‘So did he, I daresay.’ Cosca stared narrow-eyed through the haze of smoke towards the ruined fort. ‘Fate is not always kind to us.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ snapped Lorsen. To make matters worse—if that were possible—he had lost half his Practicals in one night, and that the better half. He frowned over at Wile, still fussing with his mask. How was it possible for a Practical to look so pitiably unthreatening? The man positively radiated doubt. Enough to plant the seeds of doubt in everyone around him. Lorsen had entertained doubts enough over the years but he did what one was supposed to, and kept them crushed into a tight little packet deep inside where they could not leak out and poison his purpose.
The door slowly creaked open and Dimbik’s archers shifted nervously, flatbows all levelled towards that square of darkness.
‘Jubair?’ barked Cosca. ‘Jubair, did you get him? Answer me, damn it!’
Something flew out, bounced once with a hollow clonk and rolled across the snow to rest near the fire.
‘What is that?’ asked Lorsen.
Cosca worked his mouth. ‘Jubair’s head.’
‘Fate is not always kind,’ murmured Brachio.
Another head arced from the doorway and bounced into the fire. A third landed on the roof of one of the shacks, rolled down it and lodged in the gutter. A fourth fell among the archers and one of them let his bow off as he stumbled away from it, the bolt thudding into a barrel nearby. More heads, and more, hair flapping, tongues lolling, spinning, and dancing, and scattering spots of blood.
The last head bounced high and rolled an elliptical course around the fire to stop just next to Cosca. Lorsen was not a man to be put off by a little gore, but even he had to admit to being a little unnerved by this display of mute brutality.
Less squeamish, the captain general stepped forward and angrily kicked the head into the flames. ‘How many men have those two old bastards killed between them?’ Though the Old Man was no doubt a good deal older than either.
‘About twenty, now,’ said Brachio.
‘We’ll fucking run out at this rate!’ Cosca turned angrily upon Sworbreck, who was frantically scratching away in his notebook. ‘What the hell are you writing for?’
The author looked up, reflected flames dancing in his eyeglasses. ‘Well, this is… rather dramatic.’
‘Do you find?’
Sworbreck gestured weakly towards the ruined fort. ‘He came to the rescue of his friend against impossible odds—’
‘And got him killed. Is not a man who takes on impossible odds generally considered an incorrigible idiot rather than a hero?’
‘The line between the two has always been blurry…’ murmured Brachio.
Sworbreck raised his palms. ‘I came for a tale to stir the blood—’
‘And I’ve been unable to oblige you,’ snapped Cosca, ‘is that it? Even my bloody biographer is deserting me! No doubt I’ll end up the villain in the book I commissioned while yonder decapitating madman is celebrated to the rafters! What do you make of this, Temple? Temple? Where’s that bloody lawyer got to? What about you, Brachio?’
The Styrian wiped fresh tears from his weepy eye. ‘I think the time has come to put an end to the ballad of the nine-fingered Northman.’
‘Finally some sense! Bring up the other tube. I want that excuse for a fort levelled to a stump. I want that meddling fool made mush, do you hear? Someone bring me another bottle. I am sick of being taken fucking lightly!’ Cosca slapped Sworbreck’s notebook from his hands. ‘A little respect, is that too much to ask?’ He slapped the biographer to boot and the man sat down sharply in the snow, one hand to his cheek in surprise.
‘What’s that noise?’ said Lorsen, holding up a palm for silence. A thumping and rumbling spilled from the darkness, rapidly growing louder, and he took a nervous step towards the nearest shack.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Dimbik.
A horse came thundering from the night, eyes wild, and a moment later dozens more, surging down the slope towards the camp, snow flying, a boiling mass of animals, a flood of horseflesh coming at the gallop.
Men flung their weapons down and ran, dived, rolled for any cover. Lorsen tripped over his flapping coat-tail and sprawled in the mud. He heard a whooping and caught a glimpse of Dab Sweet, mounted at the rear of the herd, grinning wildly, lifting his hat in salute as he skirted the camp. Then the horses were among the buildings and all was a hell of milling, kicking, battering hooves, of screaming, thrashing, rearing beasts, and Lorsen flattened himself helplessly against the nearest hovel, clinging with his fingernails to the rough-sawn wood.
Something knocked his head, almost sent him down, but he clung on, clung on, while a noise like the end of the world broke around him, the very earth trembling under the force of all those maddened animals. He gasped and grunted and squeezed his teeth and eyes together so hard they hurt, splinters and dirt and stones stinging his cheek.
Then suddenly there was silence. A throbbing, ringing silence. Lorsen unpeeled himself from the side of the shack and took a wobbling step or two through the hoof-hammered mud, blinking into the haze of smoke and settling dirt.
‘They stampeded the horses,’ he muttered.
‘Do you fucking think so?’ shrieked Cosca, tottering from the nearest doorway.
The camp was devastated. Several of the tents had ceased to be, the canvas and their contents—both human and material—trampled into the snow. The ruined fort continued to smoulder. Two of the shacks were thoroughly aflame, burning straw fluttering down and leaving small fires everywhere. Bodies were humped between the buildings, trampled men and women in various states of dress. The injured howled or wandered dazed and bloodied. Here and there a wounded horse lay, kicking weakly.
Lorsen touched one hand to his head. His hair was sticky with blood. A trickle tickling his eyebrow.
‘Dab fucking Sweet!’ snarled Cosca.
‘I did say he had quite a reputation,’ muttered Sworbreck, fishing his tattered notebook from the dirt.
‘Perhaps we should have paid him his share,’ mused Friendly.
‘You can take it to him now if you please!’ Cosca pointed with a clawing finger. ‘It’s in… the wagon.’ He trailed off into a disbelieving croak.
The fortified wagon that had been Superior Pike’s gift, the wagon in which the fire tubes had been carried, the wagon in which the Dragon People’s vast treasure had been safely stowed…
The wagon was gone. Beside the fort there was only a conspicuously empty patch of darkness.
‘Where is it?’ Cosca shoved Sworbreck out of the way and ran to where the wagon had stood. Clearly visible in the snowy mud among the trampled hoof-prints were two deep wheel-ruts, angling down the slope towards the Imperial Road.
‘Brachio,’ Cosca’s voice rose higher and higher until it was a demented shriek, ‘find some fucking horses and get after them!’
The Styrian stared. ‘You wanted all the horses corralled together. They’re stampeded!’
‘Some must have broken from the herd! Find half a dozen and get after those bastards! Now! Now! Now!’ And he kicked snow at Brachio in a fury and nearly fell over. ‘Where the hell is Temple?’
Friendly looked up from the wagon-tracks and raised an eyebrow.
Cosca closed his hands to trembling fists. ‘Everyone who can, get ready to move!’