“Don’t say that, Master,” said the third stranger, pausing to tamp more rustleaf into his pipe, though his teeth chattered with the cold. “What with the way I go and all.”
“I am sure,” said Bauchelain, “that your sense of humour is far too refined to succumb to this clumsy effort, Mister Reese.”
“Oh, it’s funny enough, I suppose, but you’re right, I won’t bust a side about it.”
Spilgit was almost hopping from one foot to the other behind the newcomers. “Hordilo, best escort these two gentlemen up to an audience with Lord Fangatooth, don’t you think? We’ll take their manservant to the Heel, so he can warm up and get a hot meal in him. Spendrugle hospitality, and all that.”
Hordilo cleared his throat.
But Korbal was the first to speak. “Bauchelain, this man called me a fool.”
“Oh dear,” said Bauchelain. “And has he not yet retracted his misjudged assessment?”
“No.”
“It was all a misunderstanding,” Hordilo said, feeling sudden sweat beneath his clothes. “Of course he’s not a fool. I do apologise.”
“There,” said Bauchelain, sighing.
“I mean,” Hordilo went on, “he killed one of the lord’s golems. Oh, and he wants to bring those two bodies with him up to the keep, because they’re his friends. So, I don’t know what he is, to be honest, but I’ll allow that he ain’t a fool. Lord Fangatooth, of course, might think otherwise, but it’s not for me to speak for him on that account. Now, shall we go?”
“Hordilo-” began Spilgit.
“Yes,” Hordilo replied, “you can take the manservant, before he freezes solid.”
Bauchelain turned to his manservant. “Off with you, then, Mister Reese. We’ll summon you later this evening.”
Hordilo grunted a laugh.
“All right, Master.” Mister Reese then glanced down at Grimled and looked over at Hordilo. “So, how many of these things has your lord got, anyway?”
“Two more,” Hordilo replied. “This one was Grimled. The others are Gorebelly and Grinbone.”
Mister Reese choked, coughed out smoke. “Gods below, did the lord name them himself?”
“Lord Fangatooth Claw the Render is a great sorcerer,” said Hordilo.
“I’m sorry, Lord what?”
“Go on, Mister Reese,” ordered Bauchelain. “We can discuss naming conventions at a later time, yes?”
“Conventions, Master? Oh. Of course, why not? All right, Slipgit-”
“That’s Spilgit.”
“Sorry. Spilgit, lead me to this blessed inn, then.”
Hordilo watched them hurry off, his gaze fixing with genuine admiration on Felittle’s swaying backside, and then he returned his attention to the two strangers, and raised his sword. “Am I going to need this out, gentlemen? Or will you come along peacefully?”
“We are great believers in peace,” said Bauchelain. “By all means, sheathe your sword, sir. We are looking forward to meeting your sorceror lord, I assure you.”
Hordilo hesitated, and then, since he could no longer feel his fingers, he slid his sword back into its scabbard. “Right. Follow me, and smartly now.”
Scribe Coingood watched Warmet Humble writhe in his chains. The chamber reeked of human waste, forcing Coingood to hold a scented handkerchief to his nose. But at least it was warm, with the huge three-legged bronze brazier sizzling and crackling and hissing and throwing up sparks every time his lord decided it was time to heat up the branding iron.
Weeping, spasms clawing their way through his broken body that hung so hapless from the chains, Warmet Humble was a sorry sight. This was what came of brotherly disputes that never saw resolution. Misunderstandings escalated, positions grew entrenched; argument fell away into deadly silence across the breakfast table, and before too long one of them ended up drugged and waking up in chains in a torture chamber. Coingood was relieved that he had been an only child, and the few times he’d ended up in chains was just his father teaching him a lesson about staying out after dark or cheating on his letters and numbers. In any case, if he’d had a brother, why, he’d never use a bhederin branding iron on him, which could brand a five year old from toe to head in a single go. Surely an ear-puncher would do; the kind the shepherds used on their goats and sheep?
Poor Warmet’s face bore one end of the brand’s mark, melted straight across the nose and both cheeks. Fangatooth had then angled it to sear first one ear and then the other. The horrid, red weal more or less divided Warmet’s once-handsome face into an upper half and a lower half.
Brothers.
Humming under his breath, Fangatooth stirred the coals. “The effect is lost,” he then said, lifting up the branding iron with both hands and a soft grunt and then frowning at the burning bits of flesh snagged on it, “when it is scar tissue being scarred anew. Scribe! Feed my imagination, damn you!”
“Perhaps, milord, a return to something more delicate.”
Fangatooth glanced over. “Delicate?”
“Exquisite, milord. Tiny and precise, but excruciatingly painful?”
“Oh, I like that notion. Go on!”
“Fingernails-”
“Done that. Are you blind?”
“They’re growing back, milord. Tender and pink.”
“Hmm. What else?”
“Strips of skin?”
“He barely has any skin worthy of the name, Scribe. No, that would be pointless.”
Warmet ceased his weeping and lifted his head. “I beg you, brother! No more! My mind is snapped, my body ruined. My future is one of terrible pain and torment. My past is memories of the same. My present is an ending howl of agony. I cannot sleep, I cannot rest my limbs-see how my head trembles in the effort to raise it? I beg you, Simplet-”
“That is no longer my name!” shrieked Fangatooth. He stabbed the branding iron into the coals. “I will burn out your tongue for that!”
“Milord,” Coingood said, “by your own rules, he must be able to speak, and see and indeed, hear.”
“Oh, that! Well, I’m of a mind to change my mind! I can do that, can’t I? Am I not the lord of this keep? Do I not command life and death over thousands?”
Well, hundreds, but why quibble? “You do indeed, milord. The world quakes at your feet. The sky weeps, the wind screams, the seas thrash, the very ground beneath us groans.”
Fangatooth spun round to face Coingood. “That’s good, Scribe. That’s very good. Write that down!”
“At once, milord.” Coingood collected up his tablet and bone graver. But the heat had melted the wax and he watched the letters fade even as he wrote. This was not a detail, he decided, worth sharing with his master. After all, there was another set of chains in this dungeon, and the wretched figure hanging from them was if anything even closer to death than poor Warmet Humble. A quick look in that direction revealed no motion from that forlorn victim.
Some strangers had arrived and proved too obnoxious to simply hang. For a time then, his lord had taken great pleasure in rushing from one prisoner to the other, and in a foul fug of burning flesh the screams had come from both sides of the chamber, along with spraying fluids that dried brown on the stone walls. But it could not last. Whatever uncanny will to live that was burning in Warmet’s soul was evidently unmatched by that other victim in this dungeon. “Done, milord.”
“Every word?”
“Every word, milord.”
“Very good. Now, take note of this, and in detail. Dear brother, your life is in my hands. I can kill you at any time. I can make you scream, and twist in pain. I can hurt you bad-no, wait. Scratch out that last one, Scribe. Twist in pain. Yes. In agony. Twisting agony. I can make you twist in twisting agony. No! Not that one, either. Give me some more, Scribe? What’s wrong with you?”
Coingood thought frantically. “You’ve covered it well, milord-”
“No! There must be more! Burn, pull, cut, impale, kick, slap. Slap? Yes, slap slap slap!” And Fangatooth walked up to his brother and began slapping him back and forth across the face. The man’s head rocked to either side, sweat spraying from the few remaining clumps of hair on his pate. Fangatooth then kicked his brother’s left shin, and then his right. Suddenly out of breath, he stepped back and swung round to Coingood. “Did you see that?”