The Collected Joe Abercrombie (90 page)

You will hear from me soon. Until then, I serve and obey.

Sand dan Glokta,
Superior of Dagoska.

T
he sun pressed down on the crumbling battlements like a great weight. It pressed through Glokta’s hat and onto his stooped head. It pressed through Glokta’s black coat and onto his twisted shoulders. It threatened to squeeze the water right out of him, squash the life right out of him, crush him to his knees. A cool autumn morning in charming Dagoska.

While the sun attacked him from above, the salt wind came at him head on. It swept in off the empty sea and over the bare peninsula, hot and full of choking dust, blasting the land walls of the city and scouring everything with salty grit. It stung at Glokta’s sweaty skin, whipped the moisture from his mouth, tickled at his eyes and made them weep stinging tears. Even the weather wants to be rid of me, it would seem.

Practical Vitari teetered along the parapet beside him, arms outstretched like a circus performer on the high rope. Glokta frowned up at her, a gangly black shape against the brilliant sky.
She could just as easily walk down here, and stop making a spectacle of herself. But at least this way there is always the chance of her falling off.
The land walls were twenty strides high at the least. Glokta allowed himself the very slightest smile at the thought of the Arch Lector’s favourite Practical slipping, sliding, tumbling from the wall, hands clutching at nothing.
Perhaps a despairing scream as she fell to her death?

But she didn’t fall.
Bitch. Considering her next report to the Arch Lector, no doubt. ‘The cripple continues to flounder like a landed fish. He has yet to uncover the slightest trace of Davoust, or any traitor, despite questioning half the city. The one man he has arrested is a member of his own Inquisition . . .’

Glokta shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted into the blinding sun. The neck of rock that connected Dagoska with the mainland stretched away from him, no more than a few hundred strides across at its narrowest point, the sparkling sea on both sides. The road from the city gates was a brown stripe through the yellow scrub, cutting southwards towards the dry hills on the mainland. A few sorry-looking seabirds squawked and circled over the causeway, but there were no other signs of life.

‘Might I borrow your eye-glass, General?’

Vissbruck flicked the eye-glass open and slapped it sulkily into Glokta’s outstretched hand.
Plainly he feels he has better things to do than give me a tour of the defences.
The General was breathing heavily, standing stiffly to attention in his impeccable uniform, plump face shining with sweat.
Doing his best to maintain his professional bearing. His bearing is the only professional thing about this imbecile, but, as the Arch Lector says, we must work with the tools we have.
Glokta raised the brass tube to his eye.

The Gurkish had built a palisade. A tall fence of wooden stakes that fringed the hills, cutting Dagoska off from the mainland. There were tents scattered about the other side, thin plumes of smoke rising from a cooking fire here or there. Glokta could just about make out tiny figures moving, sun glinting on polished metal.
Weapons and armour, and plenty of both.

‘There used to be caravans from the mainland,’ Vissbruck murmured. ‘Last year there were a hundred of them every day. Then the Emperor’s soldiers started to arrive, and there were fewer traders. They finished the fence a couple of months ago. There hasn’t been so much as a donkey since. Everything has to come in by ship, now.’

Glokta scanned across the fence, and the camps behind, from the sea on one side to the sea on the other.
Are they simply flexing their muscles, putting on a show of force? Or are they in deadly earnest? The Gurkish love a good show, but they don’t mind a good fight either – that’s how they’ve conquered the whole of the South, more or less.
He lowered the eye-glass. ‘How many Gurkish, do you think?’

Vissbruck shrugged. ‘Impossible to say. At least five thousand, I would guess, but there could be many more, behind those hills. We have no way of knowing.’

Five thousand. At the least. If it’s a show, it’s a good one.
‘How many men have we?’

Vissbruck paused. ‘I have around six hundred Union soldiers under my command.’

Around six hundred? Around? You lackwit dunce! When I was a soldier I knew the name of every man in my regiment, and who was best suited to what tasks.
‘Six hundred? Is that all?’

‘There are mercenaries in the city also, but they cannot be trusted, and frequently cause trouble of their own. In my opinion they are worse than worthless.’

I asked for numbers, not opinions.
‘How many mercenaries?’

‘Perhaps a thousand, now, perhaps more.’

‘Who leads them?’

‘Some Styrian. Cosca, he calls himself.’

‘Nicomo Cosca?’ Vitari was staring down from the parapet, one orange eyebrow raised.

‘You know him?’

‘You could say that. I thought he was dead, but it seems there’s no justice in the world.’

She’s right there.
Glokta turned to Vissbruck. ‘Does this Cosca answer to you?’

‘Not exactly. The Spicers pay him, so he answers to Magister Eider. In theory, he’s supposed to follow my orders—’

‘But he only follows his own?’ Glokta could see in the General’s face that he was right.
Mercenaries. A double-edged sword, if ever there was one. Keen, as long as you can keep paying, and provided that trustworthiness is not a priority. ‘And Cosca’s men outnumber yours two to one.’ It would appear that, as far as the defences of the city are concerned, I am speaking to the wrong man. Perhaps there is one issue, though, on which he can enlighten me.
‘Do you know what became of my predecessor, Superior Davoust?’

General Vissbruck twitched his annoyance. ‘I have no idea. That man’s movements were of no interest to me.’

‘Hmm,’ mused Glokta, jamming his hat down tighter onto his head as another gritty gust of wind blew in across the walls. ‘The disappearance of the city’s Superior of the Inquisition? Of no interest whatsoever?’

‘None,’ snapped the General. ‘We rarely had cause to speak to one another. Davoust was well-known as an abrasive character. As far as I am concerned, the Inquisition has its responsibilities, and I have mine.’
Touchy, touchy. But then everyone is, since I arrived in town. You’d almost think they didn’t want me here.

‘You have your responsibilities, eh?’ Glokta shuffled to the parapet, lifted his cane and prodded at a corner of crumbling masonry, not far from Vitari’s heel. A chunk of stone cracked away and tumbled from the wall into space. A few moments later he heard it clatter into the ditch, far below. He rounded on Vissbruck. ‘As commander of the city’s defences, would you count the maintenance of the walls as being among your responsibilities? ’

Vissbruck bristled. ‘I have done everything possible!’

Glokta counted the points off with the fingers of his free hand. ‘The land walls are crumbling and poorly manned. The ditch beyond is so choked with dirt it barely exists. The gates have not been replaced in years, and are falling to pieces on their own. If the Gurkish were to attack tomorrow, I do believe we’d be in quite a sorry position.’

‘Not for any oversight on my part, I can assure you! With the heat, and the wind, and the salt from the sea, wood and metal rot in no time, and stone fares little better! Do you realise the task?’ The General gestured at the great sweep of the towering land walls, curving away to the sea on either side. Even here at the top, the parapet was wide enough to drive a cart down, and they were a lot thicker at the base. ‘I have few skilled masons, and precious little materials! What the Closed Council gives me barely pays for the upkeep of the Citadel! Then the money from the Spicers scarcely keeps the walls of the Upper City in good repair—’

Fool! One could almost believe he did not seriously mean to defend the city at all.
‘The Citadel cannot be supplied by sea if the rest of Dagoska is in Gurkish hands, am I right?’

Vissbruck blinked. ‘Well, no, but—’

‘The walls of the Upper City might keep the natives where they are, but they are too long, too low, and too thin to withstand a concerted attack for long, would you agree?’

‘Yes, I suppose so, but—’

‘So any plan that treats the Citadel, or the Upper City, as our main line of defence is one that only plays for time. Time for help to arrive. Help that, with our army committed hundreds of leagues away in Angland, might take a while appearing.’
Will never appear at all.
‘If the land walls fall the city is doomed.’ Glokta tapped the dusty flags underfoot with his cane. ‘Here is where we must fight the Gurkish, and here is where we must keep them out. Everything else is an irrelevance.’

‘An irrelevance,’ Vitari piped to herself as she hopped from one part of the parapet to another.

The General was frowning. ‘I can only do as the Lord Governor and his council instruct me. The Lower City has always been regarded as dispensable. I am not responsible for overall policy—’

‘I am.’ Glokta held Vissbruck’s eye for a very long moment. ‘From now on all resources will be directed into the repair and strengthening of the land walls. New parapets, new gates, every broken stone must be replaced. I don’t want to see a crack an ant could crawl through, let alone a Gurkish army.’

‘But who will do the work?’

‘The natives built the damn things in the first place, didn’t they? There must be skilled men among them. Seek them out and hire them. As for the ditch, I want it down below sea level. If the Gurkish come we can flood it, and make the city into an island.’

‘But that could take months!’

‘You have two weeks. Perhaps not even that long. Press every idle man into service. Women and children too, if they can hold a spade.’

Vissbruck frowned up at Vitari. ‘And what about your people in the Inquisition?’

‘Oh, they’re too busy asking questions, trying to find out what happened to your last Superior. Or they’re watching me, and my quarters, and the gates of the citadel all day and night, trying to make sure that the same thing doesn’t happen to your new one. Be a shame, eh, Vissbruck, if I disappeared before the defences were ready?’

‘Of course, Superior,’ muttered the General.
But without tremendous enthusiasm, I rather think.

‘Everyone else must work, though, including your own soldiers.’

‘But you can’t expect my men to—’

‘I expect every man to do his part. Anyone who doesn’t like it can go back to Adua. He can go back and explain his reluctance to the Arch Lector.’ Glokta leered his toothless smile at the General. ‘There’s no one that can’t be replaced, General, no one at all.’

There was a great deal of sweat on Vissbruck’s pink face, great drops of it. The stiff collar of his uniform was dark with moisture. ‘Of course, every man must do his part! Work on the ditch will begin immediately!’ He made a weak attempt at a smile. ‘I’ll find every man, but I’ll need money, Superior. If people work they must be paid, even the natives. Then we will need materials, everything has to be brought in by sea—’

‘Borrow what you need to get started. Work on credit. Promise everything and give nothing, for now. His Eminence will provide.’
He’d better.
‘I want reports on your progress every morning.’

‘Every morning, yes.’

‘You have a great deal to do, General. I’d get started.’

Vissbruck paused for a moment, as though unsure whether to salute or not. In the end he simply turned on his heel and stalked off.
The pique of a professional soldier dictated to by a civilian, or something more? Am I upsetting his carefully laid plans? Plans to sell the city to the Gurkish, perhaps?

Vitari hopped down from the parapet onto the walkway. ‘His Eminence will provide? You’d be lucky.’

Glokta frowned at her back as she sauntered away, then he frowned towards the hills on the mainland, then he frowned up at the citadel.
Dangers on every side. Trapped between the Arch Lector and the Gurkish, and with nobody but an unknown traitor for company. It’ll be a wonder if I last a day.

A committed optimist might have called the place a dive.
But it scarcely deserves the name.
A piss-smelling shack with some oddments of furniture, everything stained with ancient sweat and recent spillages.
A kind of cesspit with half the cess removed.
Customers and staff were indistinguishable: drunken, fly-blown natives stretched out in the heat. Nicomo Cosca, famed soldier of fortune, sprawled in amongst this scene of debauchery, soundly asleep.

He had his driftwood chair rocked back on its rear legs against the grimy wall, one boot up on the table in front of him. It had probably been as fine and flamboyant a boot as one could hope for, once, black Styrian leather with a golden spur and buckles.
No longer
. The upper was sagging and scuffed grey with hard use. The spur was snapped off short, the gilt on the buckles was flaking away and the iron underneath was spotted with brown rust. A circle of pink, blistered skin peered at Glokta through a hole in the sole.