Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

His tongue was unfamiliar, three times its usual size, like a bloody lump of ham that had been shoved between his jaws, filling his mouth so he could hardly breathe. The right side of his face was a mask of agony. With every lurch of the cart his jaws rattled together, sending white-hot stabs of pain from his teeth into his eyes, his neck, the very roots of his hair. There were bandages over his mouth, he had to breathe through the left side, but even the air moving in his throat was painful.

Panic started to claw at him. Every part of his body was screaming. One arm was bound tight across his chest but he clutched weakly at the side of the cart with the other, trying to do something, anything, his eyes bulging, heart hammering, breath snorting in his nose.

“Gugh!” he growled, “gurrr!” And the more he tried to speak, the more the pain grew, and grew, until it seemed his face would split, until it seemed his skull would fly apart—

“Easy.” A scarred face swam into view above. Ninefingers. Jezal grabbed at him, wildly, and the Northman caught his hand in his own big paw and squeezed it tight. “Easy, now, and listen to me. It hurts, yes. Seems like more than you can take, but it isn’t. You think you’re going to die, but you won’t. Listen to me, because I’ve been there, and I know. Each minute. Each hour. Each day, it gets better.”

He felt Ninefingers’ other hand on his shoulder, pushing him gently back down into the cart. “All you got to do is lie there, and it gets better. You understand? You got the light duty, you lucky bastard.”

Jezal let his limbs go heavy. All he had to do was lie there. He squeezed the big hand and the hand squeezed back. The pain seemed less. Awful still, but within his control. His breath slowed. His eyes closed.

The wind cut over the cold plain, plucking at the short grass, tugging at Jezal’s tattered coat, at his greasy hair, at his dirty bandages, but he ignored it. What could he do about the wind? What could he do about anything?

He sat, his back against the wheel of the cart, and stared down wide-eyed at his leg. A broken length of spear shaft had been strapped to either side, wrapped round and round with strips of torn-up cloth, held firmly and painfully straight. His arm was no better, sandwiched between two slats from a shield and bound tightly across his chest, the white hand dangling, fingers numb and useless as sausages.

Pitiful, improvised efforts at medicine that Jezal could never see working. They might almost have seemed amusing, had he not been the unfortunate patient. He would surely never recover. He was broken, shattered, ruined. Would he be now a cripple of the kind he avoided on the street corners of Adua? War-wounded, ragged and dirty, shoving their stumps in the faces of passers-by, holding their crabbing palms out for coppers, uncomfortable reminders that there was a dark side to soldiering that one would rather not think about?

Would he be now a cripple like… and a horrible coldness crept over him… like Sand dan Glokta? He tried to shift his leg and groaned at the pain. Would he walk for the rest of his life with a stick? A shambling horror, shunned and avoided? A salutary lesson, pointed at and whispered of? There goes Jezal dan Luthar! He used to be a promising man, a handsome man, he won a Contest and the crowd cheered for him! Who would believe it? What a waste, what a shame, here he comes, let’s move on…

And that was before he even thought about what his face might look like. He tried to move his tongue and the stab of agony made him grimace, but he could tell there was a terribly unfamiliar geography to the inside of his mouth. It felt slanted, twisted, nothing fitted together as it used to. There was a gap in his teeth that felt a mile wide. His lips tingled unpleasantly under the bandages. Torn, battered, ripped open. He was a monster.

A shadow fell across Jezal’s face and he squinted up into the sun. Ninefingers stood over him, a water-skin hanging from one big fist. “Water,” he grunted. Jezal shook his head but the Northman squatted down, pulled the stopper from the skin and held it out regardless. “Got to drink. Keep it clean.”

Jezal snatched the skin bad-temperedly from him, lifted it gingerly to the better side of his mouth and tried to tilt it. It hung bloated and baggy. He struggled for a moment, before realising there was no way of drinking with only one good hand. He fell back, eyes closed, snorting through his nose. He almost ground his teeth with frustration, but quickly thought better of it.

“Here.” He felt a hand slide behind his neck and firmly lift his head.

“Gugh!” he grunted furiously, with half a mind to struggle, but in the end he allowed his body to sag, and submitted to the ignominy of being handled like a baby. What was the point, after all, in pretending he was anything other than utterly helpless? Sour, lukewarm water seeped into his mouth, and he tried to force it down. It was like swallowing broken glass. He coughed and spat the rest out. Or he tried to spit and found the pain far too great. He had to lean forward and let it dribble from his face, most of it running down his neck and into the filthy collar of his shirt. He sat back heavily with a moan and pushed the skin away with his good hand.

Ninefingers shrugged. “Alright, but you’ll have to try again later. Got to keep drinking. You remember what happened?” Jezal shook his head.

“There was a fight. Me and sunshine there,” and he nodded over at Ferro, who scowled back, “handled most of ’em, but it seems three got around us. You dealt with two, and you did well with that, but you missed one, and he hit you in the mouth with a mace.” He gestured at Jezal’s bandaged face. “Hit you hard, and you’re familiar with the outcome. Then you fell, and I’m guessing he hit you when you were down, which is how you got the arm and the leg broke. Could have been a lot worse. If I was you I’d be thanking the dead that Quai was there.”

Jezal blinked over at the apprentice. What did he have to do with anything? But Ninefingers was already answering his question.

“Came up and knocked him on the head with a pan. Well, I say knocked. Smashed his skull to mush, didn’t you?” He grinned over at the apprentice, who sat staring out across the plain. “He hits hard for a thin man, our boy, eh? Shame about that pan, though.”

Quai shrugged as though he stove a man’s head in most mornings. Jezal supposed he should be thanking the sickly fool for saving his life, but he didn’t feel so very saved. Instead he tried to form the sounds as clearly as he could without hurting himself, making little more than a whisper. “Ow bad ith it?”

“I’ve had worse.” Small comfort indeed. “You’ll get through alright. You’re young. Arm and leg’ll mend quick.” Meaning, Jezal inferred, that his face would not. “Always tough taking a wound, and never tougher than the first. I cried like a baby at every one of these,” and Ninefingers waved a hand at his battered face. “Most everyone cries, and that’s a fact. If it’s any help.”

It was not. “Ow bad?”

Ninefingers scratched at the thick stubble on the side of his face. “Your jaw’s broke, you lost some teeth, you got your mouth ripped, but we stitched you up pretty good.” Jezal swallowed, hardly able to think. His worst fears seemed to be confirmed. “It’s a hard wound you got there, and a nasty place to get it. In your mouth so you can’t eat, can’t drink, can’t hardly talk without pain. Can’t kiss either of course, though that shouldn’t be a problem out here, eh?” The Northman grinned but Jezal was in no mood to join him. “A bad wound, alright. A naming wound they’d call it, where I come from.”

“A wha?” muttered Jezal, immediately regretting it as pain licked at his jaw.