Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

‘No!’ spoke Inquisitor Lorsen, representative of the general’s employer and custodian of the mission for which the brave Company were engaged. ‘Your keenness to spare bloodshed does you much credit, General Cosca, but the dread rebel cannot be trusted to behave according to the rules of war. They lack your unimpeachable good character and I will not hear of you placing yourself in their power. I, the Union and indeed the world cannot afford to lose so useful a servant as you have proved, and daily continue to prove, yourself to be. You have a company of bold and righteous men all eager to carry out your order, any one of whom, I cannot doubt, would be more than willing to risk their lives if it might spare those of the defenceless. Let one of them be sent to this admirable purpose. I, my master Superior Pike, his master the Arch Lector, and indeed his master His August Majesty the High King of the Union,’ and here the men, though not all natives of that great nation, bowed their heads in deep respect, ‘would, I am sure, though carrying many great cares, no less deeply regret a single life wasted.’

Following this exhaustive speech, volunteers stepped forward instantly to lend their strong arms to the noble project. Cosca wiped aside a second manly tear, holding out his arms towards them and speaking, ‘My boys! My brave boys!’ and pressing his strong hands to his noble breast in gratitude to them, and to the Fates, for furnishing him with such men.

It was one Sufeen on whom the great man’s eye now alighted, a scout of long experience and Kantic extraction but tall and of a noble bearing, no doubt one among those people who had rather fled their homeland than submit to the tyranny of the Gurkish Emperor, a man who laughed at fear almost as loudly as the captain general himself.

‘Offer the rebels fair treatment if they abandon their cowardly kidnap and surrender themselves to his Majesty’s justice,’ said Inquisitor Lorsen.

‘And warn them they shall taste the full measure of my wrath should they harm a hair upon the heads of their hostages,’ said Cosca. ‘Do this for me, Sufeen, and you will be rewarded.’

‘Sir, your respect is all the reward I could desire,’ answered the scout, and the two men embraced. Taking the notary of the Company with him to arrange the terms of the rebels’ surrender, brave Sufeen began the long and lonely walk down the grassy hillside towards the bastion of the enemy and, presently, was seen to be admitted and the tall gates of the settlement firmly shut behind him.

An eerie silence now ensued while the Company awaited the result of Sufeen’s negotiations, hoping for a happy outcome and yet prepared entirely for the bloody alternative. It was as tense a passage of time as your abject reporter has ever borne witness to. The wind still whispered through the trees and across the grass, the careless birds still warbled their morning song from the branches, but every man gathered there surely occupied the very extremities of nervous anxiety.

Every man, that is, save one!

‘Ah, that moment before battle is joined!’ spoke Cosca, prostrate in the long grass above the town like a lion waiting to spring, his eye glittering and his great fists clenched in anticipation of the work that was to come. ‘The delicious calm before the storm of steel! Perhaps a man should not be keen to engage in such bloody business as ours, but the excitement! It has always set my veins to thrill! Does it not yours, Sworbreck?’

Your humble servant must at this juncture confess a touch of understandable reticence, and could answer only in the negative. I, after all, had not the long experience, the consummate skill at arms, nor the natural immunity to fear with which the captain general was furnished. He, after all, was Nicomo Cosca. He laughed in the face of fear!

But no laughter escaped those well-formed lips now. ‘Something is amiss,’ he murmured as the time dragged out, and the men immediately stiffened for action. They knew from long experience that Nicomo Cosca was possessed of a special sense for danger almost magical, a sixth sense if you will, beyond the range of perception of the common man. Whether this was a thing learned by long and painful trials or an inborn talent I cannot say, but this humble reporter observed its operation on several occasions and its efficacy was not to be denied. Springing to his feet with the agility of an acrobat, and an instant later into his gilded saddle – a gift, as I understand it, from the Grand Duchess Sefeline of Ospria following his great victory on her behalf at the Battle of the Isles – the captain general roared, ‘To arms!’

Within a twinkling, several score men were mounted and pouring down the hillside towards Averstock, their deep and passionate war cries resounding across the picturesque valley. A timely signal given by mirror induced another detachment, carefully sited in trees on the far side of the settlement, to begin their attack at the same moment, such that not one rebel could possibly escape this deadly pincer. In battle the Company worked with the smoothness, precision and perfect accuracy of a priceless watch, with Cosca the master watchmaker, each of five hundred men giving himself utterly to his place in the grand machine.

How many heartbeats did it take for the speeding horses to reach the fence of the town? I cannot categorically state the number, but inconceivably few! How many more for the dauntless men of the Company to swarm over the defences, crushing the cowardly resistance at the walkways? But a handful more! I will not enter too deeply into the sordid details of the combat that ensued, in part because your humble observer, fearing for his very life, was kept at some remove from the hottest fighting, in part to spare the delicate sensibilities of my female readers, and in part because to describe such animal actions blow by blow ill befits a cultured readership.

Let me only note that I observed the captain general in combat himself and, though kitten in the company of his friends, he was a tiger and more in the presence of his enemies! Never has such wondrous dexterity with a throwing knife been seen, nor such deadly facility with a blade! At one stage this reporter witnessed, with his own two eyes, the remarkable sight of two men killed with one thrust of Cosca’s flashing blade! Run through. Nay! Impaled. Nay! Spitted, I say, like two writhing cubes of meat upon a Gurkish skewer. The gushing blood watered the windblown grit of the street, the quivering innards of the rebels laid open to the skies, with blood-curdling shrieks and womanly wails for mercy not given. Their intestines were unwound, eyes punctured, brains dashed upon the wattle walls of the settlement to be left as food for the flies. Fleshy bodies were savagely ripped asunder by unforgiving steel to divulge their vermilion cargoes of still-writhing offal upon the merciless dust! Oh, such the ugly truth of war, which we, the civilised, must not flinch from a full description of!

‘We must protect the townsfolk!’ bellowed Captain Jubair over the noise of combat, who, though born in Gurkhul and displaying all the superstition natural to his kind, had learned from Cosca a mercy and respect for the weak entirely foreign to his dusky race. At most times a gentle giant, the ire of his simple mind was fully inflamed by the possibility of injury to the helpless and now he fought like an enraged elephant.

Though it felt an age to this reporter, such was the righteous ferocity of the Company that the combat was finished in but a few savage moments, the cowardly rebels utterly routed, destroyed and put to the sword, without – oh, happy chance and vindication of their cause by fate – a single injury to the Company. Cosca had let fall retribution upon the base curs with such terrible speed – no more slowly than does the brooding storm smite the earth with blinding lightning – that they had not time to visit the promised massacre upon the townsfolk, and each and every precious hostage was released smiling from bondage to be happily reunited with their tearful families.