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“A barbaric custom,” muttered Jalenhorm, his thoughts evidently taking a similar course. “Really?” growled Pike. “I was just now thinking what a civilised one it is.” “Civilised? Two men butchering each other before a crowd?” “Better than a whole crowd butchering each other. A problem solved with only one man killed? That’s a war ended well, to my mind.”
“How does this business work?” “They mark out a circle. Round the edge men stand with shields, half from one side, half from the other, and they make sure no one leaves before it’s settled. Two men go into the circle. The one that dies there is the loser. Unless someone has it in mind to be merciful. Can’t see that happening today, though, somehow.” Also undeniable. “What do you fight with?” “Each one of us brings something. Could be anything. Then there’s a spin of a shield, and the winner picks the weapon he wants.” “So you might end up fighting with what your enemy brought?” “It can happen.
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“You mad bastard!” hissed Dogman, his temper flaring up hot in his cold chest. “You could’ve been the deaths of all of us!” “Oh, there’s still time.”
“Better to do it,” Logen whispered under his breath, “than live with the fear of it.” He remembered his father telling him that. Saying it in the smoky hall, light from the fire shifting on his lined face, long finger wagging. Logen remembered telling it to his own son, smiling by the river, teaching him to tickle fish, father and son, both dead now, earth and ashes. No one would learn it after Logen, once he was gone. No one would miss him much at all, he reckoned. But then who cared? There’s nothing worth less than what men think of you after you’re back in the mud.
Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say that bastard never learns.
Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say that he’s finished.
“Yes!” he hissed, and Logen laughed, and the Bloody-Nine laughed, together.
Blood stained his teeth pink, trickled from the cuts on his face, seeped from his torn lips. The laughter gurgled up louder, and louder, ripping at West’s ears, jagged as a saw-blade. More agonised than any scream, more furious than any war-cry. Awfully, sickeningly wrong. Chuckling at a massacre. Slaughterhouse giggling.
“Don’t like the sound o’ that one bit,” Dogman whispered back. “Sounds like magic.” “What d’you expect? She’s a fucking witch, ain’t she? I’ll go round behind.”
The axe blade made a clicking sound as it split her head neatly down the middle, all the way to her chin. Blood sprayed out and spattered in Dogman’s gawping face, and the witch’s thin body slumped down on the stones like it was made of nothing but rags. Dow frowned as he twisted the haft of his axe this way and that, until the blade came free of Caurib’s ruined skull with a faint sucking sound. “That bitch talks too much,” he grunted.
“No,” whispered Logen, but all that came out was a dull slurp. He had no more power to stop it than he had to make the sky fall in. Seemed to him then that men do pay for the things they’ve done, alright. But sometimes the payment isn’t what they expected. “The Bloody-Nine!” roared Crummock again, as he sank down on his knees and lifted up his arms towards the sky. “King o’ the Northmen!”
“After what they did to you—how can you do this, now?” Glokta showed Farrad his toothless grin. “After what they did to me, how could I do anything else?”
But he’d given his word, and a man who doesn’t keep his word isn’t much of a man at all. That’s what Logen’s father used to tell him.
“Crowns.” Logen spat onto the straw, spit still pink from the cuts in his mouth. “Kings. The whole notion’s shit, and me the worst choice there could be.” “You ain’t saying no, though, eh?” Logen frowned up at him. “So some other bastard even worse’n Bethod can sit in that chair, make the North bleed some more? Maybe I can do some good with it.” “Maybe.” Dow looked straight back. “But some men aren’t made for doing good.”
Dogman stared at him for a long moment. Stared him right in the eye. “Why?” “Because I gave my word.” “And? Never bothered you before, did it?” “Can’t say it did, and there’s the problem.” Logen swallowed, and his mouth tasted bad. “What else can you do, but try and do better?”
Logen could only stare. “You really are mad.” “Maybe I am, but there’s worse than me out there.” He leaned close again, soft breath in Logen’s ear. “I’m not the one killed the boy, am I?”
The priest Mamun sat there a moment longer, a sadness on his perfect face. “So be it. We will put on our armour. May God forgive you, Bayaz.” “You need forgiveness more than I, Mamun! Pray for yourself!” “So I do. Every day. But I have seen no sign in all my long life that God is the forgiving kind.”
Fearlessness, as Logen Ninefingers had once observed, is a fool’s boast.
Strange. However much pain we experience, we never become used to it. We always scramble to escape it. We never become resigned to more.
“Frankly, I need your help.” Frankly, you are my last hope. “My help? Surely you are not without powerful friends of your own?” “It is my regrettable experience that powerful men can afford no friends.”
“If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid.”
It can be a terrible curse for a man to get everything he ever dreamed of. If the shining prizes turn out somehow to be empty baubles, he is left without even his dreams for comfort.
Trust. It was a word that only liars used. A word the truthful had no need of.
She frowned even harder. “Yulwei was a good man. He helped me in the desert. He saved my life.” “And mine, more than once. But good men will only go so far along dark paths.” Bayaz’s bright eyes slid down to rest on the cube of dark metal under Ferro’s hand. “Others must walk the rest of the way.”
Courage can come from many places, and be made of many things, and yesterday’s coward can become tomorrow’s hero in an instant if the time is right. The giddy flood of bravery which Jezal experienced at that moment consisted largely of guilt and fear, and shame at his fear, swollen by a peevish frustration at nothing having turned out the way he had hoped, and a sudden vague awareness that being killed might solve a great number of irritating problems to which he saw no solution. Not noble ingredients, to be sure. But no one ever asks what the baker put in his pie as long as it tastes well.
Jezal planted his elbows on his knees, his chin drooping down onto his palms, and gave vent to a long sigh. He was so very, very tired. “I seem to have done the wrong thing,” he muttered. “Huh.” Ferro’s eyes slid away. “You’ve got a knack for it.”
“Ah, we’re all sorry. I don’t blame you. I don’t blame no one, not even Bethod. What good does blame do? We all do what we have to. I gave up looking for reasons a long time ago.”
The worst enemies are the ones that live next door, his father always used to tell him.
“You ever noticed how one fight has a habit of leading on to another? Seems like there’s always one fight more.”
“Peace?” grunted the Dogman. “Just what is that, anyway? What do you do with it?”
His throwing knife dropped out of his coat and rattled against the boards. They all stared at it for a moment, then Cosca grinned up. “You see that fly, against the wall?” Glokta narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps not the best moment for—” The blade spun across the room, missed the target by a stride, hit the wall handle-first and gouged out a lump of plaster, bounced back and clattered across the floor. “Shit,” said Cosca. “I mean… damn.” Ardee frowned down at the knife. “I’d say shit.”
“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes.” Cosca stretched his chin up and scratched at his scabby neck. “The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”
Round and round in circles we go, clutching at successes that we never grasp, endlessly tripping over the same old failures. Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
Frost stood, motionless, his white eyebrows going up with mild surprise. Then blood welled from the tiny wound on his throat and ran down into his shirt in a black line. He reached out with one big white hand. He wobbled, blood bubbling from under his mask. “Futh,” he breathed.
The sad fact was that Logen had felt more warmth and more trust with Ferro and Jezal, Bayaz and Quai than he did with his own kind now. They’d been a difficult set of bastards, each in their own way. It wasn’t that he’d really understood them, or even liked them much. But Logen had liked himself when he was with them.
Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s got a talent for turning a friend into an enemy.
“I’ve had better days.” He smacked the back of his head against the stone as Ardee leaned down to retrieve his cane. “To be betrayed by both,” he found himself muttering. “That hurts. Even me. One I expected. One I could have taken. But both? Why?” “Because you’re a ruthless, plotting, bitter, twisted, self-pitying villain?” Glokta stared at her, and she shrugged. “You asked.” They set off once again through the nauseating darkness. “The question was meant to be rhetorical.” “Rhetoric? In a sewer?”
“I’ll pay you! Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll double it!” Cosca held out his open palm. “I prefer cash in hand.” “Now? I don’t have… I don’t have it with me!” “A shame, but I work on the same principle as a whore. You’ll buy no fun with promises, my friend. No fun at all.”
Sult would have been better, but if we cannot have the brains, I suppose we must make do with the arsehole.
“I expect you think you know an awful lot about torture, eh, Goyle? Believe me, though, you don’t really understand a thing until you’ve spent some time on both sides of the table.”
“You’ve crossed the line!” “Line?” Glokta spluttered with laughter. “I spent the night cutting the fingers from one of my friends and killing another, and you dare to talk to me about lines?”
I suppose that’s where ambition gets you without the talent. Humility is easier to teach than one would think. All it takes to puncture our arrogance is a nail or two in the right place.
“Time to laugh in your enemy’s face! To risk all on one final throw! You can pick up the pieces afterward. If they don’t go back together, well, what’s the difference? Tomorrow we might all be living in a different world.”
My hopes all entrusted to the world’s least trustworthy man.
“Power is all you ever cared for, and you are left without even that. The First of the Magi, and the last.” “So it would seem. Does that not please you?” “I take no pleasure in this, Bayaz. This is what must be done.” “Ah. A righteous battle? A holy duty? A crusade, perhaps? Will God smile on your methods, do you think?” Mamun shrugged. “God smiles on results.”
The Eaters were still. They stood facing inwards, spread out in a great ring with the First of the Magi at their centre. Ferro Maljinn felt no fear, of course. But these were poor odds.
“Eleven wards, and eleven wards reversed,” said Bayaz. “Iron. Quenched in salt water. An improvement suggested by Kanedias’ researches. Glustrod used raw salt. That was his mistake.” Mamun looked up, the icy calmness vanished from his face. “You cannot mean…” His black eyes flickered to Ferro, then down to her hand, clenched tight around the Seed. “No! The First Law—” “The First Law?” The Magus showed his teeth. “Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose. The word of Euz?” Bayaz’s lip curled. “Hah! Let him come forth and stop me!”
Glokta cleared his throat. “I think it would be better for all concerned if we could discuss this like civilised—” “You see anyone civilised?” snarled Vitari.
Vitari frowned after them, her eyes deadly slits. “If you so much as touch my—” “Yes, yes.” Glokta waved his hand. “My terror is boundless.”
“Should’ve died fighting Ninefingers, long time ago. The rest was all a gift. Grateful for it, though, Dogman. I’ve always loved… our talks.”
