Last Argument Of Kings: Book Three (The First Law 3)

‘Nice day for it,’ said Crummock.

‘Aye.’ But Logen wasn’t sure there was any such a thing.

‘Well, if Bethod don’t show, and we get nothing killed at all, at least you lot will have done wonders for my wall, eh?’

It was amazing how well and how fast a man could patch a wall when it was the pile of stones that might save his own life. A few short days and they had the whole stretch of it built up and mortared, most of the ivy cut away. From inside the fort, where the ground was that much higher, it didn’t look too fearsome. From outside it was three times the height of a tall man up to the walkway. They’d now made the parapet neck-high at the top, with plenty of good slots for shooting and throwing rocks from. Then they’d dug out a decent ditch in front, and lined it with sharp stakes.

They were still digging, over on the left where the wall met the cliff and it was easiest to climb over. That was Dow’s stretch, and Logen could hear him shouting at his boys over the sound of shovels. ‘Get digging, you lazy fucks! I’ll not be killed for your lack of work! Put your back into it, you bastards!’ and so on, all day long. One way of getting work out of a man, Logen reckoned.

They’d dug the ditch out especially deep right in front of the old gate. A nice reminder to everyone that there were no plans to leave. But it was still the weakest spot, and there was no missing it. That was where Logen would be, if Bethod came. Right in the middle, on Shivers’ stretch of wall. He was standing above the archway now, not far from Logen and Crummock, his long hair flapping about in the breeze, pointing out some cracks that still needed mortaring.

‘Wall’s looking good!’ Logen shouted at him.

Shivers looked round, worked his mouth, then spat over his shoulder. ‘Aye,’ he growled, and turned away.

Crummock leaned close. ‘If it comes to a battle you’ll have to watch your back with that one, Bloody-Nine.’

‘I reckon so.’ The middle of a fight was a good place to settle a score with a man on your own side. No one ever checked too carefully if the corpses got it in the back or the front once the fighting was done. Everyone too busy crying at their cuts, or digging, or running away. Logen gave the big hillman a long stare. ‘I’ll have a lot of men to watch if it comes to a battle. We ain’t so very friendly that you won’t be one of ’em.’

‘Likewise,’ said Crummock, grinning all the way across his big, bearded face. ‘We both got a reputation for being none too picky who gets killed, once the killing starts. But that’s no bad thing. Too much trust makes men sloppy.’

‘Too much trust?’ It had been a while since Logen had too much of anything except enemies. He jerked his thumb towards the tower. ‘I’m going up, check if they’ve seen anything.’

‘I hope they have!’ said Crummock, rubbing his fat palms together. ‘I hope that bastard comes today!’

Logen hopped down from the wall and walked out across the fort, if you could call it that, past Carls and hillmen, sat in groups eating, or talking, or cleaning weapons. A few who’d been on guard through the night wrapped up in blankets, asleep. He passed the pen where the sheep were huddled together, a good deal fewer than there had been. He passed the makeshift forge set up near the stone shed, a couple of soot-smeared men working a bellows, another pouring metal into moulds for arrow heads. They’d need a damn lot of arrow-heads if Bethod came calling. He came to the narrow steps cut into the rock-face and took them two at a time, up above the fort to the top of the tower.

There was a big pile of rocks for throwing up there, on that shelf on the mountainside, and six big barrels wedged full of shafts. The pick of the archers stood at the new-mortared parapets, the men with the best eyes and the best ears, keeping watch for Bethod. Logen saw the Dogman in amongst the rest, with Grim on one side of him and Tul on the other.

‘Chief!’ It still made Logen smile to say it. A long time, they’d done things the other way around, but it worked a lot better like this, to his mind. At least no one was scared all the time. Not of their own chief, anyway. ‘See anything?’

The Dogman grinned round, and offered him out a flask. ‘A lot, as it goes.’

‘Uh,’ said Grim. The sun was getting up above the mountains now, slitting the clouds with bright lines, eating into the shadows across the hard land, burning away the dawn haze. The great fells loomed up bold and careless on either side, smeared with yellow green grass and fern on the slopes, strips of bare rock breaking through the brown summits. Below, the bare valley was quiet and still. Spotted with thorn bushes and clumps of stunted trees, creased with the paths of dried-out streams. Just as empty as it had been the day before, and the day before that, and ever since they’d got there.

It reminded Logen of his youth, climbing up in the High Places, alone. Days at a time, testing himself against the mountains. Before his was a name that anyone had heard of. Before he married, or had children, and before his wife and his children went back to the mud. The happy valleys of the past. He sucked in a long, cold breath of the high air, and he blew it out. ‘It’s quite a spot for a view, alright, but I meant have we seen anything of our old friend.’

‘You mean Bethod, the right royal King of the Northmen? No, no sign of him. Not a hair.’

Tul shook his big head. ‘Would’ve expected there to be some sign by now, if he was coming.’

Logen sloshed some water round his mouth and spat it out over the side of the tower, watched it splatter on the rocks way down below. ‘Maybe he won’t fall for it.’ He could see the happy side of Bethod not coming. Vengeance is a nice enough notion at a distance, but the getting of it close up isn’t so very pretty. Especially when you’re outnumbered ten to one with nowhere to run to.

‘Maybe he won’t at that,’ said Dogman, wistful. ‘How’s the wall?’

‘Alright, long as they don’t bring such a thing as a ladder with ’em. How long do you reckon we wait, before we—’

‘Uh,’ grunted Grim, his long finger pointing down into the valley.

Logen saw a flicker of movement down there. And again. He swallowed. A couple of men, maybe, creeping through the boulders like beetles through gravel. He felt the men tense up all around him, heard them muttering. ‘Shit,’ he hissed. He looked sideways at the Dogman, and the Dogman looked back. ‘Seems like Crummock’s plan worked.’

‘Seems that way. Far as getting Bethod to follow us, at least.’

‘Aye. The rest is the tricky bit.’ The bit that was more than likely to get them all killed, but Logen knew they were all thinking it without him saying a word.

‘Now we just hope that the Union keeps their end of the deal,’ said Dogman.

‘We hope.’ Logen tried to smile, but it didn’t come out too good. Hoping had never turned out that well for him.

Their signs were all there, all Bethod’s best from way back – Whitesides, Goring, Pale-as-Snow, Littlebone. Then there were others – sharp and ragged marks from out past the Crinna. Wild men, made dark and bloody deals with Bethod. Dogman could hear them whooping and calling to each other, strange sounds like animals might make in the forest.

Quite a gathering, all in all, and the Dogman could smell the fear and the doubt thick as soup up on the wall. A lot of weapons being fingered, a lot of lips being chewed. He did his best to keep his face hard and careless, the way that Threetrees would’ve done. The way a chief should. However much his own knees wanted to tremble.

‘How many now, you reckon?’ asked Logen.

Dogman let his eyes wander over ’em, thinking about it. ‘Eight thousand do you think, or ten, maybe?’

A pause. ‘That’s about what I was thinking.’

‘A lot more’n us, anyway,’ Dogman said, keeping his voice low.

‘Aye. But fights aren’t always won by the bigger numbers.’

‘Course not.’ Dogman worked his lips as he looked at all them men. ‘Just mostly.’ There was plenty going on down there, up at the front, shovels glinting, a ditch and an earth rampart taking shape, all across the valley.

‘Doing some digging o’ their own,’ grunted Dow.

‘Always was thorough, was Bethod,’ said Dogman. ‘Taking his time. Doing it right.’

Logen nodded. ‘Make sure none of us get away.’

Dogman heard the sound of Crummock’s laughter behind him. ‘Getting away wasn’t ever the purpose o’ this, though, eh?’

Bethod’s own standard was going up now, near to the back but still towering over the others. Huge great thing, red circle on black. Dogman frowned at it, flapping in the breeze. He remembered seeing it months ago, back in Angland. Back when Threetrees had still been alive, and Cathil too. He worked his tongue round his sour mouth.

‘King o’ the fucking Northmen,’ he muttered.

A few men came out from the front, where they were digging, started walking up towards the wall. Five of ’em, all in good armour, the one at the front with his arms spread out wide.

‘Jawing time,’ muttered Dow, then gobbed down into the ditch. They came up close, the five, up in front of the patched-up gate, mail coats shining dull in the brightening sun. The first of ’em had long white hair and one white eye, and weren’t too hard to remember. White-Eye Hansul. He looked older than he used to, but didn’t they all? He’d been the one to ask Threetrees to surrender, at Uffrith, and been told to piss off. He’d had shit thrown down on him at Heonan. He’d offered duels to Black Dow, and to Tul Duru, and to Harding Grim. Duels against Bethod’s champion. Duels against the Bloody-Nine. He’d done a lot of talking for Bethod, and he’d told a lot o’ lies.

‘That Shite-Eye Hansul down there?’ jeered Black Dow at him. ‘Still sucking on Bethod’s cock, are you?’

The old warrior grinned up at them. ‘Man’s got to feed his family somehow, don’t he, and one cock tastes pretty much like another, if you ask me! Don’t pretend like your mouths ain’t all tasted salty enough before!’

He had some kind of point there, the Dogman had to admit. They’d all fought for Bethod themselves, after all. ‘What’re you after, Hansul?’ he shouted. ‘Bethod want to surrender to us, does he?’

‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you, outnumbered like he is, but that’s not why I’m here. He’s ready to fight, just like always, but I’m more of a talker than a fighter, and I talked him into giving you all a chance. I got two sons down there, in with the rest, and call me selfish but I’d rather not have ’em in harm’s way. I’m hoping we can maybe talk our way clear of this.’

‘Don’t seem too likely!’ shouted Dogman, ‘but give it a go if you must, I’ve got nothing else pressing on today!’

‘Here’s the thing, then! Bethod don’t particularly want to waste time, and sweat, and blood on climbing your little shit-pile of a wall. He’s got business with the Southerners he wants to get settled. It’s scarcely worth the breath of pointing out the bastard of a fix you’re in. We’ve got the numbers more’n ten to one, I reckon. Much more, and you’ve no way out. Bethod says any man wants to give up now can go in peace. All he has to do is give over his weapons.’

‘And his head soon afterwards, eh?’ barked Dow.

Hansul took a big breath in, like he hardly expected to be believed. ‘Bethod says any man wants to can go free. That’s his word.’

‘Fuck his word!’ Dow sneered at him, and down the walls men jeered and spat their support. ‘D’you think we ain’t all seen him break it ten times before? I done shits worth more!’

‘Lies, o’ course,’ chuckled Crummock, ‘but it’s traditional, no? To get a bit o’ lying done, before we get started on the hard work. You’d feel insulted if he didn’t give it some kind of a try at least. Any man, is it?’ he called down. ‘What about Crummock-i-Phail, can he go free? What about the Bloody-Nine?’

Hansul’s face sagged at the name. ‘It’s true then? Ninefingers is up there, is he?’

Dogman felt Logen come up beside and show himself on the wall. White-Eye turned pale, and his shoulders slumped. ‘Well,’ Dogman heard him saying quiet, ‘it has to be blood, then.’

Logen leaned lazily on the parapet, and he gave Hansul and his Carls a look. That hungry, empty look, like he was picking which one of a herd o’ sheep to slaughter first. ‘You can tell Bethod we’ll come out.’ He left a pause. ‘Once we’ve killed the fucking lot o’ you.’

A ripple of laughter went down the walls, and men jeered and shook their weapons in the air. Not funny words, particularly, but hard ones, which was what they all needed to hear, Dogman reckoned. Good way to get rid of their fear, for a moment. He even managed half a smile himself.

White-Eye just stood there, in front of their rickety gate, and he waited for the boys to go quiet. ‘I heard you was chief of this crowd now, Dogman. So you don’t have to take your orders from this blood-mad butcher no more. That your answer as well? That the way it is?’

Dogman shrugged. ‘Just what other way did you think it’d be? We didn’t come here to talk, Hansul. You can piss off back, now.’

Some more laughter, and some more cheers, and one lad down at Shivers’ end of the wall pulled his trousers down and stuck his bare arse over the parapet. So that was that for the negotiations.

White-Eye shook his head. ‘Alright, then. I’ll tell him. Back to the mud with the lot o’ you, I reckon, and well earned. You can tell the dead I tried, when you meet ’em!’ He started picking his way back down the valley, the four Carls behind him.

Logen loomed forward, all of a sudden. ‘I’ll be looking for your sons, Hansul!’ he screamed, spit flying out his snarling, grinning mouth and away into the wind, ‘When the work begins! You can tell Bethod I’m waiting! Tell ’em all I’ll be waiting!’

Bethod’s ditch was deep enough for him, and the Thralls had put away their shovels and moved behind it. The Dogman had climbed the steps back to the tower, no doubt taken up his bow beside Grim and Tul, and was waiting. Crummock was behind the wall with his Hillmen, lined up fierce and ready. Dow was with his lads on the left. Red Hat was with his boys on the right. Shivers wasn’t far from Logen, both of them stood above the gate, waiting.

The standards down in the valley flapped and rustled gently in the wind. A hammer clanged once, twice, three times in the fortress behind them. A bird called, high above. A man whispered, somewhere, then was still. Logen closed his eyes, and tipped his face back, and he felt the hot sun and the cool breeze of the High Places on his skin. All as quiet as if he’d been alone, and there were no ten thousand men about him eager to set to killing one another. So still, and calm, he almost smiled. Was this what life would have been, if he’d never held a blade?

For the length of three breaths or so, Logen Ninefingers was a man of peace.

Then he heard the sound of men moving, and he opened his eyes. Bethod’s Carls shuffled to the sides of the valley, rank after rank of them, with a crunching of feet and a rattling of gear. They left a rocky path, an open space through their midst. Out of that gap black shapes came, swarming over the ditch like angry ants from a broken nest, boiling up the slope towards the wall in a formless mass of twisted limbs, and snarling mouths and scraping claws.

Shanka, and even Logen had never seen half so many in one place. The valley crawled with them – a gibbering, clattering, squawking infestation.

‘By the fucking dead,’ someone whispered.

Logen wondered if he should shout something to the men on the walls around him. If he should cry, ‘Steady!’, or ‘Hold!’. Something to help put some heart in his lads, the way a leader was meant to. But what would have been the point? Every one of them had fought before and knew his business. Every one of them knew that it was fight or die, and there was no better spur to a man’s courage than that.

So Logen gritted his teeth, and he curled his fingers tight round the cold grip of the Maker’s sword, and he slid the dull metal from its scarred sheath, and he watched the Flatheads come. A hundred strides away now, maybe, the front runners, and coming on fast.

‘Ready your bows!’ roared Logen.

‘Bows!’ echoed Shivers.

‘Arrows!’ came Dow’s harsh scream from down the wall, and Red Hat’s bellow from the other side. All around Logen the bows creaked as they were drawn, men taking their aim, jaws clenched, faces grim and dirty. The Flatheads came on, heedless, teeth shining, tongues lolling, bitter eyes bright with hate. Soon, now, very soon. Logen spun the grip of the sword round in his hand.

‘Soon,’ he whispered.

Bows clicked and shafts twittered and Shanka died down in the valley, and the archers took aim, nice and easy, loosing ’em off and on to the next. Dogman heard the order from down below and he saw the twitch and flicker of shafts flying from the walls. More Flatheads dropped, thrashing and struggling in the dirt.

‘Easy as squashing ants in a bowl!’ someone shouted.

‘Aye!’ growled the Dogman, ‘except ants won’t climb up out of that bowl and cut your fucking head off! Less talk and more arrows!’ He watched the first Shanka come up to their fresh-dug ditch, start floundering in, trying to drag the stakes down, scrabbling about at the bottom of the wall.

Tul heaved a great stone up over his head, leaned out and flung it spinning down with a roar. Dogman saw it crash into a Shanka’s head below in the ditch and dash its brains out, red against the rocks, saw it bounce and tumble into others, send a couple reeling. More fell, screeching as shafts flitted down into them, but there were plenty behind, sliding into the ditch, swarming over each other. They crushed up to the wall, spreading out down its length, a few of them hurling spears up at the men on top, or shooting clumsy arrows.

Now they were starting to climb, claws digging into pitted stone, hauling themselves up, and up. Slow across most of the wall, and getting torn off by rocks and arrows from above. Quicker on the far side, over on the left, furthest from the Dogman and his boys, where Black Dow had the watch. Even quicker round the gate, where there was still some ivy stuck to the stone.

‘Damn it, but those bastards can climb!’ hissed the Dogman, fumbling out his next shaft.

‘Uh,’ grunted Grim.

Men shot arrows and ducked down as arrows bounced from stone. A spear went twittering past over Logen’s head. Down below he could hear the Shanka scratching and tearing at the gates, beating at them with clubs and hammers, could hear them shrieking with rage. Shanka hissed and squawked as they tried to pull themselves over the parapet and men hacked at them with sword and axe, poked them off the wall with spears.

He could hear Shivers roaring, ‘Get ’em away from the gate! Away from the gate!’ Men bellowed curses. One Carl who’d been leaning out over the parapet fell back, coughing. He had a Shanka’s spear through him, just under his shoulder, the point making the shirt stick right up off his back. He blinked down at the warped shaft, opened his mouth to say something. He groaned, took a couple of wobbling steps, and a big Flathead started dragging itself over the parapet behind him, its arm stretched out on the stone.

The Maker’s sword chopped deep into it just below the elbow, spattering sticky spots across Logen’s face. The blade caught stone and made his hand sing, sent him stumbling long enough for the Shanka to drag itself over, its flopping arm only just held on by a flap of skin and sinew, dark blood drooling out in long spurts.

It came for Logen with its other claw but he caught its wrist, kicked its knee sideways and brought it down. Before it could get up he’d chopped a long gash out of its back, splinters of white bone showing in the great wound. It thrashed and struggled, splattering blood around, and Logen caught it tight under the throat, heaved it back over the wall and flung it off. It fell, and crashed into another just starting to climb. Both of them went sprawling in the ditch, one scrabbling around with a broken stake in its throat.

A young lad stood there, gawping, bow hanging limp from his hand.

‘Did I tell you to stop fucking shooting?’ Logen roared at him, and he blinked and nocked a shaft with a trembling hand, hurried back to the parapet. There were men everywhere fighting, and shouting, shooting arrows and swinging blades. He saw three Carls stabbing at a Flathead with their spears. He saw Shivers plant a blow in the small of another’s back, blood leaping in the air in dark streaks. He saw a man smash a Flathead in the face with his shield, just as it got to the top of the wall, and knock it into the empty air. Logen slashed at a Shanka’s hand, slipped in some blood and fell on his side, nearly stabbed himself. He crawled a stride or two and fumbled his way up. He hacked a Shanka’s arm off that was already spitted thrashing on a Carl’s spear, chopped halfway through another’s neck as it showed itself over the parapet. He lurched after it and stared over.

One Shanka was still on the wall, and Logen was just pointing to it when an arrow from off the tower took it in the back. It crashed down into the ditch, stuck on a stake. The ones round the gate were all done, crushed with rocks and bristling with broken arrows. That was it for the centre, and Red Hat’s side was already clear. Over on the left there were still a few up on the walls, but Dow’s boys were getting well on top of them now. Even as Logen watched he saw a couple flung down bloody into the ditch.

In the valley they started wavering, edging away, squeaking and shrieking, arrows still falling among them from the Dogman’s archers. Seemed that even Shanka could have enough. They started to turn, to scuttle back towards Bethod’s ditch.

‘We done ’em!’ someone bellowed, and then everyone was cheering and screaming. The boy with the bow was waving it over his head now, grinning like he’d beaten Bethod all by himself.

Logen didn’t celebrate. He frowned out at the great crowd of Carls beyond the ditch, the standards of Bethod’s host flapping over them in the breeze. Brief and bloody, that one might have been, but the next time they came it was likely to be a lot less brief, and a lot more bloody. He made his aching fist uncurl from round the Maker’s sword, leaned it up against the parapet, and he pressed one hand with the other to stop them shaking. He took a long breath.

‘Still alive,’ he whispered.

Grim sat opposite, trimming some straight sticks to use as arrow shafts. There’d still been the slightest glimmer of dusk in the sky when they’d sat down together. Now it was dark as pitch but for the dusty stars, and neither one of them had said a word the whole time. That was Harding Grim for you, and it suited Logen well enough. A comfortable silence was much preferable to a worrisome conversation, but nothing lasts forever.

The sound of angry footsteps came out of the darkness and Black Dow stalked up to the fire, Tul and Crummock just behind him. He had a frown on his face black enough to have earned his name, and a dirty bandage round his forearm, a long streak of dark blood dried into it.

‘Pick up a cut, did you?’ asked Logen.

‘Bah!’ Dow dropped down beside the fire. ‘Nothing but a scratch. Fucking Flatheads! I’ll burn the lot of ’em!’

‘How about the rest of you?’

Tul grinned. ‘My palms are terrible chafed from hefting rocks, but I’m a tough bastard. I’ll live through it.’

‘And I still find myself miserably idle,’ said Crummock, ‘with my children looking to my weapons, and cutting arrows from the dead. Good work for children, that, gets ’em comfortable round a corpse. The moon’s keen to see me fight, though, so she is, and so am I.’

Logen sucked at his teeth. ‘You’ll get your chance, Crummock, I’d not worry about that. Bethod’s got plenty for everyone, I reckon.’

‘I never seen Flatheads come on like that,’ Dow was musing. ‘Right at a well-manned wall with no ladders, no tools. It ain’t too clever, your Flathead, but it ain’t stupid either. They like ambushes. They like cover, and hiding, and creeping around. They can be mad fearless, when they have to be, but to come on like that, by choice? Not natural.’

Crummock chuckled, a great raspy rumbling. ‘Shanka fighting for one set of men against another ain’t natural either. These aren’t natural times. Might be Bethod’s witch has worked some charm to get ’em all stirred up. Cooked herself a chant and a ritual to fill those things with hate of us.’

‘Danced naked round a green fire and all the rest, I don’t doubt,’ said Tul.

‘The moon will see us right, my friends, don’t worry yourself on that score!’ Crummock rattled the bones around his neck. ‘The moon loves us all, and we cannot die while there’s—’

‘Tell it to those as went back to the mud today.’ Logen jerked his head over towards the fresh dug graves at the back of the fortress. There was no seeing them in the darkness, but they were there. A score or so long humps of turned and pressed-down earth.

But the big hillman only smiled. ‘I’d call them the happy ones, though, wouldn’t you? Least they all get their own beds, don’t they? We’ll be lucky if we don’t go in pits for a dozen each once the work gets hot. There’ll be nowhere for the living to sleep otherwise. Pits for a score! Don’t tell me you ain’t seen that before, or dug the holes your own sweet self.’

Logen got up. ‘Maybe I have, but I didn’t like it any.’

‘Course you did!’ Crummock roared after him. ‘Don’t give me that, Bloody-Nine!’

Logen didn’t look back. There were torches set on the wall, every ten paces or so, bright flames in the darkness, white specks of insects floating around them. Men stood in their light, leaning on their spears, bows clenched in their hands, swords drawn, watching the night for surprises. Bethod had always loved surprises, and Logen reckoned they’d have some before they were through, one way or another.

He came up to the parapet and set his hands on the clammy stone, frowned down at the fires burning in the blackness of the valley. Bethod’s fires, far away in the dark, and their own ones, bonfires built up and lit just below the wall to try and catch any clever bastards trying to sneak up. They cast flickering circles across the shadowy rocks, with here or there the twisted corpse of a Flathead, hacked and flung from the wall or stuck with arrows.

Logen felt someone move behind him and his back prickled, eyes sliding to the corners. Shivers, maybe, come to settle their score and shove him off the wall. Shivers, or one of a hundred others with some grudge that Logen had forgotten but they never would. He made sure his hand was close to a blade, and he bared his teeth, and he made ready to spin and strike.

‘We did good today, though, eh?’ said the Dogman. ‘Lost less than twenty.’

Logen breathed easy again, and he let his hand drop. ‘We did alright. But Bethod’s just getting started. He’s prodding, to see where we’re weakest, see if he can wear us down. He knows that time’s the thing. Most valuable thing there is, in war. A day or two’s worth more to him than a load of Flatheads. If he can crush us quick he’ll take the losses, I reckon.’

‘Best thing might be to hold out, then, eh?’

Off in the darkness, far away and echoing, Logen could just hear the clang and clatter of smithing and carpentry. ‘They’re building down there. All the stuff they’ll need to climb our wall, fill in our ditch. Lots of ladders, and all the rest. He’ll take us quick if he can, Bethod, but he’ll take us slow if he has to.’

Dogman nodded. ‘Well, like I said. Best thing to do would be to hold out. If all goes to plan, the Union’ll be here soon.’

‘They’d better be. Plans have a way of coming apart when you lean on ’em.’