Logen stared down at him. ‘Get off my leg.’
‘That I will!’ Crummock jerked away and dropped down on his fat arse in the dirt. Dogman had never seen such a performance. Looked like the rumours about him being cracked were right enough. ‘Do you know a fine thing, Bloody-Nine?’
‘More’n one, as it goes.’
‘Here’s another, then. I saw you fight Shama Heartless. I saw you split him open like a pigeon for the pot, and I couldn’t have done it better my blessed self. A lovely thing to see!’ Dogman frowned. He’d been there too, and he didn’t remember much lovely about it. ‘I said then,’ and Crummock rose up to his knees, ‘and I said since,’ and he stood up on his feet, ‘and I said when I came down from the hills to seek you out,’ and he lifted up his arm to point at Logen. ‘That you’re a man more beloved of the moon than any other!’
Dogman looked over at Logen, and Logen shrugged. ‘Who’s to say what the moon likes or doesn’t? What of it?’
‘What of it, he says! Hah! I could watch him kill the whole world, and a thing of beauty it would be! The what of it is, I have a plan. It flowed up with the cold springs under the mountains, and was carried along in the streams under the stones, and washed up on the shore of the sacred lake right beside me, while I was dipping my toes in the frosty.’
Logen scratched at his scarred jaw. ‘We’ve got work to be about, Crummock. You got something worth saying you can get to it.’
‘Then I will. Bethod hates me, and the feeling’s mutual, but he hates you more. Because you’ve stood against him, and you’re living proof a man of the North can be his own man, without bending on his knee and tonguing the arse of that golden-hat bastard and his two fat sons and his witch.’ He frowned. ‘Though I could be persuaded to take my tongue to her. D’you follow me so far?’
‘I’m keeping up,’ said Logen, but Dogman weren’t altogether sure that he was.
‘Just whistle if you drop behind and I’ll come right back for you. My meaning’s this. If Bethod were to get a good chance at catching you all alone, away from your Union friends, your crawling-like-ants sunny-weather lovers over down there yonder, then, well, he might give up a lot to take it. He might be coaxed down from his pretty hills for a chance like that, I’m thinking, hmmm?’
‘You’re betting that he hates me a lot.’
‘What? Do you doubt that a man could hate you that much?’ Crummock turned away, spreading his great long arms out wide at Tul and Grim. ‘But it’s not just you, Bloody-Nine! It’s all of you, and me as well, and my three sons here!’ The girl threw the hammer down again and planted her hands on her hips, but Crummock blathered on regardless. ‘I’m thinking your boys join up with my boys and it might be we’ll have eight hundred spears. We’ll head up north, like we’re going up into the High Places, to get around behind Bethod and play merry mischief with his arse end. I’m thinking that’ll get his blood up. I’m thinking he won’t be able to pass on a chance to put all of us back in the mud.’
The Dogman thought it over. Chances were that a lot of Bethod’s people were jumpy about now. Worried to be fighting on the wrong side of the Whiteflow. Maybe they were hearing the Bloody-Nine was back, and thinking they’d picked the wrong side. Bethod would love to put a few heads on sticks for everyone to look at. Ninefingers, and Crummocki-Phail, Tul Duru and Black Dow, and maybe even the Dogman too. He’d like that, would Bethod. Show the North there was no future in anything but him. He’d like it a lot.
‘Supposing we do wander off north,’ asked Dogman. ‘How’s Bethod even going to know about it?’
Crummock grinned wider than ever. ‘Oh, he’ll know because his witch’ll know.’
‘Bloody witch,’ piped up the lad with the spear, his thin arms trembling as he fought to keep it up straight.
‘That spell-cooking, painted-face bitch Bethod keeps with him. Or does she keep him with her? There’s a question, though. Either way, she’s watching. Ain’t she, Bloody-Nine?’
‘I know who you mean,’ said Logen, and not looking happy. ‘Caurib. A friend o’ mine once told me she had the long eye.’ Dogman didn’t have the first clue about all that, but if Logen was taking it to heart he reckoned he’d better too.
‘The long eye, is it?’ grinned Crummock. ‘Your friend’s got a pretty name for an ugly trick. She sees all manner of goings-on with it. All kind of things it’d be better for us if she didn’t. Bethod trusts her eyes before he trusts his own, these days, and he’ll have her watching for us, and for you in particular. She’ll have both her long eyes open for it, that she will. I may be no wizard,’ and he spun one of the wooden signs around and around on his necklace, ‘but the moon knows I’m no stranger to the business neither.’
‘And what if it goes like you say?’ rumbled Tul, ‘what happens then? Apart from we give Bethod our heads?’
‘Oh, I like my head where it is, big lad. We draw him on, north by north, that’s what the forest told me. There’s a place up in the mountains, a place well loved by the moon. A strong valley, and watched over by the dead of my family, and the dead of my people, and the dead of the mountains, all the way back until when the world was made.’
Dogman scratched his head. ‘A fortress in the mountains?’
‘A strong, high place. High and strong enough for a few to hold off a many until help were to arrive. We lure him on up into the valley, and your Union friends follow up at a lazy distance. Far enough that his witch don’t see ’em coming, she’s so busy looking at us. Then, while he’s all caught up in trying to snuff us out for good and all, the Southerners creep up behind, and—’ He slapped his palms together with an echoing crack. ‘We squash him between us, the sheep-fucking bastard!’
‘Sheep-fucker!’ cursed the girl, kicking at the hammer on the ground.
They all looked at each other for a moment. Dogman didn’t much like the sound of this for a plan. He didn’t much like the notion of trusting their lives to the say-so o’ this crazy hillman. But it sounded like some kind of a chance. Enough that he couldn’t just say no, however much he’d have liked to. ‘We got to talk on this.’
‘Course you do, my new best friends, course you do. Don’t take too long about it though, eh?’ Crummock grinned wide. ‘I been down from the High Places for way too long, and the rest o’ my beautiful children, and my beautiful wives, and the beautiful mountains themselves will all of them be missing me. Think on the sunny side o’ this. If Bethod don’t follow, you get a few nights sat up in the High Places as the summer dies, warming yourselves at my fire, and listening to my songs, and watching the sun going down over the mountains. That sound so bad? Does it?’
‘You thinking of listening to that mad bastard?’ muttered Tul, once they’d got out of earshot. ‘Witches and wizards and all that bloody rubbish? He makes it up as he goes along!’
Logen scratched his face. ‘He’s nowhere near as mad as he sounds. He’s held out against Bethod all these years. The only one who has. Twelve winters is it now, he’s been hiding, and raiding, and keeping one foot ahead? Up in the mountains maybe, but still. He’d have to be slippery as fishes and tough as iron to make that work.’
‘You trust him, then?’ asked Dogman.
‘Trust him?’ Logen snorted. ‘Shit, no. But his feud with Bethod’s deeper even than ours is. He’s right about that witch, I seen her, and I seen some other things this past year . . . if he says she’ll see us, I reckon I believe him. If she doesn’t, and Bethod don’t come, well, nothing lost is there?’
Dogman had that empty feeling, worse’n ever. He looked over at Crummock, sitting on a rock with his children round him, and the madman smiled back a mouthful of yellow teeth. Hardly the man you’d want to hang all your hopes on, but Dogman could feel the wind changing. ‘We’d be taking one bastard of a risk,’ he muttered. ‘What if Bethod caught up to us and got his way?’
‘We move fast, then, don’t we!’ growled Dow. ‘It’s a war. Taking risks is what you do if you reckon on winning!’
>
‘Uh,’ grunted Grim.
Tul nodded his big head. ‘We’ve got to do something. I didn’t come here to watch Bethod sit on a hill. He needs to be got down.’
‘Got down where we can set to work on him!’ hissed Dow.
‘But it’s your choice.’ Logen clapped his hand down on the Dogman’s shoulder. ‘You’re the chief.’
He was the chief. He remembered them deciding on it, gathered round Threetrees’ grave. Dogman had to admit, he’d much rather have told Crummock to fuck himself, then turned round and headed back, and told West they never found a thing except woods. But once you’ve got a task, you get it done. That’s what Threetrees would’ve said. Dogman gave a long sigh, that feeling in his gut bubbling up so high he was right on the point of puking. ‘Alright. But this plan ain’t going to get us anything but dead unless the Union are ready to do their part, and in good time too. We’ll take it to Furious, and let their chief Burr know what we’re about.’
‘Furious?’ asked Logen.
Tul grinned. ‘Long story.’
Flowers and Plaudits
Jezal still did not have the slightest idea why it was necessary for him to wear his best uniform. The damn thing was stiff as a board and creaking with braid. It had been designed for standing to attention in rather than riding, and, as a result, dug painfully into his stomach with every movement of his horse. But Bayaz had insisted, and it was surprisingly difficult to say no to the old fool, whether Jezal was supposed to be in command of this expedition or not. It had seemed easier, in the end, just to do as he was told. So he rode at the head of the long column in some discomfort, constantly tugging at his tunic and sweating profusely in the bright sun. The one consolation was that he got to breathe fresh air. Everyone else had to eat his dust.
To further add to his pain, Bayaz was intent on continuing the themes that had made Jezal so very bored all the way to the edge of the World and back.
‘. . . it is vital for a king to maintain the good opinion of his subjects. And it is not so very hard to do. The lowly have small ambitions, and are satisfied with small indulgences. They need not get fair treatment. They need only think that they do . . .’
Jezal found that after a while he could ignore the droning of the old man’s voice, in the same way that one could ignore the barking of an old dog that barked all the time. He slumped into his saddle and allowed his thoughts to wander. And where else would they find their way, but to Ardee?
He had landed himself in quite a pickle, alright. Out on the plain, things had seemed so very simple. Get home, marry her, happily ever after. Now, back in Adua, back among the powerful, and back in his old habits, they grew more complicated by the day. The possibility of damage to his reputation and his prospects were issues that could not simply be dismissed. He was a Colonel in the King’s Own, and that meant certain standards to uphold.
‘. . . Harod the Great always had respect for the common man. More than once, it was the secret of his victories over his peers . . .’
And then Ardee herself was so much more complicated in person than she had been as a silent memory. Nine parts witty, clever, fearless, attractive. One part a mean and destructive drunk. Every moment with her was a lottery, but perhaps it was that sense of danger that struck the sparks when they touched, made his skin tingle and his mouth go dry . . . his skin was tingling now, even at the thought. He had never felt like this about a woman before, not ever. Surely it was love. It had to be. But was love enough? How long would it last? Marriage, after all, was forever, and forever was a very long time.
An indefinite extension of their current not-so secret romance would have been his preferred choice, but that bastard Glokta had stuck his ruined foot through that possibility. Anvils, and sacks, and canals. Jezal remembered that white monster shoving his bag over a prisoner’s head on a public thoroughfare, and shuddered at the thought. But he had to admit that the cripple was right. Jezal’s visits were not good for that girl’s reputation. One should treat others the way one would want to be treated, he supposed, just as Ninefingers had once said. But it certainly was a damned inconvenience.
‘. . . are you even listening, my boy?’
‘Eh? Er . . . yes, of course. Harod the Great, and so forth. The high respect he had for the common man.’
‘Appeared to have,’ grumbled Bayaz. ‘And he knew how to take a lesson too.’
They were getting close to Adua now, passing out of the farmland and through one of the huddles of shacks, impromptu dwellings, cheap inns and cheaper brothels that had grown up around each of the city’s gates, huddling about the road, each one almost a town in its own right. Up into the long shadow of Casamir’s Wall, the outermost of the city’s lines of defence. A dour guardsmen stood on either side of the high archway, gates marked with the Golden sun of the Union standing open. They passed through the darkness and out into the light. Jezal blinked.
A not inconsiderable number of people had gathered in the cobbled space beyond, pressing in on either side of the road, held back by members of the city watch. They burst into a chorus of happy cheers as they saw him ride through the gate. Jezal wondered for a moment if it was a case of mistaken identity, and they had been expecting someone of actual importance. Harod the Great, perhaps, for all he knew. He soon began to make out the name ‘Luthar’ repeated amongst the noise, however. A girl at the front flung a flower at him, lost under his horse’s hooves, and shouted something he could not make out. But her manner left Jezal with no doubts. All these people had gathered for him.
‘What’s happening?’ he whispered to the First of the Magi.
Bayaz grinned as though he, at least, had expected it. ‘I imagine the people of Adua wish to celebrate your victory over the rebels.’
‘They do?’ He winced and gave a limp-wristed wave, and the cheering grew noticeably in volume. The crowd only thickened as they made their way into the city and the space reduced. There were people scattered up and down the narrow streets, people at the downstairs windows and people higher up, whooping and cheering. More flowers were thrown from a balcony high above the road. One stuck in his saddle and Jezal picked it up, turned it round and round in his hand.
‘All this . . . for me?’
‘Did you not save the city? Did you not stop the rebels, and without spilling a drop of blood on either side?’
‘But they gave up for no reason. I didn’t do anything!’
Bayaz shrugged, snatched the flower from Jezal’s hand and sniffed at it, then tossed it away and nodded his head towards a clump of cheering tradesmen crowding a street corner. ‘It would seem they disagree. Just keep your mouth shut and smile. That’s always good advice.’
Jezal did his best to oblige, but the smiles were not coming easily. Logen Ninefingers, he was reasonably sure, would not have approved. If there was an opposite to trying to look like less than you were, then this, surely, was its very definition. He glanced nervously around, convinced that the crowds would suddenly recognise him for the utter fraud he felt, and replace the flowers and calls of admiration with angry jeers and the contents of their chamber pots.
But it did not happen. The cheering continued as Jezal and his long column of soldiers worked their slow way through the Three Farms district. With each street Jezal passed down he relaxed a little more. He slowly began to feel as if he must indeed have achieved something worthy of the honour. To wonder if he might, in fact, have been a dauntless commander, a masterful negotiator. If the people of the city wished to worship him as their hero, he began to suppose it would be churlish to refuse.
They passed through a gate in Arnault’s Wall and into the central district of the city. Jezal sat up tall in his saddle and puffed out his chest. Bayaz dropped behind to a respectful distance, allowing him to lead the column alone. The cheering mounted as they tramped down the wide Middleway, as they crossed the Four Corners towards the Agriont. It was like the feeling of victory at the Contest, only it had involved considerably less work, and
was that really such an awful thing? What harm could it do? Ninefingers and his humility be damned. Jezal had earned the attention. He plastered a radiant smile across his face. He lifted his arm with self-satisfied confidence, and began to wave.
The great walls of the Agriont rose up ahead and Jezal crossed the moat to the looming south gatehouse, rode up the long tunnel into the fortress, the crackling hooves and tramping boots of the King’s Own echoing in the darkness behind him. He processed slowly down the Kingsway, approvingly observed by the great stone monarchs of old and their advisers, between high buildings crammed with onlookers, and into the Square of Marshals.
Crowds had been carefully arranged on each side of the vast open space, leaving a long track of bare stone down the middle. At the far end a wide stand of benches had been erected, a crimson canopy in the centre denoting the presence of royalty. The noise and spectacle were breathtaking.
Jezal remembered the triumph laid on for Marshal Varuz when he returned from his victory over the Gurkish, remembered staring wide-eyed, little more than a child. He had caught one fleeting glimpse of the Marshal himself, seated high on a grey charger, but never imagined that one day he might ride in the place of honour. It still seemed strange, if he was honest. After all, he had defeated a bunch of peasants rather than the most powerful nation in the Circle of the World. Still, it was hardly his place to judge who was worthy of a triumph and who was not, was it?
And so Jezal spurred his horse forwards, passing between the rows of smiling faces, waving arms, through air thick with support and approval. He saw that the great men of the Closed Council were arranged across the front row of benches. He recognised Arch Lector Sult in shining white, High Justice Marovia in solemn black. His erstwhile fencing master, Lord Marshal Varuz, was there, Lord Chamberlain Hoff just beside him. All applauding, mostly with a faint disdain which Jezal found rather ungracious. In the midst, well propped up on a gilded chair, was the King himself.
The First Law Trilogy Boxed Set: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings Page 132