Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

“Back! Get back!” The four Guardsmen were chanting it loud as they shoved. “In the Emperor’s name, stand down!”

For a few seconds, it looked as if it all might dissolve in chaos, and Egar drew desperate breath in preparation for the moment. But Jaran and Tald were pros—they rolled him on his face and secured his wrists with twine before they lifted. And as they pinioned him for the lift, he heard a shrill blast from the Guard captain’s whistle.

“That’s enough !” And a harsh scraping sound—Egar made it for the captain’s riot saber coming out. “In the Emperor’s name, you, will, stand, down! ”

The crowd quieted. Egar’s two captors hauled him upright and set him on his feet. The captain brandished his saber. By city law, it was supposed to be blunted so as not to inflict lethal injury, but it didn’t look that way in the glint of bandlight and the torches.

Darhan stood, arms folded, looking on. He would not meet Egar’s eyes.

“If any of you”—the captain now stalking a short arc in front of the restrained crowd, voice pitched loud and lecturing—“wish to witness this man suffer the penalty for his murder of an accredited imperial officer , then you may do so at his execution.”

Undercurrent of murmuring. But all the force had gone out of it.

“For now, you will give way to the authority vested in me by His Imperial Radiance Jhiral Khimran, or face charges of your own for a breach of the Emperor’s peace. Do I make myself clear?”

The quiet held. The captain evidently judged it sufficient for his purposes.

“All right, lads. Let’s open some space here. Jaran, Tald—walk him through.”

Through was used advisedly. The press of freebooters opened grudgingly as Egar’s captors marched him forward. They all wanted a good look. See a Dragonbane brought low. See the man who dared to kill an imperial knight and rape his wife in their own bedchamber. See the doomed man walking . Egar, still groggy and sagging from the blow to the head, was almost glad of the two Guardsmen’s grip on his upper arms. The crowd of faces jostled past like something out of his recent pipe house dreams.

“That’s close enough,” the guard on his right snapped as part of the press lurched up against them. He and the Dragonbane both staggered a little from the push. Egar turned his head, saw, with sudden shock, the shaven-headed burn victim staring intensely at him among the pushers, scar-puckered face not much more than a foot away.

Something cool brushed upward, against his pinioned hands. Something stung the edge of his left palm, insect-like. Something thick and rounded pressed into the loose curl of his right. The twine on his wrists slithered away like tiny serpents.

“Hoy, Tald, he’s getting—”

But for Tald, it was already far too late.

The passed knife was scalpel-sharp, it had slit the twine bindings with less pressure than a soft kiss, put a thin cut in Egar’s left hand by touch alone, and settled into the Dragonbane’s right palm as if custom-built for that purpose.

Egar thrashed around, didn’t waste time getting the blade aloft. He cut downward, instinct honed in years of desperate battlefield clinches, found Tald’s inner thigh with the knife, and the big artery that pulsed there. The Guardsman yelped, outraged, and leapt back as he felt the sting of the blade. He did not yet know what had been done to him.

“He’s loose— ”

Wailing, but choked off, as Egar cleared room with one hacking elbow into Tald’s sternum, and spun to face Jaran—slashed the man across the forehead before he could startle back more than inches. Blood rose in the wound, rinsed down the shocked Guardsman’s face in a flood. He snarled and flailed blindly out at his suddenly loosed prisoner. He struggled to swing his day-club. Egar booted him in the kneecap. He fell down. The Dragonbane kicked out again, connected with something soft. Jaran folded flat.

Egar swooped low, grabbed up Jaran’s club in his free hand, and whirled to face the others. Saw the captain’s saber glinting down, got in a block, looped and slammed the blade away, stepped in. Rallying cries around him now, the rest of the Guardsman floundering after response. Egar got in close with the captain, punch to the face, snap the head back, and jam the terrible small knife up under his jaw and in. He twisted, felt the slim blade snap and break off, let it go.

Darhan yelling somewhere, frustrated rage. “He’s free, you fools! He’s getting away!”

The captain reeled back, blood drooling out from under his chin, clutching at his wound, saber gone. No time to grab it. The crowd looked on, roaring as if it were sport. Egar met another Guardsman head-on, took a low, glancing blow off the hip, rode it. Stood and struck back with his club, side of the head, heard the crunch it made, and the man went down senseless.

The others came running in. This can’t last, Dragonbane . He spotted his next weapon, snarled with fierce joy. Traded blows with the first of his new attackers, screamed in his face for shock, and dodged past, into heat and brighter light. Seized the torch by its shaft where it stood pegged, plucked it up out of the earth with a triumphant bellow, and swung about. The flames whooped through the air.

He got lucky—hit two of the remaining Guardsmen on the same sweeping stroke as they charged him. Chunks of oil-soaked binding and pitch jarred loose, caught in clothing and hair. The flames splattered about. The burning men reeled back, beating at themselves in panic. Egar hauled back his head and howled, berserker ululation. It went through his aching head like an ax, it split the air like the rage of some vast bird of prey. He brandished club and torch aloft in either hand. Swung the flaming brand through the air again, made it whoop .

“Come on then! Who wants some more?”

He was bellowing in Majak without realizing—harsh, exotic syllables most of them would not understand. He saw men watching him in the firelight-painted murk, gathered faces like a theater audience—excited, appalled—none even close to taking him on.

Ten paces away, the river at his back. He spotted Darhan, hovering close on his flank, long-knife drawn. Egar pointed the torch at him, stared down its length, lined the Ishlinak up in the waver of heated air where the flames danced.

“You, you cunt!” he yelled. “I’m going to fucking have you!”

He hurled the torch at the other man, saw with gut-deep satisfaction how Darhan flinched away. Then he turned and sprinted flat-out for the riverbank.

Cast the day-club aside as he reached the edge.

Plowed a headlong dive, direct into the black water beyond.

It took Ringil longer than he’d have liked to get to the Black Folk Span. The streets below the palace on the estuary side were crammed, impassable at any pace above that of a snail with a diploma in law. Wagons and carts and every variety of human traffic vied for space. No way to open passage, short of spurring his horse forward into the press, trampling down anyone too slow or stubborn to get out of his way.

But that could only draw attention, and violence of one sort or another, and despite the spiky, hungover will to do harm in his head, what he needed right now was to stay as inconspicuous as possible, to lose himself in the hubbub of Yhelteth’s heart. Archeth would let him go, he knew, and he clung to a hope that Rakan might, too. But word had to get back to Jhiral sooner or later, and that meant a limited amount of time to work with. So he gathered his small store of patience around him like a threadbare cloak, rode the slow throb of his aching head, and sat his horse like a man midway across a river in full summer spate, up to his knees in the flow of citizenry, moving slower than he could have walked.