Last Argument of Kings

by Joe Abercrombie

  'This will be a battle like no other!' Poulder was frothing, pointlessly. 'Never since Harod forged the Union has an invader set foot upon the soil of Midderland!'

  Kroy growled his agreement.

  'The Gurkish mean to overturn our laws, smother our culture, make slaves of our people! The very future of our nation hangs in the—'

  The tent flap snapped back and Pike ducked through, his melted face expressionless. A tall man shuffled behind, stooped over and wobbly with fatigue, a heavy blanket wrapped round his shoulders, his face smeared with dirt.

  'This is Fedor dan Hayden,' said Pike. 'A Knight Herald. He was able to swim from the docks in Adua under cover of night, and slip around the Gurkish lines.'

  'An action of conspicuous bravery,' said West, to grumbles of grudging agreement from Poulder and Kroy. 'You have all of our thanks. How do things stand inside the city?'

  'Frankly, my Lord Marshal, they are dire.' Hayden's voice was scratchy with weariness. 'The western districts—the Arches and the Three Farms—belong to the Emperor. The Gurkish breached Arnault's Wall two days ago, and the defences are stretched to breaking point. At any moment they could burst through, and threaten the Agriont itself. His Majesty asks that you march on Adua with all possible speed. Every hour could be vital.'

  'Does he have any particular strategy in mind?' asked West. Jezal dan Luthar never used to have anything in mind beyond getting drunk and bedding his sister, but he hoped that time might have wrought changes.

  'The Gurkish have the city surrounded, but they are spread thin. On the eastern side, particularly. Lord Marshal Varuz believes you could break through with a sharp attack.'

  'Though the western districts of the city will still be crawling with Gurkish swine,' growled Kroy.

  'Bastards,' whispered Poulder, his jowls twitching. 'Bastards.'

  'We have no choice but to march on Adua immediately,' said West. 'We will make use of every road and move with all possible speed to take up a position east of the city, marching by torchlight if necessary. We must assault the Gurkish encirclement at dawn and break their hold on the walls. Admiral Reutzer will meanwhile lead the fleet in an attack against the Gurkish ships in the harbour. General Kroy, order some cavalry forward to scout the way and screen our advance. I want no surprises.'

  For once, there was no sign of reluctance. 'Of course, my Lord Marshal.'

  'Your division will approach Adua from the north-east, break through the Gurkish lines and enter the city in force, pushing westward towards the Agriont. If the enemy have reached the centre of the city, you will engage them. If not, you will bolster the defences at Arnault's Wall and prepare to flush them from the Arches district.'

  Kroy nodded grimly, a single vein bulging on his forehead, his officers like statues of military precision behind him. 'By this time tomorrow, not one Kantic soldier will be left alive in Adua.'

  'Dogman, I would like you and your Northmen to support General Kroy's division in their attack. If your…' West wrestled with the word, '… king has no objections.'

  The Dogman licked his sharp teeth. 'Reckon he'll go whichever way the wind blows. That's always been his style.'

  'The wind blows towards Adua tonight.'

  'Aye.' The Northman nodded. 'Towards Adua, then.'

  'General Poulder, your division will approach the city from the south-east, participate in the battle for the walls, then enter the city in force and move on the docks. If the enemy has made it that far, you will clear them away, then turn northwards and follow the Middleway to the Agriont.'

  Poulder hammered the table with his fist, his officers growling like prize-fighters. 'Yes, damn it! We'll paint the streets with Gurkish blood!'

  West gave Poulder, and then Kroy, each a hard frown. 'I hardly need to emphasise the importance of victory tomorrow.'

  The two Generals rose without a word and moved for the tent flap together. They faced each other before it. For a moment West wondered if, even now, they would fall back into their familiar bickering.

  Then Kroy held out his hand. 'The best of luck, General Poulder.'

  Poulder seized the hand in both of his. 'And to you, General Kroy. The very best of luck to all of us.' The two of them stepped smartly out into the dusk, their officers following, Jalenhorm and Brint close behind.

  Hayden coughed. 'Lord Marshal… four other Knights Herald were sent with me. We split up, in the hopes that one of us at least would make it through the Gurkish lines. Have any of the others arrived?'

  'No… not yet. Perhaps later…' West did not think it terribly likely, and neither did Hayden, he could see it in his eyes.

  'Of course. Perhaps later.'

  'Sergeant Pike will find you some wine and a horse. I imagine you would very much like to see us attack the Gurkish in the morning.'

  'I would.'

  'Very good.' The two men left the way they had come, and West frowned after them. A shame about the man's comrades, but there would be many more deaths to mourn before tomorrow was done. If there was anyone left to do the mourning. He pushed aside the tent flap and stepped out into the chill air.

  The ships of the fleet were anchored in the narrow harbour down below, rocking slowly on the waves, tall masts waving back and forth against the darkening clouds—hard blue, and cold grey, and angry orange. West fancied he could see a few boats crawling closer to the black beach, still ferrying the last of the army to the shore.

  The sun was dropping fast towards the horizon, a final muddy flare above the hills in the west. Somewhere under there, just out of sight, Adua was burning. West worked his shoulders round in circles, trying to force the knotted muscles to relax. He had heard no word since before they left Angland. As far as he was aware Ardee was still inside its walls. But there was nothing he could do. Nothing beyond ordering an immediate attack and hoping, against the general run of luck, for the best. He rubbed unhappily at his stomach. He had been suffering with indigestion ever since the sea journey. The pressures of command, no doubt. A few more weeks of it would probably see him vomiting blood over his maps, just like his predecessor. He took a long, ragged breath and blew it out.

  'I know how you feel.' It was the Dogman, sitting on a rickety bench beside the tent flap, elbows on his knees, staring down towards the sea.

  West sagged down beside him. Briefings with Poulder and Kroy were always a terrible drain. Play the man of stone for too long and you are left a man of straw. 'I'm sorry,' he found himself saying.

  Dogman looked up at him. 'You are? For what?'

  'For all of it. For Threetrees, for Tul… for Cathil.' West had to swallow an unexpected lump in his throat. 'For all of it. I'm sorry.'

  '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.'

  West thought about that for a moment. Then he nodded. 'Alright.' They sat and watched the torches being lit around the bay below, like glittering dust spreading out across the dark country.

  Night time, and a grim one. Grim for the cold, and the drip, drip of thin rain, and all the hard miles that needed slogging over before dawn. Grim most of all for what waited at the end of it, when the sun came up. Marching to a battle only got harder each time. When Logen had been a young man, before he lost a finger and gained a black reputation, there'd at least been some trace of excitement to it, some shadow of a thrill. Now there was only the sick fear. Fear of the fight, and worse still, fear of the results.

  Being king was no kind of help. It was no help to anything, far as he could see. It was just like being chief, but worse. Made him think there was something he should be doing that he wasn't. Made the gap between him and everyone else that bit wider. That bit more unbridgeable.

  Boots squelched and sucked, weapons and harness clattered and jingled, men grunted and cursed in the darkness. A few of them had spitting torches now, to light the muddy way, streaks of rain flitting down in the glow around them.
The rain fell on Logen too, a feathery kiss at his scalp, and his face, the odd pit and patter on the shoulders of his old coat.

  The Union army was spread out down five roads, all heading east, all pointing towards Adua and what sounded like a hard reckoning with the Gurkish. Logen and his crew were on the northernmost one. Off to the south he could see a faint line of flickering lights, floating disembodied in the black country, stretching away out of sight. Another column. Another few thousand men, cursing through the mud towards a bloody dawn.

  Logen frowned. He saw the side of Shivers' lean face, up ahead, by the flickering light of a torch, a scowl full of hard shadows, one eye glinting. They watched each other for a moment, then Shivers turned his back, hunched up his shoulders and carried on walking.

  'He still don't like me much, that one, and never will.'

  'Careless slaughter ain't necessarily the high road to popularity,' said Dogman. 'Especially in a king.'

  'But that one there might have the bones to do something about it.' Shivers had a grudge. One that wasn't going away with time, or kindness, or even lives saved. There aren't many wounds that ever heal all the way, and there are some that hurt more with every day that passes.

  The Dogman seemed to guess at Logen's thoughts. 'Don't worry about Shivers. He's alright. We've got plenty to worry about with these Gurkish, or whatever.'

  'Uh,' said Grim.

  Logen wasn't so sure about that. The worst enemies are the ones that live next door, his father always used to tell him. Back in the old days he'd just have murdered the bastard where he stood and problem solved. But he was trying to be a better man now. He was trying hard.

  'By the dead, though,' Dogman was saying. 'Fighting against brown men, now, for the Union? How the bloody hell did that all happen? We shouldn't be down here.'

  Logen took a long breath, and he let Shivers walk away. 'Furious stuck around for us. Wasn't for him we'd never have been done with Bethod. We owe him. It's just this one last fight.'

  'You ever noticed how one fight has a habit of leading on to another? Seems like there's always one fight more.'

  'Uh,' said Grim.

  'Not this time. This is the last, then we're done.'

  'That so? And what happens then?'

  'Back to the North, I guess.' Logen shrugged his shoulders. 'Peace, isn't it?'

  'Peace?' grunted the Dogman. 'Just what is that, anyway? What do you do with it?'

  'I reckon… well… we'll make things grow, or something.'

  'Make things grow? By all the fucking dead! What do you, or I, or any one of us know about making things grow? What else have we done, all our lives, but kill?'

  Logen wriggled his shoulders, uncomfortable. 'Got to keep some hope. A man can learn, can't he?'

  'Can he? The more you kill, the better you get at it. And the better you get at killing, the less use you are for anything else. Seems to me we've lived this long 'cause when it comes to killing we're the very best there is.'

  'You're in a black mood, Dogman.'

  'I been in a black mood for years. What worries me is that you ain't. Hope don't much suit the likes of us, Logen. Answer me this. You ever touched a thing that wasn't hurt by it? What have you ever had, that didn't turn to dirt?'

  Logen thought about that. His wife and his children, his father and his people, all back to the mud. Forley, Threetrees and Tul. All good folk, and all dead, some of them by Logen's own hand, some of them by his neglect, and his pride, and his foolishness. He could see their faces, now, in his thoughts, and they didn't look happy. The dead don't often. And that was without looking to the dark and sullen crew lurking behind. A crowd of ghosts. A hacked and bloody army. All the folk he'd chosen to kill. Shama Heartless, his guts hanging out of his split stomach. Blacktoe, with his crushed legs and his burned hands. That Finnius bastard, one foot cut off and his chest slashed open. Bethod, even, right at the front with his skull pounded to mush, his frowning face twisted sideways, Crummock's dead boy peering from around his elbow. A sea of murder. Logen squeezed his eyes shut then prised them wide open, but the faces still lingered at the edge of his mind. There was nothing he could say.

  'Thought so.' Dogman turned away from him, wet hair dripping round his face. 'You have to be realistic, ain't you always told me? You have to be that.' He strode off up the road, under the cold stars. Grim lingered next to Logen for a moment, then he shrugged his damp shoulders and followed the Dogman, taking his torch with him.

  'A man can change,' whispered Logen, not sure whether he was talking to the Dogman, or to himself, or to those corpse-pale faces waiting in the darkness. Men clattered down the track all round him, and yet he stood alone. 'A man can change.'

  * * *

  Questions

  « ^ »

  A trace of autumn fog had slunk off the restless sea as the sun went down over crippled Adua, turning the chill night ghostly. A hundred strides distant the houses were indistinct. Two hundred and they were spectral, the few lights in the windows floating wraiths, hazy through the gloom. Good weather for bad work, and we have much of that ahead of us.

  No distant explosions had rattled the still darkness so far. The Gurkish catapults had fallen silent. At least for the moment, and why not? The city almost belongs to them, and why burn your own city? Here, on the eastern side of Adua, far from the fighting, all seemed timelessly calm. Almost as if the Gurkish had never come. So when a vague clattering filtered through the gloom, as of the boots of a body of well-armed men, Glokta could not help a pang of nervousness, and pressed himself into the deeper shadows against the hedge by the road. Faint, bobbing lights filtered through the murk. Then the outline of a man, one hand resting casually on the pommel of a sword, walking with a loose, strutting slouch that bespoke extreme over-confidence. Something tall appeared to stick from his head, waving with his movements.

  Glokta peered into the murk. 'Cosca?'

  'The very same!' laughed the Styrian. He was affecting a fine leather cap with a ludicrously tall plume, and he flicked at it with a finger. 'I bought a new hat. Or should I say you bought me one, eh, Superior?'

  'So I see.' Glokta glared at the long feather, the flamboyant golden basketwork on the hilt of Cosca's sword. 'I thought we said inconspicuous.'

  'In… con… spicuous?' The Styrian frowned, then shrugged his shoulders. 'Ah, so that was the word. I remember something was said, and I remember I didn't understand it.' He winced, and scratched at his crotch with one hand. 'I think I picked up some passengers from one of those women at the tavern. Little bastards don't half give a man an itch.' Huh. The women are paid to go there. One might have thought the lice would have better taste.

  A shadowy crowd began to form out of the darkness behind Cosca, a few carrying hooded lanterns. A dozen shaggy outlines, then a dozen more, menace floating silently from each one of them like the stink floating from a turd. 'Are these your men?'

  The nearest sported perhaps the worst facial boils that Glokta had ever seen. The man beside him had only one hand, the other having been replaced with a savage-looking hook. A huge fat fellow came next, his pale neck blue with a confusion of badly drawn tattoos. A man almost dwarfish, with a face like a rat and only one eye accompanied him. He had not bothered with a patch, and the socket yawned open under his greasy hair. The list of villainy went on. Two dozen, perhaps, all told, of the most savage-looking criminals Glokta had ever laid eyes on. And I've laid eyes on a few in my time. Strangers to bathwater, certainly. Not a one of them looks like he wouldn't sell his sister for a mark. 'They appear somewhat unreliable,' he murmured.

  'Unreliable? Nonsense, Superior! Out of luck is all, and we both know how that goes, no? Why, there's not a man of them I wouldn't trust my mother to.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'She's been dead these twenty years. What harm could they do her now?' Cosca flung his arm round Glokta's twisted shoulders and drew him close, causing a painful twinge to jab at his hips. 'I'm afraid that pickings are slim.' His warm breath s
melled strongly of spirits and corruption. 'Every man not desperate fled the city the moment the Gurkish arrived. But who cares, eh? I hired them for their guts and their sinews, not their looks. Desperate men are the kind I like! We can understand them, no, you and I? Some jobs call for desperate men only, eh, Superior?'

  Glokta frowned briefly over that collection of gaunt, of bloated, of scarred and ruined faces. How could it possibly be that promising Colonel Glokta, dashing commander of the King's Own first regiment, came to be in charge of such a rabble? He gave a long sigh. But it is a little late now to be finding fine-looking mercenaries, and I suppose these will fill a pit as well as better. 'Very well. Wait here.'

  Glokta looked up at the dark house as he swung the gate open with his free hand and hobbled through. A chink of light peeped out from between the heavy hangings in the front window. He rapped at the door with the handle of his cane. A pause, then the sound of reluctant footsteps shuffling up the hall.

  'Who is it?'

  'Me. Glokta.'

  Bolts drew back and light spilled out into the chill. Ardee's face appeared, lean-looking, grey round the eyes and pink round the nose. Like a dying cat.

  'Superior!' She grinned as she took him by the elbow and half-dragged him over the threshold. 'What a delight! Some conversation at last! I'm so toweringly bored.' Several empty bottles were gathered in the corner of the living room, made to glint angrily by smoky candles and a smouldering log in the grate. The table was cluttered with dirty plates and glasses. The place smelled of sweat and wine, old food and new desperation. Can there be a more miserable occupation than getting drunk on one's own? Wine can keep a happy man happy, on occasion. A sad one it always makes worse.