you there. Takes a different and rarer kind to stand up all alone and say, ‘I don’t like the way we do things.’ Especially to a set of torturers. Wile didn’t have either kind of courage. So he just did as he was told and tried not to think about it, and wondered what it would be like to have a job you believed in.
Ferring didn’t have that same problem. He liked the work. You could see it in those blue, blue eyes of his. He grinned over at the tattooed old man now and said, ‘Doubt he’ll be taking a burning that well by the time he gets back to Starikland.’ The prisoner just sat and watched, blue-painted ribs shifting with his crackly breathing. ‘Lot of nights between here and there. Lot of burnings, maybe. Yes, indeedy. Reckon he’ll be good and talkative by—’
‘I already suggested you shut up,’ said Bolder. ‘Now I’m thinking o’ making it an instruction. What do you —’
There was a knock at the door. Three quick knocks, in fact. The Practicals looked at each other, eyebrows up. Lorsen back with more questions. Once Lorsen had a question in mind, he wasn’t a man to wait for an answer.
‘You going to get that?’ Pauth asked Ferring.
‘Why would I?’
‘You’re closest.’
‘You’re shortest.’
‘What’s that got to fucking do with anything?’
‘It amuses me.’
‘Maybe my knife up your arse will amuse me!’ And Pauth slipped his knife out of his sleeve, blade appearing as if by magic. He loved to do that. Bloody show-off.
‘Will you two infants
Wile rearranged his cards again, wondering if there was some way he could win. One win, was that too much to ask? But such a rotten hand. His father had always said
Another insistent knocking. ‘All right, I’m coming!’ snapped Bolder, dragging back the bolts. ‘It’s not as if —’
There was a clatter, and Wile looked up to see Bolder lurching against the wall looking quite put out and someone barging past. Seemed a bit strong even if they’d taken a while to answer the door. Bolder obviously agreed, because he opened his mouth to complain, then looked surprised when he gurgled blood everywhere instead. That was when Wile noticed there was a knife-handle sticking from his fat throat.
He dropped his cards.
‘Eh?’ said Ferring, trying to get up, but his boots were tangled with the table. It wasn’t Lorsen who’d been knocking, it was the big Northman, the one with all the scars. He took a stride into the room, teeth bared, and crunch! Left a knife buried in Ferring’s face to the cross-piece, his nose flattened under it and blood welling and Ferring wheezed and arched back and kicked the table over, cards and coins flying.
Wile stumbled up, the Northman turning to look at him, blood dotting his face and pulling another knife from inside his coat, and—
‘Stop!’ hissed Pauth. ‘Or I kill him!’ Somehow he’d got to the prisoner, kneeling behind the chair he was roped to, knife blade pressed against his neck. Always been a quick thinker, Pauth. Good thing someone was.
Bolder had slid to the floor, was making a honking sound and drooling blood into a widening pool.
Wile realised he was holding his breath and took a great gasp.
The scarred Northman looked from Wile, to Pauth, and back, lifted his chin slightly, then gently lowered his blade.
‘Get help!’ snapped Pauth, and he tangled his fingers in the prisoner’s grey hair and pulled his head back, tickling his stubbled neck with the point of his knife. ‘I’ll see to this.’
Wile circled the Northman, his knees all shaky, pushing aside one of the leather curtains that divided up the fort’s downstairs, trying to keep as safe a distance as possible. He slithered in Bolder’s blood and nearly went right over, then dived out of the open door and was running.
‘Help!’ he screeched. ‘Help!’
One of the mercenaries lowered a bottle and stared at him, cross-eyed. ‘Wha?’ The celebrations were still half-heartedly dragging on, women laughing and men singing and shouting and rolling in a stupor, none of them enjoying it but going through the motions anyway like a corpse that can’t stop twitching, all garishly lit by the sizzling bonfire. Wile slid over in the mud, staggered up, dragging down his mask so he could shout louder.
‘Help! The Northman! The prisoner!’
Someone was pointing at him and laughing, and someone shouted at him to shut up, and someone was sick all over the side of a tent, and Wile stared about for anyone who might exert some control over this shambles and suddenly felt somebody clutch at his arm.
‘What are you jabbering about?’ None other than General Cosca, dewy eyes gleaming with the firelight, lady’s white powder smeared across one hollow, rash-speckled cheek.
‘That Northman!’ squealed Wile, grabbing the captain general by his stained shirt. ‘Lamb! He killed Bolder! And Ferring!’ He pointed a trembling finger towards the fort. ‘In there!’
To give him his due, Cosca needed no convincing. ‘Enemies in the camp!’ he roared, flinging his empty bottle away. ‘Surround the fort! You, cover the door, make sure no one leaves! Dimbik, get men around the back! You, put that woman down! Arm yourselves, you wretches!’
Some snapped to obey. Two found bows and pointed them uncertainly towards the door. One accidentally shot an arrow into the fire. Others stared baffled, or continued with their revelry, or stood grinning, imagining that this was some elaborate joke.
‘What the hell happened?’ Lorsen, black coat flapping open over his nightshirt, hair wild about his head.
‘It would appear our friend Lamb attempted a rescue of your prisoner,’ said Cosca. ‘Get away from that door, you idiots—do you think this is a joke?’
‘Rescue?’ muttered Sworbreck, eyebrows raised and eyeglasses skewed, evidently having recently crawled from his bed.
‘Rescue?’ snapped Lorsen, grabbing Wile by the collar.
‘Pauth took the prisoner… prisoner. He’s seeing to it—’
A figure lurched from the fort’s open door, took a few lazy steps, eyes wide above his mask, hands clasped to his chest. Pauth. He pitched on his face, blood turning the snow around him pink.
‘You were saying?’ snapped Cosca. A woman shrieked, stumbled back with a hand over her mouth. Men started to drag themselves from tents and shacks, bleary-eyed, pulling on clothes and bits of armour, fumbling with weapons, breath smoking in the cold.
‘Get more bows up here!’ roared Cosca, clawing at his blistered neck with his fingernails. ‘I want a pincushion of anything that shows itself! Clear the bloody civilians away!’
Lorsen was hissing in Wile’s face. ‘Is Conthus still alive?’
‘I think so… he was when I… when I—’
‘Cravenly fled? Pull your mask up, damn it, you’re a disgrace!’
Probably the Inquisitor was right, and Wile was a disgraceful Practical. He felt strangely proud of that possibility.
‘Can you hear me, Master Lamb?’ called Cosca, as Sergeant Friendly helped him into his gilded, rusted breastplate, a combination of pomp and decay that rather summed up the man.
‘Aye,’ came the Northman’s voice from the black doorway of the fort. The closest thing to silence had settled over the camp since the mercenaries returned in triumph the previous day.
‘I am so pleased you have graced us with your presence again!’ The captain general waved half-dressed bowmen into the shadows around the shacks. ‘I wish you’d sent word of your coming, though, we could have prepared a more suitable reception!’
‘Thought I’d surprise you.’
‘We appreciate the gesture! But I should say I have some hundred and fifty fighting men out here!’ Cosca took in the wobbling bows, dewy eyes and bilious faces of his Company. ‘Several of them are very drunk, but still. Long established admirer though I am of lost causes I really don’t see the happy ending for you!’
