Honor among thieves

Chapter Fifty-Nine

An old fishwife with a face like a rotten parsnip threw herself in front of the Godstone and defied the watchman to strike through her bones. He hesitated a moment, just long enough for Pritchard Hood to grab her and pull her away. She clawed at his eyes and he could do nothing but hold her at arm’s length.

The crowd shouted then, voices blending together: “He’s killing her!”

“He’s manhandling that poor woman!”

“Let her go!”

“Disperse,” Hood said, still struggling with the fishwife. “Damn you-let go of me. You-all of you. Disperse! Go back to your homes.”

The crowd took a step in, toward the stone.

“Back! All of you back!” Pritchard Hood howled. “You, men-keep them back.”

A pick swung round and bit into the side of a thief who had come too close, one of the pickpockets who’d been in the guild longer than Malden. The man screamed. A mallet came around and cracked the skull of a blind beggar.

The crowd screamed with him. It screamed for blood.

It took another step inward.

“Break it! Break it now!” Hood shouted. A watchman lifted his mallet to smash the Godstone And a thrown knife entered his throat, dropping him to choke on his own blood. The crowd roared like the ocean in storm and surged toward the stone, grabbing the watchmen and the bailiff even as picks crushed in heads and mallets bashed the sides of old men and lepers.

The crowd could not be stopped. It fell on Hood and his men like the vengeance of the Bloodgod Himself.

“Hold them down!” Malden shouted, but he could barely hear his own voice over the tumult. “Don’t let them fight back-don’t let them kill you!”

The crowd needed no goading, and would heed no advice. Screaming, foaming at the mouth like an enraged bull, it seethed as one creature, unified in bloodlust. A watchman was torn limb from limb as Malden watched in horror, his blood slicking the cobbles underfoot so that many in the crowd slipped and were trampled by the feet of others, trying to get in closer, trying to tear and rend.

The watchmen fought desperately with their tools. The death count was horrible among the poor and the old-it was a massacre, plain and simple-but the watch couldn’t hold out very long. Malden couldn’t see Pritchard Hood under the piling crowd but he shouted anyway, “Seize Hood-we’ll run him out of town on a hurdle!”

Hood might already have been dead before the words escaped Malden’s lips. The bailiff was most certainly dead a moment later, when his broken body was hauled up on the shoulders of a group of whores and carried out of the square. No man could survive with his head barely attached to his body like that, or with his chest caved in at so many places. Blood slicked the bailiff’s unmoving mouth and pooled in an empty eye socket. Malden had to turn away rather than see more.

The crowd wasn’t satisfied, though. It screamed for more. More blood. More vengeance. All the tension of the last few weeks, as Ness waited to be sacked and pillaged by the barbarian horde, was being released in an orgy of rage.

Malden stayed atop the Godstone-trying to climb down would have been suicide-and shouted for order, for reason, for calm. He shouted for civility, for peace, for true justice. His words were completely lost in the din.

When the crowd swept out of the square, headed in the direction of Castle Hill, tears ran down his cheeks. What had he done? What had he set loose? He half expected the mob to burn the city in its rage. To slaughter every man and woman and child it could find, regardless of their guilt or innocence. When the square cleared out enough to make it safe, he slipped down the side of the stone and landed hard on his ankle. His own blood was singing, though with fear rather than anger.

Bodies littered the square. Bodies of the poor, the crippled, of thieves. The crowd had taken the bodies of the watchmen with them, for what purpose Malden did not like to contemplate.

“Lad! Over fucking here!” Slag called. The dwarf had taken shelter in a doorway across the square. “Do you know how fucking dangerous it is to be this fucking short when the fucking world goes mad?” Slag demanded, his face wracked with terror.

“I–I didn’t know they would-”

Slag shook his head. “Listen, Malden. There’s nothing you can do now. Get somewhere safe-wait out this night.” The dwarf peered around the edge of the doorway. “Fuck. Never mind.”

Malden stared at him, deeply confused. Then he leaned out himself and took a look.

Coruth the witch was walking across the square toward them, taking care as she stepped over all the bodies.

“Malden,” the old woman said. “Come with me.”