Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

“The fuck… ?” said someone.

Do I look like a fucking slave to you?

Something moved in the gloom of the nearest side alley. Ringil, still struggling to breathe, could not get enough of an angle to see clearly.

“Oi!” Venj trod forward. Ringil got a worm’s-eye view of his boots. “This ain’t your fucking business, chum, so put that blade up, and clear off while you still can.”

Do I look like a fucking slave to y—

“Stop fucking saying that!”

Better run , said another voice, from the other side of the street. Ringil felt a chill smoking off him as he heard the words, though in his fuddled state he could not work out why. Better run .

“Right, that’s it,” said Venj grimly. “You were fucking warned.”

Out on the marsh , said a third voice, as cold and empty as the other two. Salt in the wind .

Footfalls, impossible to tell from where. The swish of a sword blade making passes in the night air. One of Venj’s men jerked out a string of curses, but there was a waking terror in his voice. Ringil twisted his head frantically, trying to see something, anything. Thought he made out a solid black figure standing in the shadows to his left.

Fuck them all , said the third voice, and Ringil remembered, with a sudden, gut-deep jolt, where he’d heard those words before.

Venj roared. “Come on then, you motherfucking—”

Dark rush of motion. Something like a whirlwind, closing from three corners.

Wrenched screams. Venj’s bellow, turned suddenly castrated.

And a hot, wet pattering through the air, like a rainy-season downpour back home in Trelayne. As it fell on his face and the cobbles around him, he realized vaguely that it was blood.

RINGIL CAME ROUND WITH THE STENCH OF SOMEONE’S VOIDED BOWELS clogging his throat. He coughed and turned over on the cobblestones, rolled up against the familiar bulk of a still-warm corpse. His knee throbbed painfully and, somewhere not far off, he heard the sea. For a couple of moments he was confused, tangled in old memories, thought he was still lying hidden among the slain at Rajal Beach. Panic-stricken, he froze the cough in his throat. His pulse pounded. If the Scaled Folk were still prowling the breakwaters, looking for survivors…

The leaning bulk of a corner building, the cobblestones under him. Faint glow of street torches. He blinked. Memory swam up to him in all its ugly glory.

No Scaled Folk anymore, Gil. We slaughtered them all, remember?

He heaved himself into a sitting position. The cough jumped him, would not be held down any longer. He gave in and let it rack his chest, had to prop himself up on the corpse until the spasms passed. When it finally stopped, there was a sour, acid taste in his throat. He hawked and spat, wiped his mouth and stared around.

Well, it wasn’t Rajal Beach, right enough, but whoever had been at work here could have given the Scaled Folk lessons in savagery. Venj’s followers were scattered across the slant of the street in butchered pieces and broad pools of blood. The corpse Ringil was leaning on lacked both legs below the knee and one arm. Others were worse. He spotted a body ripped in two somewhere below the rib cage, another reduced to chunks of meat no larger or better defined than you’d see on a butcher’s slab. Venj himself sprawled back against a wall, throat torn out, staring down with sightless eyes at his own opened guts. His ax was still gripped firmly in both hands. Other weapons lay about for the taking, one or two with their owner’s disembodied hands still clinging.

A faint odor of scorched flesh and metal hung over everything. The slave market stink of branding.

“Interesting,” Ringil mumbled, mostly to keep from thinking too hard about what he’d seen of his saviors. He patted the corpse on its intact shoulder, leaned hard on it, and used the leverage to get back on his feet. “And very handy. I think—”

“Hoy!”

Klithren hung there at a panting halt—he’d come up the rise at a jog. Naked disbelief slapped across his face like cheap paint as he stared at the slaughter in front of him. He grabbed at the sword in his belt. For one drop-stomached moment, Ringil thought it was all over, that Klithren would kill him now before he could even find his sword, let alone put up a guard with it. He met the bounty hunter’s gaze, felt himself shaking his head numbly.

No more, no more .

“Hoiran’s fucking balls, Shenshenath. Who did this?”

“I uh, I—” Then, abruptly, he was tumbling forward and Klithren let go of his sword hilt and darted in just in time to catch him and hold him up. His boot heels dug and scrubbed about on the cobbles; he tried to get purchase, but his legs were like marsh grass stalks. The bounty hunter made a hushing noise.

“Hey, hey. Easy, Shenshenath, easy. I got you.”

He lowered Ringil gently to the ground. Put hands on him, checking for wounds. Ringil pushed him away.

“I’m fine—just gashes. Got hit in the head with something.”

The bounty hunter nodded, took back his hands with an oddly propitiatory gesture. He crouched there in front of Ringil, still taking in the carnage.

“You see who did this?”

“They jumped us. No time.” Ringil felt another cough coming on, rolled with it, played it up for all it was worth. He nodded weakly to one side. “Out of that alley. Like fucking demons.”

“But…” Klithren’s brow furrowed. “Must have been a lot of them, right?”

“Didn’t see. No time.” He kept his voice faint, tightened up the Yhelteth accent. “Couldn’t tell.”

The bounty hunter stared around. As his eyes fell on Venj, Ringil thought his mouth grew clamped. Thought his eyes suddenly gleamed.

“He found you, then? Venj. He tell you what he wanted?”

Ringil felt a chilly caution settle over him. He shook his head, feeling his way by inches. “Found me, yeah, in a tavern up there. Never told me what it was about. Something important, he said, but they hit us before he could say.”

“Well, where the fuck were you all going?”

Another groggy headshake—work the act. “Dunno. Back to the square, I think. Bounty office. He seemed… excited.”

Klithren sat back on his haunches. “Just doesn’t make any fucking sense. He left me a note at the boardinghouse. Gone back to see you at the tavern, something important, he said. Supposed to meet him there. I get there, he’s gone to the harbor , left word for me to follow. I get to the harbor, no one fucking there, either, and some wharf rat drunk tells me he saw men head up the street this way. Heard the fight, but by the time I got up here…”

Ringil nodded. At night, the sound of steel clash and dying would carry half a mile at least. He started to get up, found his legs a little stronger this time.

“Over quicker than you can piss,” he said truthfully. And then, with mental apologies to Egar, “Thought I saw staff lances. And howling. You hear it?”

“Steppe thugs?” Klithren looked doubtful. “You think? Looks savage enough, yeah, but I haven’t heard of a Majak company in these parts since the war wrapped up. Haven’t seen any about town, either.”

“So maybe I imagined it. Got hit in the head, like I said.” Ringil cast about for the Ravensfriend, found it in a pool of blood. He wiped it down as best he could with rags from one of the slaughtered men, slotted it clumsily back in the scabbard on his back. Checked his sleeve for the dragon knife, settled it a little looser. Looked up and down the street for witnesses.

“Ah fuck, Venj. Look at you.”

Klithren had wandered over to stare at the axman’s corpse. Ringil came up on his shoulder, got a reflexive, flinching glance from the other man, the skirmish habit of years, and then the bounty hunter went back to brooding on his fallen comrade. Neck bent forward, the nape offered. Ringil felt himself hesitate.