Grim Company 02 - Sword Of The North (19 page)

‘You deaf, bitch? Want me to clean out your ears with my sword?’

Cole shook his head. Ed was still struggling with the straps of his harness, and one of the Mad Dogs helped him out of the device none too gently. ‘Dumb bastard,’ the man muttered. A dozen other Mad Dogs quickly encircled the three miners. They were hard-faced fellows, armed with crossbows and short swords.

Behind Corvac and his Mad Dogs rose the Horn. It towered over them, a monstrous projection of some unearthly black material that seemed to drink in the fading sunlight. From what Cole remembered from Garrett’s history lessons, the body of Tyrannus was said to have exploded when it fell from the heavens and struck earth, the pieces of the dead god scattering to eventually form the Blight. Below the Horn rested the Black Lord’s severed head. Its vile presence enriched the surrounding bedrock with more concentrated magic than anywhere else in the Trine, but it also made the immediate area incredibly dangerous.

Corvac was looking Cole up and down now, his thin lips curling as though he were examining a particularly foul-smelling turd. ‘They call you the Ghost. They say you killed two prisoners aboard the ship that brought you here.’

Cole said nothing. Better to keep silent, in his experience. He had a nasty habit of talking himself into trouble.

‘You ought to be putting in the shift of three men to make up for the two you murdered,’ Corvac continued. ‘You ought to be working your
gods-damned
arse to the bone.’

The Mad Dog leader swaggered forward and thrust out his chest until he was nose to nose with Cole, who wasn’t a tall man but nonetheless had a good few inches on Corvac. ‘Instead I see you fooling around with the big retard there like it ain’t my nuts you’re busting. Like it ain’t right and proper that murderers and rapists and other scum should pay their debts to society. Let me ask you something.’

‘Yes?’ Cole hazarded.

‘Do I look like a cunt?’

Cole licked his lips. ‘Uh… no?’

‘Then why are you trying to fuck me? No one fucks Corvac!’ The Mad Dog’s voice became a shriek and he sprayed spittle all over Cole’s face. He spun and strolled over to Smiler. ‘You. Are you trying to fuck me?’

‘Me?’ Smiler flashed a puzzled grin. The wrong move.

Corvac lashed out with the hilt of his sword, smashing Smiler right in the face. Blood and broken teeth exploded from the Condemned’s mouth, and Smiler dropped like a stone. ‘You piece of shit,’ Corvac whispered hoarsely. ‘Giving me that queer smile like you’re picturing your dick in my mouth. I told you. No one fucks Corvac! The three of you will pay for your part in this fractious!’

‘Fracas,’ Dull Ed uttered. He hadn’t said a word up until then.

Corvac turned to the halfwit. ‘What did you just say?’ he asked, voice a deadly murmur.

‘Fracas,’ Ed repeated solemnly. ‘You spoke it wrong.’

Corvac was across to him in an instant, his knee driving into Ed’s stomach, sword hilt bludgeoning the big dullard over the skull. Ed hit the dirt and then began to sob like a child.

‘You’re calling
me
stupid? These men hang on every word I say! You’re a cretin who can’t even tie his own bootlaces!’ Corvac aimed a vicious kick at Ed’s head, leaving a scarlet imprint of his boot on the halfwit’s face.

Something stirred inside Cole. ‘Stop hurting him,’ he said in a dry rasp.

The Mad Dog’s eyes narrowed to slits.

‘It was my fault,’ Cole added quickly, scarcely able to believe what he was saying. ‘I’m responsible. If you have to punish anyone, it should be me.’

He didn’t know why he had spoken up. All he knew was that he couldn’t watch Ed get kicked to death. It wasn’t the halfwit’s fault he had the mind of a child.

Corvac made an exaggerated show of pointing at Cole with his short sword and turned to his men. ‘Take a look at this one, lads! Seems we got a genuine hero on our hands!’

‘I’m no hero,’ Cole muttered.

‘You’re a fucking idiot is what you are!’ Corvac sprang at him, the point of his sword aimed straight at Cole’s chest.

A year ago it would have struck home. It was a nice move, a deftly executed killing stroke. He might be a bully but it turned out Corvac knew how to use a sword. Yet he was no Brodar Kayne. Davarus Cole had been trained by the Darkson, the most infamous assassin in the south, a master in the arts of unarmed combat.

He waited until the sword was a foot from his chest and then suddenly he pivoted at the waist, turning so that the steel tip skewered empty air where his body had been but a moment before. Quick as a snake, he grabbed hold of Corvac’s sword arm as the man’s momentum carried him past. A twist and a tug later and he was standing before the Mad Dog leader, Corvac’s own short sword now gripped firmly in his pale and callused hands.

‘You sneaky little
bitch
!’ Corvac snarled, red-faced with anger or embarrassment or quite possibly both. ‘Men! Kill him!’

Cole watched the crossbows being raised, listened to blades whispering from sheaths. There was a certain dignity in this, he reflected. He would die a good death, sword in hand. Then he saw Derkin watching him with a sad expression, and his calm faltered at the sight of Bessie in the hunchback’s hands. Dignified or not, he didn’t relish the prospect of that huge cleaver going to work on his corpse. All thoughts of a defiant last stand abandoned, he squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the end.

‘Stand down. All of you!’

Cole dared open one eye a crack.

A handful of Whitecloaks were approaching, led by Captain Priam. For the most part the town’s garrison did not venture outside Newharvest, leaving the running of the mining operation to the Mad Dogs. Whatever his reasons for being here, Captain Priam’s shaved head was the most welcome sight Cole had seen in days.

‘What’s going on?’ Priam demanded. He had a soft voice, almost feminine, but it carried well and contained a quiet strength. He reminded Cole of Captain Kramer, the skipper of the
Redemption
– the ship that had taken him on the ill-fated voyage to the Swell.

Kramer was also the first man Davarus Cole had ever killed.

‘Rebellion!’ Corvac barked in response to Priam’s question. ‘These Condemned must die!’

Captain Priam shook his head and gestured towards the north. ‘There’s been an incident at the Fist. The earth shifted and a dozen men were crushed. We cannot afford to lose anyone else.’

‘Shit.’ Corvac spat and turned away.

Cole leaned back in the chair and stared glumly down at the table. It was a rickety thing, covered in scratches and with a wobbly leg on either side. Smiler and Ed sat opposite Cole. The former nursed a swollen jaw, while the latter was wrapped in bandages and carried more bruises than the rotten apples unscrupulous fruit merchants occasionally sold in Dorminia’s Bazaar for ten a copper. That Ed had been able to walk back to town unaided was testament to the halfwit’s unexpected tenacity. He had taken a heck of a beating, and Cole considered himself a good judge in such matters, having been on the receiving end of a fair few in his time.

Across the table from the three men, an old Condemned named Whistler shook his shaggy grey head and gave a throaty chuckle. ‘You’re a rare one, Ghost. Thought I’d seen it all, but to hear how you plucked Corvac’s sword from his hand and turned it against him… Sounds to me like one of them tales the young women like to read about. Of heroes and suchlike. All that shite.’

‘It was just a trick I learned,’ Cole said irritably. Why did everyone insist on thinking of him as a hero? He was a bastard and a whoreson. ‘You know what I’ve learned?’

‘Yeah?’ obliged Whistler.

‘That true heroes don’t exist. The world sucks the goodness out of everyone sooner or later.’

‘That’s a cynical point of view.’

‘Well, it’s true! I used to be an optimist. People were drawn to me because of it. Drawn to my charisma. I even had a henchman. His name was Three-Finger and he was a good sort. But just like me, the grim reality of life got to him eventually. Turned him into a bitter husk of a man.’

‘A sorry tale and no mistake.’

‘It’s just how I feel. I don’t even have money for a beer.’

Neither he nor Smiler nor Ed had been handed any coin at day’s end. Corvac wasn’t the type to let go of a grudge easily.

Cole’s stomach growled again. The evening meals seemed portioned to leave the miners just the right side of famished. He was hungry, broke and had made an enemy of one of the most powerful figures in Newharvest.

‘I wish I could help,’ Whistler said. ‘But I’m out of coin too. I could really use a warm beer and a cold woman.’

Cole frowned. ‘Don’t you mean a
cold
beer and a
warm
woman?’

‘Yeah. That’s what I meant.’ Whistler shifted uncomfortably.

Smiler sucked on his remaining teeth for a moment before speaking. His mouth was all swollen and he looked as though he had swallowed a handful of stones. ‘Whithler… didn’t you uthe to work down at the morgue? I’m thure I remember your fathe. How’d you end up in the Obelithkth dungeonth?’

‘It don’t matter,’ Whistler snapped. They sat in silence for a time, lost in their thoughts. Except possibly Ed, who just looked lost. Cole glanced up when he heard footsteps approaching.

‘You must be the one they call the Ghost.’

The speaker was a burly man with green eyes. Behind him loomed two equally large men.

‘Yes,’ Cole answered wearily. He knew he had taken a risk coming to the Re-Spite, what with the Mad Dogs all riled up about the incident with Corvac. He was quickly reaching the point where he no longer cared.

‘They call me Floater. Mind if I buy you a beer? That prick Corvac’s been tormenting us for months. It’s about time someone stood up to him.’

Cole breathed a relieved sigh and beckoned them to sit. Floater took a seat while the other two men went to order drinks. ‘Only a few more weeks till I’m outta this hellhole,’ Floater said. ‘Does me good to know Corvac got a taste of his own medicine before I left. I’m looking forward to telling my children about it once I’m back in the City of Towers.’

‘You’re Thelassan?’ asked Whistler.

‘Yeah. Second shipment. I got six months for slapping a shopkeep after she tried to swindle me. Most of the Indebted from the first shipment are home already. Those that survived the Blight, that is. Lost a couple of pals at the Fist just today.’

Floater’s friends returned with a tray piled with tankards. The big Thelassan handed one to Cole, who stared down at the murky liquid within. He gave it an experimental sip and winced. It tasted like the cheap pisswater they served in Dorminia’s scummiest dives.

‘I’d go slow with this stuff,’ warned Floater. ‘It’s stronger than you think.’

‘I can handle myself,’ Cole replied, a little defensively. It was true, his drinking prowess had been near legendary among the regulars of Dorminia’s taverns. He smiled, remembering all the times he had had to drag his friends from the dives lining Copper Street, so drunk they could barely stand. Sometimes he’d been the one who couldn’t walk out. He would wake up in a gutter somewhere, his friends having disappeared after he’d squandered his allowance buying them all drinks. That didn’t seem right somehow. Not now that he thought about it.

He frowned and brought the tankard up to his lips, then downed the beer in one long gulp. It tasted like bilge water but there was no denying the warm glow it left.

‘It’s funny,’ Floater was saying. ‘Working the Blight’s hell. But I tell you, I’ve felt more…
alive
here than I ever did back in the City of Towers.’

Floater’s friends nodded their agreement. The man’s observations didn’t make much sense to Cole, but as long as the Thelassans were supplying the drinks he wasn’t going to argue.

‘So then, Ghost,’ Floater said, passing him another beer. ‘How’d you learn to dodge a sword? And why are you so damned pale? If I didn’t know better I’d think you one of the Mistress’s handmaidens. Except they’re all female.’

Cole took a long sip of his beer and stared into the depths of the murky liquid. ‘I’ve seen a few things in my time. Done some stuff you probably wouldn’t believe. I even considered myself a hero, once. Then I was betrayed. I took a dagger in the stomach. I think it was coated in some kind of poison. That’s why I’m so pale.’

Floater nodded at Ed. ‘Sounds pretty heroic, the way you stepped in to rescue your friend there.’

Cole shrugged and drained the rest of his beer. There was a pleasant glow in his chest now. ‘Garrett always said you have to protect those weaker than you.’

‘Garrett?’

‘My mentor. He was murdered.’

‘Tough break.’

Cole nodded and grabbed another tankard. He took a long gulp, draining it faster than he intended and accidentally spilling some over his lap. ‘The Blight won’t break me,’ he said suddenly.

‘What’s that, Ghost?’

‘I said the Blight won’t break me. I’m going to escape. I’m going to find Sasha.’

‘Thatha?’ Smiler repeated, creating a moment of confusion around the table as the others tried to work out what the hell he had just said. ‘Who ith thhe?’

‘She…’ Cole searched for the words. When they’d last parted Sasha had told him he was an asshole. Told him that Garrett would be ashamed of him. She’d been angry, probably on her time of the month if Cole was any judge of women. She hadn’t meant what she’d said. Had she?

‘Sasha is the reason I won’t die in this place,’ he rallied, impressing even himself. He emptied his tankard and set it down on the table, a little unsteadily.

‘You’re Condemned,’ Floater told him gently. ‘You’re stuck here for life. There’s no way out.’

‘No way out,’ Cole repeated, slurring the words slightly. ‘Who says there’s no way out?’ He thought of all the times he had endured against the odds.
The Swell. The Obelisk. The Darkson’s betrayal. I survived them all. They have no idea who I am!
Well, it was time they learned.

He surged to his feet and snatched up Whistler’s beer.

‘Hey, that’s mine!’ the old man protested, but Cole ignored him. He drained the beer in a single gulp and flung the empty tankard across the table. It landed with a loud clatter, getting the attention of half the tavern. Just as Cole had planned.