Sharp Ends

Freedom!

A note from the publisher

Following his death at the age of ninety-five, this fragment was discovered, crumpled, stained and almost worn through, plugging a hole in the sole of an ancient boot belonging to Spillion Sworbreck, the noted biographer, epicurean and poet widely known for, among a bibliography of daunting scale, his eighteen-volume The Life of Dab Sweet, Scourge of the Wild Frontier, and The Grand Duchess of Villainy, his romantic reimagining of the career of Monzcarro Murcatto presented in epic verse.

Fact? Whimsy? Satire? The origins and purpose of the writing remain entirely a mystery, but it is now published for the first time, along with its peculiar footnote, written in a different hand from the author’s, florid and sharply angled. A reader’s observation? A critic’s opinion? An editor’s verdict? Only you, dear reader, can be the judge …

Being an absolutely true account of the liberation of the town of Averstock from the grip of the incorrigible rebel menace by the Company of the Gracious Hand under the Famous Nicomo Cosca penned by your humble servant Spillion Sworbreck.

Averstock, Summer 590

What can my unworthy pen set down upon the subject of that great heart, that good friend, that magnificent presence, that dauntless explorer, proud statesman, peerless swordsman, accomplished lover, occasional sea captain, amateur sculptor of renown, noted connoisseur, champion short-distance swimmer and warrior poet, the famous soldier of fortune, Nicomo Cosca?

He was a man of great parts, of extraordinary abilities both mental and physical, of a keen mind and a quickness to action characteristic of the fox, but with a sensitivity and mercy of which the gentlest dove would have been envious. He was a giving friend, quick to laugh and generous to a fault, but an implacable enemy, loved and feared equally across the Circle of the World, none of the diverse lands of which were unknown to him. And yet, in spite of grand achievements at his back to fill five famous lifetimes, he held not a trace of arrogance or vanity, was always challenging himself to do better, to reach further, to aim higher, and, though his conduct had in the main, across his dozens of successful campaigns, been unimpeachable, was frequently troubled by what he saw as the regrets and disappointments of the past. ‘Regrets,’ as he once told this unworthy reporter, with a boundless sadness plainly stamped into that noble visage, ‘are the cost of the business.’

Though he was, at the time I was fortunate enough to make his acquaintance, approaching a full sixty years of age, he showed no sign of infirmity. A lifetime in the saddle, breathing the clean air and living a life free of low habits made him appear no older than a hale and athletic thirty-seven, with as full and lustrous a raven-black head of hair as any boy of sixteen could boast. According to the reports of womenfolk, who – gentle creatures! – must be taken as better judges of such matters than your humble servant, he was possessed of an extremely handsome face and a goodly frame entirely undiminished by the years in power and muscularity. He took drink but rarely and only in the strictest moderation, for the awful depravities he had seen visited by drunken soldiers upon an innocent populace during his long career were terrible, and, as he once told me, ‘No devil is more dangerous to a soldier than that which occupies the bottle.’

On the occasion the details of which I am about to relate, and which well illustrates the character of the man, Nicomo Cosca and his Company of the Gracious Hand had been employed by that noted servant of His August Majesty, Superior Pike, to root out the ringleaders of the vile rebellion in Starikland which culminated in the horrifying massacre at Rostod. To this righteous purpose, the Company, numbering some five hundred brave souls, was now sworn, and, having sworn, they would achieve or die in the attempt. Perhaps you have heard lurid tales of the faithlessness of the mercenary kind? Banish such thoughts from your minds, dear readers, at least in so far as they bear upon the happy brotherhood presided over by the famous Nicomo Cosca! For these men, though born under diverse skies, speaking diverse tongues, coming from high and low, near and far, representing every colour and creed to be found within the Circle of the World, were as faithful and loyal to one another, and to their employers, as any tight-knit band of countrymen. Once their notary had prepared a paper of engagement and the noble Cosca set his flourishing signature upon it, they put aside by one accord all other considerations and were bound to the mission as staunchly as the Knights of the Body are bound to the defence of His August Majesty’s royal person, and no entreaty, no offers of golden hoard, land or title, no rewards earthly or divine could persuade them to deviate from their promised purpose.

The town of Averstock was one of those pioneer settlements that, like a seed taken root in stony ground, was at that time flourishing in the lawless land of the Near Country, close to the civilising border of the Union. It was well built of firm timber and, though simple and lacking any ornament, was cunningly situated, clean and orderly, pleasing to the eye, and ringed by a stout palisade constructed by the good townsfolk as protection against the dread Ghosts, who had for some years previous visited terrible slaughter upon the defenceless settlers.

It was towards this fair and previously peaceable settlement that Cosca now piercingly gazed, his manly brow furrowed by deep concern and righteous outrage.

‘The rebels are in the town, at least a hundred strong,’ said Captain Dimbik, springing down from his lathered charger, his golden locks bouncing upon his broad shoulders. He had been an officer of the King’s Own, but so singularly attached to adventure that, when peace with the fell Northman was declared, he instantly resigned his commission to seek new dangers in the unmapped West. ‘They have, through base treachery, taken the townsfolk hostage, are perpetrating hourly outrages upon their innocent persons, and threaten to kill the women and defenceless babes should any man attempt to deliver the settlement from their tyranny.’

‘Are these men or monsters?’ spoke Captain Brachio, a cultured Styrian gentleman of the highest breeding, slender and well formed, and sporting an old wound beneath the eye which lent a rugged flare to his goodly countenance.

‘I must go down there myself, curse them!’ Cosca’s lustrous moustaches trembled with fair indignation as his bright eye directed its perilous fire toward the infested settlement. ‘And negotiate the release of the hostages. I can allow no possibility of failure. If one innocent man, woman or child were to be harmed …’ And here, friends, I must report that the general dashed a manly tear from his cheek at the very thought of injury to the minor. ‘My fragile conscience could not bear the weight of it. I will warn these rebels in no uncertain terms that-’

‘No!’ spoke Inquisitor Lorsen, representative of the general’s employer and custodian of the mission for which the brave Company were engaged. ‘Your keenness to spare bloodshed does you much credit, General Cosca, but the dread rebel cannot be trusted to behave according to the rules of war. They lack your unimpeachable good character and I will not hear of you placing yourself in their power. I, the Union and indeed the world cannot afford to lose so useful a servant as you have proved, and daily continue to prove, yourself to be. You have a company of bold and righteous men all eager to carry out your order, any one of whom, I cannot doubt, would be more than willing to risk their lives if it might spare those of the defenceless. Let one of them be sent to this admirable purpose. I, my master Superior Pike, his master the Arch Lector, and indeed his master His August Majesty the High King of the Union,’ and here the men, though not all natives of that great nation, bowed their heads in deep respect, ‘would, I am sure, though carrying many great cares, no less deeply regret a single life wasted.’

Following this exhaustive speech, volunteers stepped forward instantly to lend their strong arms to the noble project. Cosca wiped aside a second manly tear, holding out his arms towards them and speaking, ‘My boys! My brave boys!’ and pressing his strong hands to his noble breast in gratitude to them, and to the Fates, for furnishing him with such men.

It was one Sufeen on whom the great man’s eye now alighted, a scout of long experience and Kantic extraction but tall and of a noble bearing, no doubt one among those people who had rather fled their homeland than submit to the tyranny of the Gurkish Emperor, a man who laughed at fear almost as loudly as the captain general himself.

‘Offer the rebels fair treatment if they abandon their cowardly kidnap and surrender themselves to his Majesty’s justice,’ said Inquisitor Lorsen.

‘And warn them they shall taste the full measure of my wrath should they harm a hair upon the heads of their hostages,’ said Cosca. ‘Do this for me, Sufeen, and you will be rewarded.’

‘Sir, your respect is all the reward I could desire,’ answered the scout, and the two men embraced. Taking the notary of the Company with him to arrange the terms of the rebels’ surrender, brave Sufeen began the long and lonely walk down the grassy hillside towards the bastion of the enemy and, presently, was seen to be admitted and the tall gates of the settlement firmly shut behind him.

An eerie silence now ensued while the Company awaited the result of Sufeen’s negotiations, hoping for a happy outcome and yet prepared entirely for the bloody alternative. It was as tense a passage of time as your abject reporter has ever borne witness to. The wind still whispered through the trees and across the grass, the careless birds still warbled their morning song from the branches, but every man gathered there surely occupied the very extremities of nervous anxiety.

Every man, that is, save one!

‘Ah, that moment before battle is joined!’ spoke Cosca, prostrate in the long grass above the town like a lion waiting to spring, his eye glittering and his great fists clenched in anticipation of the work that was to come. ‘The delicious calm before the storm of steel! Perhaps a man should not be keen to engage in such bloody business as ours, but the excitement! It has always set my veins to thrill! Does it not yours, Sworbreck?’

Your humble servant must at this juncture confess a touch of understandable reticence, and could answer only in the negative. I, after all, had not the long experience, the consummate skill at arms, nor the natural immunity to fear with which the captain general was furnished. He, after all, was Nicomo Cosca. He laughed in the face of fear!

But no laughter escaped those well-formed lips now. ‘Something is amiss,’ he murmured as the time dragged out, and the men immediately stiffened for action. They knew from long experience that Nicomo Cosca was possessed of a special sense for danger almost magical, a sixth sense if you will, beyond the range of perception of the common man. Whether this was a thing learned by long and painful trials or an inborn talent I cannot say, but this humble reporter observed its operation on several occasions and its efficacy was not to be denied. Springing to his feet with the agility of an acrobat, and an instant later into his gilded saddle – a gift, as I understand it, from the Grand Duchess Sefeline of Ospria following his great victory on her behalf at the Battle of the Isles – the captain general roared, ‘To arms!’

Within a twinkling, several score men were mounted and pouring down the hillside towards Averstock, their deep and passionate war cries resounding across the picturesque valley. A timely signal given by mirror induced another detachment, carefully sited in trees on the far side of the settlement, to begin their attack at the same moment, such that not one rebel could possibly escape this deadly pincer. In battle the Company worked with the smoothness, precision and perfect accuracy of a priceless watch, with Cosca the master watchmaker, each of five hundred men giving himself utterly to his place in the grand machine.

How many heartbeats did it take for the speeding horses to reach the fence of the town? I cannot categorically state the number, but inconceivably few! How many more for the dauntless men of the Company to swarm over the defences, crushing the cowardly resistance at the walkways? But a handful more! I will not enter too deeply into the sordid details of the combat that ensued, in part because your humble observer, fearing for his very life, was kept at some remove from the hottest fighting, in part to spare the delicate sensibilities of my female readers, and in part because to describe such animal actions blow by blow ill befits a cultured readership.

Let me only note that I observed the captain general in combat himself and, though kitten in the company of his friends, he was a tiger and more in the presence of his enemies! Never has such wondrous dexterity with a throwing knife been seen, nor such deadly facility with a blade! At one stage this reporter witnessed, with his own two eyes, the remarkable sight of two men killed with one thrust of Cosca’s flashing blade! Run through. Nay! Impaled. Nay! Spitted, I say, like two writhing cubes of meat upon a Gurkish skewer. The gushing blood watered the windblown grit of the street, the quivering innards of the rebels laid open to the skies, with blood-curdling shrieks and womanly wails for mercy not given. Their intestines were unwound, eyes punctured, brains dashed upon the wattle walls of the settlement to be left as food for the flies. Fleshy bodies were savagely ripped asunder by unforgiving steel to divulge their vermilion cargoes of still-writhing offal upon the merciless dust! Oh, such the ugly truth of war, which we, the civilised, must not flinch from a full description of!

‘We must protect the townsfolk!’ bellowed Captain Jubair over the noise of combat, who, though born in Gurkhul and displaying all the superstition natural to his kind, had learned from Cosca a mercy and respect for the weak entirely foreign to his dusky race. At most times a gentle giant, the ire of his simple mind was fully inflamed by the possibility of injury to the helpless and now he fought like an enraged elephant.

Though it felt an age to this reporter, such was the righteous ferocity of the Company that the combat was finished in but a few savage moments, the cowardly rebels utterly routed, destroyed and put to the sword, without – oh, happy chance and vindication of their cause by fate – a single injury to the Company. Cosca had let fall retribution upon the base curs with such terrible speed – no more slowly than does the brooding storm smite the earth with blinding lightning – that they had not time to visit the promised massacre upon the townsfolk, and each and every precious hostage was released smiling from bondage to be happily reunited with their tearful families.

Here was a dangerous moment, for, the blood of the men being fully inflamed, there was the chance that some among them, gentle and forbearing as lambs though they might be under gentler circumstances, might forget themselves and stoop to plunder. But Cosca sprang now upon a wagon and, spreading his arms, called in such ringing tones and in such gentle terms for calm that his Company was instantly brought under control and returned to the proper discipline of civilised men.

‘I would rather we go hungry,’ the good general exhorted them, ‘than that there should be any loss of property to these good people, who may in future times call themselves subjects of His August Majesty the High King of the Union!’

And the Company sent up as one man a rousing cheer. One humble member, overcome by guilt, returned a clutch of eggs to the goodwife from whose coops he had removed them, muttering his most profuse apologies and weeping tears of deepest regret, but she begged him to keep them, and implored besides the grateful and hungry men of the Company to take all the eggs she had, and sent up in a higher pitch, frail hands pressed together, her own thanks to the king and his faithful and diligent servant his Eminence the Arch Lector for delivering she and her neighbours from the tyranny and foul depredations of the dread rebel.

At this moment, and your humble servant must admit he brushes away a tear of his own at the recollection, the corpse of noble Sufeen was discovered among the dead. His companions, with many expressions of manly sorrow and remembrances of his high qualities, let fall a river of tears. Nicomo Cosca, as in all things, was first among their number.

‘Oh, good Sufeen!’ The general beat upon his blood-spattered breastplate. ‘Oh, great heart and worthy friend! The regret of this sacrifice shall bear upon me until my dying day!’

The brave scout had fought like a champion, surrounded by craven enemies who had fallen upon him under flag of parley, and killed more than a dozen filthy rebels before they cut him down. A satchel of ancient coins was found near his mutilated body and instantly surrendered to the captain general.

‘Take an inventory of this money, Sergeant Friendly,’ spoke Cosca.

‘I shall count it,’ said Cosca’s faithful henchman, nodding his assent.

‘It shall be distributed according to our Rule of Quarters! Let one quarter be divided among the men in recognition of their brave work today! Let another be used to commission a competent stonecutter to produce a timeless monument to brave Sufeen! Let the third be spent in the purchase of supplies from the townsfolk, and let the final quarter be given to them for the repair of damage done by the rebels, and the founding of a hospital for the orphan children of those who have stood martyr to the cause!’

Another rousing cheer went up from the throats of the mercenaries for, though many were men of low origins, they all were men of high character, and base greed was foreign to their giving natures, gain always the very least of their motivations. They instantly began the work of returning the settlement to its original fine condition, extinguishing a fire the rebels had set in their extremity, and putting right the uncouth damage wrought upon the buildings and public spaces during the occupation.

I reported earlier that Cosca was the best friend to have, but he was also the worst enemy, and implacable in his punishment of wrongdoers. It gives me no pride, but at the same time no shame, to report that the severed heads of several of the rebel ringleaders were left mounted above the gates of the town as a dread warning to others. No one took the least pleasure in this awful operation, but this was the Near Country, far beyond the borders of civilisation, and outside the jurisdiction of Union, or even of Imperial justice, if there is any such thing in that benighted nation. Cosca, in the light of his vast experience, judged that strong lessons now might spare much bloodshed later. Such is the terrible arithmetic of warfare.

‘We must be merciful whenever possible,’ said the fair-minded general. ‘We must!’ And he struck one solid palm with one strong fist. ‘But, sad to say, one cannot afford to indulge oneself with too much mercy.’ He looked now towards those grisly warnings mounted, with expressions horribly vacant, and already attracting avian attentions, upon the town’s palisade. ‘Heads on spikes,’ he said, shaking his own. ‘A most terrible and regrettable necessity.’

‘Your forbearance does you much credit, General,’ spoke the good Inquisitor Lorsen. ‘His Majesty’s Inquisition demands that the guilty be sternly punished and the innocent protected.’

The townsfolk implored Cosca to remain, and offered him flowers and, indeed, gold to stay within their settlement, but he demurred. ‘Other towns of the Near Country yet chafe under the rebel yoke,’ he said. ‘I can have no rest until Superior Pike’s noble mission is fulfilled and the treacherous leader of the rebels, foul Conthus, is delivered in chains into the hands of the Inquisition to await the king’s justice.’

‘But will you and your men not take your ease for just one night, General Cosca?’ the town’s headman enquired. ‘For but one happy hour? With the triumphant liberation of our humble burg your labours have surely for the time being reached their end?’

‘My thanks,’ replied the great man, laying a heavy hand upon his shoulder, ‘but I have taken my ease too long already.’ That famous soldier of fortune, Nicomo Cosca, now worked the waxed tips of his proud black moustaches to deadly points between finger and thumb and directed his piercing gaze towards the western horizon. ‘If I have learned one thing in forty years of warfare, it is that doing right … has no end.’

All well enough, I suppose, but I was hoping for more. It’s dowdy. It’s bland. I’m all for realism in its place, report the facts and so forth, but you can’t expect to make the readers gasp with this manner of understatement. Did I not tell you it hasn’t been boring?

For pity’s sake, Sworbreck, work it up! More heroism, more dazzle, more blood in the action there, a larger-than-life quality! More villainous, the fiendish rebels! A rescued maiden or two? Put your back into it! Give it a bit more zing!

Then strip out any mention of that bloody notary, if you please. Expunge that treacherous bastard from the record!

And capitalise Captain General.