Current sucked my trousers off, dumped me half a mile downstream. Time I got back to camp I’d more or less turned blue with cold, shivering so bad I near shook my fingers off.”
“And?”
“That’s why they called me Shivers. You asked. Back in Sipani.” And he grinned. Seemed like he could see the funny side of it, these days. Vitari stood there for a moment, a lean black outline, then slid out through the door. “Well, Chief, looks like it’s just you and me-”
“And me!” He snapped round, reaching for his axe. Beside him Monza crouched, sword already half-drawn, both straining into the darkness. Ishri’s grinning face hung on one side, over the edge of the hayloft. “And a fine afternoon to my two heroes.” She slid down the ladder face first, as smooth as if her bandaged body had no bones in it. Up onto her feet, looking impossibly thin without her coat, and she sauntered across the straw towards Day’s corpse. “One of your killers killed the other. There’s killers for you.” She looked at Shivers, eyes black as coal, and he gripped his axe tight.
“Fucking magic,” he mumbled. “Even worse’n banking.”
She crept up, all white-toothed, hungry grin, touched one finger to the pick on the back of his axe and pushed it gently down towards the floor. “Do I take it you murdered your old friend Faithful Carpi to your satisfaction?”
Monza slapped her sword back into its sheath. “Faithful’s dead, if that’s the point of your fucking performance.”
“You have a strange manner of celebration.” She lifted her long arms to the ceiling. “Vengeance is yours! Praise be to God!”
“Orso still lives.”
“Ah, yes.” Ishri opened her eyes very wide, so wide Shivers wondered if they might drop out. “When Orso dies you will smile.”
“What do you care whether I smile?”
“I, care? Not a particle. You Styrians have a habit of boasting, and boasting, and never following through. I am pleased to find one who can get the job done. Do the job, scowl by all means.” She ran her fingers across the table-top then casually snuffed the flames of the burners out with the palm of her hand. “Speaking of which, you told our mutual friend Duke Rogont you could bring the Thousand Swords over to his side, as I recall?”
“If the Emperor’s gold is forthcoming-”
“In your shirt pocket.”
Monza frowned as she pulled something from her pocket and held it up to the light. A big red-gold coin, shining with that special warmth gold has that somehow makes you want to hold it. “Very nice, but it’ll take more than one.”
“Oh, there’ll be more. The mountains of Gurkhul are made of gold, I hear.” She peered at the charred edges of the hole in the corner of the barn, then happily clicked her tongue. “I still have it.” And she twisted her body through the gap like a fox through a fence and was gone.
Shivers left it a moment, then leaned close to Monza. “Can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something odd about her.”
“You’ve got this amazing sense for people, haven’t you?” She turned without smiling and left the barn.
Shivers stood there a moment longer, frowning down at Day’s body, working his face around, feeling the scars on the left side stretching, shifting, itching. Cosca dead, Day dead, Vitari gone, Friendly gone, Morveer fled and, by the look of things, turned against them. So much for the merry company. He should’ve been all nostalgic for the happy friends of long ago, the bands of brothers he’d been a part of. United in a common cause, even if it was no more’n staying alive. Dogman, and Harding Grim, and Tul Duru. Black Dow, even, all men with a code. All faded into the past, and left him alone. Down here in Styria, where no one had any code that meant a thing.
Even then, his right eye was about as close to crying as his left.
He scratched at the scar on his cheek. Ever so gently, just with his fingertips. He winced, scratched harder. And harder still. He stopped himself, hissing through his teeth. Now it itched worse than ever, and hurt into the bargain. He’d yet to work out a way to scratch that itch that didn’t make matters worse.
There’s vengeance for you.
The Old New Captain General
Monza had seen wounds past counting, in all their wondrous variety. The making of them had been her profession. She’d witnessed bodies ruined in every conceivable manner. Men crushed, slashed, stabbed, burned, hanged, skinned, gutted, gored. But Caul Shivers’ scar might well have been the worst she’d ever seen on the face of a living man.
It started as a pink mark near the corner of his mouth, became a ragged groove thick as a finger below his cheekbone, then widened, a stream of mottled, melted flesh flowing towards his eye. Streaks and spots of angry red spread out from it across his cheek, down the side of his nose. There was a thin mark to match slanting across his forehead and taking off half his eyebrow. Then there was the eye itself. It was bigger than the other. Lashes gone, lids shrivelled, the lower one drooping. When he blinked with his right eye, the left only twitched, and stayed open. He’d sneezed a while back, and it had puckered up like a swallowing throat, the dead enamelled pupil still staring at her through the pink hole. She’d had to will herself not to spew, and yet she was gripped with a horrified fascination, constantly looking to see if it would happen again, and it hardly helped that she knew he couldn’t see her looking.
She should have felt guilt. She’d been the cause of it, hadn’t she? She should have felt sympathy. She’d scars of her own, after all, and ugly enough. But disgust was as close as she could get. She wished she’d started off riding on the other side of him, but it was too late now. She wished he’d never taken the bandages off, but she could hardly tell him to put them back on. She told herself it might heal, might get better, and maybe it would.
But not much, and she knew it.
He turned suddenly, and she realised why he’d been staring at his saddle. His right eye was on her. His left, in the midst of all that scar, still looked straight downwards. The enamel must have slipped, and now his mismatched eyes gave him a look of skewed confusion.
“What?”
“Your, er…” She pointed at her face. “It’s slipped… a bit.”
“Again? Fucking thing.” He put his thumb in his eye and slid it back up. “Better?” Now the false one was fixed straight ahead while the real one glared at her. It was almost worse than it had been.
“Much,” she said, doing her best to smile.
Shivers spat something in Northern. “Uncanny results, did he say? If I happen back through Puranti I’ll give that eye-making bastard a visit…”
The mercenaries’ first picket came into view around a curve in the track-a scattering of shady-looking men in mismatched armour. She knew the one in charge by sight. She’d made it her business to know every veteran in the Thousand Swords, and what he was good for. Secco was this one’s name, a tough old wolf who’d served as a corporal for six years or more.
He pointed his spear at her as they brought their horses to a walk, his fellows around him, flatbows, swords, axes at the ready. “Who goes-”
She pushed her hood back. “Who do you think, Secco?”
The words froze on his lips and he stood, spear limp, as she rode past. On into the camp, men going about their morning rituals, eating their breakfasts, getting ready to march. A few looked up as she and Shivers passed on the track, or at any rate the widest stretch of mud between the tents. A few of them started staring. Then a few more, watching, following at a distance, gathering along the way.
“It’s her.”
“Murcatto.”
“She’s alive?”
She rode through them the way she used to, shoulders back, chin up, sneer locked on her mouth, not even bothering to look. As if they were nothing to her. As if she was a better kind of animal than they were. And all the
