Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

She slowly prised open her eyes, slowly brought her hands round in front of her, blinked down as though she had never seen them before. “What’s this?”

“This is exactly what it appears to be.” He nodded his head down the wharf. “This is a ship leaving for Westport on the next tide. You have contacts in Westport?”

The tendons in her thin neck fluttered as she swallowed. “I have contacts everywhere.”

“Good. Then this is me setting you free.”

There was a long silence. “Free?” She lifted one hand to her head and rubbed absently at her stubbly scalp, staring at Glokta for a drawn-out moment. Not sure whether to believe it, and who can blame her? I’m not sure that I believe it. “His Eminence must have mellowed beyond recognition.”

Glokta snorted. “Not likely. Sult knows nothing about this. If he did, I rather think we both might be swimming with rocks round our ankles.”

Her eyes narrowed. The merchant Queen judges the bargain. “Then what’s the price?”

“The price is you’re dead. You’re forgotten. Put Dagoska from your mind, it’s finished. Find some other people to save. The price is you leave the Union and never come back. Not. Ever.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Why?”

Ah, my favourite question. Why do I do this? He shrugged. “What does it matter? A woman lost in the desert—”

“Should take such water as she is offered, no matter who it comes from. Don’t worry. I won’t be saying no.” She reached out suddenly and Glokta half-jerked away, but her fingertips only touched him gently on his cheek. They rested there for a moment, while his skin tingled, and his eye twitched, and his neck ached. “Perhaps,” she whispered, “if things had been different…”

“If I weren’t a cripple and you weren’t a traitor? Things are as they are.”

She let her hand drop, half smiling. “Of course they are. I would say I’ll see you again—”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

She nodded slowly. “Then goodbye.” She pulled the hood over her head, throwing her face back into shadow, then brushed past Glokta and walked quickly towards the end of the wharf. He stood, weight on his cane, and watched her go, scratching his cheek slowly where her fingers had rested. So. To get women to touch you, you need only spare their lives. I should try it more often.

He turned away, limped a few painful steps onto the dusty quay, peering up into the dark buildings. I wonder if Practical Vitari is in there somewhere, watching? I wonder if this little episode will find its way into her next report to the Arch Lector? He felt a sweaty shiver up his aching back. I won’t be putting it in mine, that’s sure, but what does it really matter? He could smell it, as the wind shifted, the smell that seemed to find its way into every corner of the city now. The sharp smell of burning. Of smoke. Of ash. Of death. Without a miracle, none of us will leave this place alive. He looked back. Carlot dan Eider was already crossing the gangway. Well. Perhaps just one of us will.

“Things are going well,” sang Cosca in his rich Styrian accent, grinning out over the parapet at the carnage beyond the walls. “A good day’s work, yesterday, considering.”

A good day’s work. Below them, on the other side of the ditch, the bare earth was scarred and burned, bristling with spent flatbow bolts like stubble on a brown chin. Everywhere, siege equipment lay wrecked and ruined. Broken ladders, fallen barrows spilling rocks, burned and shattered wicker screens, trampled into the hard dirt. The shell of one of the great siege towers was still half standing, a framework of blackened timbers sticking twisted from a heap of ash, scorched and tattered leather flapping in the salt wind.

“We taught those Gurkish fuckers a lesson they won’t soon forget, eh, Superior?”

“What lesson?” muttered Severard. What lesson indeed? The dead learn nothing. The corpses were dotted about before the Gurkish front line, two hundred strides or so from the land walls. They were scattered across the no-man’s-land between, surrounded by a flotsam of broken weapons and armour. They had dropped so heavily just before the ditch that you could almost have walked from the sea on one side of the peninsula to the sea on the other without once stepping on the earth. In a few places they were crowded together into huddled groups. Where the wounded crawled to take cover behind the dead, then bled to death themselves.

Glokta had never seen slaughter like it. Not even after the siege of Ulrioch, when the breach had been choked with Union dead, when Gurkish prisoners had been murdered by the score, when the temple had been burned with hundreds of citizens inside. Corpses sagged and lolled and sprawled, some charred with fire, some bent in attitudes of final prayer, some spread out heedless, heads smashed by rocks flung from above. Some had clothes ripped and rooted through. Where they tore at their own shirts to check their wounds, hoping they were not fatal. All of them disappointed.

Flies buzzed in legions around the bodies. Birds of a hundred species hopped and flapped and pecked at the unexpected feast. Even here, high up in the blasting wind, it was starting to reek. The stuff of nightmares. Of my nightmares for the next few months, I shouldn’t wonder. If I last that long.

Glokta felt his eye twitching, and he blew out a deep breath, stretched his neck from side to side. Well. We must fight on. It is a little late now for second thoughts. He peered gingerly over the parapet to take a look down at the ditch, his free hand grasping tight at the pitted stone to keep his balance.

Not good. “They have nearly filled the channel down below us, and over near the gates.”

“True,” said Cosca cheerfully. “They drag up their boxes of rocks and try to tip them in. We can only kill them so fast.”

“That channel is our best defence.”

“True again. It was a good idea. But nothing lasts forever.”

“Without it there is nothing to stop the Gurkish mounting ladders, rolling up rams, mining under our walls even. It might be necessary to organise a sortie of some kind, dig it back out.”

Cosca rolled his dark eyes sideways. “Lowered from the wall by ropes, slaving in the darkness, not two hundred strides from the Gurkish positions? Was that what you had in mind?”

“Something like that.”

“Then I wish you luck with it.”

Glokta snorted. “I would go, of course.” He tapped his leg with his cane. “But I’m afraid my days of heroics are far behind me.”

“Lucky for you.”

“Hardly. We should build a barricade behind the gates. That is our weakest point. A half circle, I would guess, some hundred strides across, would make an effective killing ground. If they manage to break through we might still contain them there, long enough to push them back.” Might…

“ Ah , pushing them back.” Cosca scratched at the rash on his neck. “I’m sure the volunteers will be falling over each other for that duty when the time comes. Still, I’ll see it done.”

“You have to admire them.” General Vissbruck strode up to the parapet, his hands clasped tightly behind his impeccably pressed uniform. I’m surprised he finds the time for presentation, with things as they are. Still, we all cling to what we can. He shook his head as he peered down at the corpses. “Some courage, to come at us like this, over and over, against defences so strong and so well manned. I’ve rarely seen men so willing to give their lives.”

“They have that most strange and dangerous of qualities,” said Cosca. “They think they’re in the right.”