Before They Are Hanged

“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.”