Administrator Grech stood up. ‘For your amusement,’ he said, ‘brought to Ethugra from the emperor’s own dungeons… despised by all who hear of their deeds… petty thieves, arsonists, traitors, and defilers of women…’
Three soldiers stepped out of the tent. They wore Imperial steel hauberks over boiled leathers and plain cap helmets with nose- and cheek-guards, and each carried a standard-issue short sword in his left hand and a light buckler strapped to his right forearm. Two were tall but stooped, somewhat hesitant and shambling in the way they moved, but the third, shorter man walked with a litheness that implied youth.
‘The cunning behind Imperial Infiltration Unit Seven… the most bloodthirsty and the most notorious men in all of history… responsible for three thousand allied deaths at Weaverbrook… Emperor Hu gives you… the last of the infamous Grave-diggers.’ Grech took a breath. ‘Gerhard “The Rook” Tummel, Swan “The… eh. .. Swan” Tummel, and Merrad “Grave-digger” Banks!’
Swan? Tummel? Banks?
The corral gate opened, and the three men walked in. The younger man took off his helmet, blinked up at the sky and then smiled meekly. ‘Bastard of a day for it, Colonel, if you don’t mind me saying.’
Banks looked as if he had been wandering the borderlands of death. His cheeks were hollow, his skin anaemic but bruised under his eyes, his hair lank and uneven. But his eyes still brimmed with the same quick humour Granger had known him for. After a moment, his two companions also removed their helmets, and Granger recognized them for who they were.
Swan and Tummel had appeared old and wretched when Granger had last seen them six years ago, and yet now they looked like they had lived their lives all over again since then. Swan was toothless with a sagging, stubbled face and rheumy eyes – the sort of visage one expected to find in a coffin. His brother, Tummel, looked ten years older.
‘Petty thieves?’ Granger said. ‘Arsonists?’ He paused. ‘Defilers of women?’
‘That last one’s pretty good,’ Swan said. ‘I quite like it.’
‘That’s because it’s the only one you haven’t done,’ Tummel said.
‘I could have if I’d wanted to.’
Tummel grunted. ‘You couldn’t run fast enough.’ He turned to Granger. ‘He did, however, burn down a grog shop.’
‘One grog shop,’ Swan muttered. ‘What is it with you and that? You never even liked the place.’
Banks glanced back as the corral gate closed behind him. ‘They picked up Swan and Tummel in a card den last year,’ he said. ‘Somebody turned them in over bad debts.’
‘What about you?’ Granger said.
Banks shrugged. ‘I was sending money home,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how they traced it, but they came for me a couple of months ago. It was either this or death.’
‘You stayed in Losoto?’
Tummel nodded. ‘Right up until three days ago. We had a half-arsed plan to overrun the emperor’s guards and capture the Excelsior,’ he said. ‘But we couldn’t wake up Swan.’
‘What do you intend to do now?’ Granger asked.
Banks sighed. ‘We were hoping you might have a plan, sir.’
Granger looked out into the crowd. They had begun to chant: death, death, death.
‘We’ll drag it out,’ he said, ‘and hope for intervention.’
‘That’s the plan?’
‘Do you have a better one, Banks?’
The other man shrugged. ‘Have at you, then,’ he muttered.
The three Gravediggers took up a fighting stance around Granger, who backed away and readied himself to dodge. Swan made a hesitant jab, but the tip of his sword fell deliberately short of Granger. Banks cried out and leaped into the fray, swinging wildly, allowing his opponent to sidestep easily.
The crowd began to jeer with disapproval.
‘You’ll need to do better than that,’ Granger said.
‘You’re unarmed, sir,’ Banks replied. ‘And I’m rather good at this. Barracks champion three years on the trot.’
‘Don’t underestimate me.’
Banks sighed again, and this time came at Granger hard. But he opted for another down-cut, giving Granger more than enough time to avoid the blow. His sword sparked against the flagstones. Swan and Tummel moved to flank his rear, just as they would have done in a real fight.
Banks should have pressed forward, but he chose not to. ‘How’d you get past the dog?’ he said, backing away again. ‘That bastard spent the whole journey from Losoto chewing through the bars between our cages.’ He shrugged. ‘Didn’t help that Swan kept teasing it.’
‘I didn’t tease it,’ Swan said.
‘You made faces at it,’ Banks replied.
‘What faces?’
‘That face you’re making now.’
‘I can’t help that. I was born like this.’
Granger didn’t say anything; he was waiting for a pincer movement from his flanking opponents. But even that manoeuvre never came. Swan and Tummel made more pitiful swings and jabs with their blades. Whether through weakness, or a reluctance to injure their opponent, Granger didn’t know. Either way the fight was rapidly becoming a farce.
The crowd began to boo and shout abuse.
Emperor Hu stood up on the podium, and inclined his head.
One of his Samarol bodyguards slotted his seeing knife into the bracket atop a carbine rifle. Then he raised the barrel.
‘Banks,’ Granger growled.
Banks turned just as the rifle fired.
Granger heard the lead ball zing past his ear. It struck Swan in the side of his head and knocked him down. He lay there unmoving, blood leaking from a hole above his ear. Banks stood dead still, a look of horror on his face.
Tummel was silent for a moment. Then he roared and rushed at the corral wall, shouting, ‘Come in here, you bastard, come in here.’ He smashed his sword repeatedly against the mesh of dragon-bones, hacking fragments from it. ‘Come in here and fight me you blind bastard. Fight an old man, you coward. Fight an old man.’
Hu merely looked impatient. ‘Get on with it,’ he said. ‘And try to make it entertaining. I don’t want to waste another rifle-ball.’
Granger picked up Swan’s sword. ‘Banks?’
The private continued to stare at his companion’s corpse.
‘Banks!’
His eyes met Granger’s.
‘Fight me for real, Banks.’
‘Sir?’
Granger rushed at him, pushing him back with a solid flurry of blows that forced the other man to raise his buckler and block. Banks began to parry, almost reluctantly at first, and then with more urgency as the strikes continued to come down on his left side.
Tummel sat on the ground and lay down his sword.
Granger broke away from Banks and whispered, ‘You’re going to have to try and kill me.’
Banks just shook his head.
‘Keep their attention away from Tummel,’ Granger urged. ‘Make it real. Make it entertaining.’ He saw an opening and thrust his sword at Banks’s undefended left. The private responded instinctively with his own blade, but not before Granger raked the younger man’s hauberk, the edge of his weapon rasping across the steel links.
From the podium he heard Emperor Hu laugh. ‘They’re getting into it now, aren’t they?’ he called out with delight.
Granger kept the pressure on Banks, forcing him back towards the corral wall, towards Tummel. The old Gravedigger merely sat on the ground and stared back at the body of his brother. It seemed that all life had deserted him.
‘On your feet, seaman,’ Granger growled.
But Tummel wouldn’t respond.
Banks, meanwhile, must have realized Granger’s real intentions, for he broke suddenly from the fight, turning his back on Granger even as the colonel’s blade was raised to strike. He grabbed Tummel by his armpits. ‘Get up, you old fool. Get up and fight.’
Granger cursed at Banks’s manoeuvre. The private left himself open to a killing blow. In what he hoped would look like a desperate mistake, he swung the blade furiously at Banks’s right side, striking the top of the buckler hard. The sword skimmed off and stuck into an enormous dragon-bone bar above Banks’s head.