Best Served Cold

T he club came over, a blow that could’ve smashed in Shivers’ skull like an egg. But it was tired, sloppy, left Greylock’s side open. Shivers ducked it, already spinning, snarling as he whipped the heavy sword round. It cut into the big man’s blue-painted forearm with a meaty thump, hacked it off clean, carried on through and chopped deep into the side of his stomach. Blood showered from the stump and into the faces of the onlookers. The club clattered to the cobbles, hand and wrist along with it. Someone gave a thin shriek. Someone else laughed.

“How’d they do that?”

Then Greylock started squealing like he’d caught his foot in a door. “Fuck! It hurts! Ah! Ah! What’s my… by the-”

He reached around with the one hand he had left, fumbling at the gash in his side, dark mush bulging out. He lurched forwards onto one knee, head tipping back, and started to scream. Until Shivers’ sword hit his mask right in the forehead and made a clang that cut his roar off dead, left a huge dent between the eyeholes. The big man crashed over on his back, his boots flew up in the air, then thumped down.

And that was the end of the evening’s entertainment.

The band spluttered out a last few wobbly notes, then the music died. Apart from some vague yelling leaking from the gaming hall, the yard was silent. Shivers stared down at Greylock’s corpse, blood bubbling out from beneath the stoved-in mask. His fury had suddenly melted, leaving him only with a painful arm, a scalp prickling with cold sweat and a healthy sense of creeping horror.

“Why do things like this always happen to me?”

“Because you’re a bad, bad man,” said Cosca, peering over his shoulder.

Shivers felt a shadow fall across his face. He was just looking up when a naked body crashed down headfirst into the circle from above, showering the already gaping crowd with blood.

That’s Entertainment

A ll at once, things got confused.

“The king!” someone squealed, for no reason that made any sense. The blood-spattered space that had been the circle was suddenly full of stumbling bodies, running to nowhere. Everyone was bawling, wailing, shouting. Men’s voices and women’s, a noise fit to deafen the dead. Someone shoved at Shivers’ shield and he shoved back on an instinct, sent them sprawling over Greylock’s corpse.

“It’s Ario!”

“Murder!” A guest started to draw his sword, and one of the band stepped calmly forwards and smashed his skull apart with a sharp blow of a mace.

More screams. Steel rang and grated. Shivers saw one of the Gurkish dancers slit a man’s belly open with a curved knife, saw him fumble his sword as he vomited blood, stab the man behind him in the leg. There was a crash of tinkling glass and a flailing body came flying through one of the windows of the gambling hall. Panic and madness spread like fire in a dry field.

One of the jugglers was flinging knives, flying metal clattering about the yard, thudding into flesh and wood, just as deadly to friends as enemies. Someone grabbed hold of Shivers’ sword arm and he elbowed them in the face, lifted his sword to hack at them and realised it was Morc, the pipe player, blood running from his nose. There was a loud whomp and a glare of orange through the heaving bodies. The screaming went up a notch, a mindless chorus.

“Fire!”

“Water!”

“Out of my way!”

“The juggler! Get the-”

“Help! Help!”

“Knights of the Body, to me! To me!”

“Where’s the prince? Where’s Ario?”

“Somebody help!”

“Back!” shouted Cosca.

“Eh?” Shivers called at him, not sure who was howling at who. A knife flickered past in the darkness, rattled away between the thrashing bodies.

“Back!” Cosca sidestepped a sword-thrust, whipped his cane around, a long, thin blade sliding free of it, ran a man through the neck with a swift jab. He slashed at someone else, missed and almost stabbed Shivers as he lurched past. One of Ario’s gentlemen, mask like a squares board, nearly caught Cosca with a sword. Gurpi loomed up behind and smashed his lute over the man’s head. The wooden body shattered, the axe blade inside split his shoulder right down to his chest and crushed his butchered wreckage into the cobbles.