K Parker - Colours in the Steel

There was only one way he could think of, and if it didn’t work he was finished. On the other hand, he wasn’t exactly spoilt for choice. First he let fly with a broad sweep, very hard and slightly wild; it connected, sure enough, and while the other man was plunging about in panic with half his face carved off, Loredan dropped to his knees, his face only a few inches above the mat of corpses and nearly corpses. He found himself looking into the eyes of a man – one he’d just seen to? Quite possibly, no way of knowing, and did it matter? – who was still just about alive, his eyes wide in a horrified stare, his lips moving without sound, as if he was trying to pass on some tremendous revelation about death. Loredan crawled over him, first a hand on his face, then a knee, and then onwards, scrabbling and slithering over the dead and dying-

– This is adding insult to injury, Bardas. Bad enough to be facing the greatest of all horrors, alone, frightened and in pain, without having some uncaring stranger kneeling on your face while you’re at it -

– For what seemed like hours, with shuffling feet and knees kicking and banging into him, stepping over his head, treading on his outstretched fingers. Still, it had to be done, and so long as nobody looked down, so long as they assumed he was just another nearly dead man wriggling about underfoot, there was a chance he might even get away with it.

He reached a point where there were feet but no more dead bodies, and decided it was time to stand up. He did so, and found himself face to face with a clan warrior, a kid of about sixteen who stared at him in horror as if he’d just shaken hands with the occupant of a freshly made grave. Loredan treated him to a knee in the groin and moved on, slipping sideways between two others and then-

– Out of the battle, as far as he could tell. Nobody was looking round at him, let alone following. He stood still to catch his breath, then hurried at a fast trot for the cover of an archway.

Maybe it’s going to be all right. Perhaps; too early to tell, though. Anyway, the next bit’s the easy part .

He peered into the darkness behind the archway. Now then; this leads to an alley which runs up behind the old fruit warehouse and comes out opposite the pin-makers’ courtyard; turn right there past the chisel-grinders’ row, carry on as far as the tavern with the barmaid with the unfortunate squint, then left down the plane-makers’ arcade as far as the junction with the westernmost ropewalk, alleyway to the left, straight down that, should come out just behind the customs sheds.

He hadn’t gone more than twenty yards into the darkness when his foot caught on something and he went sprawling. He landed on his side, jerked his knees up, pushed against the alley wall and was on his feet again in just over a second, with his sword in a classic two-handed guard. Whatever he’d just tripped over groaned.

Options: kill it in case it follows, leave it or investigate. While he was deciding, it groaned again. Ah, the hell with it , Loredan muttered under his breath.

‘Who’s that?’ he said.

No reply except another low moan. Wondering what in gods’ name he thought he was doing, he sheathed his sword, stooped and put out a hand. He felt a face; smooth, soft, a girl or a young boy.

‘What’s the matter?’ he whispered.

‘Arrow,’ the voice replied.

‘Can you get up?’

Groan. Loredan sighed. This was a complication he really could do without.

‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

Somehow he got its arm round his shoulder, then straightened his back and knees and lifted. It wasn’t very heavy; almost certainly a girl by the feel, which maybe explained a little why he was doing this extremely rash thing.

‘Now walk,’ he said. ‘Please. If you don’t, I’m going to have to dump you.’

‘I’ll try,’ she said. ‘Difficult.’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘If it was easy, everyone’d be able to do it, and where’d be the point in that? All right, I’ve got you. Try and hold on if you can.’

‘Can’t.’

‘All right, then, be difficult. But I’m warning you-’

‘Can’t,’ the girl repeated. ‘No fingers.’

‘What?’

‘No fingers -’

No fingers, no fingers. Who did he know in this city, young girl, skinny, no fingers?

Oh, for crying out loud -

Gorgas Loredan knelt behind the stairs that led up to a gallery of shops, waiting for the men to go by. There were about twelve of them – in other words, too many – and they had a wagon. He considered jumping on, hoping they wouldn’t notice in the dark. No, forget it, not feeling lucky. The wagon, he noticed, was piled high with barrels.

To his intense annoyance, the procession halted about ten yards away from where he was hiding. The escort – they were close enough for him to confirm that they were plainsmen – lit torches from the lantern that swung from the side of the wagon and set about investigating the surrounding area. Gorgas began to feel decidedly nervous, and he had made up his mind to run for it and hope they were too busy to follow him when they stopped poking about and, splitting up into pairs, began to unload the barrels.

The idea of a quick sprint was still appealing. True, there was an archer sitting on the driver’s bench with an arrow nocked and ready, but it seemed a reasonable assumption that his function was primarily defensive. No advantage to be gained by wasting valuable arrows taking pot shots at fleeing civilians in bad light. He made up his mind to start running on the count of five.

He’d reached four when two of the plainsmen rolled their barrel into a shop doorway and flushed out a pair of children, a boy and a girl, approximately six and ten respectively. They had the native common sense to run in different directions; but the archer swivelled round on his bench, followed the girl and shot her through the kidneys at about twenty yards, then drew and nocked an arrow in a single flowing movement and hit the boy square in the middle of his neck at close on forty yards, just as he was about to reach the safety of the alleyway Gorgas had been planning to use himself. By the time he’d looked back at the wagon, the archer had nocked another arrow and was looking round for something to loose it at. One of his companions muttered, ‘Shot!’ under his breath; the rest seemed to take it all in their stride and carried on with their work.

Running for it wasn’t such an inviting prospect any more. Gorgas swore under his breath. Time was getting on and he had things to do and a long way to go. He also had a rough idea of what was in the barrels; if he was right, there would soon be yet another unwelcome complication.

The men nearest to him deposited a barrel no more than ten yards from where he was hiding, which made deciding what he was going to do that bit easier. The prospect was still galling in the extreme; he disliked doing the sort of thing he was now resolved to do even more than the type of people who tended to do it. Nevertheless; in extreme situations there comes a point when heroism is the safest and most logical course of action. As quietly as he could he wriggled up onto his haunches, pulled an arrow from his quiver (only three left; damn), held his bow out at a slant because of the confined space, with his head canted over to compensate; nocked, drew, held and loosed.

Even in bad light it was a routine enough shot, and Gorgas was a perfectly competent archer. Even so, it was a great relief to him when the arrow went home, making that tchock! noise unique to a bodkin-head arrow in manflesh, and the plainsman toppled sideways off the box and onto the ground.

Gorgas nocked another arrow as he stood up, fumbling a little and staggering as his cramped legs protested at the short notice. Only one of the other men had seen what was going on; and in the time between his seeing the shot and calling out to his mates, Gorgas was on his feet and moving well, to the point where he was nearer to the wagon than any of the plainsmen.