He pushed his hand absently through the cold, hard, glittering stones, and they tickled pleasantly at the skin between his fingers. Pleasant, but perilous. We must still tread carefully. More carefully than ever . . .
Fear
It was a long way to the edge of the World, of that there could be no doubt. A long, and a lonely, and a nervous way. The sight of the corpses on the plain had worried everyone. The passing riders had made matters worse. The discomforts of the journey had in no way diminished. Jezal was still constantly hungry, usually too cold, often wet through, and would probably be saddle-sore for the rest of his days. Every night he stretched out on the hard and lumpy ground, dozed and dreamed of home, only to wake to the pale morning more tired and aching than when he lay down. His skin crawled, and chafed, and stung with the unfamiliar feeling of dirt, and he was forced to admit that he had begun to smell almost as vile as the others. It was enough, altogether, to make a civilised man run mad, and now, to add to all of this, there was the constant nagging of danger.
From that point of view, the terrain was not on Jezal’s side. Hoping to shake off any pursuers, Bayaz had ordered them away from the river a few days earlier. The ancient road wound now through deep scars in the plain, through rocky gullies, through shadowy gorges, alongside chattering streams in deep valleys.
Jezal began to think on the endless, grinding flatness almost with nostalgia. At least out there one did not look at every rock, and shrub, and fold in the ground and wonder whether there was a crowd of bloodthirsty enemies behind it. He had chewed his fingernails almost until the blood ran. Every sound made him bite his tongue and spin around in his saddle, clutching at his steels, staring for a murderer, who turned out to be a bird in a bush. It was not fear, of course, for Jezal dan Luthar, he told himself, would laugh in the face of danger. An ambush, or a battle, or a breathless pursuit across the plain – these things, he imagined, he could have taken in his stride. But this endless waiting, this mindless tension, this merciless rubbing-by of slow minutes was almost more than he could stand.
It might have helped had there been someone with whom he could share his unease, but, as far as companionship went, little had changed. The cart still rolled along the cracked old road while Quai sat grim and silent on top. Bayaz said nothing but for the occasional lecture on the qualities of great leadership, qualities which seemed markedly absent in himself. Longfoot was off scouting out the route, only appearing every day or two to let them know how skilfully he was doing it. Ferro frowned at everything as though it was her personal enemy, and at Jezal most of all, it sometimes seemed, her hands never far from her weapons. She spoke rarely, and then only to Ninefingers, to snarl about ambushes, or covering their tracks better, or the possibilities of being followed.
The Northman himself was something of a puzzle. When Jezal had first laid eyes on him, gawping at the gate of the Agriont, he had seemed less than an animal. Out here in the wild, though, the rules were different. One could not simply walk away from a man one disliked, then do one’s best to avoid him, belittle him in company, and insult him behind his back. Out here you were stuck with the companions you had, and, being stuck with him, Jezal had come slowly to realise that Ninefingers was just a man, after all. A stupid, and a thuggish, and a hideously ugly one, no doubt. As far as wit and culture went, he was a cut below the lowliest peasant in the fields of the Union, but Jezal had to admit that out of all the group, the Northman was the one he had come to hate least. He had not the pomposity of Bayaz, the watchfulness of Quai, the boastfulness of Longfoot, or the simple viciousness of Ferro. Jezal would not have been ashamed to ask a farmer his opinion on the raising of crops, or a smith his opinion on the making of armour, however dirty, ugly or low-born they might have been. Why not consult a hardened killer on the subject of violence?
‘I understand that you have led men in battle,’ Jezal tried as his opening.
The Northman turned his dark, slow eyes on him. ‘More than once.’
‘And fought in duels.’
‘Aye.’ He scratched at the ragged scars on his stubbly cheek. ‘I didn’t come to look like this from a wobbly hand at shaving.’
‘If your hand was that wobbly, you would choose, perhaps, to grow a beard.’
Ninefingers chuckled. Jezal was almost used to the sight now. It was still hideous, of course, but smacked more of good-natured ape than crazed murderer. ‘I might at that,’ he said.
Jezal thought about it a moment. He did not wish to make himself appear weak, but honesty might earn the trust of a simple man. If it worked with dogs, why not with Northmen? ‘I myself,’ he ventured, ‘have never fought in a full-blooded battle.’
‘You don’t say?’
‘No, truly. My friends are in Angland now, fighting against Bethod and his savages.’ Ninefingers’ eyes swivelled sideways. ‘I mean . . . that is to say . . . fighting against Bethod. I would be with them myself, had not Bayaz asked me to come on this . . . venture.’
‘Their loss is our gain.’
Jezal looked sharply across. From a subtler source, that might almost have sounded like sarcasm. ‘Bethod started this war, of course. A most dishonourable act of unprovoked aggression on his part.’
‘You’ll get no argument from me on that score. Bethod’s got a gift when it comes to starting wars. The only thing he’s better at is the finishing of ’em.’
Jezal laughed. ‘You can’t mean that you think he’ll beat the Union?’
‘He’s beaten worse odds, but you know best. We don’t all have your experience.’
The laughter stuttered out in Jezal’s throat. He was almost sure that had been irony, and it made him think for a moment. Was Ninefingers looking at him now, and behind that scarred, that plodding, that battered mask thinking, ‘what a fool’? Could it be that Bayaz had been right? That there was something to be learned from this Northman after all? There was only one way to find out.
‘What’s a battle like?’ he asked.
‘Battles are like men. No two are ever quite the same.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Imagine waking up at night to hear a crashing and a shouting, scrambling out of your tent into the snow with your trousers falling down, to see men all around you killing one another. Nothing but moonlight to see by, no clue who’re enemies and who’re friends, no weapon to fight with.’
‘Confusing,’ said Jezal.
‘No doubt. Or imagine crawling in the mud, between the stomping boots, trying to get away but not knowing where to go, with an arrow in your back and a sword cut across your arse, squealing like a pig and waiting for a spear to stick you through, a spear you won’t even see coming.’>
‘Painful,’ agreed Jezal.
‘Very. Or imagine standing in a circle of shields no more than ten strides across, all held by men roaring their loudest. There’s just you and one other man in there, and that man’s won a reputation for being the hardest bastard in the North, and only one of you can leave alive.’
‘Hmm,’ murmured Jezal.
‘That’s right. You like the sound of any of those?’ Jezal did not, and Ninefingers smiled. ‘I didn’t think so, and honestly? Nor do I. I’ve been in all kind of battles, and skirmishes, and fights. Most of them started in chaos, and all of ’em ended in it, and not once did I not come near to shitting myself at some point.’
‘You?’
The Northman chuckled. ‘Fearlessness is a fool’s boast, to my mind. The only men with no fear in them are the dead, or the soon to be dead, maybe. Fear teaches you caution, and respect for your enemy, and to avoid sharp edges used in anger. All good things in their place, believe me. Fear can bring you out alive, and that’s the very best anyone can hope for from any fight. Every man who’s worth a damn feels fear. It’s the use you make of it that counts.’
‘Be scared? That’s your advice?’
‘My advice would be to find a good woman and steer well clear of the whole bloody business, and it’s a shame no one told
me the same twenty years ago.’ He looked sideways at Jezal. ‘But if, say, you’re stuck out on some great wide plain in the middle of nowhere and can’t avoid it, there’s three rules I’d take to a fight. First, always do your best to look the coward, the weakling, the fool. Silence is a warrior’s best armour, the saying goes. Hard looks and hard words have never won a battle yet, but they’ve lost a few.’
‘Look the fool, eh? I see.’ Jezal had built his whole life around trying to appear the cleverest, the strongest, the most noble. It was an intriguing idea, that a man might choose to look like less than he was.
‘Second, never take an enemy lightly, however much the dullard he seems. Treat every man like he’s twice as clever, twice as strong, twice as fast as you are, and you’ll only be pleasantly surprised. Respect costs you nothing, and nothing gets a man killed quicker than confidence.’
‘Never underestimate the foe. A wise precaution.’ Jezal was beginning to realise that he had underestimated this Northman. He wasn’t half the idiot he appeared to be.
‘Third, watch your opponent as close as you can, and listen to opinions if you’re given them, but once you’ve got your plan in mind, you fix on it and let nothing sway you. Time comes to act, you strike with no backward glances. Delay is the parent of disaster, my father used to tell me, and believe me, I’ve seen some disasters.’
‘No backward glances,’ muttered Jezal, nodding slowly to himself. ‘Of course.’
Ninefingers puffed out his pitted cheeks. ‘There’s no replacement for seeing it, and doing it, but master all that, and you’re halfway to beating anyone, I reckon.’
‘Halfway? What about the other half?’
The Northman shrugged. ‘Luck.’
‘I don’t like this,’ growled Ferro, frowning up at the steep sides of the gorge. Jezal wondered if there was anything in the world she did like.
‘You think we’re followed?’ asked Bayaz. ‘You see anyone?’
‘How could I see anyone from down here? That’s the point!’
‘Good ground for an ambush,’ muttered Ninefingers. Jezal looked around him, nervously. Broken rocks, bushes, scrubby trees, the ground was full of hiding places.
‘Well, this is the route that Longfoot picked for us,’ grumbled Bayaz. ‘and there’s no purpose in hiring a cleaner if you’re going to swab the latrines yourself. Where the hell is that damn Navigator anyway? Never around when you want him, only turns up to eat and boast for hours on end! If you knew how much that bastard cost me—’
‘Damn it.’ Ninefingers pulled his horse up and clambered stiffly down from his saddle. A fallen tree trunk, wood cracked and grey, lay across the gorge, blocking the road.
‘I don’t like this.’ Ferro shrugged her bow from her shoulder.
‘Neither do I,’ grumbled Ninefingers, taking a step towards the fallen tree. ‘But you have to be real—’
‘That’s far enough!’ The voice echoed back and forth around the valley, brash and confident. Quai hauled on the reins and brought the cart to a sudden halt. Jezal looked along the lip of the gorge, his heart thumping in his mouth. He saw the speaker now. A big man dressed in antique leather armour, sitting carelessly on the edge of the drop with one leg dangling, his long hair flapping softly in the breeze. A pleasant and a friendly-looking man, as far as Jezal could tell at this distance, with a wide smile on his face.
‘My name is Finnius, a humble servant of the Emperor Cabrian!’
‘Cabrian?’ shouted Bayaz. ‘I heard he’d lost his reason!’
‘He’s got some interesting ideas.’ Finnius shrugged. ‘But he’s always seen us right. Let me explain matters – we’re all around you!’ A serious-seeming man with a short sword and shield stepped out from behind the dead tree trunk. Two more appeared, and then three more, creeping out from behind the rocks, behind the bushes, all with serious faces and serious weapons. Jezal licked his lips. He would laugh in the face of danger, of course, but now it came to it nothing seemed at all amusing. He looked over his shoulder. More men had come from behind the rocks they had passed a few moments before, blocking the valley in the other direction.
Ninefingers folded his arms. ‘Just once,’ he murmured, ‘I’d like to take someone else by surprise.’
‘There’s a couple more of us,’ shouted Finnius, ‘up here, with me! Good hands with bows, and ready with arrows.’ Jezal saw their outlines now against the white sky, the curved shapes of their weapons. ‘So you see that you’ll be going no further down this road!’
Bayaz spread his palms. ‘Perhaps we can come to some arrangement that suits us both! You need only name your price and—’
‘Your money’s no good to us, old man, and I’m deeply wounded by the assumption! We’re soldiers, not thieves! We have orders to find a certain group of people, a group of people wandering out in the middle of nowhere, far from the travelled roads! An old bald bastard with a sickly-looking boy, some stuck-up Union fool, a scarred whore, and an ape of a Northerner! You seen a crowd that might fit that description?’
‘If I’m the whore,’ shouted Ninefingers, ‘who’s the Northerner?’
Jezal winced. No jokes, please no jokes, but Finnius only chuckled. ‘They didn’t tell me you were funny. Reckon that’s a bonus. At least until we kill you. Where’s the other one, eh? The Navigator?’
‘No idea,’ growled Bayaz, ‘unfortunately. If anyone dies it should be him.’
‘Don’t take it too hard. We’ll catch up with him later.’ And Finnius laughed an easy laugh, and the men around them grinned and fingered their weapons. ‘So if you’d be good enough to give your arms to those fellows ahead of you, we can get you trussed up and start back towards Darmium before nightfall!’
‘And when we get there?’
Finnius gave a happy shrug. ‘Not my business. I don’t ask questions of the Emperor, and you don’t ask questions of me. That way, no one gets skinned alive. Do you take my meaning, old man?’
‘Your meaning is hard to miss, but I am afraid that Darmium is quite out of our way.’
‘What are you,’ called Finnius, ‘soft in the head?’
The nearest man stepped forward and grabbed hold of Bayaz’ bridle. ‘That’s enough of that,’ he growled.
Jezal felt that horrible sucking in his guts. The air around Bayaz’ shoulders trembled, like the hot air above a forge. The foremost of the men frowned, opened his mouth to speak. His face seemed to flatten, then his head broke open and he was suddenly snatched away as though flicked by a giant, unseen finger. He had not even time to scream.
Nor had the four men who stood behind him. Their ruined bodies, the broken remnants of the grey tree trunk, and a great quantity of earth and rocks around them were ripped from the ground and flung through the air to shatter against the rocky wall of the gorge a hundred strides distant with a sound like a house collapsing.
Jezal’s mouth hung open. His body froze. It had taken only a terrifying instant. One moment five men had been standing there, the next they were slaughtered meat among a heap of settling debris. Somewhere behind him he heard the hum of a bowstring. There was a cry and a body dropped down into the valley, bounced from the sheer rocks and flopped rag-like, face down in the stream.
‘Ride, then!’ roared Bayaz, but Jezal could only sit in his saddle and gape. The air around the Magus was still moving, more than ever. The rocks behind him rippled and twisted like the stones on the bed of a stream. The old man frowned, stared down at his hands. ‘No . . .’ he muttered, turning them over before him.
The brown leaves on the ground were lifting up into air, fluttering as though on a gust of wind. ‘No,’ said Bayaz, his eyes opening wide. His whole body had begun to shake. Jezal gawped as the loose stones around them rose from the ground, drifting impossibly upwards. Sticks began to snap from the bushes, clods of grass began to tear themselves away from the rocks, his coat rustled and flapped, dragged upwards by some unseen force.
‘No!’ screamed Bayaz, then his shoulders hunched
in a sudden spasm. A tree beside them split apart with a deafening crack and splinters of wood showered out into the whipping air. Someone was shouting but Jezal could scarcely hear them. His horse reared and he had not the wit to hold on. He crashed onto his back on the earth while the whole valley shimmered, trembled, vibrated around him.
Bayaz’ head snapped back, rigid, one hand up and clawing at the air. A rock the size of a man’s head flew past Jezal’s face and burst apart against a boulder. The air was filled with a storm of whipping rubbish, of fragments of wood, and stone, and soil, and broken gear. Jezal’s ears were ringing with a terrifying clattering, rattling, howling. He flung himself down on his face, crossed his arms over his head and squeezed his eyes shut.
He thought of his friends. Of West, and Jalenhorm, and Kaspa, of Lieutenant Brint, even. He thought of his family and his home, of his father and his brothers. He thought of Ardee. If he lived to see them again, he would be a better man. He swore it to himself with silent, trembling lips as the unnatural wind ripped the valley apart around him. He would no longer be selfish, no longer be vain, no longer be lazy. He would be a better friend, a better son, a better lover, if only he lived through this. If only he lived through this. If only . . .
He could hear his own terrified breath coming in quick gasps, the blood surging in his head.
The noise had stopped.
Jezal opened his eyes. He lifted his hands from his head and a shower of twigs and soil fell around him. The gorge was full of settling leaves, misty with choking dust. Ninefingers was standing nearby, red blood running down his dirty face from a cut on his forehead. He was walking slowly sideways. He had his sword drawn, hanging down by his leg. Someone was facing him. One of the men that had blocked the way behind them, a tall man with a mop of red hair. Circling each other. Jezal watched, kneeling, mouth wide open. He felt in some small way that he should intervene, but he had not the beginnings of an idea how to do so.
The First Law Trilogy Boxed Set: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings Page 77