The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,206

ground shaking.

It had all been such good fun at the Siege School. Good luck to end up there. Better’n working in a mill. Damn sight safer, too. Didn’t seem safer now, needless to say.

Something better not thought about.

“Sponge ’er, Peck!”

He didn’t like calling the cannons “her.” Like they were women. Added a hint of the disgusting to the already unpleasant. Naught motherly about the bastard things that he could see. Murder’s men’s work mostly, after all.

The sponge streamed black water as he shoved it into the cannon’s smoking barrel and gave it a ramming, spraying himself each time. He was soaked with sponge-water and smeared head to toe with soot and his shirtsleeves torn and flapping wet at his chafing wrists, but you leave even a smear of burning powder behind and when they put the new charge in, the lot of you will be blown to hell.

Something else better not thought about.

He could see soldiers below them, through the drifting smoke. Lord Crant’s men, he thought. A ragged-looking regiment, stretched out crooked across the hillside. They’d tried to dig in but had about three good shovels between ’em and the rocky ground wasn’t offering much help. No one was. They were cowering now, at the thunder of the cannons behind them and the masses of enemy somewhere in front. Trapped betwixt hell and hail, as Peck’s granny used to say. They’d flung their weapons down to cover their ears, faces twisted with pain and terror. Peck had seen a couple try to run and be dragged back to their posts. Seemed a feeble sort of defence, if those rebels ever got across that river and up the rocky hillside.

One more thing best not thought about. Awful lot of those in a battle.

Like the Arch Lector, standing in his pure white coat on the summit of the hill. That hard-faced woman, too. Most frightening pair o’ bastards he ever saw. Looked like they never felt a human thing between ’em. He swallowed as he glanced away, swabbed the cannon down and left it steaming.

The boy who held the smouldering match-cord was crying. Streaks through the soot on his face. Wasn’t clear if it was the smoke in his eyes or he was hurt or he was crying ’cause this was so horrible. Peck slapped a hand down on his shoulder, dirty water slopping from his bucket. No point saying anything. The lad gave a helpless little smile, then Meyer snatched the match-cord out of his hand and shouted something.

“Oh, no.” Peck dropped on his knees again on the shaking hillside and clapped his hands over his ears, turning the burble to an echoing hiss, like the sound you get when you hold a seashell to your head.

The one thing you could say was that it was better to do the shooting than to be shot at. But the poor bastards their piece was pointing at were another o’ those things it was better not to think about.

At a time like this, best not to think at all.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

There was a sound like a whip cracking in Suval’s ear, there was a great shower of stinging splinters and he cringed as something bounced off his back. A branch fell from a tree nearby and crashed down among the wreckage.

“God help us,” he whispered, lifting his head. Someone was crying. Someone was shouting. Someone was burning. He saw him totter writhing down to the water’s edge and flop in. Someone was trying to drag a limp man back by his armpits. Suval saw him fall with the wounded man on top of him, and struggle up, and struggle on. Desperate to save his friend’s life. Or desperate for an excuse to save his own.

Suval picked up his dented helmet with trembling hands, put it on, dumping dirt on his head and hardly noticing. He spent a moment trying to fasten the buckle on the chinstrap before he realised it was broken. He stared about, no idea where his spear had fallen. But there was a sword nearby, so he picked that up instead. He had no idea how to use a sword. He’d never even held one before.

Murezin had said they would never have to fight, only dress up for some vain man who wanted to say he had a Gurkish Legion, and they had laughed about it while they drank bad tea together. You could not find good tea anywhere in this damned country. Murezin had been wrong