The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,162

to run, almost, but Glokta caught her wrist. Caught it with surprising strength. When she turned back, his eyes were fixed on her, fever-bright.

“Everyone should forgive themselves, Vick.” He gave her wrist another squeeze then let her go, looking out towards the lake again. “After all… no one else will.”

Some Men Can’t Help Themselves

Broad knelt there, in the dirt, in the darkness, axe in his fist, frowning across bare mud studded with tree stumps. Towards the road and the ruined sawmill just beyond.

He’d promised Liddy no more trouble.

Yet here he was, armed to the teeth in the moonlit brush with a crowd of bitter beggars, waiting to ambush the king’s soldiers so the maddest woman he ever met would help him bring down the government. If there was such a thing as no more trouble, he’d got himself about as far from it as a man could get.

He’d promised Liddy no more trouble. But he’d promised her a good life, too. What do you do when one promise runs head first into another? He’d no choice. Had to do this. For Savine, for his family.

That, and the thing he didn’t really want to think about—how the axe felt so right in his fist as he gripped it tighter than ever.

“They’re late,” grunted Sarlby.

Broad turned to look at him, the glint of moonlight in the corners of his sunken eyes and on the edges of his loaded flatbow. “Coming to something when you can’t rely on folk to come timely to their own ambush.”

“Shhhh,” hissed Judge.

Broad shifted back into the shadows as he heard the faint sound of hoofs, rattling harness, grind of carriage wheels.

The fear sharpened, and the excitement underneath it, creeping up his throat as lamplight glimmered on the rotten tree stumps, gleamed on the puddles in the road, caught the sharpened logs of the collapsing fence and the long shed with its fallen-in roof.

The pulse thudded in his head as the first riders came through the trees into the open. Soldiers with lanterns, hint of red uniforms, helmets and breastplates gleaming. A dozen, maybe. Then a wagon of some sort. A big, black, weighty shape pulled by a team of six.

The beam of a lantern came stabbing towards the trees as one of the riders turned, Judge’s tattered silhouette frozen before they all shrank into the bushes. Broad heard laughter, saw the lamplit smoke of breath as he held his own. That same feeling he’d had in the trenches in Styria, waiting for the order to charge, desperate to go.

The horsemen kept moving. The big wagon lurched after on the rutted road. More riders followed. Six more, maybe? That was all.

Broad eased closer to Judge. “This right?” he whispered, hardly able to make the words for the tightness in his throat. “They can’t fit three-dozen prisoners in that one wagon.”

“I’ll take care of the planning,” said Judge, wet teeth gleaming in her smile. “You get the killing done.”

“Wait up!” came floating from the road, and the column clattered to an awkward halt. The officer at the front swung from his saddle, held up his lantern, beam flashing on the logs scattered across the track. Where Broad and the others had torn the sawmill’s fence down a few hours before.

The wagon was still grinding forward in spite of its driver hauling on the reins, crowding the horsemen into a milling, grumbling mass. Sarlby brought up his flatbow, calmly settled the stock against his shoulder. Someone drew a sword with a soft scrape of steel, exciting to Broad as a lover’s whisper. He felt a sudden urge to roll his sleeves up. Important to have a routine. But it was too late now.

“Ready…” he heard Judge say in a snarl that brought the ugly tickle in his guts to a throbbing ache. “Ready…”

There was a flash like lightning, the great scar through the forest lit brighter than day, the broken teeth of the stumps casting strange shadows, the outline of men and horses frozen for an instant before they were flung tumbling in a spurt of fire. A crashing explosion clapped off the trees, a whizzing like angry wasps, flicking and pinging in the undergrowth. Something thudded into the trunk beside them in a spray of splinters.

Sarlby ducked down.

“Fuck!” someone hissed.

“Yes!” screamed Judge, standing up and throwing her fists into the sky.

Broad was already running. Towards the lamplight, the plunging horses, the swelling cloud of smoke. Pounding across the clearing for the road and the sawmill, the black world bouncing,