Last Argument of Kings

seemed like, milling
around in the sea of mud at the base of the wall. Wild men, from out
past the Crinna, where they hardly spoke right and cared nothing for
the dead. They all were rain-soaked and filth-spattered, hiding under
rough-made shields and waving rough-forged weapons, barbed and
brutal. Their standards stood flapping in the rain behind them, bones
and ragged hides, ghostly shadows in the downpour.
    Some were
carrying rickety ladders forwards, or lifting those that had been
thrown down, trying to foot them near the wall and haul them up while
rocks and spears and sodden arrows flapped and splattered into the
mud. Others were climbing, shields held over their heads, two ladders
up at Dow’s side, one on Red Hat’s side, one just to
Logen’s left. A pair of big savages were swinging great axes
against the scarred gates, chopping wet splinters out with every
blow. Logen pointed at them, screamed uselessly into the wet. No one
heard him, or could have over the great noise of drumming rain, of
crashing, thudding, scraping, blades on shields, shafts in flesh,
battle cries and shrieks of pain.
    He fumbled his
sword up from the puddles on the walkway, dull metal glistening with
beads of water. Just near him one of Shivers’ Carls was facing
off against an Easterner who’d scrambled from the top of a
ladder. They traded a couple of blows, axe against shield then sword
swishing at the empty air. The Easterner’s axe-arm went up
again and Logen hacked it off at the elbow, stumbled into his back
and knocked him screaming on his face. The Carl finished him with a
chop to the back of the skull, pointed his bloody sword over Logen’s
shoulder.
    â€œThere!â€

The Perfect Couple
    One of Jezal’s
countless footmen perched on the stepladder, and lowered the crown
with frowning precision onto his head, its single enormous diamond
flashing pricelessly bright. He gave it the very slightest twist back
and forth, the fur-trimmed rim gripping Jezal’s skull. He
climbed back down, whisked the stepladder away, and surveyed the
result. So did half a dozen of his fellows. One of them stepped
forward to tweak the precise positioning of Jezal’s
gold-embroidered sleeve. Another grimaced as he flicked an
infinitesimal speck of dust from his pure white collar.
    â€œVery
good,â€

The Seventh Day
    The Easterners
had come again last night. Crept up by darkness, found a spot to
climb in and killed a sentry. Then they’d set a ladder and a
crowd of ’em had sneaked inside by the time they were found
out. The cries had woken the Dogman, hardly sleeping anyway, and he’d
scrabbled awake in the black, all tangled with his blanket. Enemies
inside the fortress, men running and shouting, shadows in the dark,
everything reeking of panic and chaos. Men fighting by starlight, and
by torchlight, and by no light at all, blades swung with hardly a
notion of where they were headed, boots stumbling and kicking showers
of bright sparks out of the guttering campfires.
    They’d
driven ’em back in the end. They’d herded them to the
wall, and cut them down in numbers, and only three had lived to drop
their weapons and give up. A bad mistake for them, as it turned out.
There were a lot of men dead, these seven days. Every time the sun
went down there were more graves. No one was in much of a merciful
mood, providing they’d been suited that way in the first place,
and not many had. So when they’d caught these three, Black Dow
had trussed ’em up on the wall where Bethod and all the rest
could see. Trussed ’em up in the hard blue dawn, first streaks
of light just stabbing across the black sky, and he’d doused
them all with oil and set a spark to them. One by one he’d done
it. So the others could see what was coming and set to screaming
before their turn.
    Dogman didn’t
much take to seeing men on fire. He didn’t like hearing their
shrieks and their fat crackling. He didn’t smile at a nose-full
of the sick-sweet stink of their burning meat. But he didn’t
think of trying to stop it neither. There was a time for soft
opinions, and this weren’t it. Mercy and weakness are the same
thing in war, and there’s no prizes for nice behaviour. He’d
learned that from Bethod, a long time ago. Maybe now those Easterners
would give it a second thought before they came again at night