Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

West stared at him. “Not one?”

“I couldn’t find any. There are forges, anvils, hammers and all the rest but… no one to work them. I spoke to one of the quartermasters. He said General Poulder refused to release any of his smiths, and so did General Kroy, so, well,” and Jalenhorm shrugged his shoulders, “we don’t have any.”

“No one thought to check?”

“Who?”

West felt the familiar headache tugging at the back of his eyes. Arrows need heads, blades need sharpening, armour and saddles and the carts that haul the supplies break, and need to be repaired. An army with no smiths is little better than an army with no weapons. And here they were, out in the frozen country, miles from the nearest settlement. Unless…

“We passed a penal colony on the way.”

Jalenhorm squinted as he tried to remember. “Yes, a foundry, I think. I saw smoke above the trees…”

“They would have some skilled metal-workers.”

The big man’s eyebrows went up. “Some criminal metalworkers.”

“I’ll take whatever we can get. Today your horse is short a shoe, tomorrow we might have nothing to fight with! Get a dozen men together, and a wagon. We’ll leave at once.”

The prison loomed up out of the trees through the cold rain, a fence of great, mossy logs tipped with bent and rusted spikes. A grim-looking place with a grim purpose. West swung from his saddle while Jalenhorm and his men reined up behind him, then squelched across the rutted track to the gate and hammered on the weathered wood with the pommel of his sword.

It took a while, but eventually a small hatch snapped open. A pair of grey eyes frowned at him through the slot. Grey eyes above a black mask. A Practical of the Inquisition.

“My name is Colonel West.”

The eyes regarded him coldly. “So?”

“I am in the service of Crown Prince Ladisla, and I need to speak to the commandant of this camp.”

“Why?”

West frowned, doing his very best to look impressive with his hair plastered to his scalp and the rain dripping off his chin. “There is a war on and I do not have time to bandy words with you! I need to speak to the commandant most urgently!”

The eyes narrowed. They looked at West for a while, and then at the dozen bedraggled soldiers behind him. “Alright,” said the Practical. “You can come in, but only you. The rest will have to wait.”

The main street was a stretch of churned-up mud between leaning shacks, water trickling from the eaves, spattering into the dirt. There were two men and a woman in the road, wet through, struggling to move a cart laden with stones, up to the axles in mush. All three had heavy chains on their ankles. Ragged, bony, hollow faces, as empty of hope as they were empty of food.

“Get that fucking cart shifted,” the Practical growled at them, and they stooped back to their unenviable task.

West struggled through the muck towards a stone building at the far end of the camp, trying to hop from one dry patch to another, without success. Another dour Practical was standing on the threshold, water running from a stained oilskin over his shoulders, hard eyes following West with a mixture of suspicion and indifference. He and his guide stepped past without a word and into the dim hall beyond, full of the noise of drumming rain. The Practical knocked at an ill-fitting door.

“Come in.”

A small, spare room with grey walls, cold and smelling slightly of damp. A mean fire flickered in the grate, a sagging shelf was stacked with books. A portrait of the King of the Union stared regally down from one wall. A lean man in a black coat sat writing at a cheap desk. He looked at West for a while, then carefully put down his pen and rubbed at the bridge of his nose with an inky thumb and forefinger.

“We have a visitor,” grunted the Practical.

“So I see. I am Inquisitor Lorsen, commandant of our little camp.”

West gave the bony hand the most perfunctory of squeezes. “Colonel West. I am here with Prince Ladisla’s army. We are camped a dozen miles to the north.”

“Of course. How might I be of assistance to his Highness?”

“We are desperately in need of skilled metal-workers. You run a foundry here, correct?”

“A mine, a foundry, and a smithy for the manufacture of farming tools, but I fail to see what—”

“Excellent. I will take a dozen or so men back with me, the most skilled men you have available.”

The commandant frowned. “Out of the question. The prisoners here are guilty of the most serious crimes. They cannot be released without a signed order from the Arch Lector himself.”

“Then we have a problem, Inquisitor Lorsen. I have ten thousand men with weapons that need sharpening, armour that needs mending, horses that need shoeing. We might be called into action at any moment. I cannot wait for orders from the Arch Lector or anyone else. I must leave with smiths, and there it is.”

“But you must understand that I cannot allow—”

“You fail to realise the gravity of the situation!” barked West, his temper already fraying. “By all means send a letter to the Arch Lector! I will send a man back to my camp for a company of soldiers! We can see who gets help first!”

The commandant thought about that for a while. “Very well,” he said eventually, “follow me.”

Two dirty children stared at West from the porch of one of the shacks as he stepped out of the commandant’s building, back into the incessant drizzle.

“You have children here?”

“We have whole families, if they are judged a danger to the state.” Lorsen glanced sideways at him. “A shame, but holding the Union together has always required harsh measures. I gather from your silence that you disapprove.”

West watched one of the shabby children limping through the muck, doomed, perhaps, to spend their whole life in this place. “I think it’s a crime.”

The commandant shrugged. “Don’t deceive yourself. Everyone is guilty of something, and even the innocent can be a threat. Perhaps it takes small crimes to prevent bigger ones, Colonel West, but it’s up to bigger men than us to decide. I only make sure they work hard, don’t prey upon each other, and don’t escape.”

“You only do your job, eh? A well-trodden way to avoid responsibility.”

“Which of us is it who lives among them, out here in the middle of nowhere? Which of us is it who watches over them, dresses them, feeds them, cleans them, fights the endless, pointless war against their damn lice? Is it you who stops them beating, and raping, and killing each other? You’re an officer in the King’s Own, eh, Colonel? So you live in Adua? In fine quarters in the Agriont, among the rich and well groomed?” West frowned, and Lorsen chuckled at him. “Which of us has truly avoided the responsibility, as you put it? My conscience has never been cleaner. Hate us if you like, we’re used to it. No one likes to shake hands with the man who empties the latrine pits either, but pits have to be emptied all the same. Otherwise the world fills up with shit. You can have your dozen smiths, but don’t try to take the high ground with me. There is no high ground here.”

West didn’t like it, but he had to admit the man made a good case, so he set his jaw and struggled on in silence, head down. They squelched towards a long, windowless, stone-built shed, thick smoke roiling up into the misty air from tall chimneys at each corner. The Practical slid back the bolt on the heavy door and heaved it open, and West followed him and Lorsen into the darkness.

The heat was like a slap in the face after the freezing air outside. Acrid smoke stung at West’s eyes, nipped at his throat. The din in the narrow space was frightening. Bellows creaked and wheezed, hammers clanged on anvils sending up showers of angry sparks, red hot metal hissed furiously in water barrels. There were men everywhere, packed in tight together, sweating, and groaning, and coughing, hollow faces half lit by the orange glow from the forges. Devils, in hell.