The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,94

the Inquisitor bellowed at the executioners to no effect.

Orso’s mother closed her eyes, delicately pressed her middle finger to her forehead and swore softly in Styrian. Orso could only stare. This was his reign so far. When he finally decided to hang a man he hadn’t wanted to hang in the first place, he couldn’t even manage it without the whole business descending into farce. He jumped to his feet in a sudden rage. “For the Fates’ sakes, just get it done!”

But Wetterlant was wedged in the trapdoor and the executioners had no solution. One of them wrestled pointlessly with the lever, the other had the prisoner under the arms, trying to drag him out, another was kicking at the one leg still wedged above the trapdoor, trying to shove it through. Meanwhile, he was making a high-pitched squealing, the rope not quite tight around his neck and the front of his hood wildly flapping with his desperate breath.

One of the nobles from the Open Council—Barezin, maybe—was on his feet and roaring his outrage but was entirely inaudible over the screeching commoners, who were pelting the scaffold with rotten food. There was a shriek, followed by another surge through the crowd but wilder, arms flailing. A fight breaking out and quickly spreading.

People were throwing things at the nobles’ enclosure now. Not only fruit but coins. Stones. Orso heard a bottle shatter. He saw someone stumbling from their seat with blood on their face.

With a final vicious kick, one of the executioners managed to free Wetterlant’s leg and he vanished beneath the platform, the rope snapping taut. There was a half-hearted whoop in some quarters, but it hardly registered above the mounting chaos in the square. One could almost have described it as a riot now, a seething mass of flailing bodies with soldiers straining at the periphery, people scrambling for safety in every direction.

He thought he heard someone shout, “The Breakers!”

A missile thudded against the sun-stitched cloth of gold that hung behind Orso. He felt wet in his hair and jerked away, shocked. A bleeding head wound might have offered some romance, but he rather suspected it was rotten fruit.

Orso’s mother pushed her chin even higher, as though daring them with a bigger target. “Are they throwing things at us?”

He distinctly heard a shout of, “Down with King Orso!” but had no idea where it came from. It could have been commoner or noble. He would hardly have blamed his mother if she had chosen that moment to come out against him.

He definitely heard a scream of, “Fuck the Young Lamb!” Black-clothed Practicals were shoving through the press, laying about them with sticks and fists, dragging struggling figures from the chaos. Orso saw a group of men break through the line of soldiers and go sprawling at the foot of the scaffold, punching and wrestling. Gorst loomed up, shielding Orso and his mother with his armoured body.

“Your Majesties,” he squeaked. “Time to depart.”

Orso wearily nodded. “Damn it, but I hate hangings.”

Old Ways, Proper Ways

Rikke sat with her boots off on her father’s bench as the War Chiefs came in, trimming her toenails. Isern sat on the floor to her left with her spear across her knees, Shivers stood on her right with his thumbs in his sword-belt. By the dead, she was glad they were there. No better pair in the Circle of the World to have on your flanks, and both good and ready for their part in what was coming.

First came Red Hat, then Oxel, then Hardbread. Rikke beckoned ’em forward, friendly as she could. Men used to smile at her a lot. But the old warriors had that nervous air folk tended to have around her since she lost one eye and had the runes pricked around the other. Like if they turned their back on her she might bite their arses.

“Sorry to keep you boys waiting,” she said, though few men had ever looked less like boys, there was scarcely one dark hair on the three.

“Well,” grunted Oxel as their Named Men crowded silent and suspicious into the hall behind, “join the Union or join the North. It’s a big choice to make.”

“And up till now it’s been little choices for me.” Rikke tossed her scissors down and crossed her legs. “What song to sing or how short to trim my toenails or which eye to have pricked out o’ my head.”

Hardbread winced at that. “You’ve made a choice now, though, have you?”

“I was hoping for