The War of the Dwarves (89 page)

Monza forced her head up. “Lick my arse, cocksucker.” Not clever, perhaps, but from the heart.

“There never was any gold!” snapped Faithful. “I told you that, pig!”

“There’s this much.” One by one, Gobba twisted the battered rings from her dangling fingers, already bloating, turning angry
purple, bent and shapeless as rotten sausages. “Good stone, that,” he said, peering at the ruby. “Seems a waste of decent
flesh, though. Why not give me a moment with her? A moment’s all it would take.”

Prince Ario tittered. “Speed isn’t always something to be proud of.”

“For pity’s sake!” Orso’s voice. “We’re not animals. Over the balcony and let us be done. I am late for breakfast.”

She felt herself dragged, head lolling. Sunlight stabbed at her. She was lifted, limp boots hissed against stone. Blue sky
turning. Up onto the balcony. The breath scraped at her nose, shuddered in her chest. She twisted, kicked. Her body, struggling
vainly to stay alive.

“Let me make sure of her.” Ganmark’s voice.

“How sure do we need to be?” Blurry through the bloody hair across her eyes she saw Orso’s lined face. “I hope you understand.
My great-grandfather was a mercenary. A low-born fighting man, who seized power by the sharpness of his mind and sword together.
I cannot allow another mercenary to seize power in Talins.”

She meant to spit in his face, but all she did was blow bloody drool down her own chin. “Fuck yourse—”

Then she was flying.

Her torn shirt billowed and flapped against her tingling skin. She turned over, and over, and the world tumbled around her.
Blue sky with shreds of cloud, black towers at the mountain top, grey rock face rushing past, yellow-green trees and sparkling
river, blue sky with shreds of cloud, and again, and again, faster, and faster.

Cold wind ripped at her hair, roared in her ears, hissed between her teeth along with her terrified breath. She could see
each tree, now, see each branch, each leaf. They surged up towards her. She opened her mouth to scream—

Twigs snatched, grabbed, lashed at her. A broken branch knocked her spinning. Wood cracked and tore around her as she plunged
down, down, and crashed into the mountainside. Her legs splintered under her plummeting weight, her shoulder broke apart against
firm earth. But rather than dashing her brains out on the rocks, she only shattered her jaw against her brother’s bloody chest,
his mangled corpse wedged against the base of a tree.

Which was how Benna Murcatto saved his sister’s life.

She bounced from the corpse, three-quarters senseless, and down the steep mountainside, over and over, flailing like a broken
doll. Rocks, and roots, and hard earth clubbed and battered, punched and crushed her, as if she was broken apart with a hundred
hammers.

She tore through a patch of bushes, thorns whipping and clutching. She rolled, and rolled, down the sloping earth in a cloud
of dirt and leaves. She tumbled over a tree root, crumpled on a mossy rock. She slid slowly to a stop, on her back, and was
still.

“Huuuurrrrhhh…”

Stones clattered down around her, sticks and gravel. Dust slowly settled. She heard wind, creaking in the branches of the
trees, crackling in the leaves. Or her own breath, creaking and crackling in her broken throat. The sun flickered through
black branches, jabbing at one eye. The other was dark. Flies buzzed, zipping and swimming in the warm morning air. She was
down with the rubbish from Orso’s kitchens. Sprawled out helpless in the midst of the rotten leaves, and the cooking slime,
and the stinking offal left over from the last month’s magnificent meals. Tossed out with the waste.

“Huuurrhhh…”

A jagged, mindless sound. She was embarrassed by it, almost, but couldn’t stop making it. Animal horror. Mad despair. The
groan of the dead, in hell. Her eye darted desperately around. She saw the wreck of her right hand, a shapeless, purple glove
with a bloody gash in the side. One finger trembled slightly. Its tip brushed against torn skin on her elbow. The forearm
was folded in half, a broken-off twig of grey bone sticking through bloody silk. It didn’t look real. Like a cheap theatre
prop.

“Huurrhhh…”

The fear had hold of her now, swelling with every breath. She couldn’t move her head. She couldn’t move her tongue in her
mouth. She could feel the pain, gnawing at the edge of her mind. A terrible mass, pressing up against her, crushing every
part of her, worse, and worse, and worse.

“Huurhh… uurh…”

Benna was dead. A streak of wet ran from her flickering eye and she felt it trickle slowly down her cheek. Why was she not
dead? How could she not be dead?

Soon, please. Before the pain got any worse. Please, let it be soon.

“Uurh… uh… uh.”

Please, death.