Last Argument of Kings (40 page)

The Circle

Dawn was coming, a grey rumour, the faintest touch of brightness around the solemn outline of the walls of Carleon. The stars had all faded into a stony sky, but the moon still hung there, just above the tree-tops, seeming almost close enough to try an arrow at.

West had not closed his eyes all night, and had passed into that strange realm of twitchy, dreamlike wakefulness that comes beyond exhaustion. Some time in the silent darkness, after all the orders had been given, he had sat by the light of a single lamp to write a letter to his sister. To vomit up excuses. To demand forgiveness. He had sat, he could not have said for how long, with the pen over the paper, but the words had simply not come. He had wanted to say all that he felt, but when it came to it, he felt nothing. The warm taverns of Adua, cards in the sunny courtyard. Ardee’s one-sided smile. It all seemed a thousand years ago.

The Northmen were already busy, clipping at the grass in the shadow of the walls, the clicking of their shears a strange echo of the gardeners in the Agriont, shaving a circle a dozen strides across down to the roots. The ground, he supposed, on which the duel would take place. The ground where, in no more than an hour or two, the fate of the North would be decided. Very much like a fencing circle, except that it might soon be sprayed with blood.

“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.”

Jalenhorm shivered and blew into his cupped hands. “Still. A lot to hang on two men fighting one another. What if Ninefingers loses?”

“Then I suppose that Bethod will go free,” said West, unhappily.

“But he invaded the Union! He caused the deaths of thousands! He deserves to be punished!”

“People rarely get what they deserve.” West thought of Prince Ladisla’s bones rotting out in the wasteland. Some terrible crimes go unpunished, and a few, for no reason beyond the fickle movements of chance, are richly rewarded. He stopped in his tracks.

A man was sitting on his own on the long slope, his back to the city. A man hunched over in a battered coat, so still and quiet in the half-light that West had almost missed him. “I’ll catch you up,” he said as he left the path. The grass, coated with a pale fur of frost, crunched gently under his boots with each step.

“Pull up a chair.” Breath smoked gently round Ninefingers’ darkened face.

West squatted down on the cold earth beside him. “Are you ready?”

“Ten times before I’ve done this. Can’t say I’ve ever yet been ready. Don’t know that there is a way to get ready for a thing like this. The best I’ve worked out is just to sit, and let the time crawl past, and try not to piss yourself.”

“I imagine a wet crotch could be an embarrassment in the circle.”

“Aye. Better than a split head, though, I reckon.”

Undeniably true. West had heard tales of these Northern duels before, of course. Growing up in Angland, children whispered lurid stories of them to each other. But he had little idea how they were really conducted. “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. I killed Shama Heartless with his own sword, and got stuck through with the spear I brought to fight Harding Grim.” He rubbed at his stomach, as though the memory ached there. “Still, don’t hurt any worse, getting stuck with your own spear instead of someone else’s.”

West laid a hand thoughtfully on his own gut. “No.” They sat in silence for a while longer.

“There’s a favour I’d like to ask you.”

“Name it.”

“Would you and your friends hold shields for me?”

“Us?” West blinked towards the Carls in the shadow of the wall. Their great round shields looked hard enough to lift, let alone to use well. “Are you sure? I’ve never held one in my life.”

“Maybe, but you know whose side you’re on. There ain’t many folk among these that I can trust. Most of ’em are still trying to work out who they hate more, me or Bethod. It only takes one to give me a shove when I need a push, or let me fall when I need catching. Then we’re all done. Me especially.”

West puffed out his cheeks. “We’ll do what we can.”

“Good. Good.”

The cold silence dragged out. Over the black hills, the black trees, the moon sank and grew dimmer.

“Tell me, Furious. Do you reckon a man has to pay for the things he’s done?”

West looked up sharply, the irrational and sickly thought flashing through his mind that Ninefingers was talking of Ardee, or of Ladisla, or both. Certainly, the Northman’s eyes seemed to glint with accusation in the half-light—then West felt the surge of fear subside. Ninefingers was talking of himself, of course, as everyone always does, given the chance. It was guilt in his eyes, not accusation. Each man has his own mistakes to follow him.

“Maybe.” West cleared his dry throat. “Sometimes. I don’t know. I suppose we’ve all done things we regret.”

“Aye,” said Ninefingers. “I reckon.”

They sat together in silence, and watched the light leak across the sky.

“Let’s go, chief!” hissed Dow. “Let’s fucking go!”

“I’ll say when!” Dogman spat back, holding the dewy branches out of the way and peering towards the walls, a hundred strides off, maybe, across a damp meadow. “Too much light, now. We’ll wait for that bloody moon to drop a touch further, then we’ll make a run at it.”

“It ain’t going to get any darker! Bethod can’t have too many men left after all the ones we killed up in the mountains, and that’s a lot o’ walls. They’ll be spread thin as cobwebs up there.”

“It only takes one to—”

And Dow was off across that field and running, as plain on the flat grass as a turd on a snow-field.

“Shit!” hissed Dogman, helpless.

“Uh,” said Grim.

There was nothing to do but stare, and wait for Dow to get stuck full of arrows. Wait for the shouts, and torches lit, and the alarm to go up, and the whole thing dumped right in the shit-hole. Then Dow dashed up the last bit of slope and was gone into the shadows by the wall.

“He made it,” said Dogman.

“Uh,” said Grim.

That ought to have been a good thing, but Dogman didn’t feel too much like laughing. He had to make the run himself now, and he didn’t have Dow’s luck. He looked at Grim, and Grim shrugged. They burst out from the trees together, feet pounding across the soft meadow. Grim had the longer legs, started pulling away. The ground was a good deal softer than Dogman had—

“Gah!” His foot squelched to the ankle and he went flying over, splashed down in the mire and slid along on his face. He floundered up, cold and gasping, ran the rest of the way with his wet shirt plastered against his skin. He stumbled up the slope to the foot of the walls and bent over, hands to his knees, blowing hard and spitting out grass.

“Looks like you took a tumble there, chief.” Dow’s grin was a white curve in the shadows.

“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.”

“Shhhh.” Grim flailed one hand at them to say keep quiet. Dogman pressed himself tight to the wall, worry snuffing his anger out quick-time. He heard men moving up above, saw the glimmer of a lamp pass slow down the walls. He waited, still, no sound but Dow’s quiet breath beside him and his own heart pounding, ’til the men above moved on and all was quiet again.

“Tell me that ain’t got your blood flowing quick, chief,” whispered Dow.

“We’re lucky it ain’t flowing right out of us.”

“What now?”

Dogman gritted his teeth as he tried to scrape the mud out of his face. “Now we wait.”

Logen stood up, brushed the dew from his trousers, took a long breath of the chill air. There could be no denying any longer that the sun was well and truly up. It might’ve been hidden in the east behind Skarling’s Hill, but the tall black towers up there had bright golden edges, the thin, high clouds were pinking underneath, the cold sky between turning pale blue.

“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.

He wrapped his fingers round the grip of the Maker’s sword, felt the scored lines tickling at his palm. He slid it from the sheath and let it hang, worked his shoulders round in circles, jerked his head from side to side. One more cold breath in, and out, then he started walking, up through the crowd that had gathered in a wide arc around the gate. A mix of the Dogman’s Carls and Crummock’s hillmen, and a few Union soldiers given leave to watch the crazy Northerners kill each other. Some called to him as he came through, all knowing there were a lot more lives hanging on this than Logen’s own.

“It’s Ninefingers!”

“The Bloody-Nine.”

“Put an end to this!”

“Kill that bastard!”

They had their shields, all the men that Logen had picked to hold them, standing in a solemn knot near the walls. West was one, and Pike, and Red Hat, and Shivers too. Logen wondered if he’d made a mistake with the last of them, but he’d saved the man’s life in the mountains and that ought to count for something. Ought to was a thin thread to hang your life on, but there it was. His life had been dangling from a thin thread ever since he could remember.

Crummock-i-Phail fell into step beside him, big shield looking small on one big arm, the other hand resting light on his fat belly. “You looking forward to this then, Bloody-Nine? I am, I can tell you that!”

Hands slapped at his shoulders, voices called encouragement, but Logen said nothing. He didn’t look left or right as he pushed past into the shaven circle. He felt men close in behind him, heard them set their shields in a half-ring round the edge of the short grass, facing the gates of Carleon. Further back the crowd pressed in tight. Whispering to each other. Straining to see. No way back now, that was a fact. But then there never had been. He’d been heading here all his days. Logen stopped, in the centre of the circle, and he turned his face up towards the battlements.

“It’s sunrise!” he roared. “Let’s get to it!”

There was silence, while the echoes died, and the wind pushed some loose leaves around the grass. A silence long enough for Logen to start hoping no one would answer. To start hoping they’d all somehow slipped away in the night, and there’d be no duel after all.

Then faces appeared on the walls. One here, one there, then a whole crowd, lining the parapet far as Logen could see in both directions. Hundreds of folk—fighting men, women, children even, up on shoulders. Everyone in the city, it looked like. Metal squealed, and wood creaked, and the tall gates ever so slowly swung apart, the glare of the rising sun spilling out the crack between, then pouring bright through the open archway. Two lines of men came tramping out.

Carls, all hard faces and tangled hair, heavy mail jingling, painted shields on their arms.

Logen knew a few of them. Some of Bethod’s closest, who’d been with him since the beginning. Hard men all, who’d held the shields for Logen more than once, back in the old days. They formed up in their own half-ring, closing the circle tight. A wall of shields—animal faces, trees and towers, flowing water, crossed axes, all of them scarred and scuffed from a hundred old fights. All of them turned in towards Logen. A cage of men and wood, and the only way out was to kill. Or to die, of course.

A black shape formed in the bright archway. Like a man, but taller, seeming to fill it all the way to the high keystone. Logen heard footsteps. Thumping footsteps, heavy as falling anvils. A strange kind of fear tugged at him. A mindless panic, as if he’d woken trapped under the snow again. He forced himself not to look over his shoulder at Crummock, forced himself to look ahead as Bethod’s champion stepped out into the dawn.

“By the fucking dead,” breathed Logen.

He thought at first it must be some trick of the light that made him look the size he did. Tul Duru Thunderhead had been a big bastard, no doubt, big enough that some had called him a giant. But he’d still looked like a man. Fenris the Feared was built on such a scale that he seemed something else. A race apart. A giant indeed, stepped out from old stories and made flesh. A lot of flesh.