The Blade Itself (38 page)

The Dogman wasn’t sure whether to believe it. King? There’d never been a king in the North before. There’d never been a need for one, and Bethod was the last one he’d have chosen. And making war on the Union? That was a fool’s errand, surely. There were always more southerners.

“If there’s no fighting here,” asked the Dogman, “what you killing for?”

“Fuck yourself!”

Tul slapped him in the face, hard, and he fell on his back. Dow put in a kick of his own, then dragged him up straight again.

“What did you kill ’em for?” asked Tul.

“Taxes!” shouted the Mire, with blood trickling out of his nose.

“Taxes?” asked the Dogman. A strange word alright, he barely knew the meaning of it.

“They wouldn’t pay!”

“Taxes for who?” asked Dow.

“For Bethod, who do you think? He took all this land, broke the clans up and took it for his own! The people owe him! And we collect!”

“Taxes, eh? That’s a fucking southern fashion and no mistake! And if they can’t pay?” asked Dogman, feeling sick to his guts. “You hang ’em, do you?”

“If they won’t pay we can do as we please with ’em!”

“As you please?” Tul grabbed him round the neck, squeezing with his great big hand ’til the Mire’s eyes were half popping out. “As you please? Does it please you to hang ’em?”

“Alright, Thunderhead,” said Dow, peeling Tul’s big fingers away, and pushing him gently back. “Alright, big lad, this ain’t for you, to kill a man tied up.” And he patted him on the chest, pulling out his axe. “It’s for work like this you bring along a man like me.”

The Mire had more or less got over his throttling now. “Thunderhead?” he coughed, looking round at them. “It’s the whole lot of you, ain’t it! You’re Threetrees, and Grim, and that’s the Weakest there! So you don’t kneel, eh? Good for fuckin’ you! Where’s Ninefingers? Eh?” jeered the Mire. “Where’s the Bloody-Nine?”

Dow turned round, running his thumb down the edge of his axe. “Gone back to the mud, and you’re joining him. We’ve heard enough.”

“Let me up, bastard!” shouted the Mire, struggling at his ropes. “You’re no better’n me, Black Dow! You’ve killed more folk than the plague! Let me up and give me a blade! Come on! You scared to fight me, you coward? Scared to give a fair chance are yer?”

“Call me coward, would you?” growled Dow. “You who’s killed children for the sport of it? You had a blade and you let it drop. That was your chance and you should have took it. The likes o’ you don’t deserve another. If you’ve anything to say worth hearing you best say it now.”

“Shit on yer!” screamed the Mire, “Shit on the pack of—”

Dow’s axe cracked him hard between the eyes and knocked him on his back. He kicked a little then that was it. Not a one of them shed too big a tear for that bastard—even Forley gave no more than a wince when the blade went in. Dow leaned over and spat on his corpse, and the Dogman hardly blamed him. The boy was something more of a problem, though. He stared down at the body with big, wide eyes, then he looked up.

“You’re them, ain’t ya,” he said, “them as Ninefingers beat.”

“Aye, boy,” said Threetrees, “we’re them.”

“I heard stories, stories about you. What you going to do with me?”

“Well, there’s the question, ain’t it,” Dogman muttered to himself. Shame was, he already knew the answer.

“He can’t stay with us,” said Threetrees. “We can’t take the baggage and we can’t take the risk.”

“He’s just a lad,” said Forley. “We could let him go.” It was a nice thought, but it wasn’t holding much water, and they all knew it. The boy looked hopeful, but Tul put an end to that.

“We can’t trust him. Not here. He’d tell someone we were back, and then we’d be hunted. Can’t do it. Besides, he had his part in that work at the farm.”

“But what choice did I ’ave?” asked the boy. “What choice? I wanted to go south! Go south and fight the Union, and earn myself a name, but they sent me here, to get taxes. My chief says do a thing, I got to do it, don’t I?”

“You do,” said Threetrees. “No one says you could’ve done different.”

“I didn’t want no part of it! I told him to let the young ones be! You got to believe me!”

Forley looked down at his boots. “We do believe you.”

“But you’re going to fuckin’ kill me anyway?”

Dogman chewed at his lip. “Can’t take you with us, can’t leave you be.”

“I didn’t want no part of it.” The boy hung his head. “Don’t hardly seem fair.”

“It ain’t,” said Threetrees. “It ain’t fair at all. But there it is.”

Dow’s axe hacked into the back of the lad’s skull and he sprawled out on his face. The Dogman winced and looked away. He knew Dow did it that way so they wouldn’t have to look at the boy’s face. A good idea most likely, and he hoped it helped the others, but face up or face down was all the same to him. He felt almost as sick as he had back at the farm.

It wasn’t the worst day he’d ever had, not by a long way. But it was a bad one.

The Dogman watched ’em filing down the road from a good spot up in the trees where no one could see him. He made sure it was downwind from ’em too, cause being honest, he was smelling a bit ripe. It was a strange old procession. On the one hand they looked like fighting men, off to a weapon-take and then to battle. On the other hand they were all wrong. Old weapons mostly, and odds and sods of mixed up armour. Marching, but loose and ragged. Most of ’em too old to be prime fighters, grey hair and bald heads, and a lot of the rest too young for beards, hardly more than boys.

Seemed to the Dogman like nothing made sense in the North no more. He thought on what the Mire had said before Dow killed him. War with the Union. Were these lot off to war? If they were then Bethod must have been scraping the pot.

“What’s to do, Dogman?” asked Forley, as he stepped back into the camp. “What’s happening down there?”

“Men. Armed, but none too well. Five score or more. Young and old mostly, heading south and west,” and the Dogman pointed off down the road.

Threetrees nodded. “Towards Angland. He means it then, Bethod. He’s making war on the Union, all the way. No amount of blood’s enough for that one. He’s taking every man can hold a spear.” That was no surprise, in its way. Bethod had never been one for half measures. He was all or nothing, and didn’t care who got killed along the road. “Every man,” muttered Threetrees to himself. “If the Shanka come over the mountains now…”

Dogman looked round. Frowning, worried, dirty faces. He knew what Threetrees was saying, they could all see it. If the Shanka came now, with no one left in the North to fight ’em, that business at the farm would be the best of it.

“We got to warn someone!” shouted Forley, “we got to warn them!”

Threetrees shook his head. “You heard the Mire. Yawl’s gone, and Rattleneck, and Sything. All dead and cold, and gone back to the mud. Bethod’s King now, King of the Northmen.” Black Dow scowled and gobbed in the dirt. “Spit all you like Dow, but facts is facts. There’s no one left to warn.”

“No one but Bethod himself,” muttered the Dogman, miserable at having to say it.

“Then we got to tell him!” Forley looked round them all, desperate. “He may be a heartless bastard but at least he’s a man! He’s better than the Flatheads ain’t he? We got to tell someone!”

“Hah!” barked Dow. “Hah! You think he’ll listen to us, Weakest? You forgotten what he told us? Us and Ninefingers too? Never come back! You forgotten how close he come to killing us? You forgotten how much he hates each one of us?”

“Fears us,” said Grim.

“Hates and fears us,” muttered Threetrees, “and he’s wise to. Because we’re strong. Named men. Known men. The type of men that others will follow.”

Tul nodded his big head. “Aye, there’ll be no welcome for us at Carleon I’m thinking. No welcome without a spike on the end of it.”

“I’m not strong!” shouted Forley. “I’m the Weakest, everyone knows that! Bethod’s got no reason to fear me, nor to hate me neither. I’ll go!”

Dogman looked at him, surprised. They all did. “You?” asked Dow.

“Aye, me! I may be no fighter, but I’m no coward neither! I’ll go and talk to him. Maybe he’ll listen.” Dogman stood and stared. It was so long since any one of them had tried to talk their way out of a fix he’d forgotten it could be done.

“Might be he’ll listen,” muttered Threetrees.

“He might listen,” said Tul. “Then he might bloody kill you, Weakest!”

Dogman shook his head. “It’s quite a chance.”

“Maybe, but it’s worth the doing, ain’t it?”

They all looked at each other, worried. It was some bones that Forley was showing, no doubt, but the Dogman didn’t much like the sound of this for a plan. He was a thin thread to hang your hopes on, was Bethod. A mighty thin thread.

But like Threetrees said, there was no one else.

Words and Dust

Kurster pranced around the outside of the circle, his long golden hair bouncing on his shoulders, waving to the crowd, blowing kisses to the girls. The audience cheered and howled and whooped as the lithe young man made his flashy rounds. He was an Aduan, an officer of the King’s Own.
A local boy, and so very popular.

Bremer dan Gorst was leaning against the barrier, watching his opponent dance through barely open eyes. His steels were unusually heavy-looking, weighty and worn and well-used, too heavy to be quick perhaps. Gorst himself looked too heavy to be quick, come to that, a great thick-necked bull of a man, more like a wrestler than a swordsman. He looked the underdog in this bout. The majority of the crowd seemed to think so.
But I know better.

Nearby a bet-maker was shouting odds, taking money from the babbling people around him. Nearly all of the bets were for Kurster. Glokta leaned across from his bench. “What odds are you giving on Gorst now?”

“On Gorst?” asked the bet-maker, “evens.”

“I’ll take two hundred marks.”

“Sorry, friend, I can’t cover that.”

“A hundred then, at five to four.”

The bet-maker thought about it for a moment, looking skywards as he worked out the sums in his head. “Done.”

Glokta sat back as the referee introduced the contestants, watching Gorst roll up his shirt-sleeves. The man’s forearms were thick as tree trunks, heavy cords of muscle squirming as he worked his meaty fingers. He stretched his thick neck to one side and the other, then he took his steels from his second and loosed a couple of practice jabs. Few in the crowd noticed. They were busy cheering Kurster as he took his mark. But Glokta saw.
Quicker than he looks. A lot, lot quicker. Those heavy steels no longer seem so clumsy.

“Bremer dan Gorst!” shouted the referee, as the big man trudged to his mark. The applause was meagre indeed. This lumbering bull was no one’s idea of a swordsman.

“Begin!”

It wasn’t pretty. From the very start Gorst swung his heavy long steel in great heedless sweeps, like a champion woodsman chopping logs, giving throaty growls with every blow. It was a strange sight. One man was in a fencing contest, the other seemed to think he was fighting to the death.
You only have to touch him, man, not split him in half.
But as Glokta watched, he realised the mighty cuts were not nearly so clumsy as they seemed. They were well-timed, and highly accurate. Kurster laughed as he danced away from the first great swing, smiled as he dodged the third, but by the fifth his smile was long gone.
And it doesn’t look like coming back.

It wasn’t pretty at all.
But the power is undeniable.
Kurster ducked desperately under another great arcing cut.
That one was hard enough to take his head off, blunted steels or no.

The crowd’s favourite did his best to seize the initiative, jabbing away for all he was worth, but Gorst was more than equal to it. He grunted as he turned the jabs efficiently away with his short steel, then growled again as he brought his long whistling around and over. Glokta winced as it smashed into Kurster’s sword with a resounding crash, snapping the man’s wrist back and nearly tearing the steel from his fingers. He stumbled back from the force of it, grimacing with pain and shock.

Now I realise why Gorst’s steels seem so worn.
Kurster dodged around the circle, trying to escape the onslaught, but the big man was too quick.
Far too quick.
Gorst had the measure of him now, anticipating every movement, harrying his opponent with relentless blows. There was no escape.

Two heavy thrusts drove the hapless officer back towards the edge of the circle, then a scything cut ripped his long steel from his hand and embedded it, wobbling wildly back and forth, in the turf. He staggered for a moment, eyes wide, his empty hand trembling, then Gorst was on him, letting go a roar and ramming full-tilt into his defenceless ribs with a heavy shoulder.

Glokta spluttered with laughter.
I never saw a swordsman fly before.
Kurster actually turned half a somersault, shrieking like a girl as he tumbled through the air, crashing to the ground with his limbs flopping and sliding away on his face. He finally came to rest in the sand outside the circle, a good three strides from where Gorst had hit him, groaning weakly.

The crowd was in shock, so quiet that Glokta’s cackling had to be audible on the back row. Kurster’s trainer rushed from his enclosure and gently turned his stricken student over. The young man kicked weakly, whimpered and clutched at his ribs. Gorst watched for a moment, emotionless, then shrugged and strolled back to his mark.

Kurster’s trainer turned to the referee. “I am sorry,” he said, “but my pupil cannot continue.”

Glokta could not help himself. He had to clamp his mouth shut with his hands. His whole body was shaking with laughter. Each gurgle caused a painful spasm in his neck, but he didn’t care. It seemed the majority of the crowd had not found the spectacle quite so amusing. Angry mutterings sprang up all around him. The grumbling turned to boos as Kurster was helped from the circle, draped between his trainer and his second, then the boos to a chorus of angry shouts.

Gorst swept the audience with his lazy, half-open eyes, then shrugged again and trudged slowly back to his enclosure. Glokta was still sniggering as he limped from the arena, his purse a good deal heavier than when he arrived. He hadn’t had that much fun in years.

The University stood in a neglected corner of the Agriont, directly in the shadow of the House of the Maker, where even the birds seemed old and tired. A huge, ramshackle building, coated in half-dead ivy, its design plainly from an earlier age. It was said to be one of the oldest buildings in the city.
And it looks it.

The roofs were sagging in the middle, a couple of them close to outright collapse. The delicate spires were crumbling, threatening to topple off into the unkempt gardens below. The render on the walls was tired and grimy, and in places whole sections had fallen away to reveal the bare stones and crumbling mortar beneath. In one spot a great brown stain flared out down the wall from a section of broken guttering. There had been a time when the study of sciences had attracted some of the foremost men in the Union, when this building had been among the grandest in the city.
And Sult thinks the Inquisition is out of fashion.

Two statues flanked the crumbling gate. Two old men, one with a lamp, one pointing at something in a book.
Wisdom and progress or some such rubbish.
The one with the book had lost his nose some time during the past century, the other was leaning at an angle, his lamp stuck out despairingly as though clutching for support.

Glokta raised his fist and hammered on the ancient doors. They rattled, moved noticeably, as if they might at any moment drop from their hinges. Glokta waited. Waited some time.

There was a sudden clatter of bolts being drawn back, and one half of the door wobbled open a few inches. An ancient face wedged itself into the gap and squinted out at him, lit underneath by a meagre taper clutched in a withered hand. Dewy old eyes peered up and down. “Yes?”

“Inquisitor Glokta.”

“Ah, from the Arch Lector?”

Glokta frowned, surprised. “Yes, that’s right.”
They cannot be half so cut off from the world as they appear. He seems to know who I am.

It was perilously dark within. Two enormous brass candelabras stood on either side of the door, but they were stripped of candles and had long gone unpolished, shining dully in the weak light from the porter’s little taper. “This way, sir,” wheezed the old man, shambling off, bent nearly double. Even Glokta had little trouble keeping up with him as he crept away through the gloom.

They shuffled together down a shadowy hallway. The windows on one side were ancient, made with tiny panes of glass so dirty that they would have let in little enough light on the sunniest of days. They let in none whatever as the sullen evening came on. The flickering candleflame danced over dusty paintings on the opposite wall, pale old men in dark gowns of black and grey, gazing wild-eyed from their flaking frames, flasks and cog-wheels and pairs of compasses clutched in their aged hands.

“Where are we going?” asked Glokta, after they had shambled through the murk for several minutes.

“The Adepti are at dinner,” wheezed the porter, glancing up at him with eyes infinitely tired.

The University’s dining hall was an echoing cavern of a room, lifted one degree above total darkness by a few guttering candles. A small fire flickered in an enormous fireplace, casting dancing shadows among the rafters. A long table stretched the length of the floor, polished by long years of use, flanked by rickety chairs. It could easily have accommodated eighty but there were only five there, crowded up at one end, huddled in around the fireplace. They looked over as the taps of Glokta’s cane echoed through the hall, pausing in their meals and peering over with great interest. The man at the head of the table got to his feet and hurried over, holding the hem of his long black gown up with one hand.

“A visitor,” wheezed the porter, waving his candle in Glokta’s direction.

“Ah, from the Arch Lector! I am Silber, the University Administrator!” And he shook Glokta’s hand. His companions had meanwhile lurched and tottered to their feet as though the guest of honour had just arrived.

“Inquisitor Glokta.” He stared round at the eager old men.
A good deal more deference than I was expecting, I must say. But then, the Arch Lectors name opens all kinds of doors.

“Glokta, Glokta,” mumbled one of the old men, “seems that I remember a Glokta from somewhere.”

“You remember everything from somewhere, but you never remember where,” quipped the administrator, to half-hearted laughter. “Please let me make the introductions.”

He went round the four black-gowned scientists, one by one. “Saurizin, our Adeptus Chemical.” A beefy, unkempt old fellow with burns and stains down the front of his robe and more than one bit of food in his beard. “Denka, the Adeptus Metallic.” The youngest of the four by a considerable margin, though by no means a young man, had an arrogant twist to his mouth. “Chayle, our Adeptus Mechanical.” Glokta had never seen a man with so big a head but so small a face. His ears, in particular, were immense, and sprouting grey hairs. “And Kandelau, the Adeptus Physical.” A scrawny old bird with a long neck and spectacles perched on his curving beak of a nose. “Please join us, Inquisitor,” and the administrator indicated an empty chair, wedged in between two of the Adepti.

“A glass of wine then?” wheedled Chayle, a prim smile on his tiny mouth, already leaning forward with a decanter and sloshing some into a glass.

“Very well.”

“We were just discussing the relative merits of our various fields of study,” murmured Kandelau, peering at Glokta through his flashing spectacles.

“As always,” lamented the Administrator.

“The human body is, of course, the only area worthy of true scrutiny,” continued the Adeptus Physical. “One must appreciate the mysteries within, before turning one’s attention to the world without. We all have a body, Inquisitor. Means of healing it, and of harming it, are of paramount interest to us all. It is the human body that is my area of expertise.”

“Bodies! Bodies!” whined Chayle, pursing his little lips and pushing food around his plate. “We are trying to eat!”

“Quite so! You are unsettling the Inquisitor with your ghoulish babble!”

“Oh, I am not easily unsettled.” Glokta leered across the table, giving the Adeptus Metallic a good view of his missing teeth. “My work for the Inquisition demands a more than passing knowledge of anatomy.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, then Saurizin took hold of the meat plate and offered it out. Glokta looked at the red slices, glistening on the plate. He licked at his empty gums. “Thank you, no.”

“Is it true?” asked the Adeptus Chemical, peering over the meat, voice hushed. “Will there be more funds? Now that this business with the Mercers is settled, that is?”

Glokta frowned. Everyone was staring at him, waiting for his reply. One of the old Adepti had his fork frozen halfway to his mouth.
So that’s it. Money. But why would they be expecting money from the Arch Lector?
The heavy meat plate was beginning to wobble.
Well… if it gets them listening.
“Money might be made available, depending, of course, on results.”

A hushed murmur crept around the table. The Adeptus Chemical carefully set down the plate with a trembling hand. “I have been having a great deal of success with acids recently.

“Hah!” mocked the Adeptus Metallic. “Results, the Inquisitor asked for, results! My new alloys will be stronger than steel when they are perfected!”

“Always the alloys!” sighed Chayle, turning his tiny eyes towards the ceiling. “No one appreciates the importance of sound mechanical thinking!”

The other three Adepti rounded fiercely on him, but the Administrator jumped in first. “Gentlemen, please! The Inquisitor is not interested in our little differences! Everyone will have time to discuss their latest work and show its merits. This is not a competition, is it Inquisitor?” Every eye turned toward Glokta. He looked slowly round at those old, expectant faces, and said nothing.