“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.