Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

Vitari hopped down from the parapet onto the walkway. “His Eminence will provide? You’d be lucky.”

Glokta frowned at her back as she sauntered away, then he frowned towards the hills on the mainland, then he frowned up at the citadel. Dangers on every side. Trapped between the Arch Lector and the Gurkish, and with nobody but an unknown traitor for company. It’ll be a wonder if I last a day.

A committed optimist might have called the place a dive. But it scarcely deserves the name. A piss-smelling shack with some oddments of furniture, everything stained with ancient sweat and recent spillages. A kind of cesspit with half the cess removed. Customers and staff were indistinguishable: drunken, fly-blown natives stretched out in the heat. Nicomo Cosca, famed soldier of fortune, sprawled in amongst this scene of debauchery, soundly asleep.

He had his driftwood chair rocked back on its rear legs against the grimy wall, one boot up on the table in front of him. It had probably been as fine and flamboyant a boot as one could hope for, once, black Styrian leather with a golden spur and buckles. No longer. The upper was sagging and scuffed grey with hard use. The spur was snapped off short, the gilt on the buckles was flaking away and the iron underneath was spotted with brown rust. A circle of pink, blistered skin peered at Glokta through a hole in the sole.

And a boot could scarcely be better fitted to its owner. Cosca’s long moustaches, no doubt meant to be waxed out sideways in the fashion of a Styrian dandy, flopped limp and lifeless round his half-open mouth. His neck and jaw were covered in a week’s growth, somewhere between beard and stubble, and there was a scabrous, flaking rash peering out above his collar. His greasy hair stuck from his head at all angles, excepting a large bald spot on his crown, angry red with sunburn. Sweat beaded his slack skin, a lazy fly crawled across his puffy face. One bottle lay empty on its side on the table. Another, half-full, was cradled in his lap.

Vitari stared down at this picture of drunken self-neglect, expression of contempt plainly visible despite her mask. “So it’s true then, you are still alive.” Just barely.

Cosca prised open one red-rimmed eye, blinked, squinted up, and then slowly began to smile. “Shylo Vitari, I swear. The world can still surprise me.” He worked his mouth, grimacing, glanced down and saw the bottle in his lap, lifted it and took a long, thirsty pull. Deep swallows, just as if it were water in the bottle. A practised drunkard, as though there was any doubt. Hardly the man one would choose to entrust the defence of the city to, at first glance. “I never expected to see you again. Why don’t you take off the mask? It’s robbing me of your beauty.”

“Save it for your whores, Cosca. I don’t need to catch what you’ve got.”

The mercenary gave a bubbling sound, half laugh, half cough. “You still have the manners of a princess,” he wheezed.

“Then this shithouse must be a palace.”

Cosca shrugged. “It all looks the same if you’re drunk enough.”

“You think you’ll ever be drunk enough?”

“No. But it’s worth trying.” As if to prove the point he sucked another mouthful from the bottle.

Vitari perched herself on the edge of the table. “So what brings you here? I thought you were busy spreading the cock-rot across Styria.”

“My popularity at home had somewhat dwindled.”

“Found yourself on both sides of a fight once too often, eh?”

“Something like that.”

“But the Dagoskans welcomed you with open arms?”

“I’d rather you welcomed me with open legs, but a man can’t get everything he wants. Who’s your friend?”

Glokta slid out a rickety chair with one aching foot and eased himself into it, hoping it would bear his weight. Crashing to the floor in a bundle of broken sticks would hardly send the right message, now, would it? “My name is Glokta.” He stretched his sweaty neck out to one side, and then the other. “Superior Glokta.”

Cosca looked at him for a long time. His eyes were bloodshot, sunken, heavy-lidded. And yet there is a certain calculation there. Not half as drunk as he pretends, perhaps. “The same one who fought in Gurkhul? The Colonel of Horse?”

Glokta felt his eyelid flicker. You could hardly say the same man, but surprisingly well remembered, nonetheless. “I gave up soldiery some years ago. I’m surprised you’ve heard of me.”

“A fighting man should know his enemies, and a hired man never knows who his next enemy might be. It’s worth taking notice of who’s who, in military circles. I heard your name mentioned, some time ago, as a man worth taking notice of. Bold and clever, I heard, but reckless. That was the last I heard. And now here you are, in a different line of work. Asking questions.”

“Recklessness didn’t work out for me in the end.” Glokta shrugged. “And a man needs something to do with his time.”

“Of course. Never doubt another’s choices, I say. You can’t know his reasons. You come here for a drink, Superior? They’ve nothing but this piss, I’m afraid.” He waved the bottle. “Or have you questions for me?”

That I have, and plenty of them. “Do you have any experience with sieges?”

“Experience?” spluttered Cosca, “Experience, you ask? Hah! Experience is one thing I am not short of—”

“No,” murmured Vitari over her shoulder, “just discipline and loyalty.”

“Yes, well,” Cosca frowned up at her back, “that all depends on who you ask. But I was at Etrina, and at Muris. Serious pair of sieges, those. And I besieged Visserine myself for a few months and nearly had it, except that she-devil Mercatto caught me unawares. Came on us with cavalry before dawn, sun behind and all, damned unfriendly trick, the bitch—”

“I heard you were passed out drunk at the time,” muttered Vitari.

“Yes, well… Then I held Borletta against Grand Duke Orso for six months—”

Vitari snorted. “Until he paid you to open the gates.”

Cosca gave a sheepish grin. “It was an awful lot of money. But he never fought his way in! You’d have to give me that, eh, Shylo?”

“No one needs to fight you, providing they bring their purse.”

The mercenary grinned. “I am what I am, and never claimed to be anything else.”

“So you’ve been known to betray an employer?” asked Glokta.

The Styrian paused, the bottle halfway to his mouth. “I am thoroughly offended, Superior. Nicomo Cosca may be a mercenary, but there are still rules. I could only turn my back on an employer under one condition.”

“Which is?”

Cosca grinned. “If someone else were to offer me more.”

Ah, the mercenary’s code. Some men will do anything for money. Most men will do anything for enough. Perhaps even make a Superior of the Inquisition disappear? “Do you know what became of my predecessor, Superior Davoust?”

“Ah, the riddle of the invisible torturer!” Cosca scratched thoughtfully at his sweaty beard, picked a little at the rash on his neck and examined the results, wedged under his fingernail. “Who knows or cares to know? The man was a swine. I hardly knew him and what I knew I didn’t like. He had plenty of enemies, and, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a real snake pit down here. If you’re asking which one bit him, well… isn’t that your job? I was busy here. Drinking.”

Not too difficult to believe. “What would your opinion be of our mutual friend, General Vissbruck?”

Cosca hunched his shoulders and sank a little lower into his chair. “The man’s a child. Playing soldiers. Tinkering with his little castle and his little fence, when the big walls are all that count. Lose those and the game is done, I say.”