'Oh, I don't know, we held our own in the last war. I'm sure we all remember the fall of Ulrioch. I know I do. The city burned brightly. The temples especially.' Glokta shrugged. 'God must have been elsewhere that day.'
'That day, yes. But there were other battles. I am sure you also remember a certain engagement, at a certain bridge, where a certain young officer fell into our hands.' The emissary smiled. 'God is everywhere.'
Glokta felt his eyelid flickering. He knows I am not likely to forget. He remembered his surprise as a Gurkish spear cut into his body. Surprise, and disappointment, and the most intense pain. Not invulnerable, after all. He remembered his horse rearing, dumping him from the saddle. The pain growing worse, the surprise turning into fear. Crawling among the boots and the bodies, gasping for air, mouth sour with dust, salty with blood. He remembered the agony as the blades cut into his leg. The fear turning to terror. He remembered how they dragged him, screaming and crying, from that bridge. That night they began to ask their questions.
'We won,' said Glokta, but his mouth was dry, his voice was cracked. 'We proved the stronger.'
'That was then. The world changes. Your nation's entanglements in the icy North put you at a most considerable disadvantage. You have managed to break the first rule of warfare. Never fight two enemies at once.'
His reasoning is hard to fault. 'The walls of Dagoska have frustrated you before,' Glokta said, but it did not sound convincing, even to his own ear. Hardly the words of a winner. He felt the eyes of Vurms, and Vissbruck, and Eider on him, making his back itch. Trying to decide who holds the upper hand, and I know who I'd pick in their shoes.
'Perhaps some of you have more confidence in your walls than others. I will return at sunset for your answer. The Emperor's offer lasts for this one day only, and will never be repeated. He is merciful, but his mercy has limits. You have until sunset.' And he swept from the room.
Glokta waited until the door had clicked shut before he slowly turned his chair around to face the others. 'What in hell was that?' he snarled at Vissbruck.
'Er…' The General tugged at his sweaty collar. 'It was incumbent upon me, as a soldier, to admit an unarmed representative of the enemy, in order to hear his terms—'
'Without telling me?'
'We knew you would not want to listen!' snapped Vurms. 'But he speaks the truth! Despite all our hard work, we are greatly outnumbered, and can expect no relief as long as the war drags on in Angland. We are nothing more than a pinprick in the foot of a huge and hostile nation. It might serve us well to negotiate while we still hold a position of some strength. You may depend upon it that we will receive no terms beyond a massacre once the city has fallen!'
True enough, but the Arch Lector is unlikely to agree. Negotiating a surrender was hardly the task for which I was appointed. 'You are unusually quiet, Magister Eider.'
'I am scarcely qualified to speak on the military aspects of such a decision. But as it turns out, his terms are generous. One thing is certain. If we refuse this offer, and the Gurkish do take the city by force, the slaughter will be terrible.' She looked up at Glokta. 'There will be no mercy then.'
All too true. On Gurkish mercy I am the expert. 'So all three of you are for capitulation?' They looked at each other, and said nothing. 'It has not occurred to you that once we surrender, they might not honour your little agreement?'
'It had occurred,' said Vissbruck, 'but they have honoured their agreements before, and surely some hope…' and he looked down at the table top, 'is better than none.' You have more confidence in our enemy than in me, it would seem. Hardly that surprising. My own confidence could be higher.
Glokta wiped some wet from under his eye. 'I see. Then I suppose I must consider his offer. We will reconvene when our Gurkish friend returns. At sunset.' He rocked his body back and winced as he pushed himself up.
'You'll consider it?' hissed Vitari in his ear as he limped down the hall away from the audience chamber. 'You'll fucking consider it?'
'That's right,' snapped Glokta. 'I make the decisions here.'
'Or you let those worms make them for you!'
'We've each got our jobs. I don't tell you how to write your little reports to the Arch Lector. How I manage those worms is none of your concern.'
'None of my concern?' Vitari snatched hold of Glokta's arm and he tottered on his weak leg. She was stronger than she looked, a lot stronger. 'I told Sult you could handle things!' she snarled in his face. 'If we lose the city, without so much as a fight even, it's both our heads! And my head is my concern, cripple!'
'This is no time to panic,' growled Glokta. 'I don't want to end up floating in the docks any more than you do, but this is a delicate balance. Let them think they might get their way, then no one will make any rash moves. Not until I'm good and ready. Understand me when I say, Practical, that this will be the first and the last time that I explain myself to you. Now take your fucking hand off me.'
Her hand did not let go, rather the fingers tightened, cutting into Glokta's arm as hard as a vice. Her eyes narrowed, furious lines cut into her freckled face at their corners. Might I have misjudged her? Might she be about to cut my throat? He almost grinned at the thought. But Severard chose that moment to step out of the shadows further down the dim hall.
'Look at the two of you,' he murmured as he padded towards them. 'It always amazes me, how love blooms in the least likely places, and between the least likely people. A rose, forcing its way through the stony ground.' He pressed his hands to his chest. 'It warms my heart.'
'Have we got him?'
'Of course. Soon as he stepped out of the audience chamber.'
Vitari's hand had gone limp, and Glokta brushed it off and began to shuffle towards the cells. 'Why don't you come with us?' he called over his shoulder, having to stop himself rubbing the bruised flesh on his arm. 'You can put this in your next report to Sult.'
Shabbed al Islik Burai looked considerably less majestic sitting down. Particularly in a scarred, stained chair in one of the close and sweaty cells beneath the Citadel.
'Now isn't this better, to speak on level terms? Quite disconcerting, having you looming over me like that.' Islik sneered and looked away, as though talking to Glokta were a task far beneath him. A rich man, harassed by beggars in the street, but we'll soon cure him of that illusion.
'We know we have a traitor within our walls. Within the ruling council itself. Most likely one of those three worthies to whom you were just now giving your little ultimatum. You will tell me who.' No response. 'I am merciful,' exclaimed Glokta, waving his hand airily, as the ambassador himself had done but a few short minutes before, 'but my mercy has limits. Speak.'
'I am here under a flag of parley, on a mission from the Emperor himself! To harm an unarmed emissary would be expressly against the rules of war!'
'Parley? Rules of war?' Glokta chuckled. Severard chuckled. Vitari chuckled. Frost was silent. 'Do they even have those any more? Save that rubbish for children like Vissbruck, that's not the way grown-ups play the game. Who is the traitor?'
'I pity you, cripple! When the city falls—'
Save your pity. You'll need it for yourself. Frost's fist scarcely made any sound as it sank into the ambassador's stomach. His eyes bulged out, his mouth hung open, he coughed a dry cough, somewhere close to vomiting, tried to breathe and coughed again.
'Strange, isn't it,' mused Glokta as he watched him struggle for air. 'Big men, small men, thin men, fat men, clever men, stupid men, they all respond the same to a fist in the guts. One minute you think you're the most powerful man in the world. The next you can't even breathe by yourself. Some kinds of power are nothing but tricks of the mind. Your people taught me that, below your Emperor's palace. There were no rules of war there, I can tell you. You know all about certain engagements, and certain bridges, and certain young officers, so you know that I've been just where you are now. There is one difference, however. I was helpless, but you can stop this unpleasantness at any time.
You need only tell me who the traitor is, and you will be spared.'
Islik had got his breath back now. Though a good deal of his arrogance is gone, one suspects for good. 'I know nothing of any traitor!'
'Really? Your master the Emperor sends you here to negotiate without all the facts? Unlikely. But if it's true, you really aren't any use to me at all, are you?'
Islik swallowed. 'I know nothing of any traitor.'
'We'll see.'
Frost's big white fist clubbed him in the face. It would have thrown him sideways if the albino's other fist hadn't caught his head before it fell, smashed his nose and knocked him clean over the back of the chair. Frost and Severard dragged him up between them, righted the chair and dumped him gasping into it. Vitari looked on, arms folded.
'All very painful,' said Glokta, 'but pain can be put to one side, if one knows that it will not last long. If it cannot last, say, past sunset. To truly break a man quickly, you have to threaten to deprive him of something. To hurt him in a way that will never heal. I should know.'
'Gah!' squawked the ambassador, thrashing in his chair. Severard wiped his knife on the shoulder of the man's white robe, then tossed his ear onto the table. It lay there, on the wood: a forlorn and bloody half-circle of flesh. Glokta stared at it. In a baking cell just like this, over the course of long months, the Emperors servants turned me into this revolting, twisted mockery of a man. One might have hoped that the chance at doing the same to one of them, the chance at cutting out vengeance, pound for pound, would provide some dull flicker of pleasure. And yet he felt nothing. Nothing but my own pain. He winced as he stretched his leg out and felt the knee click, hissed air through his empty gums. So why do I do this?
Glokta sighed. 'Next will come a toe. Then a finger, an eye, a hand, your nose, and so on, do you see? It'll be at least an hour before you're missed, and we are quick workers.' Glokta nodded at the severed ear. 'We could have a pile of your flesh a foot high by that time. I'll carve you until you're nothing but a tongue and a bag of guts, if that's what it takes, but I'll know who the traitor is, that I promise you. Well? Do you know anything yet?'
The ambassador stared at him, breathing hard, dark blood running from his magnificent nose, down his chin, dripping from the side of his head. Speechless with shock, or thinking on his next move? It hardly matters. 'I grow bored. Start on his hands, Frost.' The albino seized hold of his wrist.
'Wait!' wailed the ambassador, 'God help me, wait! It was Vurms. Korsten dan Vurms, the governor's own son!'
Vurms. Almost too obvious. But then again, the most obvious answers are usually the right ones. That little bastard would sell his own father if he only thought that he could find a buyer—
'And the woman, Eider!'
Glokta frowned. 'Eider? You sure?'
'She planned it! She planned the whole thing!' Glokta sucked slowly at his empty gums. They tasted sour. An awful sense of disappointment, or an awful sense of having known all along? She was always the only one with the brains, or the guts, or the resources, for treason. A shame. But we know better than to hope for happy endings.
'Eider and Vurms,' muttered Glokta. 'Vurms and Eider. Our sordid little mystery comes to a close.' He looked up at Frost. 'You know what to do.'
* * *
Long Odds
« ^ »
The hill rose out of the grass, a round, even cone like a thing man-made. Strange, this one great mound standing out in the midst of the level plain. Ferro did not trust it.
Weathered stones stood in a rough circle around its top and scattered about the slopes, some up on end, some lying on their sides, the smallest no more than knee high, the biggest twice as tall as a man. Dark, bare stones, standing defiant against the wind. Ancient, cold, angry. Ferro frowned at them.
It felt as though they frowned back.
'What is this place?' asked Ninefingers.
Quai shrugged. 'Old is what this place is, terribly old. Older than the Empire itself. Built before the time of Euz, perhaps, when devils roamed the earth.' He grinned. 'Built by devils, for all I know. Who can say? Some temple to forgotten gods? Some tomb?'
'Our tomb,' whispered Ferro.
'What?'
'Good place to stop,' she said out loud. 'Get a look across the plain.'
Ninefingers frowned up at it. 'Alright. We stop.'
Ferro stood on one of the stones, hands on hips, staring out across the plain through narrowed eyes. The wind tore at the grass and made waves from it, like the waves on the sea. It tore at the great clouds too, twisting them, ripping them open, dragging them through the sky. It lashed at Ferro's face, nipped at her eyes, but she ignored it.
Damn wind, just like always.
Ninefingers stood beside her, squinting into the cold sun. 'Anything out there?'
'We are followed.' They were far away, but she could see them. Tiny dots in the far distance. Tiny riders moving on the ocean of grass.
Ninefingers grimaced. 'You sure?'
'Yes. You surprised?'
'No.' He gave up looking and rubbed at his eyes. 'Bad news is never a surprise. Just a disappointment.'
'I count thirteen.'
'You can count 'em? I can't even see 'em. They coming for us?'
She raised her arms. 'You see anything else out here? Might be that laughing bastard Finnius found some more friends.'
'Shit.' He looked down at the cart, drawn up at the base of the hill. 'We can't outrun them.'
'No.' She curled her lip. 'You could ask the spirits for their opinion.'
'So they could tell us what? That we're fucked?' Silence for a moment. 'Better to wait, and fight them here. Bring the cart up to the top. At least we've got a hill, and a few rocks to hide behind.'
'That's what I was thinking. Gives us some time to prepare the ground.'
'Alright. We'd best get to it.'
The point of the shovel bit into the ground with the sharp scrape of metal on earth. An all too familiar sound. Digging pits and digging graves. What was the difference?
Ferro had dug graves for all kinds of people. Companions, or as close as she had come to companions. Friends, or as close as she had come to friends. A lover or two, if you could call them that. Bandits, killers, slaves. Whoever hated the Gurkish. Whoever hid in the Badlands, for whatever reason.
Spade up and spade down.
When the fighting is over, you dig, if you are still alive. You gather up the bodies in a line. You dig the graves in a row. You dig for your fallen comrades. Your slashed, your punctured, your hacked and your broken comrades. You dig as deep as you can be bothered, you dump them in, you cover them up, they rot away and are forgotten, and you go on, alone. That's the way it's always been.
But here, on this strange hill in the middle of this strange country, there was still time. Still a chance for the comrades to live. That was the difference, and for all her scorn, and her scowls, and her anger, she clung to it as she clung to the spade, desperate tight.
Strange how she never stopped hoping.
'You dig well,' said Ninefingers. She squinted up at him, standing over her at the edge of the pit.
'Lots of practice.' She dug the spade into the earth beside the hole, planted her hands on the sides and jumped out, sat on the edge with her legs hanging down. Her shirt was stuck to her with sweat, her face was running with it. She wiped her forehead with her dirty hand. He handed her the water-skin and she took it from him, pulled the stopper out with her teeth.
'How long do we have?'
She sucked a mouthful out of the skin and worked it round, spat it out. 'Depends how hard they go.' She took another mouthful and swallowed. 'They are going hard now. They keep that up, they could be on us late tonight, or maybe dawn tomorrow.' She handed the skin back.
'Dawn tomorrow.' Ninefingers slowly pushed the stopper back in. 'Thirteen you said, eh?'
'Thirteen.'
'And four of us.'
'Five, if the Navigator comes to help.'
Ninefin
gers scratched at his jaw. 'Not very likely.'
'That apprentice any use in a fight?'
Ninefingers winced. 'Not much.'
'How about Luthar?'
'I'd be surprised if he's ever thrown a fist in anger, let alone a blade.'
Ferro nodded. 'Thirteen against two, then.'
'Long odds.'
'Very.'
He took a deep breath and stared down into the pit. 'If you had a mind to run, I can't say I'd blame you.'
'Huh,' she snorted. Strange, but she hadn't even thought about it. 'I'll stick. See how it turns out.'
'Alright. Good. Can't say I don't need you.'
The wind rustled in the grass and sighed against the stones. There were things that should be said at a time like this, Ferro guessed, but she did not know what. She had never had much talk in her.
'One thing. If I die, you bury me.' She held her hand out to him. 'Deal?'
He raised an eyebrow at it. 'Done.' It was a long time, she realised, since she touched another person without the purpose of hurting them. It was a strange feeling, his hand gripped in hers, his fingers tight round hers, his palm pressed against hers. Warm. He nodded at her. She nodded at him. Then they let go.
'What if we both die?' he said.
She shrugged. 'Then the crows can pick us clean. After all, what's the difference?'
'Not much,' he muttered, starting off down the slope. 'Not much.'
* * *
The Road to Victory
« ^ »
West stood by a clump of stunted trees, in the cutting wind, on the high ground above the river Cumnur, and watched the long column move. More accurately, he watched it not move.
The neat blocks of the King's Own, up at the head of Prince Ladisla's army, marched smartly enough. You could tell them from their armour, glinting in the odd ray of pale sun that broke through the ragged clouds, from the bright uniforms of their officers, from the red and golden standards snapping at the front of each company. They were already across the river, formed up in good order, a stark contrast with the chaos on the other side.
Before They Are Hanged Page 22