Best Served Cold

That left two young staff officers, bright swords drawn and bright eyes full of righteous hate, and Cosca. Probably they would both have been nice enough people under happier circumstances. Probably their mothers loved them and probably they loved their mothers back. Certainly they did not deserve to die here in this gaudy temple to greed simply for choosing one self-serving side over another. But what choice for Cosca other than to do his very best to kill them? The lowest slug, weed, slime struggle always to stay alive. Why should Styria’s most infamous mercenary hold himself to another standard?

The two officers moved apart, one heading for the tall windows, the other for the paintings, herding Cosca towards the end of the room and, more than likely, the end of his life. He was prickly with sweat under the Talinese uniform, the breath burning his lungs. Fighting to the death was undeniably a young man’s game.

“Now, now, lads,” he muttered, weighing his sword. “How about you face me one at a time? Have you no honour?”

“No honour?” sneered one. “Us?”

“You disguised yourself in order to launch a cowardly attack upon our general by stealth!” hissed the other, face pinking with outrage.

“True. True.” Cosca let the point of his sword drop. “And the shame of it stabs at me. I surrender.”

The one on the left was not taken in for a moment. The one on the right looked somewhat puzzled, though, lowered his sword for an instant. It was him that Cosca flung his knife at.

It twittered through the air and thudded into the young man’s side, doubling him over. Cosca charged in behind it, aiming for the chest. Perhaps the boy leaned forwards, or perhaps Cosca’s aim was wayward, but the blade caught the officer’s neck and, in a spectacular justification of all the sharpening, took his head clean off. It spun away, spraying spots of blood, bounced from one of the paintings with a hollow clonk and a flapping of canvas. The body keeled forwards, blood welling from the severed neck in long spurts and creeping out across the floor.

Even as Cosca yelped with surprised triumph, the other officer was on him, slashing away like a man beating a carpet. Cosca ducked, weaved, parried, jerked helplessly back from a savage cut, tripped over the headless corpse and went sprawling in the slick of blood around it.

The officer gave a shriek as he sprang to finish the work. Cosca’s flailing hand clutched for the nearest thing, gripped it, flung it. The severed head. It caught the young man in the face and sent him stumbling. Cosca floundered to his blade and snatched it up, spun about, hand, sword, face, clothes all daubed with red. Strangely fitting, for a man who had lived the life he had.

The officer was already at him again with a flurry of furious cuts. Cosca gave ground as fast as he could without falling over, sword drooping, pretending at complete exhaustion and not having to pretend all that much. He collided with the table, nearly fell, his free hand fished behind him, found the rim of the ornamental jar. The officer came forwards, lifting his sword with a yelp of triumph. It turned to a gurgle of shock as the jar came flying at him. He managed to smash it away with the hilt of his sword, fragments of pottery bursting across one side of him, but that left his blade wide for a moment. Cosca made one last desperate lunge, felt a gentle resistance as his blade punched through the officer’s cheek and out through the back of his head with textbook execution.

“Oh.” The officer wobbled slightly as Cosca whipped his sword back and capered sharply away. “Is that…” His look was one of bleary-eyed surprise, like a man who had woken up drunk to find himself robbed and tied naked to a post. Cosca could not quite remember whether it was in Etrisani or Westport that had happened to him, those years all rather blended into one.

“Whasappenah?” The officer slashed with exaggerated slowness and Cosca stepped out of the way, let him spin round in a wide circle and sprawl over onto his side. He laboriously rolled, clambered up, blood running gently from the neat little slit beside his nose. The eye above it was flickering now, face on that side gone slack as old leather.

“Sluviduviduther,” he drooled.

“Your pardon?” asked Cosca.

“Slurghhh!” And he raised his quivering sword and charged. Directly sideways into the wall. He crashed into the painting of the girl surprised while bathing, tore a great gash through it with his flailing sword arm, brought the great canvas keeling down on top of him as he fell, one boot sticking out from underneath the gilded frame. He did not move again.

“The lucky bastard,” Cosca whispered. To die beneath a naked woman. It was the way he had always wanted to go.

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