Logen felt something warm tickling his eye, and he touched his hand to it. Frowned down at his red finger tips, turning pink as the rain pattered on them. Blood. Had someone hit him on the head, then? Or was he dreaming it? A memory, from long ago.
He spun round just before the club came down and crushed his skull like an egg, caught some hairy bastard's wrists with both hands. The world was suddenly fast, noisy, pain pulsing in his head. He lurched against the parapet, staring into a dirty, bearded, angry face, pressed up tight against his.
Logen let go the club with one hand, started snatching at his belt for a knife. He couldn't feel one. All that time spent sharpening all those blades, and now he needed one there was nothing to hand. Then he realised. The blade he was looking for was stuck in that ugly bastard, down in the mud somewhere at the base of the wall. He scrabbled round the other side of his belt, still wrestling at the club, but losing that battle now, given that he only had the one hand to work with. Logen got bent back, slowly, over the battlements. His fingers found the grip of a knife. The hairy Easterner tore his club free and lifted it up, opening his mouth wide and giving a stinking yell.
Logen stabbed him right through the face, and the blade went through one cheek and out the other and took a couple of teeth with it. Hairy's bellow turned to a high-pitched howl and he dropped his club and stumbled away, eyes bulging. Logen slid down and snatched his sword from under the trampling feet of the two fighting over the spear, waited a moment for the Easterner to come round close to him, then chopped through the back of one thigh and brought him down with a scream where the Carl could see to him.
Hairy was still drooling blood, one hand on the grip of the knife through his face, trying to work it free. Logen's sword made a red gash through the wet furs on his side, brought him to his knees. The next swing split his head in half.
Not ten strides away Shivers was in bad trouble, backed up with three Easterners at him, another just getting to the top of a ladder, and all his boys kept busy behind. He winced as he took a hard blow from a hammer across his shield, stumbled back, his axe dropping from his hand and clattering on the stone. The thought did pass through Logen's mind that he'd be a deal better off if Shivers got his head flattened. But the odds were good that he'd be next.
So he took a great breath, and bellowed as he charged.
The first one turned just in time to get his face hacked open rather than the back of his skull. The second got his shield up, but Logen went low and chopped clean through his shin instead, sent him shrieking down on to his back, blood pumping out into the pools of water across the walkway. The third one was a big bastard, wild red hair sticking all ways off his head. He had Shivers stunned and on his knees by the parapet, his shield hanging down, blood running from a cut on his forehead. Red Hair raised a big hammer up to finish the job. Logen stabbed him through the back before he got the chance, the long blade sliding through him right to the hilt. Never take a man face to face if you can kill him from behind, Logen's father used to say, and that was one good piece of advice he'd always tried to follow. Red Hair thrashed and squealed, twisting madly with his last breaths, dragging Logen around after him by the hilt of his sword, but it wasn't long before he dropped.
Logen grabbed Shivers under the arm and hauled him up. He frowned hard as his eyes came back into focus, saw who was helping him. He leaned down and snatched his fallen axe up from the stones. Logen wondered for a moment if he was about to get it buried in his skull, but Shivers only stood there, blood running down his wet face from the cut across his head.
'Behind you,' said Logen, nodding past his shoulder. Shivers turned, Logen did the same, and they stood with their backs to each other. There were three or four ladders up now, around the gate, and the battle on the walls had broken up into a few separate, bloody little fights. There were Easterners clambering over the parapet, screaming their meaningless jabber, hard faces and hard weapons glistening wet, coming at Logen along the wall while more dragged themselves up. Behind him he heard the clash and grunt of Shivers fighting, but he paid it no mind. He could only deal with what was in front of him. You have to be realistic about these things.
He shuffled back, showing weariness that was only half-feigned, then as the first of them came on he gritted his teeth and leaped forward, cut him across the face and sent him screaming, hand clasped to his eyes. Logen stumbled into another and got barged in the chest with a shield, its rim catching him under the chin and making him bite his tongue.
Logen nearly tripped over the sprawled-out corpse of a dead Carl, righted himself just in time, flailed with his sword and hit nothing, reeled after it and felt something cut into his leg as he went. He gasped, and hopped, waving the sword around, all off-balance. He lunged at some moving fur, his leg gave under him and he piled into someone. They fell together and Logen's head cracked against the stone. They rolled and Logen struggled up on top, shouting and drooling, tangled his fingers in an Easterner's greasy hair and smashed his face into the stone, again and again until his skull went soft. He dragged himself away, heard a blade clang against the walkway where he'd been, hauled himself up to his knees, sword loose in one sticky hand.
He knelt there, water running down his face, dragging in air. More of them coming at him, and nowhere to go. His leg was hurting, no strength in his arms. His head felt light, like it might float away. No strength left to fight with, hardly. More of them coming at him, one at the front with thick leather gloves, a big maul in his hands, its heavy spiked head red with blood. Looked like he'd already broken one skull with it, and Logen's would be next. Then Bethod would've won, at last.
Logen felt a cold feeling stab at his gut. A hard, empty feeling. His knuckles clicked as the muscles in his hand went rigid, gripping the sword painful tight. 'No!' he hissed. 'No, no, no.' But he might as well have said no to the rain. That cold feeling spread out, up through Logen's face, tugging his mouth into a bloody smile. Gloves came closer, his maul scraping against the wet stone. He glanced over his shoulder.
His head came apart, spraying out blood. Crummock-i-Phail roared like an angry bear, fingerbones flying round his neck, his great hammer whirling round and round his head in huge circles. The next Easterner tried to back away, holding up his shield. Crummock's hammer swung two-handed, ripped his legs out from under him, sent him tumbling over and over and onto his face on the stone. The big hillman sprang up onto the walkway, nimble as a dancer for all his great bulk, caught the next man a blow in the stomach that hurled him through the air and left him crumpled against the battlements.
Logen watched one set of savages murdering another, breathing hard as Crummock's boys whooped and screamed, paint on their faces smeared in the rain. They flooded up onto the wall, hacking at the Easterners with their rough swords and their bright axes, driving them back and shoving their ladders away, flinging their bodies over the parapet and into the mud below.
He knelt there, in a puddle, leaning on the cold grip of Kanedias' sword, its point dug into the stone walkway. He bent over and breathed hard, his cold gut sucking in and out, his raw mouth salty, his nose full of the stink of blood. He hardly dared to look up. He clenched his teeth, and closed his eyes, and hawked sour spit up onto the stones. He forced that cold feeling in his stomach down and it slunk away, for now, at least, and left him with only pain and weariness to worry about.
'Looks like those bastards had enough,' came Crummock's laughing voice from out of the drizzle. The hillman tipped his head back, mouth open, stuck his tongue out into the rain, then licked his lips. 'That was some good work you put in today, Bloody-Nine. Not that it ain't my special pleasure to watch you at it, but I'm glad to get my share.' He hefted his great long hammer up in one hand and spun it round as if it was a willow switch, peering at a great bloody stain on the head with a clump of hair stuck to it, then grinning wide.
Logen looked up at him, hardly enough strength left to lift his head. 'Oh aye. Good work. We'll go at the back tomorrow though, eh, since
you're that keen? You can take the fucking wall.'
The rain was slacking, down to a thin spit and drizzle. A glimmer of fading sunlight broke through the sagging clouds, bringing Bethod's camp back into view, his muddy ditch and his standards, tents scattered across the valley. Dogman squinted, thought he could see a few men stood around the front watching the Easterners run back, a glint of sunlight on something. An eye-glass maybe, like the Union used, usually to look the wrong way. Dogman wondered if it was Bethod down there, watching it all happen. It would be just like Bethod to have got himself an eye-glass.
He felt a big hand clap him on the shoulder. 'We gave 'em a slap, chief,' rumbled Tul, 'and a good 'un!'
There was small doubt o' that. There were a lot of dead Easterners scattered in the mud round the base of that wall, a lot of wounded carried by their mates, or dragging themselves slow and painful back towards their lines. But there were a fair few killed on their side of the wall as well. Dogman could see a stack of muddy corpses over near the back of the fortress where they were doing the burying. He could hear someone screaming. Hard and nasty screams, the kind a man makes when he needs a limb taken off, or he's had one off already.
'We gave 'em a slap, aye,' Dogman muttered, 'but they gave us one as well. I'm not sure how many slaps we'll stand.' The barrels that carried their arrows were no more'n half full now, the rocks close to run out. 'Best send some boys to pick over the dead!' he shouted to the men over his shoulder. 'Get what we can while we can!'
'Can't have too many arrows at a time like this,' said Tul. 'Number o' those Crinna bastards we killed today, I reckon we'll have more spears tonight than we had this morning.'
Dogman managed to put a grin on his face. 'Nice of 'em to bring us something to fight with.'
'Aye. Reckon they'd get bored right quick if we ran out of arrows.' Tul laughed, and he clapped the Dogman on the back harder than ever, hard enough to make his teeth rattle. 'We did well! You did well! We're still alive, ain't we?'
'Some of us are.' Dogman looked down at the corpse of the one man who'd died up on the tower. An old boy, hair mostly grey, a rough-made arrow in his neck. Bad luck, that had been, to catch a shaft on a day as wet as today, but you're sure to get a measure of luck in a fight, both good and bad. He frowned down into the darkening valley. 'Where the hell are the Union at?'
At least the rain had stopped. You have to be grateful for the small things in life, like some smoky kind of a fire after the wet. You have to be grateful for the small things, when any minute might be your last.
Logen sat alone beside his scrub of a flame, and rubbed gently at his right palm. It was sore, pink, stiff from gripping the rough hilt of the Maker's sword all the long day, blistered round the joints of his fingers. His head was bruised all over. The cut on his leg was burning some, but he could still walk well enough. He could've ended up a lot worse. There were more than three score buried now, and they were putting them in pits for a dozen each, just as Crummock had said they would. Three score and more gone back to the mud, and twice that many hurt, a lot of them bad.
Over by the big fire, he could hear Dow growling about how he'd stabbed some Easterner in the fruits. He could hear Tul's rumbling laughter. Logen hardly felt like a part of it, any more. Maybe he never had been. A set of men he'd fought and beaten. Lives he'd spared, for no reason that made sense. Men who'd hated him worse than death, but been bound to follow. Hardly more his friends than Shivers was. Perhaps the Dogman was his only true friend in all the wide Circle of the World, and even in his eyes, from time to time, Logen thought he could see that old trace of doubt, that old trace of fear. He wondered if he could see it now, as the Dogman came up out of the darkness.
'You think they'll come tonight?' he asked.
'He'll give it a go in the dark sooner or later,' said Logen, 'but my guess is he'll leave it 'til we're a bit more worn down.'
'You get more worn down than this?'
'I guess we'll find out.' Logen grimaced as he stretched out his aching legs. 'It really seems like this shit used to be easier.'
Dogman gave a snort. Not a laugh, really. More just letting Logen know he'd heard. 'Memory can work some magic. You remember Carleon?'
'Course I do.' Logen looked down at his missing finger, and he bunched his fist, so it looked the same as it always had. 'Strange, how it all seemed so simple back in them days. Who you fought for, and why. Can't say it ever bothered me.'
'It bothered me,' said Dogman.
'It did? You should've said something.'
'Would you have listened?'
'No. I guess not.'
They sat there for a minute, in silence.
'You reckon we'll live through this?' asked the Dogman.
'Maybe. If the Union turns up tomorrow, or the day after.'
'You think they will?'
'Maybe. We can hope.'
'Hoping for a thing don't make it happen.'
'The opposite, usually. But every day we're still alive is a chance. Maybe this time it'll work.'
Dogman frowned at the shifting flames. 'That's a lot of maybes.'
'That's war.'
'Who'd have thought we'd be relying on a bunch of Southerners to solve our problems for us, eh?'
'I reckon you solve 'em any way you can. You have to be realistic'
'Being realistic, then. You reckon we'll live through this?'
Logen thought about it for a while. 'Maybe.'
Boots squelched in the soft earth, and Shivers walked up quiet towards the fire. There was a grey bandage wrapped round his head, where he'd taken that cut, and his hair hung down damp and greasy from under it.
'Chief,' he said.
Dogman smiled as he got up, and clapped him on the shoulder. 'Alright, Shivers. That was good work, today. I'm glad you came over, lad. We all are.' He gave Logen a long look. 'All of us. Think I might try and get a rest for a minute. I'll see you boys when they come again. Most likely it'll be soon enough.' He walked off into the night, and left Shivers and Logen staring one at the other.
Probably Logen should have got his hand near to a knife, watched for sudden moves and all the rest. But he was too tired and too sore for it. So he just sat there, and watched. Shivers pressed his lips together, squatting down beside the fire opposite, slow and reluctant, as if he was about to eat something he knew was rotten, but had no choice.
'If I'd have been in your place,' he said, after a while, 'I would've let those bastards kill me today.'
'Few years ago I'm sure I would've.'
'What changed?'
Logen frowned as he thought about it. Then he shrugged his aching shoulders. 'I'm trying to be better than I was.'
'You think that's enough?'
'What else can I do?'
Shivers frowned at the fire. 'I wanted to say…' He worked the words around in his mouth and spat them out. 'That I'm grateful, I guess. You saved my life today. I know it.' He wasn't happy about saying it, and Logen knew why. It's hard to be done a favour by a man you hate. It's hard to hate him so much afterwards. Losing an enemy can be worse than losing a friend, if you've had him for long enough.
So Logen shrugged again. 'It's nothing. What a man should do for his crew, that's all. I owe you a lot more. I know that. I can never pay what I owe you.'
'No. But it's some kind o' start at it, far as I'm concerned.' Shivers got up and took a step away. Then he stopped, and turned back, firelight shifting over one side of his hard, angry face. 'It ain't ever as simple, is it, as a man is just good or bad? Not even you. Not even Bethod. Not anybody.'
'No.' Logen sat and watched the flames moving. 'No, it ain't ever that simple. We all got our reasons. Good men and bad men. It's all a matter of where you stand.'
* * *
The Perfect Couple
« ^ »
One of Jezal's countless footmen perched on the stepladder, and lowered the crown with frowning precision onto his head, its single enormous diamond flashing pricelessly bright. He gave it
the very slightest twist back and forth, the fur-trimmed rim gripping Jezal's skull. He climbed back down, whisked the stepladder away, and surveyed the result. So did half a dozen of his fellows. One of them stepped forward to tweak the precise positioning of Jezal's gold-embroidered sleeve. Another grimaced as he flicked an infinitesimal speck of dust from his pure white collar.
'Very good,' said Bayaz, nodding thoughtfully to himself. 'I believe that you are ready for your wedding.'
The peculiar thing, now that Jezal had a rare moment to think about it, was that he had not, in any way of which he was aware, agreed to get married. He had neither proposed nor accepted a proposal. He had never actually said 'yes' to anything. And yet here he was, preparing to be joined in matrimony in a few short hours, and to a woman he scarcely knew at all. It had not escaped his notice that in order to have been managed so quickly the arrangements must have been well underway before Bayaz had even suggested the notion. Perhaps before Jezal had even been crowned… but he supposed it was not so very surprising. Since his enthronement he had drifted helplessly through one incomprehensible event after another, like a man shipwrecked and struggling to keep his head above water, out of sight of land, dragged who knew where by unseen, irresistible currents. But considerably better dressed.
He was gradually starting to realise that the more powerful a man became, the fewer choices he really had. Captain Jezal dan Luthar had been able to eat what he liked, to sleep when he liked, to see who he liked. His August Majesty King Jezal the First, on the other hand, was bound by invisible chains of tradition, expectation, and responsibility, that prescribed every aspect of his existence, however small.