Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

Ladisla hunched his shoulders. “I suppose I must shoulder a portion of the blame for this whole business.” A portion? West would have liked to serve him a portion of his boot. “I should have listened to you, Colonel. I knew it all along. Caution is the best policy in war, eh? That’s always been my motto. Let that fool Smund talk me into rashness. He always was an idiot!”

“Lord Smund gave his life,” muttered West.

“Shame he didn’t give it a day earlier, we might not be in this fix!” The Prince’s lip quivered slightly. “What do you think they’ll say about this back home, eh, West? What do you think they’ll say about me now?”

“I’ve no idea, your Highness.” It could hardly be any worse than what they said already. West tried to squash his anger and put himself in Ladisla’s position. He was so utterly unprepared for the hardship of this march, so completely without resources, so entirely dependent on others for everything. A man who had never had to make a decision more important than which hat to wear, who now had to come to terms with his responsibility for thousands of deaths. Small wonder he had no idea how to go about it.

“If only they hadn’t run.” Ladisla clenched his fist and thumped petulantly at a tree root. “Why didn’t they stand and fight, the cowardly bastards? Why didn’t they fight?”

West closed his eyes, did his best to ignore the cold, and the hunger, and the pain, and to push away the fury in his chest. This was always the way of it. Just when Ladisla was finally starting to arouse some sympathy, he would let fall some loathsome utterance which brought West’s distaste for the man flooding back. “I couldn’t possibly say, your Highness,” he managed to squeeze through his gritted teeth.

“Right,” grumbled Threetrees, “that’s your lot! On your feet again, and no excuses!”

“Not up again already is it, Colonel?”

“I’m afraid so.”

The Prince sighed and dragged himself wincing to his feet. “I’ve no notion of how they can keep this up, West.”

“One stride at a time, your Highness.”

“Of course,” muttered Ladisla, starting to stumble off through the trees after the two convicts. “One stride at a time.”

West worked his aching ankles for a moment and then bent down to follow, when he felt a shadow fall across him. He looked up to see that Black Dow had stepped into his path, blocking the way with one heavy shoulder, his snarling face no more than a foot away. He nodded towards the Prince’s slow moving back. “You want me to kill him?” he growled in Northern.

“If you touch any one of them!” West had spat out the words before he had any idea of how to finish. “I’ll…”

“Yes?”

“I’ll kill you.” What else could he say? He felt like a child making ludicrous threats in a schoolyard. An extremely cold and dangerous schoolyard, and to a boy twice his size.

But Dow only grinned. “That’s a big temper you got on you for a skinny man. A lot of killing we’re talking about, all of a sudden. You sure you got the bones for it?”

West tried to look as big as he could, which wasn’t easy standing down a slope and hunched over with exhaustion. You have to show no fear, if you’re to calm a dangerous situation, however much you might be feeling. “Why don’t you try me?” His voice sounded pitifully weak, even in his own ear.

“I might do that.”

“Let me know when it’s time. I’d hate to miss it.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” whispered Dow, turning his head and spitting on the ground. “You’ll know it’s time when you wake up with your throat cut.” And he sauntered off up the muddy slope, slow enough to show he wasn’t scared. West wished that he could have said the same. His heart was pounding as he pushed on between the trees after the others. He trudged doggedly past Ladisla and caught up to Cathil, falling into step beside her.

“You alright?” he asked.

“I’ve been worse.” She looked him up and down. “How about you?”

West suddenly realised what a state he must look. He had an old sack with holes cut in it for his arms pulled over his filthy uniform, his belt buckled tight over the top with the heavy sword pushed through it and knocking against his leg. There was an itchy growth of half beard across his rattling jaw, and he guessed that his face must have been a mixture of angry pink and corpse grey. He wedged his hands under his armpits and gave a sad grin. “Cold.”

“You look it. Should have kept your coat, maybe.”

He had to nod at that. He peered through the branches of the pines at Dow’s back and cleared his throat. “None of them have been… bothering you, have they?”

“Bothering me?”

“Well, you know,” he said awkwardly, “a woman in amongst all these men, they’re not used to it. The way that man Dow stares at you. I don’t—”

“That’s very noble of you, Colonel, but I wouldn’t worry about them. I doubt they’ll do anything more than stare, and I’ve dealt with worse than that.”

“Worse than him?”

“First camp I was in, the commandant took a liking to me. Still had the glow of a good free life on my skin, I suppose. He starved me to get what he wanted. Five days with no food.”

West winced. “And that was long enough to make him give up?”

“They don’t give up. Five days was all I could stand. You do what you have to.”

“You mean…”

“What you have to.” She shrugged. “I’m not proud, but I’m not ashamed either. Pride and shame, neither one will feed you. The only thing I regret is those five days of hunger, five days when I could have eaten well. You do what you have to. I don’t care who you are. Once you start starving…” She shrugged again.

“What about your father?”

“Pike?” She looked up at the burnt-faced convict ahead of them. “He’s a good man, but he’s no relative of mine. I’ve no idea what became of my real family. Split up all over Angland probably, if they’re still alive.”

“So he’s—”

“Sometimes, if you pretend you’re family, people act differently. We’ve helped each other out. If it wasn’t for Pike, I suppose I’d still be hammering metal in the camp.”

“Instead of which you’re enjoying this wonderful outing.”

“Huh. You make do with what you’re given.” She put her head down and quickened her pace, stalking off through the trees.

West watched her go. She had some bones to her, the Northmen would have said. Ladisla could have learned a thing or two from her tight-lipped determination. West looked over his shoulder at the Prince, stumbling daintily through the mud with a petulant frown on his face. He blew out a smoky sigh. It seemed that it was far too late for Ladisla to learn anything.

A miserable meal of a chunk of old bread and a cup of cold stew. Threetrees wouldn’t let them have a fire, for all of Ladisla’s begging. Too much risk of being seen. So they sat and spoke quietly in the gathering gloom, a little way from the Northmen. Talking was good, if only to keep one’s mind from the cold, and the aches, and the discomfort. If only to stop one’s teeth from chattering.

“You said you fought in Kanta, eh, Pike? In the war?”

“That’s right. I was a Sergeant there.” Pike nodded slowly, his eyes glittering in the pink mess of his face. “Hard to believe we were always too hot, eh?”

West gave a sad gurgle. The closest thing to a laugh that he could manage. “Which was your unit?”

“I was in the first regiment of the King’s Own cavalry, under Colonel Glokta.”

“But, that was my regiment!”

“I know.”

“I don’t remember you.”

Pike’s burns shifted in a way that West thought might have been a smile. “I looked different, back then. I remember you, though. Lieutenant West. The men liked you. Good man to go to with a problem.”