Best Served Cold

She said something happily in Kantic. Morveer’s mastery of the tongue was not supreme, but it sounded like, “You still have it, Ishri.” She swept the wheat where Morveer was hiding with her black eyes, at which he ducked down with the greatest alacrity, then she turned and disappeared behind the shattered corner of the barn from whence she came. He heard her faintly chuckling to herself.

“You still have it.”

Morveer was left only with an overpowering-but in his opinion entirely justifiable-desire to flee, and never look back. So he wormed his way through the gore-spattered crops on his belly. Towards the trees, inch by painful inch, breath wheezing in his burning chest, terror pricking at his arse all the long way.

No Worse

M onza jerked the Calvez back and the man gave a wheezing grunt, face all squeezed up with shock, clutching at the little wound in his chest. He took a tottering step forwards, hauling up his short-sword as if it weighed as much as an anvil. She stepped out to the left and ran him through the side, just under his ribs, a foot of well-used blade sliding through his studded leather jerkin. He turned his head in her direction, face pink and trembling, veins bulging in his stretched-out neck. When she pulled the sword out, he dropped as if it had been the only thing holding him up. His eyes rolled towards her.

“Tell my…” he whispered.

“What?”

“Tell… her-” He strained up from the boards, dust caked across one side of his face, then coughed black vomit and stopped moving.

Monza placed him, all of a sudden. Baro, his name had been, or Paro, something with an “o” on the end. Some cousin of old Swolle’s. He’d been there at Musselia, after the siege, after they sacked the town. He’d laughed at one of Benna’s jokes. She remembered because it hadn’t seemed the time for jokes, after they’d murdered Hermon and stolen his gold. She hadn’t felt much like laughing, she knew that.

“Varo?” she muttered, trying to think what that joke had been. She heard a board creak, saw movement just in time to drop down. Her head jolted, the floor hit her in the face. She got up, the room tipped over and she ploughed into the wall, put one elbow out of the window, almost fell right through it. Roaring outside, clatter and clash of combat.

Through a head full of lights she saw something come at her and she tumbled out of the way, heard it smash into plaster. Splinters in her face. She screamed, reeling off balance, slashed at a black shape with the Calvez, saw her hand was empty. Dropped it already. There was a face at the window.

“Benna?” And some blood trickled from her mouth.

No time for jokes. Something clattered into her back and drove her breath out. She saw a mace, dull metal gleaming. Saw a man’s face, snarling. A chain whipped around his neck and jerked him up. The room was settling, blood whooshing in her head, she tried to stand and only rolled onto her back.

Vitari had him round the throat and they lurched together about the dim room. He elbowed at her, other hand fiddling at the chain, but she dragged it tight, eyes ground to two furious little slits. Monza struggled up, made it to her feet, wobbled towards them. He fished at his belt for a knife but Monza got there first, pinned his free arm with her left hand, drew the blade with her right and started stabbing him with it.

“Uh, uh, uh.” Squelch, scrape, thud, honking and spitting in each other’s faces, her stuttering moan, and his squealing grunts, and Vitari’s low growl all mingling together into an echoing, animal mess. Pretty much the same sounds they would have made if they were fucking rather than killing each other. Scrape, thud, squelch. “Uh, ah, uh.”

“Enough!” hissed Vitari. “He’s done!”

“Uh.” She let the knife clatter to the boards. Her arm was sticky wet inside her coat all the way to her elbow, gloved hand locked up into a burning claw. She turned to the door, narrowing her stinging eyes against the brightness, stepped clumsily over the corpse of an Osprian soldier and through the broken wood in the doorway.

A man with blood down his cheek clawed at her, near dragged her over as he fell, smearing gore across her coat. A mercenary was stabbed from behind as he tried to stagger up from the yard, went down thrashing on his face. Then the Osprian soldier who’d speared him got kicked in the head by a horse, his steel cap flying right off and him toppling sideways like a felled tree. Men and mounts strained all around-a deadly storm of thumping boots, hooves, clattering metal, swinging weapons and flying dirt.