‘She got her hands free,’ he whispered over his shoulder.
‘I said she had bones,’ came the giant’s voice from outside. ‘Tell Black Dow there will be a price for this. A price for the woman and a price for the insult.’
‘I’ll tell him.’ The metal-eyed man came forward, pulling something from his belt. A knife, she saw the flash of metal in the gloom. Aliz saw it too, whimpered, gripped hard at Finree’s fingers and she gripped back. She was not sure what else she could do. He squatted down in front of them, forearms on his knees and his hands dangling, the knife loose in one. Finree’s eyes flickered from the gleam of the blade to the gleam of his metal eye, not sure which was more awful. ‘There’s a price for everything, ain’t there?’ he whispered to her.
The knife darted out and slit the cord between her ankles in one motion. He reached behind his back and pulled a canvas bag over her head with another, plunging her suddenly into fusty, onion-smelling darkness. She was dragged up by her armpit, hands slipping from Aliz’ limp grip.
‘Wait!’ she heard Aliz shouting behind her. ‘What about me? What about—’
The door clattered shut.
The Bridge
Your August Majesty,
If this letter reaches you I have fallen in battle, fighting for your cause with my final breath. I write it only in the hope of letting you know what I could not in person: that the days I spent serving with the Knights of the Body, and as your Majesty’s First Guard in particular, were the happiest of my life, and that the day when I lost that position was the saddest. If I failed you I hope you can forgive me, and think of me as I was before Sipani: dutiful, diligent, and always utterly loyal to your Majesty.
I bid you a fond farewell,
Bremer dan Gorst
He thought better of ‘a fond’ and crossed it out, realised he should probably rewrite the whole thing without it, then decided he did not have the time. He tossed the pen away, folded the paper without bothering to blot it and tucked it down inside his breastplate.
Perhaps they will find it there, later, on my crap-stained corpse. Dramatically bloodied at the corner, maybe? A final letter! Why, to whom? Family? Sweetheart? Friends? No, the sad fool had none of those, it is addressed to the king! And borne upon a velvet pillow into his Majesty’s throne room, there perhaps to wring out some wretched drip of guilt. A single sparkling tear spatters upon the marble tiles. Oh! Poor Gorst, how unfairly he was used! How unjustly stripped of his position! Alas, his blood has watered foreign fields, far from the warmth of my favour! Now what’s for breakfast?
Down on the Old Bridge the third assault had reached its critical moment. The narrow double span was one heaving mass, rows of nervous soldiers waiting unenthusiastically to take their turn while the wounded, exhausted and otherwise spent staggered away in the opposite direction. The resolve of Mitterick’s men was flickering, Gorst could see it in the pale faces of the officers, hear it in their nervous voices, in the sobs of the injured. Success or failure was balanced on a knife-edge.
‘Where the hell is bloody Vallimir?’ Mitterick was roaring at everyone and no one. ‘Bloody coward, I’ll have him cashiered in disgrace! I’ll go down there my bloody self! Where did Felnigg get to? Where … what … who …’ His words were buried in the hubbub as Gorst walked down towards the river, his mood lifting with every jaunty step as if a great weight was floating from his shoulders piece by leaden piece.
A wounded man stumbled by, one arm around a fellow, clutching a bloody cloth to his eye. Someone will be missing from next year’s archery contest! Another was hauled past on a stretcher, crying out piteously as he bounced, the stump of his leg bound tightly with red-soaked bandages. No more walks in the park for you! He grinned at the injured men laid groaning at the verges of the muddy track, gave them merry salutes. Unlucky, my comrades! Life is not fair, is it?
He strode through a scattered crowd, then threaded through a tighter mass, then shouldered through a breathless press, the fear building around him as the bodies squeezed tighter, and with it his excitement. Feelings ran high. Men shoved at each other, thrashed with their elbows, screamed pointless insults. Weapons waved dangerously. Stray arrows would occasionally putter down, no longer in volleys but in apologetic ones and twos. Little gifts from our friends on the other side. No, really, you shouldn’t have!
The mud beneath Gorst’s feet levelled off, then began to rise, then gave way to old stone slabs. Between twisted faces he caught glimpses of the river, the bridge’s mossy parapet. He began to make out from the general din the metallic note of combat and the sound tugged at his heart like a lover’s voice across a crowded room. Like the whiff of the husk pipe to the addict. We all have our little vices. Our little obsessions. Drink, women, cards. And here is mine.
Tactics and technique were useless here, it was a question of brute strength and fury, and very few men were Gorst’s match in either. He put his head down and strained at the press as he had strained at the mired wagon a few days before. He began to grunt, then growl, then hiss, and he rammed his way through the soldiers like a ploughshare through soil, shoving heedlessly with shield and shoulder, tramping over the dead and wounded. No small talk. No apologies. No petty embarrassments here.
‘Out of my fucking way!’ he screeched, sending a soldier sprawling on his face and using him for a carpet. He caught a flash of metal and a spear-point raked his shield. For a moment he thought a Union man had taken objection, then he realised the spear had a Northman on the other end. Greetings, my friend! Gorst was trying to twist his sword free of the press and into a useful attitude when he was given an almighty shove from behind and found himself suddenly squashed up against the owner of the spear, their noses almost touching. A bearded face, with a scar on the top lip.
Gorst smashed his forehead into it, and again, and again, shoved him down and stomped on his head until it gave under his heel. He realised he was shouting at the falsetto top of his voice. He wasn’t even sure of the words, if they were words. All around him men were doing the same, spitting curses in each other’s faces that no one on the other side could possibly understand.
A glimpse of sky through a thicket of pole-arms and Gorst thrust his sword into it, another Northman bent sideways, breath wheezing silently through a mouth frozen in a drooling ring of surprise. Too tangled to swing, Gorst gritted his teeth and jabbed away, jabbed, jabbed, jabbed, point grating against armour, pricking at flesh, opening an arm up in a long red slit.
A growling face showed for a moment over the rim of Gorst’s shield and he set his boots and drove the man back, battering at his chest, jaw, legs. Back he went, and back, and squealing over the parapet, his spear splashing into the fast-flowing water below. Somehow he managed to cling on with the other hand, desperate fingers white on stone, blood leaking from his bloated nose, looking up imploringly. Mercy? Help? Forbearance, at least? Are we not all just men? Brothers eternal, on this crooked road of life? Could we be bosom friends, had we met in other circumstances?
Gorst smashed his shield down on the hand, bones crunching under the metal edge, watched the man fall cartwheeling into the river. ‘The Union!’ someone shrieked. ‘The Union!’ Was it him? He felt soldiers pushing forward, their blood rising, surging across the bridge with an irresistible momentum, carrying him northwards, a stick on the crest of a wave. He cut someone down with his long steel, laid someone’s else’s head open with the corner of his shield, strap twisting in his hand, his face aching he was smiling so hard, every breath burning with joy. This is living! This is living! Well, not for them, but—