blade down.

The scorched stumps were still smouldering, smoke curling up into the air, but all was cold now. Logen’s mouth tasted salty, like blood. Perhaps he bit his tongue somewhere. Perhaps it was someone else’s. He threw the sword down and it bounced and clattered, shedding red specks across the dirt. Quai gaped around for a moment, then he folded up and coughed puke into the road. Logen stared down at Blacktoe’s headless corpse. ‘That was a good man. Better than me.’

‘History is littered with dead good men.’ Bayaz knelt stiffly and picked up the sword, wiped the blade on Blacktoe’s coat, then he squinted up the road, peering through the haze of smoke. ‘We should be moving. Others might be on their way.’

Logen looked at his bloody hands, slowly turning them over and over. They were his hands, no doubt. There was the missing finger. ‘Nothing’s changed,’ he mumbled to himself.

Bayaz straightened up, brushing the dirt from his knees. ‘When has it ever?’ He held out the sword out to Logen, hilt first. ‘I think you’ll still be needing this.’

Logen stared at the blade for a moment. It was clean, dull grey, just as it had always been. Unlike him, it showed not so much as a scratch from the hard use it had seen that day. He didn’t want it back. Not ever.

But he took it anyway.

PART II

‘
Life – the way it really is – is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse’

Joseph Brodsky