Elf Defence (Adventures in Aguillon #2) - Lisa Henry Page 0,58
thing about hangings, Helga?” Gunther asked her with a sneer. “You can use the rope more than once!”
The crowd gasped, and Benji craned his head searching hopefully for Gretchen. Surely Gretchen would rescue him? He’d love to see the goons try to push her down the steps. She’d crush them like bugs. But he couldn’t see her anywhere.
The goon holding his chain tugged him closer to the noose, and Benji’s stomach began to regret all the gingerbread and strudel he’d eaten. His lunch was having a little revolution of its own, and Benji was pretty sure it was searching for a rapid exit from his body. Frankly, he wasn’t sure which one it would choose. Both seemed quite likely at the moment. He burped alarmingly and swallowed back a mouthful of sour apple.
“Not so mouthy when it’s your neck on the line, are you?” Gunther taunted. “Perhaps you should have thought about the consequences before you killed our beloved duke and tried to put a pretender in his place! Lars isn’t fit to be duke—he’s a big useless lump who’ll only ever be a cowboy!”
Benji was in terror for his life, but hearing Lars insulted made his anger overtake his fear and come bubbling to the surface. “Lars is a better duke than you’ll ever be,” he snapped, “and he’s ten times the man you are in every way that counts! And he’s a cowherd, you arsehole!”
The crowd shifted restlessly, and so did the men lurking in the shade. They were at a tipping point now; Benji could feel it in his bones. Gunther sensed the change in mood too, flapping his hand at the goon holding Benji.
“Hurry up!” he snapped.
Benji struggled to no avail as the goon put the noose around his neck and tightened it. “Wait! Isn’t there supposed to be a trapdoor? What sort of amateurs are you?”
“I was just gonna kick you over the side,” the goon said. “That should work.”
“Oh,” Benji agreed unhappily. “Yeah, that will probably work.”
He’d only come on this stupid quest to keep Calarian company, and now he was going to die swinging from the end of a rope. Which wouldn’t have been all that terrible if it had been in the aid of a glorious revolution, but Benji had learned over the past few days that even if some revolutions were maybe glorious, most of them probably weren’t. And the last thing Tournel had needed was a revolution anyway. That might change once Gunther was in control, but it didn’t look like Benji would be around to see it.
The worst thing about all of this was that he’d only just found out that life didn’t have to be all about revolution and upheaval to be meaningful—it was quite possible to be happy if you were lucky enough to have a slightly vain, quest-centred elf and a handsome but good natured cowherd by your side. And Benji had only just gotten both of those, and now he was going to lose them, without ever getting to tell them how he felt.
He really wished he’d bothered to learn about religion after all, because a god to pray to would have been a comfort right now. It might have given him a glimmer of hope, however small.
“Hurry up!” Gunther snapped.
Benji squeezed his eyes shut when he saw the goon take a step closer, unable to watch. The goon tugged on the rope and the crossbar creaked ominously, and at the sound Benji decided fuck it, he’d give those gods he didn’t believe in a try anyway.
“Please please please,” he muttered under his breath. “Someone. Anyone. Anything.”
Gunther let out an ugly, grating laugh. “Really? Prayers? What do you think is going to happen? A horde of avenging angels appearing just in time to save you, perhaps?”
Benji kept his eyes and his mouth shut, and thought of Lars and Calarian, of the collective where he’d grown up, and of his mum who, for the record, would be unsurprised at how this all ended for him but upset all the same. He tried to imagine that this was all a terrible dream, and any moment now he’d wake up sprawled across Lars’s broad chest, lazily fighting Calarian for room because they both wanted to doze with their ears directly over the steady thump of Lars’s heartbeat. If he tried, he could almost hear it thundering away, loud and comforting, with the sound of cows mooing drifting through the window.