Before They Are Hanged (40 page)

Chop. Hack. Snarl.

Someone staggered near him, clutching at an arrow in his chest. West’s sword split his skull open down to his mouth. The corpse jerked, twisting the blade from his hand. He stumbled in the dirt, half fell, lashed out at a passing body with his fist. Something crashed into him and flung him back against a tree, knocking the air from his lungs in a breathy wheeze. Someone had him fast around the chest, pinning his arms, trying to crush the life out of him.

West craned forward, and sank his teeth into the man’s lip, felt them meet in the middle. He screamed and punched but West hardly felt the blows. He spat out the flap of flesh and butted him in the face. The man squirmed and yelped, blood leaking out of his torn mouth. West clamped his teeth round his nose, growling like a mad dog.

Bite. Bite. Bite.

His mouth filled with blood. He could hear screaming in his ears, but all that mattered was to squeeze his jaws together, tighter and tighter. He twisted his head away and the man reeled back, clutching at his face. An arrow came out of nowhere and thudded into his ribs, he fell to his knees. West dived on him, grabbed hold of his tangled hair with clutching hands and smashed his face into the ground, again and again.

“It’s done.”

West’s hands jerked back, grasping claws full of blood and ripped-out hair. He struggled up, gasping, eyes bulging.

Everything was still. The world had stopped reeling. Spots of snow filtered gently down into the clearing, settling across the wet earth, the scattered gear, the stretched-out bodies, and the men still standing. Tul was not far away, staring at him. Threetrees was behind, sword in hand. Pike’s pink slab of a face had something close to a wince on it, one bloody fist squeezed round his arm. They were all looking. All looking at him. Dow raised his hand, pointing at West. He tipped his head back and started to laugh. “You bit him! You bit his fucking nose off! I knew you were a mad bastard!”

West stared at them. The thumping in his head was starting to subside. “What?” he muttered. There was blood all over him. He wiped his mouth. Salty. He looked at the nearest corpse, face down on the earth. Blood was trickling from underneath its head, running down the slope and pooling around West’s boot. He remembered… something. A sudden cramp in his guts bent him over, spitting pink onto the ground, empty stomach heaving.

“Furious!” shouted Dow. “That’s what y’are!”

Grim had already stepped out of the bushes, bow over his shoulder, and was squatting down, dragging a bloody fur from one of the corpses. “Good coat,” he muttered to himself.

West watched them all pick over the campsite, bent over and sick and utterly spent. He listened to Dow laughing. “Furious!” cackled his harsh voice. “That’s what I’ll call you!”

“They got arrows over here.” The Dogman pulled something out of one of the packs on the ground, and grinned. “And cheese. Bit dusty.” He picked some mould off the wedge of yellow with his dirty fingers, bit into it, and grinned. “Still good though.”

“Lots o’ good stuff,” nodded Threetrees, starting to smile himself. “And we’re all still going, more or less. Good day’s work, lads.” He slapped Tul on the back. “We’d best head on north quick before these lot are missed. Let’s get what there is fast and pick up those other two.”

West’s mind was only just starting to move again. “The others!”

“Alright,” said Threetrees, “you and Dow check on them… Furious.” He turned away with half a smile.

West lurched off through the trees the way he’d come, slipping and sliding in his haste, blood pulsing again. “Protect the Prince,” he muttered to himself. He waded across the stream almost without noticing the cold, struggled onto the far bank and back uphill, hurrying towards the cliff where they had left the others.

He heard a woman’s scream, quickly cut off, a man’s voice growling. Horror crept through every part of his body. Bethod’s men had found them. It might already be too late. He urged his burning legs on up the slope, stumbling and sliding in the mud. Had to protect the Prince. The air burned in his throat but he forced himself on, fingers clutching at the tree trunks, scrabbling at the loose twigs and needles on the frosty ground.

He burst out into the open space beside the cliff, breathing hard, the bloody sword gripped tight in his fist.

Two figures struggled on the ground. Cathil was underneath, wriggling on her back, kicking and clawing at someone on top of her. The man had managed to drag her trousers down below her knees and now he was fiddling with his own belt while he struggled to hold his other hand across her mouth. West took a step forward, raising the sword high, and the man’s head snapped round. West blinked. The would-be rapist was none other than Crown Prince Ladisla himself.

When he saw West he stumbled up and took a step back. He had a slightly sheepish expression, almost a grin, like a schoolboy caught stealing a pie from the kitchen. “Sorry,” he said, “I thought you’d be longer.”

West stared at him, hardly able to understand what was happening. “Longer?”

“You fucking bastard!” screamed Cathil, scrambling back and dragging her trousers up. “I’ll fucking kill you!”

Ladisla touched his lip. “She bit me! Look!” He held his bloody finger tips out as though they were proof of an outrage perpetrated against him. West found himself moving forwards. The Prince must have seen something in his face, because he took a step away, holding up one hand while he held up his trousers with the other. “Now hold on, West, just—”

There was no towering rage. No temporary blindness, no limbs moving by themselves, not the slightest trace of a headache. There was no anger at all. West had never in his life felt so calm, so sober, so sure of himself. He chose to do it.

His right arm jerked out and his open palm thumped against Ladisla’s chest. The Crown Prince gave a gentle gasp as he stumbled sharply backwards. His left foot twisted in the mud. He put down his right foot, but there was no ground behind him. His brows went up, his mouth and eyes opened with silent shock. The heir to the throne of the Union fell away from West, his hands clutching vainly, turning slowly to his side in the air… and he was gone.

There was a short, breathy cry, a thumping sound, and another, a long clattering of stones.

Then silence.

West stood there, blinking.

He turned to look at Cathil.

She was frozen, a couple of strides away, eyes gawping wide open.

“You… you…”

“I know.” It hardly sounded like his voice. He edged to the very brink of the cliff, and peered over. Ladisla’s corpse lay drooped face down over the rocks far below, West’s ragged coat spread out behind him, trousers round his ankles, one knee bent back the wrong way, a ring of dark blood spreading out across the stones around his broken head. Never had anyone looked more dead.

West swallowed. He had done that. Him. He had killed the heir to the throne. He had murdered him in cold blood. He was a criminal. He was a traitor. He was a monster.

And he almost wanted to laugh. The sunny Agriont, where loyalty and deference were given without question, where commoners did what their betters told them, where the killing of other people was simply not the done thing, all this was very far away. Monster he might be, but, out here in the frozen wilderness of Angland, the rules were different. Monsters were in the majority.

He felt a hand clap him heavily on the shoulder. He looked up to see Black Dow’s earless head beside him, peering down. The Northman whistled softly through pursed lips. “Well, that’s the end of that, I reckon. You know what, Furious?” And he grinned sideways at West. “I’m getting to like you, boy.”

To the Last Man

To Sand dan Glokta,

Superior of Dagoska, and for his eyes alone.

It is clear that, in spite of your efforts, Dagoska cannot remain in Union hands for much longer. I therefore order you to leave immediately and present yourself to me. The docks may have been lost, but you should have no trouble slipping away by night in a small boat. A ship will be waiting for you down the coast.

You will confer overall command on General Vissbruck, as the only Union member of Dagoska’s ruling council left alive in the city. It need hardly be said that the orders of the Closed Council to the defenders of Dagoska remain the same.

To fight to the last man.

Sult

Arch Lector of his Majesty’s Inquisition.

General Vissbruck slowly lowered the letter, his jaws locked tight together. “Are we to understand then, Superior, that you are leaving us?” His voice was cracking slightly.
With panic? With fear? With anger? Who could blame him, for any one of them?

The room was much the same as it had been the first day Glokta arrived in the city. The superb mosaics, the masterful carvings, the polished table, all shining in the early morning sun streaming through the tall windows.
The ruling council itself, however, is sadly reduced.
Vissbruck, his jowls bulging over the stiff collar of his embroidered jacket, and Haddish Kahdia, slumped tiredly in his chair, were all that remained. Nicomo Cosca stood apart, leaning against the wall near the window and picking his fingernails.

Glokta took a deep breath. “The Arch Lector wants me to… explain myself.”

Vissbruck gave a squeaky chuckle. “For some reason, the image of rats fleeing a burning house springs to mind.”
An apt metaphor. If the rats are fleeing the flames to fling themselves into a mincing machine.

“Come now, General.” Cosca let his head roll back against the wall, a faint smile on his lips. “The Superior didn’t have to come to us with this. He could have stolen away in the night, and no one any the wiser. That’s what I’d have done.”

“Allow me to have scant regard for what
you
might have done,” sneered Vissbruck. “Our situation is critical. The land walls are lost, and with them all chance of holding out for long. The slums swarm with Gurkish soldiers. Every night we make sallies from the gates of the Upper City. We burn a ram. We kill some sentries while they sleep. But every day they bring up more equipment. Soon, perhaps, they will have cleared space down among the hovels and assembled their great catapults. Shortly thereafter, one imagines, the Upper City will come under sustained fire from incendiaries!” He stabbed an arm at the window. “They might even reach the Citadel from there! This very room may sport a boulder the size of a woodshed as a centrepiece!”

“I am well aware of our position,” snapped Glokta.
The stench of panic the last few days has grown strong enough almost for the dead to smell it.
“But the Arch Lector’s orders are most specific. To fight to the last man. No surrender.”

Vissbruck’s shoulders slumped. “Surrender would do no good in any case.” He got up, made a half-hearted attempt to straighten his uniform, then slowly pushed his chair under the table. Glokta almost pitied him at that moment.
Probably he is deserving of pity, but I wasted all I had on Carlot dan Eider, who hardly deserved it at all.

“Allow me to offer you one piece of advice, from a man who’s seen the inside of a Gurkish prison. If the city should fall, I strongly recommend that you take your own life rather than be captured.”

General Vissbruck’s eyes widened for a moment, then he looked down at the beautiful mosaic floor, and swallowed. When he lifted his face Glokta was surprised to see a bitter smile. “This is hardly what I had in mind when I joined the army.”

Glokta tapped his ruined leg with his cane, and gave a twisted grin of his own. “I could say the same. What did Stolicus write? ‘The recruiting sergeant sells dreams but delivers nightmares?’ ”

“That would seem appropriate to the case.”

“If it’s any comfort, I doubt that my fate will be even as pleasant as yours.”

“A small one.” And Vissbruck snapped his well-polished heels together and stood to vibrating attention. He remained like that for a moment, frozen, then turned without a word for the door, soles clicking loud against the floor and dying away in the corridor outside.

Glokta looked over at Kahdia. “Regardless of what I said to the General, I would urge you to surrender the city at the earliest opportunity.”

Kahdia’s tired eyes slid up. “After all this? Now?”

Especially now.
“Perhaps the Emperor will choose to be merciful. In any case, I can see little advantage for you in fighting on. As things stand, there is still something to bargain with. You might be able to get some kind of terms.”

“And that is the comfort you offer? The Emperor’s mercy?”

“That’s all I have. What did you tell me about a man lost in the desert?”

Kahdia nodded slowly. “Whatever the outcome, I would like to thank you.”

Thank me, you fool?
“For what? Destroying your city and leaving you to the Emperor’s mercy?”

“For treating us with some measure of respect.”

Glokta snorted. “Respect? I thought I simply told you whatever you wanted to hear, in order to get what I needed.”

“Perhaps so. But thanks cost nothing. God go with you.”

“God will not follow where I am going,” Glokta muttered, as Kahdia shuffled slowly from the room.

Cosca grinned down his long nose. “Back to Adua, eh, Superior?”

“Back, as you say, to Adua.”
Back to the House of Questions. Back to Arch Lector Sult.
The thought was hardly a happy one.

“Perhaps I’ll see you there.”

“You think so?”
More likely you’ll be butchered along with all the rest when the city falls. Then you’ll miss your opportunity to see me hanged.

“If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that there’s always a chance.” Cosca grinned as he pushed himself away from the wall and strutted towards the door, one hand rested jauntily on the pommel of his sword. “I hate to lose a good employer.”

“I’d hate to be lost. But prepare yourself for the possibility of disappointment. Life is full of them.”
And the manner of its ending is often the greatest one of all.

“Well then. If one of us should be disappointed.” And Cosca bowed in the doorway with a theatrical flourish, the flaking gilt on his once magnificent breastplate glinting in a shaft of morning sunlight. “It has been an honour.”

Glokta sat on the bed, tonguing at his empty gums and rubbing his throbbing leg. He looked around his quarters.
Or Davoust’s quarters. That’s where an old wizard terrified me in the middle of the night. That’s where I watched the city burn. That’s where I was nearly eaten by a fourteen-year-old girl. Ah, the happy memories…

He grimaced as he pushed himself up and limped over to the one box he had brought with him.
And this is where I signed a receipt for one million marks, advanced by the banking house of Valint and Balk.
He slid the flat leather case that Mauthis had given him out of his coat pocket.
Half a million marks in polished stones, barely touched.
He felt again the tugging temptation to open it, to dig his hand inside and feel that cool, hard, clicking distillation of wealth between his fingers. He resisted with an effort, bent down with a greater one, pushed some of the folded clothes aside with one hand and dug the case down under them with the other.
Black, black and black. I really should get a more varied wardrobe—

“Going without saying goodbye?”

Glokta jerked violently up from his stoop and nearly vomited at a searing spasm through his back. He reached out with one arm and slammed the box lid down just in time to flop onto it before his leg buckled. Vitari was standing in the doorway, frowning over at him.

“Damn it!” he hissed, blowing spit through the gaps in his teeth with every heaving breath, left leg numb as wood, right leg cramping up with agony.

She padded into the room, narrowed eyes sliding left and right.
Checking that there’s no one else here. A private interview, then.
His heart was starting to beat fast as she slowly shut the door, and not just from the spasms in his leg. The key rattled in the lock.
Just the two of us. How terribly exciting.

She paced silently across the carpet, her long black shadow stretching out towards him. “I thought we had a deal,” hissed out from behind her mask.

“So did I,” snapped Glokta, struggling to find a more dignified position. “Then I got a little note from Sult. He wants me back, and I think we can all guess why.”

“Not because of anything I told him.”

“So you say.”

Her eyes narrowed further, her feet padded closer. “We had a deal. I kept my end.”

“Good for you! You can console yourself with that thought when I’m floating face down in the docks in Adua and you’re stuck here, waiting for the Gurkish to break down the—oof!”

And she was on him, her weight grinding his twisted back into the box, squeezing the air from him in a ragged wheeze. There was a bright flash of metal and the rattle of a chain, her fingers slid round his neck.

“You crippled worm! I should cut your fucking throat right now!” Her knee jabbed painfully into his stomach, cold metal tickled gently at the skin on his neck, her blue eyes glared into his, flickering back and forth, glistening hard as the stones in the box under his back.
My death could be moments away. Easily.
He remembered watching her choke the life out of Eider.
With as little care as I might squash an ant, and I, poor cripple, just as helpless as one.
Perhaps he should have been gibbering with fear, but all he could think was:
when was the last time I had a woman on top of me?

He snorted with laughter. “Don’t you know me at all?” he blubbered, half chuckling, half sobbing, eyes watering with a sickening mixture of pain and amusement. “Superior Glokta, pleased to meet you! I don’t care a good shit what you do, and you know it. Threats? You’ll have to do a sight better than that, you ginger whore!”

Her eyes bulged with fury. Her shoulder came forwards, her elbow went back, ready to apply the greatest possible pressure.
Enough to cut my neck through to my twisted spine, I don’t doubt.

Glokta felt his lips curl back in a sickly grin, wet with spit.
Now.

He heard Vitari’s breath snorting behind her mask.
Do it.

He felt the blade press against his neck, a chill touch, so sharp that he could hardly feel it.
I’m ready.

Then she let out a long hiss, lifted the blade high and rammed it into the wood beside his head. She stood up and turned away from him. Glokta closed his eyes and breathed for a moment.
Still alive.
There was an odd feeling in his throat.
Relief, or disappointment? Hard to tell the difference.

“Please.” It was said so softly that he thought he might have imagined it. Vitari was standing with her back to him, head bent over, fists clenched and trembling.

“What?”

“Please.”
She did say it. And it hurts her to do it, you can tell.

“Please, eh? You think there’s any place here for please? Why the hell should I save you, really? You came here to spy for Sult. You’ve done nothing but get in my way ever since you got here! It’s hard to think of anyone I trust less, and I don’t trust anyone!”

She turned back to face him, reached behind her head, took hold of the straps of her mask, and pulled it off. There was a sharp tan line underneath: brown round her eyes, her forehead, her neck, white round her mouth with a pink mark across the bridge of her nose. Her face was far softer, much younger, more ordinary than he had expected. She no longer looked fearsome. She looked scared and desperate. Glokta felt suddenly, ludicrously awkward, as though he had blundered into a room and caught someone naked. He almost had to look away as she kneeled down level with him.

“Please.” Her eyes looked moist, dewy, her lip trembling as if she was on the very point of weeping.
A glimpse at the secret hopes beneath the vicious shell? Or just a good act?
Glokta felt his eyelid fluttering. “It’s not for myself,” she almost whispered. “Please. I’m begging you.”

He rubbed his hand thoughtfully across his neck. When he took it away there was blood on his fingertip. The faintest brown smear.
A nick. A graze. Just a hair’s breadth further, and I’d be pumping blood all over the lovely carpet right now. Only a hair’s breadth. Lives turn on such chances. Why should I save her?