Джо Аберкромби - A Little Hatred - Book One (The Age of Madness)

Things began to flicker up from the crowd: thrown stones, thrown tools, thrown bits of machinery, bouncing from the walls of the office, clattering from the guards’ armour.

Something knocked Vallimir’s hat off and he sank down with his hand clapped to his bloody scalp. A bottle shattered next to the door and Savine heaved it shut, dropped the heavy bar and backed into the room. In spite of the stifling heat, she felt cold to her shaved scalp. She had expected an ugly scene on the way out, perhaps, insults hurled and surly men dragged to the cells while she glided back to luxury, unruffled. How could she have expected this? An armed insurrection!

She could hear her own snatched breath. The breath of a hunted animal. Foolishly, with fumbling fingers, she drew her sword. That was what one was supposed to do when one’s life was in danger. Was her life in danger? The noise was louder outside, closer. Over the endless whirr of the machinery she heard screaming, swearing, mindless growling, the clash of steel. A long, high shrieking started which would not stop.

She needed to piss, needed to piss terribly. The sword’s grip was slippery in her suddenly sweaty palm. Her eyes darted to the windows. Fitted with heavy grates. To the furniture. Nowhere to hide she would not be found in an instant. To the floor … and the loose board.

She threw herself onto her knees, prising at the wood with her fingertips, with her polished fingernails. She clenched her teeth as she worked her fingers under the board, heedless of the tearing splinters, worked the point of her sword into the gap, hammering at the pommel with the heel of her hand.

Savine jerked her head up at a voice outside. ‘Open the door, darlin’.’ Syrupy, but with an edge of menace. The voice of a slaughterman coaxing a piglet back into the pen. ‘Open the door, we’ll be gentle. Make us break it, maybe we break you, too.’ Rough giggling, and Savine jumped at a blow that made the bar shudder.

She hauled at the hilt of her sword, every sinew tensed and trembling. With a squealing complaint, the nails gave and Savine went sprawling on her back, sword bouncing away bent across the floor.

She scrambled to the hole. A glimpse of the dusty boxes below between two joists. Wide enough to wriggle through? She fumbled at the buttons on her jacket, bleeding fingertips leaving red smears on the material, and tore it off. She wrestled the silver buckle of her lovely sword-belt open and flung it away. The sword she dropped through the hole, its clatter drowned out by the clattering of the machines. No time for preparations. No time for doubts. She swung her legs into the gap, started to slide through. Far from ladylike, but there is no ladylike way to escape from a gang of killers.

‘I’m going to count to five, bitch!’ That voice from outside the door, boiling over with violence now. ‘Five, then we’re coming in!’

‘Count to a thousand, you cunt!’ she snarled as she worked her hips into the hole, tight, too tight, boards digging at her through her clothes.

‘One!’

She was stuck fast. She clenched her teeth, squirmed desperately, clutched at the joists and tried to haul herself through.

‘Two!’

She gave a growl and with a mighty ripping of cloth tore through, scraped one shoulder, caught her chin on timber as she fell, flopped down on her side below, head cracking against the rim of a barrel.

‘Three!’ she heard faintly through the ringing in her ears.

She pushed herself up, groggy. She couldn’t see, felt a stab of panic. Touched a trembling hand to her eyes. Her wig was skewed across them. She ripped it off, threw it down. She was trapped by something. Her torn skirt, snagged on a nail head above. She clawed at the laces and slithered free of it, left it hanging behind her.

‘Four!’

She saw her sword gleaming in the shadows, closed her fist around the grip and started to crawl, keeping low, slithering along in the dust behind the barrels. That unearthly shrieking was still going on, pausing every now and then for a whooping breath then starting again.

‘Five!’ She heard the door of the office tremble from a blow, the bar rattle in its brackets.

She’d cut her palm, somehow, torn two of her fingernails half-off, was leaving blood on everything she touched, dabs and smears of it across her petticoats. That would be hell to get out. Hell to get out. She had to get out.

She crawled on, head pulsing, shoulder throbbing, jaw aching, hips grazed raw, crawled as fast as she could, tongue pressed into her teeth, crawled, blood tickling at her eyebrow, catching glimpses between the barrels as she went.

Vallimir being dragged away, bloody head lolling. A worker cackling as he waved the colonel’s hat around, impaled on the end of a huge knife. One of the guards, lying still, helmet torn off, hair matted and a dark pool around his broken head. Another on hands and knees, men gathered around, hitting him lazily with sticks which clanged off his dented armour.

He stumbled up, putting out a groggy arm to steady himself, was jerked off his feet as his hand was caught between two cogs, dragged into the midst of the machinery. He gave a great high-pitched scream as his arm was crushed, hauled into the gears up to the shoulder, blood spattering his face. Savine felt spots of it on her own cheek, but no one heard her gasp over the noise of the tortured machinery, of the tortured man.

There was a lurch, a slow grinding, the guard’s scream turning to a bubbling wail, then the machinery lurched on, wheels turning. Savine tried not to look. Keep her eyes ahead. This wasn’t happening. None of it was happening. How could it be happening? Men were shouting. Barking like a pack of dogs. She couldn’t make out words, only anger and the shuddering blows on the door above.

She followed the main driveshaft with her eyes, saw it disappear through a dark hole in the brickwork on the other side of the looms. Perhaps she could crawl to it, in the shadowy, dusty space below the gears. Through there. Perhaps through there.

She wriggled under the rollers on her belly. Ambitious as a snake, now she slithered like a snake, like a worm, wet with sweat in the sticky heat, prickling with fear as the frames rattled and whirred around her. She could see a lad through the turning machinery, chink of light across his eager face, but he was staring towards the office. They all were. Staring like wolves at the henhouse. Waiting for the door to give. So they could drag her out.

She crawled on, broken fingernails clutching, on through a great spatter of that guard’s blood, on under the great shaft that brought power into the shed, twinkling with grease as it madly spun, dust puffing from the floor with her every whimpering breath.

At any moment, she expected the delighted scream. There she is! At any moment, she expected rough hands to close around her ankle. Bring the bitch out! Her sweating back tingled in anticipation of it. Her chest heaved, coughing and shuddering from the dust as she struggled on, biting her tongue, trying to smother the desperate fear.

When she finally reached the hole in the wall, she almost sobbed with relief. Clutched at the ragged bricks and dragged herself through, tumbled into a dark passageway, sprawled in ankle-deep water and took a fetid mouthful, spat it out, retching.

The place was dark, only a flickering glimmer at the edges of damp bricks, throbbing with the noise of machines, echoing with distorted screams. There was light ahead, a winking light, and she eased towards it, sodden boots slopping and slurping in the mud, the clattering growing louder, something moving up ahead.

One of the great waterwheels that turned the driveshaft. Whirring, creaking, thrashing timbers, light stabbing between the black beams, water foaming as the slats of the wheel plunged into the river, showering spray as they thrust out again in a rain of shining drops.