Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

“It’s persistent,” muttered Vitari, shoving her back against the wall with her boot. “You’d have to give it that.”

“Fools!” hissed Shickel. “You cannot resist what comes! God’s right hand is falling upon this city, and nothing can save it! All your deaths are already written!” A particularly bright detonation flared across the sky, casting orange light onto the Practicals’ masked faces. A moment later the thunder of it echoed around the room. Shickel began to laugh, a crazy, grating cackle. “The Hundred Words are coming! No chains can bind them, no gates can keep them out! They are coming!”

“Perhaps.” Glokta shrugged. “But they will come too late for you.”

“I am dead already! My body is nothing but dust! It belongs to the Prophet! Try as you might, you will learn nothing from me!”

Glokta smiled. He could almost feel the warmth of the flames, far below, on his face.

“That sounds like a challenge.”

Ardee smiled at him, and Jezal smiled back. He grinned like an idiot. He could not help it. He was so happy to be back where things made sense. Now they need never be parted. He wanted only to tell her how much he loved her. How much he missed her. He opened his mouth but she pressed her finger to his lips. Firmly.

“Shhh.”

She kissed him. Gently at first, then harder.

“Uh,” he said.

Her teeth nipped at his lip. Playful, to begin with.

“Ah,” he said.

They bit harder, and harder still.

“Ow!” he said.

She sucked at his face, her teeth ripping at his skin, scraping on his bones. He tried to scream, but nothing came out. It was dark, his head swam. There was a hideous tugging, an unbearable pulling on his mouth.

“Got it,” said a voice. The agonising pressure released.

“How bad is it?”

“Not as bad as it looks.”

“It looks very bad.”

“Shut up and hold that torch higher.”

“What’s that?”

“What?”

“That there, sticking out?”

“His jaw, fool, what do you think it is?”

“I think I’m going to be sick. Healing is not among my remarkable—”

“Shut your fucking hole and hold the torch up! We’ll have to push it back in!” Jezal felt something pressing on his face, hard. There was a cracking sound and an unbearable lance of pain stabbed through his jaw and into his neck, like nothing he had ever felt before. He sagged back.

“I’ll hold it, you move that.”

“What, this?”

“Don’t pull his teeth out!”

“It fell out by itself!”

“Damn fool pink!”

“What’s happening?” said Jezal. But all that came out was a kind of gurgle. His head was throbbing, pulsing, splitting with pain.

“He’s waking up now!”

“You stitch then, I’ll hold him.” There was a pressure round his shoulders, across his chest, folding him tight. His arm hurt. Hurt terribly. He tried to kick but his leg was agony, he couldn’t move it.

“You got him?”

“Yes I’ve got him! Get stitching!”

Something stabbed into his face. He had not thought the pain could grow any worse. How wrong he had been.

“Get off me!” he bellowed, but all he heard was, “thugh.”

He struggled, tried to wriggle free, but he was folded tight, and it only made his arm hurt more. The pain in his face got worse. His upper lip, his lower lip, his chin, his cheek. He screamed and screamed and screamed, but heard nothing. Only a quiet wheezing. When he thought his head would surely explode, the pain grew suddenly less.

“Done.”

The grip was released and he lay back, floppy as a rag, helpless. Something turned his head. “That’s good stitching. That’s real good. Wish you’d been around when I got these. Might still have my looks.”

“What looks, pink?”

“Huh. Best get started on his arm. Then there’s the leg to set an’ all.”

“Where did you put that shield?”

“No,” groaned Jezal, “please…” Nothing but a click in his throat.

He could see something now, blurry shapes in the half-light. A face loomed towards him, an ugly face. Bent and broken nose, skin torn and crossed with scars. There was a dark face, just behind it, a face with a long, livid line from eyebrow to chin. He closed his eyes. Even the light seemed painful.

“Good stitching.” A hand patted the side of his face. “You’re one of us, now, boy.”

Jezal lay there, his face a mass of agony, and the horror crept slowly through every limb.

“One of us.”

So the Dogman was just lying there on his face, wet to the skin and trying to keep still without freezing solid, looking out across the valley from the trees, and watching Bethod’s army marching. He couldn’t see that much of them from where he was lying, just a stretch of the track over a ridge, enough to see the Carls tramping by, painted shields bright on their backs, mail glistening with specks of melted snow, spears sticking up high between the tree trunks. Rank after rank of ’em, marching steady.

They were a good way off, but he was taking quite a risk even getting this close. Bethod was just as careful as ever. He’d got men out all around, up on the ridges and the high points, anywhere where he thought someone could get a sight of what he was up to. He’d sent a few scouts south and some others east, hoping to trick anyone was watching, but he hadn’t got the Dogman fooled. Not this time. Bethod was heading back the way he’d come. He was heading north.

Dogman breathed in sharp, and gave a long, sad sigh. By the dead, he felt tired. He watched the tiny figures filing past through the pine branches. He’d spent all those years scouting for Bethod, keeping an eye on armies like this one for him, helping him win battles, helping to make him a King, though he’d never dreamed it at the time. In some ways everything had changed. In others it was just the same as ever. Here he was still, face down in the muck with a sore neck from looking up. Ten years older and not a day better off. He could hardly remember what his ambitions used to be, but this hadn’t ever been among ’em, he was sure of that. All that wind blown past, all that snow fallen, all that water flowed by. All that fighting, all that marching, all that waste.

Logen gone, and Forley gone, and the candle burning down fast on the rest of ’em.

Grim slithered through the frozen scrub beside him, propped himself on his elbows and peered out towards the Carls moving on the road. “Huh,” he grunted.

“Bethod’s moving north,” whispered Dogman.

Grim nodded.

“He’s got scouts out all over, but he’s heading north, no doubt. We’d best let Threetrees know.”

Another nod.

Dogman lay there in the wet. “I’m getting tired.”

Grim looked up, lifted an eyebrow.

“All this effort, and for what? Everything the same as ever. Whose side is it we’re on now?” Dogman waved his hand over at the men slogging down the road. “We supposed to fight all this lot? When do we get a rest?”

Grim shrugged his shoulders, squeezed his lips together like he was thinking about it. “When we’re dead?”

And wasn’t that the sorry truth.

Took Dogman a while to find the others. They were nowhere near where they should’ve been by now. Being honest, they weren’t far from where they were when he left. Dow was the first one he saw, sat on a big stone with the usual scowl on his face, glaring down into a gully. Dogman came up next to him, saw what he was looking at. The four Southerners, clambering over the rocks, slow and clumsy as new-born calves. Tul and Threetrees were waiting for them at the bottom, looking mighty short on patience.