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Why do I do it, when it always hurts me? Why must we test the pain? Tongue the ulcer, rub the blister, pick the scab?
And the more shrivelled the man, the more swollen his pretensions must become. Why do they never realise? Small things only seem smaller in large spaces.
The job had needed doing, and they’d done it, and were all three still alive. About as much as he could’ve hoped for from a piece of work like that, but somehow it still left a sour taste on him. He’d never found it easy, but it was harder than ever, now he was chief. Strange, how it’s that much easier to kill folk when you’ve got someone telling you to do it. Hard business, killing. Harder than you’d think.
“Fucking lovely, eh? They got a word for it, don’t they? What’s that word, now?” “Plausible,” said Grim. Dow’s eyes lit up. “Plausible. That’s what y’are, Dogman. You’re one plausible bastard.
“Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s got a touch with the women.”
Ferro was frowning at him as they moved away from the Four Corners. “Is there something?” he snapped. She shrugged. “You’re not as much of a coward as you were.” “My thanks for that epic praise.” He rounded on Bayaz. “What the hell was that?”
“Where are you going?” snapped Ferro suspiciously. “I have a few matters to attend to,” said the Magus, “and you will be coming with me.” “Why would I do that?” She appeared to be in a worse mood even than usual since they left the docks, which was no mean achievement. Bayaz’s eyes rolled to the sky. “Because you lack the social graces necessary to function for longer than five minutes on your own in such a place as this. Why else?
Well. He might have been a new man, but he was still a man.
“Cleverness is no guarantee of sensible behaviour. My father used to say so all the time.”
“Hah!” snorted Ardee, as though she guessed what he was thinking. “Sand dan Glokta, giving lectures on the benefits of chastity? Please! How many women did you ruin before the Gurkish ruined you? You were notorious!”
It can be a fearsome weapon, patience. One that few men ever learn to use.
“Best tell me your name, while you still got breath in you. I like to know who I’ve killed.” “You already know me, Crow.” Logen held his other hand up, and he let the fingers spread out, and the moonlight glinted black on his bloody hand, and on the bloody stump of his missing finger. “We were side by side in the line at Carleon. Never thought you’d all forget me so soon. But things don’t often turn out the way we expect, eh?”
I spent a lot of years dreaming of killing you, Bloody-Nine.” Logen nodded, slowly. “Well. You’ll never be alone with that dream.”
Glokta looked back to Morrow. “How quickly things can change, eh, Harlen? One minute everyone wants to know you. The next?” He tapped sadly at his useless foot with the filthy toe of his cane. “You’re fucked. It’s a tough lesson.” I should know. Marovia’s secretary backed away, tongue darting over his lips, one hand held out in front of him. “Now hold on—” “Why?” Glokta pushed out his bottom lip. “Do you really think we can grow to love each other again after all this?”
When was it exactly that I became… this? By small degrees, I suppose. One act presses hard upon another, on a path we have no choice but to follow, and each time there are reasons. We do what we must, we do what we are told, we do what is easiest. What else can we do but solve one sordid problem at a time? Then one day we look up and find that we are… this.
There’s a certain look the beaten get, after a fight. Slow-moving, hunched-up, mud-spattered, mightily interested in the ground. Dogman had seen that look before often enough. He’d had it himself more’n once. Sorrowful they’d lost. Shamed they’d been beaten. Guilty, to have given up without getting a wound. Dogman knew how that felt, and a gnawing feeling it could be, but guilt was a sight less painful than a sword-cut, and healed a sight quicker.
Summer was the best season for killing, and he’d seen plenty more men die in good weather than in bad.
The Thunderhead squatted down beside him. “Sometimes I find my own name’s a heavy weight to carry. Dread to think how a name like yours must drag at a man.”
Should’ve looked for each other, maybe. But I guess you learn to stop hoping, after a while. Life teaches you to expect the worst, eh?”
You can never have too many knives, his father had told him. Unless they’re pointed at you, and by people who don’t like you much.
“Shall I tell you what would make me happy, Superior Glokta?” Now for the musings of another power-mad old fart. “By all means, your Worship.”
“I apologise for the lack of imagination.” Glokta sighed. “In our defence, it’s difficult to be always thinking of something new. I mean, smashing a man’s feet with a lump hammer, it’s so…” “Pethethrian?” ventured Frost. Glokta heard a sharp volley of laughter from behind Severard’s mask, felt his own mouth grinning too. He really should have been a comedian, rather than a torturer.
Ah, that beautiful, horrible moment between stubbing your toe and feeling the hurt. Here it comes. Here it comes. Here it—Longfoot
People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.
“You want a hand with that mallet, girl?” “No I fucking don’t!”
“How many men you killed, Da?” Had to be Crummock’s daughter. There weren’t too many high voices round that camp, more was the pity. Logen saw the hillman’s great shape in the darkness, his three children sitting near him, their outsize weapons propped up in easy reach. “Oh, I’ve killed a legion of ’em, Isern.” Crummock’s great deep voice rumbled out at Logen as he came closer. “More’n I can remember. Your father might not have all his wits all the time, but he’s a bad enemy to have. One of the worst. You’ll see the truth of that close up, when Bethod and his arse-lickers come calling.” He
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Minute by stretched-out minute, Jezal began to realise: there was nothing so indescribably dull, once you got down to the nuts and bolts of it, as ultimate power.
Torlichorm gave a syrupy smile, of the kind a wet-nurse might use while trying to calm a troublesome infant. “So you see, your Majesty, we cannot possibly consider Colonel West as—” Jezal’s empty goblet bounced off Torlichorm’s bald forehead with a loud crack and clattered away into the corner of the room. The old man gave a wail of shock and pain and slid from his chair, blood running from a long gash across his face. “Cannot?” screamed Jezal, on his feet, eyes starting from his head. “You dare to give me fucking ‘cannot,’ you old bastard? You belong to me, all of you!” His finger stabbed
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“Life is a series of things we would rather not do.”
Cosca sucked at his stained teeth as he slithered from the booth to retrieve his blade. “I used to be dazzling with a throwing knife, you know.” “Beautiful women used to hang from my every word.” Glokta sucked at his own empty gums. “Times change.”
“Well, whoever it is banging on the door, I’m sure I can organise a heroic last stand, against the odds, without hope of relief.” I am not lacking for enemies, after all. The mercenary’s eyes glinted as the girl thumped a full bottle down on the warped table before him. “Ah, lost causes. My favourite.”
The final irony of West’s unpredictable career, it seemed, was that he would be the one to announce the name of the man who would dismiss him in dishonour moments later.
“A considerable promotion, for one so young, so inexperienced—” “I have been a professional soldier some dozen years, and fought in two wars and several battles. It would seem his Majesty the King deems me sufficiently seasoned.”
Dogman let his eyes wander over ’em, thinking about it. “Eight thousand do you think, or ten, maybe?” A pause. “That’s about what I was thinking.” “A lot more’n us, anyway,” Dogman said, keeping his voice low. “Aye. But fights aren’t always won by the bigger numbers.” “Course not.” Dogman worked his lips as he looked at all them men. “Just mostly.”
“That Shite-Eye Hansul down there?” jeered Black Dow at him. “Still sucking on Bethod’s cock, are you?” The old warrior grinned up at them. “Man’s got to feed his family somehow, don’t he, and one cock tastes pretty much like another, if you ask me! Don’t pretend like your mouths ain’t all tasted salty enough before!”
“You can tell Bethod we’ll come out.” He left a pause. “Once we’ve killed the fucking lot o’ you.”
For the length of three breaths or so, Logen Ninefingers was a man of peace.
“Give me a reason not to do it.” The tears welled up and ran down the sides of his bloody face. “My birds,” he whispered. “Birds?” “There’ll be no one to feed them. I deserve it, sure enough, but my birds… they’ve done nothing.” She narrowed her eyes at him. Birds. Strange, the things that people have to live for.
And so, it seems, I survive. Again. Glokta raised his eyebrows. Perhaps the trick is not wanting to.
He was gradually starting to realise that the more powerful a man became, the fewer choices he really had.
“It was hardly as if it was true love.” He saw the thin sinews in her neck moving as she swallowed. “But somehow I always thought it would be me making a fool of him.”
Dow gave him a long look. “When did Bethod stop suiting you, eh, Ninefingers?” Logen stared back at him. “Hard to say. Bit by bit, I reckon. Maybe he got to be more of a bastard as time went on. Or maybe I got to be less of one.” “Or maybe there ain’t room on one side for two bastards as big as the pair o’ you.” “Oh, I don’t know.” Logen got up. “You and me work real sweet together.”
“Tul Duru. Every man in the North knew his name, and every man said it with respect, even his enemies. He was the sort o’ man… that gave you hope, I reckon. That gave you hope. You want strength, do you? You want courage? You want things done right and proper, the old way?” He nodded down at the new-turned earth. “There you go. Tul Duru Thunderhead. Look no fucking further. I’m less, now that he’s gone, and so are all o’ you.” And Dow turned and stalked off away from the grave and into the dusk, his head down.
If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?
“Last Argument of Kings” —Inscribed on his cannons by Louis XIV
“They want to burn your farms, and your towns, and your cities. They want to make slaves of your children. They want everyone in the world to pray to God in the same way they do, with the same words they use, and for your land to be a province of their Empire. I know this.” Ferro wiped the blade of her knife on the sleeve of the dead man’s tunic. “The only difference between war and murder is the number of the dead.”
You can have enemies you never really meet, Logen had plenty. You can kill men you don’t know, he’d done it often. But you can’t truly hate a man without loving him first, and there’s always a trace of that love left over.
Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s reluctant.
“By the dead, Ninefingers, but you never change. You’re like some old dog no one can stop from barking. Challenge? What have we got left to fight over?”
“You think I wanted this? You think I asked for any of it? All I wanted was a strip more land to feed my people, to stop the big clans squeezing me. All I wanted was to win a few victories to be proud of, to pass on something better to my sons than I got from my father.” He leaned forward, his hands clutching at the battlements. “Who was it always had to push a step further? Who was it would never let me stop? Who was it had to taste blood, and once he’d tasted it got drunk on it, went mad with it, could never get enough?” His finger stabbed down. “Who else but the Bloody-Nine?” “That’s not
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