Best Served Cold

Monza frowned as she pulled something from her pocket and held it up to the light. A big red-gold coin, shining with that special warmth gold has that somehow makes you want to hold it. “Very nice, but it’ll take more than one.”

“Oh, there’ll be more. The mountains of Gurkhul are made of gold, I hear.” She peered at the charred edges of the hole in the corner of the barn, then happily clicked her tongue. “I still have it.” And she twisted her body through the gap like a fox through a fence and was gone.

Shivers left it a moment, then leaned close to Monza. “Can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something odd about her.”

“You’ve got this amazing sense for people, haven’t you?” She turned without smiling and left the barn.

Shivers stood there a moment longer, frowning down at Day’s body, working his face around, feeling the scars on the left side stretching, shifting, itching. Cosca dead, Day dead, Vitari gone, Friendly gone, Morveer fled and, by the look of things, turned against them. So much for the merry company. He should’ve been all nostalgic for the happy friends of long ago, the bands of brothers he’d been a part of. United in a common cause, even if it was no more’n staying alive. Dogman, and Harding Grim, and Tul Duru. Black Dow, even, all men with a code. All faded into the past, and left him alone. Down here in Styria, where no one had any code that meant a thing.

Even then, his right eye was about as close to crying as his left.

He scratched at the scar on his cheek. Ever so gently, just with his fingertips. He winced, scratched harder. And harder still. He stopped himself, hissing through his teeth. Now it itched worse than ever, and hurt into the bargain. He’d yet to work out a way to scratch that itch that didn’t make matters worse.

There’s vengeance for you.

The Old New Captain General

M onza had seen wounds past counting, in all their wondrous variety. The making of them had been her profession. She’d witnessed bodies ruined in every conceivable manner. Men crushed, slashed, stabbed, burned, hanged, skinned, gutted, gored. But Caul Shivers’ scar might well have been the worst she’d ever seen on the face of a living man.

It started as a pink mark near the corner of his mouth, became a ragged groove thick as a finger below his cheekbone, then widened, a stream of mottled, melted flesh flowing towards his eye. Streaks and spots of angry red spread out from it across his cheek, down the side of his nose. There was a thin mark to match slanting across his forehead and taking off half his eyebrow. Then there was the eye itself. It was bigger than the other. Lashes gone, lids shrivelled, the lower one drooping. When he blinked with his right eye, the left only twitched, and stayed open. He’d sneezed a while back, and it had puckered up like a swallowing throat, the dead enamelled pupil still staring at her through the pink hole. She’d had to will herself not to spew, and yet she was gripped with a horrified fascination, constantly looking to see if it would happen again, and it hardly helped that she knew he couldn’t see her looking.

She should have felt guilt. She’d been the cause of it, hadn’t she? She should have felt sympathy. She’d scars of her own, after all, and ugly enough. But disgust was as close as she could get. She wished she’d started off riding on the other side of him, but it was too late now. She wished he’d never taken the bandages off, but she could hardly tell him to put them back on. She told herself it might heal, might get better, and maybe it would.

But not much, and she knew it.

He turned suddenly, and she realised why he’d been staring at his saddle. His right eye was on her. His left, in the midst of all that scar, still looked straight downwards. The enamel must have slipped, and now his mismatched eyes gave him a look of skewed confusion.

“What?”

“Your, er…” She pointed at her face. “It’s slipped… a bit.”

“Again? Fucking thing.” He put his thumb in his eye and slid it back up. “Better?” Now the false one was fixed straight ahead while the real one glared at her. It was almost worse than it had been.

“Much,” she said, doing her best to smile.

Shivers spat something in Northern. “Uncanny results, did he say? If I happen back through Puranti I’ll give that eye-making bastard a visit…”

The mercenaries’ first picket came into view around a curve in the track-a scattering of shady-looking men in mismatched armour. She knew the one in charge by sight. She’d made it her business to know every veteran in the Thousand Swords, and what he was good for. Secco was this one’s name, a tough old wolf who’d served as a corporal for six years or more.

He pointed his spear at her as they brought their horses to a walk, his fellows around him, flatbows, swords, axes at the ready. “Who goes-”

She pushed her hood back. “Who do you think, Secco?”