“Things are going well,” sang Cosca in his rich Styrian accent, grinning out over the parapet at the carnage beyond the walls. “A good day’s work, yesterday, considering.”
A good day’s work. Below them, on the other side of the ditch, the bare earth was scarred and burned, bristling with spent flatbow bolts like stubble on a brown chin. Everywhere, siege equipment lay wrecked and ruined. Broken ladders, fallen barrows spilling rocks, burned and shattered wicker screens, trampled into the hard dirt. The shell of one of the great siege towers was still half standing, a framework of blackened timbers sticking twisted from a heap of ash, scorched and tattered leather flapping in the salt wind.
“We taught those Gurkish fuckers a lesson they won’t soon forget, eh, Superior?”
“What lesson?” muttered Severard. What lesson indeed? The dead learn nothing. The corpses were dotted about before the Gurkish front line, two hundred strides or so from the land walls. They were scattered across the no-man’s-land between, surrounded by a flotsam of broken weapons and armour. They had dropped so heavily just before the ditch that you could almost have walked from the sea on one side of the peninsula to the sea on the other without once stepping on the earth. In a few places they were crowded together into huddled groups. Where the wounded crawled to take cover behind the dead, then bled to death themselves.
Glokta had never seen slaughter like it. Not even after the siege of Ulrioch, when the breach had been choked with Union dead, when Gurkish prisoners had been murdered by the score, when the temple had been burned with hundreds of citizens inside. Corpses sagged and lolled and sprawled, some charred with fire, some bent in attitudes of final prayer, some spread out heedless, heads smashed by rocks flung from above. Some had clothes ripped and rooted through. Where they tore at their own shirts to check their wounds, hoping they were not fatal. All of them disappointed.
Flies buzzed in legions around the bodies. Birds of a hundred species hopped and flapped and pecked at the unexpected feast. Even here, high up in the blasting wind, it was starting to reek. The stuff of nightmares. Of my nightmares for the next few months, I shouldn’t wonder. If I last that long.
Glokta felt his eye twitching, and he blew out a deep breath, stretched his neck from side to side. Well. We must fight on. It is a little late now for second thoughts. He peered gingerly over the parapet to take a look down at the ditch, his free hand grasping tight at the pitted stone to keep his balance.
Not good. “They have nearly filled the channel down below us, and over near the gates.”
“True,” said Cosca cheerfully. “They drag up their boxes of rocks and try to tip them in. We can only kill them so fast.”
“That channel is our best defence.”
“True again. It was a good idea. But nothing lasts forever.”
“Without it there is nothing to stop the Gurkish mounting ladders, rolling up rams, mining under our walls even. It might be necessary to organise a sortie of some kind, dig it back out.”
Cosca rolled his dark eyes sideways. “Lowered from the wall by ropes, slaving in the darkness, not two hundred strides from the Gurkish positions? Was that what you had in mind?”
“Something like that.”
“Then I wish you luck with it.”
Glokta snorted. “I would go, of course.” He tapped his leg with his cane. “But I’m afraid my days of heroics are far behind me.”
“Lucky for you.”
“Hardly. We should build a barricade behind the gates. That is our weakest point. A half circle, I would guess, some hundred strides across, would make an effective killing ground. If they manage to break through we might still contain them there, long enough to push them back.” Might…
“Ah, pushing them back.” Cosca scratched at the rash on his neck. “I’m sure the volunteers will be falling over each other for that duty when the time comes. Still, I’ll see it done.”
“You have to admire them.” General Vissbruck strode up to the parapet, his hands clasped tightly behind his impeccably pressed uniform. I’m surprised he finds the time for presentation, with things as they are. Still, we all cling to what we can. He shook his head as he peered down at the corpses. “Some courage, to come at us like this, over and over, against defences so strong and so well manned. I’ve rarely seen men so willing to give their lives.”
“They have that most strange and dangerous of qualities,” said Cosca. “They think they’re in the right.”
Vissbruck stared sternly out from under his brows. “It is we who are in the right.”
“If you like.” The mercenary grinned sideways at Glokta. “But I think the rest of us long ago gave up on the idea that there’s any such thing. The plucky Gurkish come on with their barrows… and it’s my job to shoot them full of arrows!” He barked out a sharp laugh.
“I don’t think that’s amusing,” snapped Vissbruck. “A fallen opponent should be treated with respect.”
“Why?”
“Because it could be any one of us rotting in the sun, and probably soon will be.”
Cosca only laughed the louder, and clapped Vissbruck on the arm. “Now you’re getting it! If I’ve learned one thing from twenty years of warfare, it’s that you have to look at the funny side!”
Glokta watched the Styrian chuckling at the battlefield. Trying to decide when would be the best time to change sides? Trying to work out how good a fight to give the Gurkish before they pay better than I do? There’s more than rhymes in that scabby head, but for the moment we cannot do without him. He glanced at General Vissbruck, who had moved further down the walkway to sulk on his own. Our plump friend has neither the brains nor the bravery to hold this city for longer than a week.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned back to Cosca. “What?” he snapped.
“Uh,” muttered the mercenary, pointing up into the blue sky. Glokta followed his finger. There was a black spot up there, not far above them, but moving upwards. What is that? A bird? It had peaked now, and was coming down. Realisation dawned suddenly. A stone. A stone from a catapult.
It grew larger as it fell, tumbling over and over, seeming to move with ridiculous slowness, as if sinking through water, its total silence adding to the sense of unreality. Glokta watched it, open-mouthed. They all did. An air of terrible expectancy settled on the walls. It was impossible to tell exactly where the stone was going to fall. Men began to scatter this way and that along the walkway, clattering, scuffling, gasping and squealing, tossing away weapons.
“Fuck,” whispered Severard, throwing himself face down on the stones.
Glokta stayed where he was, his eyes locked on that one dark spot in the bright sky. Is it coming for me? Several tons of rock, about to splatter my remains across the city? What a ludicrously random way to die. He felt his mouth twitch up in a faint smile.