Before They Are Hanged

line above the
horizon. Nothing moved in all that vast space. Nothing but them and
the impatient clouds. And one bird, hovering high, high up, almost
still on the air, long feathers on its dark wing tips fluttering.
    â€œFirst
bird I seen in two days,â€

A Matter of Time
    To
Arch Lector Sult,
    Head
of his Majesty’s Inquisition.
    Your
Eminence,
    Six
weeks now, we have held the Gurkish back. Each morning they brave our
murderous fire to tip earth and stone into our ditch, each night we
lower men from the walls to try and dig it out. In spite of all our
efforts, they have finally succeeded in filling the channel in two
places. Daily, now, scaling parties rush forward from the Gurkish
lines and set their ladders, sometimes making it onto the walls
themselves, only to be bloodily repulsed.
    Meanwhile
the bombardment by catapults continues, and several sections of the
walls are dangerously weakened. They have been shored up, but it
might not be long before the Gurkish have a practicable breach.
Barricades have been raised on the inside to contain them should they
make it through into the Lower City. Our defences are tested to the
limit, but no man entertains a thought of surrender. We will fight
on.
    As
always, your Eminence, I serve and obey.
    Sand
dan Glokta
    Superior
of Dagoska.
    Glokta held his
breath, licking at his gums as he watched the dust clouds settling
across the roofs of the slums through his eye-glass. The last crashes
and clatters of falling stones faded, and Dagoska, for that one
moment, was strangely silent. The world holds its breath.
    Then the distant
screaming reached him on his balcony, thrust out from the wall of the
Citadel, high above the city. A screaming he remembered well from
battlefields both old and new. And hardly happy memories. The
Gurkish war cry. The enemy are coming. Now, he knew, they were
charging across the open ground before the walls, as they had done so
many times these past weeks. But this time they have a breach.
    He watched the
tiny shapes of soldiers moving on the dust-coated walls and towers to
either side of the gap. He moved his eye-glass down to take in the
wide half-circle of barricades, the triple ranks of men squatting
behind them, waiting for the Gurkish to come. Glokta frowned and
worked his numb left foot inside his boot. A meagre-seeming
defence, indeed. But all we have.
    Now Gurkish
soldiers began to pour through the yawning breach like black ants
swarming from a nest; a crowd of jostling men, twinkling steel,
waving banners, emerging from the clouds of brown dust, scrambling
down the great heap of fallen masonry and straight into a furious
hail of flatbow bolts. First through the breach. An unenviable
position. The front ranks were mown down as they came on, tiny
shapes falling and tumbling down the hill of rubble behind the walls.
Many fell, but there were always more, pressing in over the bodies of
their comrades, struggling forward over the mass of broken stones and
shattered timbers, and into the city.
    Now another cry
floated up, and Glokta saw the defenders charge from behind their
barricades. Union soldiers, mercenaries, Dagoskans, all hurled
themselves towards the breach. At this distance it all seemed to move
with absurd slowness. A stream of oil and a stream of water
dribbling towards one another. They met, and it became impossible
to tell one side from the other. A flowing mass, punctuated by
glittering metal, rippling and surging like the sea, a colourful flag
or two hanging limp above.
    The cries and
screams hung over the city, echoing, shifting with the breeze. The
far off swell of pain and fury, the clatter and din of combat.
Sometimes it sounded like a distant storm, incomprehensible.
Sometimes a single cry or word would float to Glokta’s ear with
surprising clarity. It reminded him of the sound of the crowd at the
Contest. Except the blades are not blunted now. Both sides are in
deadly earnest. How many already dead this morning, I wonder? He
turned to General Vissbruck, sweating beside him in his immaculate
uniform.
    â€œHave you
ever fought in a melee like that, General? A straight fight, toe to
toe, at push of pike, as they say?â€

Scars
    One by one,
Ferro took out the stitches—slitting the thread neatly with the
shining point of her knife, working them gently out of Luthar’s
skin, dark fingertips moving quick and sure, yellow eyes narrowed
with concentration. Logen watched her work, shaking his head