Look out, look out, he s having a fi
Fever! It s the coughing fever!
Get him the fuck away from m
Poison, poison!
Don t touch the fucking food!
Spit it up, man. Spit it the fuck up!
And then the new cry, the new terror. Possessed, possessed! The Dark Court has him. Hoiran comes! Don t let him touch you, he ll break the chains like a
Hoiran! Hoiran! Abase yourselves, it is
Hoiran walks!
Back, get back
The march-masters arrived. Gerin was barely aware of them, vision torn back and forth in splinters as his neck spasmed front and side, front and side, front and side. The spittle was gathering in his throat he coughed and spat desperately, felt it start to foam and blow on his lips. A dimly seen form stooped across him, a fist clobbered inaccurately down. The blow glanced off the side of his head. His spine arched, and he made deep snarling noises at the base of his throat. A second march-master joined the first.
Not like that, you fucking twat. Get a grip on his
Yeah, you fucking try to
Just hold him still, will you!
Someone got fully astride Gerin, tried to pin him down by the arms. He thought he recognized the march- master s face from days earlier hair grizzled and receding beneath a knitted wool cap, brow creased, and eyes worried. Another younger, angrier face loomed behind him and to the side. Deep in the fit and foaming, Gerin glimpsed the second man raising a fist wrapped in metallic knuckle-duster gleam. Saw the way he angled carefully for the punch. This one would break his face for sure.
Something thin and glinting whipped loosely upward in the night air, dropped down again over the younger man s head Gerin knew it for a length of chain. He dropped his Strov-practiced spasming like a peeled cloak, hinged furiously up against the grip on his arms, nuzzled into the older march-master s neck like a lover.
He bit deep and hung on.
The march-master yelped and tried to smack him away. The younger man s steel-loaded punch misfired, hit his struggling companion in the shoulder. Then the chain pulled taut, ripped him backward and tumbling away. Gerin locked his jaws on the older man s neck, got his hands up to help the clinch. The other slaves on the coffle crowded about, prevented retreat. The march-master was bleating now, stumbling, trying to elbow a path clear. Flailing to get Gerin off him. The woolen cap got knocked askew on his balding head, then away, into the confusion. Gerin rode the struggles, felt his nose bloodied from a random blow, ignored it, ground and sliced and scissored with his teeth, worked at tearing a ragged hole in the man s neck. Skin, sinew, tiny gobbets of shredded flesh and there, there, the tiny, wet-pulsing pipe of the artery. He spat loose, let go. The march-master staggered back, eyes wide on Gerin s in the poor light, mouth gaping like a plea. He slapped a hand to the wound in his neck, felt the damage there, the swift pulse of his life running out over his fingers. Made a kind of moaning sound and fell over gibbering.
Get his fucking bolt cutters! Now!
It was the Rajal veteran, through gritted teeth as he sawed the length of chain link back and forth across the younger march-master s throat. His fist were up and doubled about the chain in an attempt to keep the worst of the strain off his manacles still Gerin saw how the veteran bled at the wrists from the pressure. The march-master thrashed and kicked, booted legs lashing out, trying to find purchase. But the dull metal links had sunk deep in the flesh at his throat, and his eyes bulged inhumanly large as he choked, filled with the desperate knowledge of his own death. Gerin darted in, grabbed the cutters from his belt. He wrestled with the unfamiliar angles of the tool, trying to make it bite on the edge of his ankle cuffs.
You motherfuckers! Heavy blow across his shoulder. Get on the fucking ground, you piece of sh
Gerin staggered, did not quite go down. The third, newly arrived march-master snarled and slammed the club into him again, from the side. It put him in the dirt this time. The march-master stood over him a single hard-breathing second with club raised again and was clawed down by the other men on the coffle before he could strike. An awful, wailing yell came up from the ground where he hit. Chained forms piled onto him.
Cut me loose, son. Do it quick.
It was the gaunt man, arms out-thrust. Gerin hesitated an instant, then fastened the bolt cutters on the man s manacles. He heaved and twisted, forearms aching from the effort. For one sickening moment, he thought the cutters would not work. Then the manacle bent, and split, and tore.
That s it, that s it, the gaunt man almost crooning. Guild-level iron, my arse. Look at that shit. Fucking skimp-shift Etterkal smiths.
The second manacle went almost as easily, and then the gaunt man had snatched the bolt cutters from Gerin s sweat-slick grip. He hefted them like a weapon. Gerin felt his mouth dry up.
Come on, the man snapped. Hold em out.
It was like his father speaking Gerin obeyed in a daze. The gaunt man set the bolt cutters to his manacles, snapped each one open in turn with a powerful doubled crimping action. He did Gerin s feet almost as fast, then his own. He tore off the broken cuffs, straightened up and laughed a sudden, fierce burst of joy that had something animal about it. He clapped Gerin on the shoulder, almost flooring him again with the force of the blow.
Fucking amazing, son. Never seen anything like that.
Elsewhere, other men had laid hands on the other two march-masters bolt cutters and were now about the squabbling uncertain task of trying to free themselves or one another in the dark. The scar-faced Rajal veteran rose up, like something summoned, from the corpse of the man he d killed. He tugged his chains loose from the red-raw gape of the march-master s burst throat and offered them up. Gerin felt a shudder run up his spine at the sight. The veteran shook the chain impatiently.
You two going to stand there congratulating each other all fucking night? he growled, and nodded out across the gathered slave caravan to where the commotion was now general.
We ve got a couple of minutes tops before someone with a sword gets here. Come on.
Gerin followed the gesture, saw the truth of it. Dark figures waded about through the disarrayed coffles, trying to trace the source of the uproar. Most held up torches or brands pulled hurriedly from the campfires. Dim glint of blades unsheathed in their free hands.
The gaunt man set the cutters to the veteran s manacles, broke them apart with no more effort than he d needed before. The veteran jerked his hands impatiently free of the ruined metal, then bent and pulled each foot free of its snapped ankle cuff in turn.
Behind them, a shout split the night.
There! Monkgrave s coffle!
They re Get them! They re loose! Fucking get in there and
Still bent over his ankle cuffs, the veteran twisted his head toward the voices. Gerin saw him grimace and nod to himself. Then he got carefully back to his feet, curled a hand around each freed wrist in turn and breathed in deeply, grunted as if surprised by something.
You d better get out of here, he told the gaunt man.
I, you, but
The veteran took the bolt cutters gently from him. Go on. Take the kid, get up into that tree line quick, while you still can.
And you?
The veteran gestured at the confusion around them, the other men struggling to free themselves in the dark. Friend, if someone doesn t buy us some more time, this is all going to be over quicker than a priest s fuck.
Then I ll stay, too.
You fight in the war? the veteran asked, as gently as he d taken the cutters.
The gaunt man hesitated. Lowered his head, shook it slowly.
Reserved trades, he said. I was I m a blacksmith.
