Before They Are Hanged tfl-2

by Joe Abercrombie

  “Listen to me, Dogman! Listen!”

  “What, chief?” croaked Dogman, hardly able to talk for the pain in his chest. He waited, and he listened, and nothing came. Threetrees’ eyes were wide open, staring up at the branches. A drop of water splattered on his cheek, ran down into his bloody beard. Nothing else.

  “Back to the mud,” said Grim, face hanging slack as old cobwebs.

  West chewed at his fingernails as he watched General Kroy and his staff riding up the road, a group of dark-dressed men on dark horses, solemn as a procession of undertakers. The snow had stopped, for now, but the sky was angry black, the light so bad it felt like evening, and an icy wind was blowing through the command post making the fabric of the tent snap and rustle. West’s borrowed time was almost done.

  He felt a sudden impulse, almost overpowering, to turn and run. An impulse so ludicrous that he immediately had another, equally inappropriate, to burst out laughing. Luckily, he was able to stop himself from doing either. Lucky to stop himself laughing, at least. This was far from a laughing matter. As the clattering hooves came closer, he was left wondering whether the idea of running was such a foolish one after all.

  Kroy pulled his black charger up savagely and climbed down, jerked his uniform smooth, adjusted his sword belt, turned sharply and came on towards the tent. West intercepted him, hoping to get the first word in and buy a few more moments. “General Kroy, well done, sir, your division fought with great tenacity!”

  “Of course they did, Colonel West.” Kroy sneered the name as though he were delivering a mortal insult, his staff gathering into a menacing half circle behind him.

  “And might I ask our situation?”

  “Our situation?” snarled the General. “Our situation is that the Northmen are driven off, but not routed. We gave them a mauling, in the end, but my units were fought out, every man. Too weary to pursue. The enemy have been able to withdraw across the fords, thanks to Poulder’s cowardice! I mean to see him cashiered in disgrace! I mean to see him hanged for treason! I will see it done, on my honour!” He glowered around the headquarters while his men muttered angrily amongst themselves. “Where is Lord Marshal Burr? I demand to see the Lord Marshal!”

  “Of course, if you could just give me…” West’s words were smothered by the mounting noise of more rushing hooves, and a second group of riders careered around the side of the Marshal’s tent. Who else but General Poulder, accompanied by his own enormous staff. A cart pulled into the headquarters along with them, crowding the narrow space with beasts and men. Poulder vaulted down from his saddle and hastened through the dirt. His hair was in disarray, his jaw was locked tight, there was a long scratch down his cheek. His crimson entourage followed behind him: steels rattling, gold braid flapping, faces flushed.

  “Poulder!” hissed Kroy. “You’ve some nerve showing your face in front of me! Some nerve! The only damn nerve you’ve shown all day!”

  “How dare you!” screeched Poulder. “I demand an apology! Apologise at once!”

  “Apologise? Me, apologise? Hah! You’ll be the one saying sorry, I’ll see to it! The plan was for you to come in from the left wing! We were hard pressed for more than two hours!”

  “Almost three hours, sir,” chipped in one of Kroy’s staff, unhelpfully.

  “Three hours, damn it! If that is not cowardice I fumble for the definition!”

  “Cowardice?” shrieked Poulder. A couple of his staff went as far as to place their hands on their steels. “You will apologise to me immediately! My division came under a brutal and sustained attack upon our flank! I was obliged to lead a charge myself. On foot!” And he thrust forward his cheek and indicated the scratch with one gloved finger. “It was we who did all the fighting! We who won the victory here today!”

  “Damn you, Poulder, you did nothing! The victory belongs to my men alone! An attack? An attack from what? From animals of the forest?”

  “Ah-ha! Exactly so! Show him!”

  One of Poulder’s staff ripped back the oilskin on the cart, displaying what seemed at first to be a heap of bloody rags. He wrinkled up his nose and shoved it forward. The thing flopped off onto the ground, rolled onto its back and stared up at the sky with beetling black eyes. A huge, misshapen jaw hung open, long, sharp teeth sticking every which way. Its skin was a greyish brown colour, rough and calloused, its nose was an ill-formed stub. Its skull was flattened and hairless with a heavy ridge of brow and a small, receding forehead. One of its arms was short and muscular, the other much longer and slightly bent, both ending in claw-like hands. The whole creature seemed lumpen, twisted, primitive. West gawped down at it, open-mouthed.

  Plainly, it was not human.

  “There!” squealed Poulder in triumph. “Now tell us my division didn’t fight! There were hundreds of these… these creatures out there! Thousands, and they fight like mad things! We only just managed to hold our ground, and it’s damn lucky for you that we did! I demand!” he frothed, “I demand!” he ranted, “I demand!” he shrieked, face turning purple, “an apology!”

  Kroy’s eyes twitched with incomprehension, with anger, with frustration. His lips twisted, his jaw worked, his fists clenched. Clearly there was no entry in the rule book for a situation such as this. He rounded on West.

  “I demand to see Marshal Burr!” he snarled.

  “As do I!” screeched Poulder shrilly, not to be outdone.

  “The Lord Marshal is…” West’s lips moved silently. He had no ideas left. No strategies, no ruses, no schemes. “He is…” There would be no retreat across the fords for him. He was finished. More than likely he would end up in a penal colony himself. “He is—”

  “I am here.”

  And to West’s profound amazement, Burr was standing in the entrance to his tent. Even in the half-light, it seemed obvious that he was terribly ill. His face was ashen pale and there was a sheen of sweat across his forehead. His eyes were sunken and ringed with black. His lip quivered, his legs were unsteady, he clutched at the tent-pole beside him for support. West could see a dark stain down the front of his uniform that looked very much like blood.

  “I am afraid I have been… somewhat unwell during the battle,” he croaked. “Something I ate, perhaps.” His hand trembled on the pole and Jalenhorm lurked near his shoulder, ready to catch him if he fell, but by some superhuman effort of will the Lord Marshal stayed on his feet. West glanced nervously at the angry gathering, wondering what they might make of this walking corpse. But the two Generals were far too caught up in their own feud to pay any attention to that.

  “Lord Marshal, I must protest about General Poulder—”

  “Sir, I demand that General Kroy apologise—”

  The best form of defence seemed to West to be an immediate attack. “It would be traditional!” he cut in at the top of his voice, “for us first to congratulate our commanding officer on his victory!” He began to clap, slowly and deliberately. Pike and Jalenhorm joined him without delay. Poulder and Kroy exchanged an icy glance, then they too raised their hands.

  “May I be the first to—”

  “The very first to congratulate you, Lord Marshal!”

  Their staffs joined in, and others around the tent, and then more further away, and soon a rousing cheer was going up.

  “A cheer for Lord Marshal Burr!”

  “The Lord Marshal!”

  “Victory!”

  Burr himself twitched and quivered, one hand clutched to his stomach, his face a mask of anguish. West slunk backwards, away from the attention, away from the glory. He had not the slightest interest in it. That had been close, he knew, impossibly close. His hands were trembling, his mouth tasted sour, his vision was swimming. He could still hear Poulder and Kroy, already arguing again, like a pair of furious ducks quacking.

  “We must move on Dunbrec immediately, a swift assault while they are unwary and—”

  “Pah! Foolishness! The defences are too strong. We must surround the walls and prepare for a lengthy—
”

  “Nonsense! My division could carry the place tomorrow!”

  “Rubbish! We must dig in! Siegecraft is my particular area of expertise!”

  And on, and on. West rubbed his fingertips in his ears, trying to block out the voices as he stumbled through the churned-up mud. A few paces further on and he clambered around a rocky outcrop, pressed his back to it and slowly slid down. Slid down until he was sitting hunched in the snow, hugging his knees, the way he used to do when he was a child, and his father was angry.

  Down in the valley, in the gathering gloom, he could see men moving over the battlefield. Already starting to dig the graves.

  A Fitting Punishment

  It had been raining, not long ago, but it had stopped. The paving of the Square of Marshals was starting to dry, the flagstones light round the edges, dark with damp in the centres. A ray of watery sun had finally broken through the clouds and was glinting on the bright metal of the chains hanging from the frame, on the blades, and hooks, and pincers of the instruments on their rack. Fine weather for it, I suppose. It should be quite the event. Unless your name is Tulkis, of course, then it might be one you’d rather miss.

  The crowd were certainly anticipating a thrill. The wide square was full of their chattering, a heady mixture of excitement and anger, happiness and hate. The public area was packed shoulder to shoulder, and still filling, but there was ample room here in the government enclosure, fenced in and well guarded right in front of the scaffold. The great and the good must have the best view, after all. Over the shoulders of the row in front he could see the chairs where the members of the Closed Council were sitting. If he went up on his toes, an operation he dared not try too often, he could just see the Arch Lector’s shock of white hair, stirred gracefully by the breeze.

  He glanced sideways at Ardee. She was frowning grimly up at the scaffold, chewing slowly at her lower lip. To think. The time was I would take young women to the finest establishments in the city, to the pleasure gardens on the hill, to concerts at the Hall of Whispers, or straight to my quarters, of course, if I thought I could manage it. Now I take them to executions. He felt the tiniest of smiles at the corner of his mouth. Ah well, things change.

  “How will it be done?” she asked him.

  “He’ll be hung and emptied.”

  “What?”

  “He will be lifted up by chains around his wrists and neck, not quite tight enough to kill him through strangulation. Then he will be opened with a blade, and gradually disembowelled. His entrails will be displayed to the crowd.”

  She swallowed. “He’ll be alive?”

  “Possibly. Hard to say. Depends whether the executioners do their job properly. Anyway, he won’t live long.” Not without his guts.

  “Seems… extreme.”

  “It is meant to be. It was the most savage punishment our savage forebears could dream up. Reserved for those who attempt harm to the royal person. Not carried out, I understand, for some eighty years.”

  “Hence the crowd.”

  Glokta shrugged. “It’s a curiosity, but you always get a good showing for an execution. People love to see death. It reminds them that however mean, however low, however horrible their lives become… at least they have one.”

  Glokta felt a tap on his shoulder and looked round, with some pain, to see Severard’s masked face hovering just behind him. “I dealt with that thing. That thing about Vitari.”

  “Huh. And?”

  Severard’s eyes slid suspiciously sideways to Ardee, then he leaned forward to whisper in Glokta’s ear. “I followed her to a house, down below Gait’s Green, near the market there.”

  “I know it. And?”

  “I took a peek in through a window.”

  Glokta raised an eyebrow. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? What was in there?”

  “Children.”

  “Children?” muttered Glokta.

  “Three little children. Two girls and a boy. And what colour do you suppose their hair was?”

  You don’t say. “Not flaming red, by any chance?”

  “Just like their mother.”

  “She’s got children?” Glokta licked thoughtfully at his gums. “Who’d have thought it?”

  “I know. I thought that bitch had a block of ice for a cunt.”

  That explains why she was so keen to get back from the South. All that time, she had three little ones waiting. The mothering instinct. How terribly touching. He wiped some wet from beneath his stinging left eye. “Well done, Severard, this could be useful. What about that other thing? The Prince’s guard?”

  Severard lifted his mask for a moment and scratched underneath it, eyes darting nervously around. “That’s a strange one. I tried but… it seems he’s gone missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “I spoke to his family. They haven’t seen him since the day before the Prince died.”

  Glokta frowned. “The day before?” But he was there… I saw him. “Get Frost, and Vitari too. Get me a list of everyone who was in the palace that night. Every lord, every servant, every soldier. I am getting to the truth of this.” One way or another.

  “Did Sult tell you to?”

  Glokta looked round sharply. “He didn’t tell me not to. Just get it done.”

  Severard muttered something, but his words were lost as the noise of the crowd suddenly swelled in a wave of angry jeering. Tulkis was being led out onto the scaffold. He shuffled forwards, chains rattling round his ankles. He did not cry or wail, nor did he yell in defiance. He simply looked drawn, and sad, and in some pain. There were light bruises round his face, tracks of angry red spots down his arms and legs, across his chest. Impossible to use hot needles without leaving some marks, but he looks well, considering. He was naked aside from a cloth tied round his waist. To spare the delicate sensibilities of the ladies present. Watching a man’s entrails spilling out is excellent entertainment, but the sight of his cock, well, that would be obscene.

  A clerk stepped to the front of the scaffold and started reading out the prisoner’s name, the nature of the charge, the terms of his confession and his punishment, but even at this distance he could hardly be heard for the sullen muttering of the crowd, punctuated by an occasional furious scream. Glokta grimaced and worked his leg slowly back and forth, trying to loosen the cramping muscles.

  The masked executioners stepped forward and took hold of the prisoner, moving with careful skill. They pulled a black bag over the envoy’s head, snapped manacles shut around his neck, his wrists, his ankles. Glokta could see the canvas moving in and out in front of his mouth. The desperate last breaths. Does he pray, now? Does he curse and rage? Who can know, and what difference can it make?

  They hoisted him up into the air, spreadeagled on the frame. Most of his weight was on his arms. Enough on the collar round his neck to choke him, not quite enough to kill. He struggled somewhat, of course. Entirely natural. An animal instinct to climb, to writhe, to wriggle out and breathe free. An instinct that cannot be resisted. One of the executioners went to the rack, pulled out a heavy blade, displayed it to the crowd with a flourish, the thin sun flashing briefly on its edge. He turned his back on the audience, and began to cut.

  The crowd went silent. Almost deathly still, aside from the odd hushed whisper. It was a punishment that brooked no calling out. A punishment which demanded awestruck silence. A punishment to which there could be no response other than a horrified, fascinated staring. That is its design. So there was only silence, and perhaps the wet gurgling of the prisoner’s breath. Since the collar makes screaming impossible.

  “A fitting punishment, I suppose,” whispered Ardee as she watched the envoy’s bloody gut slithering out of his body, “for the murderer of the Crown Prince.”

  Glokta bowed his head to whisper in her ear. “I’m reasonably sure that he did not kill anyone. I suspect he is guilty of nothing more than being a courageous man, who came to us speaking truth and holding out the hand of peace.”

>   Her eyes widened. “Then why hang him?”

  “Because the Crown Prince has been murdered. Someone has to hang.”

  “But… who really killed Raynault?”

  “Someone who wants no peace between Gurkhul and the Union. Someone who wants the war between us to grow, and spread, and never end.”

  “Who could want that?”

  Glokta said nothing. Who indeed?

  You don’t have to admire that Fallow character, but he can certainly pick a good chair. Glokta settled back into the soft upholstery with a sigh, stretching his feet out towards the fire, working his aching ankles round and round in clicking circles.

  Ardee did not seem quite so comfortable. But then this morning’s diversion was hardly a comforting spectacle. She stood frowning out of the window, thoughtful, one hand pulling nervously at a strand of hair. “I need a drink.” She went to the cabinet and opened it, took out a bottle and a glass. She paused, and looked round. “Aren’t you going to tell me it’s a little early in the day?”

  Glokta shrugged. “You know what the time is.”

  “I need something, after that…”

  “Then have something. You don’t need to explain yourself to me. I’m not your brother.”

  She jerked her head round and gave him a hard look, opened her mouth as though about to speak, then she shoved the bottle angrily away and the glass after it, snapped the doors of the cabinet shut. “Happy?”

  He shrugged. “About as close as I get, since you ask.”

  Ardee dumped herself into a chair opposite, staring sourly down at one shoe. “What happens now?”

  “Now? Now we will delight each other with humorous observations for a lazy hour, then a stroll into town?” He winced. “Slowly, of course. Then a late lunch, perhaps, I was thinking of—”

  “I meant about the succession.”

  “Oh,” muttered Glokta. “That.” He reached round and dragged a cushion into a better position, then stretched out further with a satisfied grunt. One could almost pretend, sitting in this warm and comfortable room, in such attractive and agreeable company, that one still had some kind of life. He nearly had a smile on his face as he continued. “There will be a vote in Open Council. Meaning, I have no doubt, that there will be an orgy of blackmail, bribery, corruption and betrayal. A carnival of deal-making, alliance-breaking, intrigue and murder. A merry dance of fixing, of rigging, of threats and of promises. It will go on until the king dies. Then there will be a vote in Open Council.”