Morrez tried for a laugh, but missed the mark by a little. What came out was a quick, hard sound like a bark. “You’d like me to give our tech over to you. I won’t do it.”
I had left the two Half-Ax guns on the ground, so it was easy for him to see where our talk was meant to be going. That was a foolish thing to do, but I did not waste any time in grieving over it. I went a different way, not even stopping to think what I was doing.
“Your comrade Sil Hawk was showing us how the guns work,” I said. “We’re fine, as that goes. Is there anything else you want to ask about the guns, Jon?”
Jon’s mouth opened and closed, like he was taken aback by the question, but after a moment he gave himself up to my plan even though he didn’t know what it was. To be honest, I wasn’t sure my own self. I had the half of an idea and was waiting for the rest to come.
“No, Rampart,” he said. “I think I got all I need to know.”
“You’re lying,” Morrez said. “Hawk didn’t talk to you. Hawk wouldn’t never break the oath she give.” But the dismay in his face was easy to read. He had thought to defy us and bolster up his own courage in doing it. Now he was afraid he might have built on softer ground than he hoped for.
What I did next was cruel, but I made no scruple of it. At least it was a different kind of cruelty than Fer Vennastin’s.
“It’s no shame she broke at last,” I said, meeting his gaze with stern coldness. “Torments will open anyone’s mouth. She held as long as she could. Longer than I thought she would. She’s a brave woman.” I sighed and shook my head. “If there’d been another way, we would of took it. We’re not minded to use such dreadful means except as a last thing when all else is played.”
I got up and walked around behind the chair. Out of sight of Morrez, I bit down hard on my thumb until I tasted blood. I kneeled down, with a grunt of effort on account of my big belly, and made a show of running my fingers across the floor.
I held my hand up in front of the boy’s face, my fingers’ tips red with fresh blood. He flinched from it. He had not wanted to believe about the torments, but now he saw a proof he couldn’t question. Tears started up in his eyes. He let out a breath that was close to being a sob.
Jon was staring at me with wide eyes.
“Like I said though,” I told the Half-Ax boy, wiping the blood off on my sleeve, “a last thing, not a first thing. I’m not threatening you. Since Hawk broke, you can stay whole. For now, at least.”
“I hope you and yours all rot,” Morrez said, his voice thick with holding back the crying. “I hope you die and rot and go to Hell.”
“I don’t believe in Hell,” I said, taking my place again on the bench. “Or Edenguard, for that matter. We make the best or the worst we can while we’re here, and when we’re gone that’s an end of it. Now, you think I brung you up here to put you to the question, and you think it will be awful brave to tell me to shove my questions in the privy and piss on them. So let’s pretend we done all that, and talk about where we go next.”
Morrez was only as old as I was. The fight at Calder’s ford might not have been his first battle, as it was mine, but I didn’t think he could be hardened yet to such things. Killing is a difficult task that pulls on the body and the spirit both alike. The blood and the fear and the cruel truth of it must surely be weighing on him, though he put on the best face he could find.
And the tears I saw in his eyes gave me hope in a way. Tears are not the mark of a coward, as some would have it. They’re only a mark of something having touched you deep. The worst cowards are them that are touched by nothing.
Where that left me, as far as this boy was concerned, was another question. I went on, feeling Jon’s eyes on my back all this time, knowing how the trick I played with my own blood had shocked him.
“So,” I said, “you got a curious name. Ten-Taken. How’d you come by it?”
“My father give it to me,” the Half-Ax fighter snapped right back at me. “The ten was kills he made. How’d you come by yours?”
“It depends which one you mean. My first name was Demar Ropemaker, and that come from my mother. My second was Demar Tanhide, from my father. My friends give me Spinner, and I liked it enough to keep it. And now I’m a Rampart. I guess you know how I come by that last name, because you was there.”
“You won it with Half-Ax blood,” Morrez said.
“Yes, I did.”
“And you’ll pay for it when Half-Ax comes.”
He said that quick and hard – out of a full stomach, as they say. His fear was turning to anger. Some of it was anger at himself for being afraid in the first place. Most was at me for making him that way. All of it was good. When you’re angry, you’re oftentimes less careful with your words.
I put my hand to my mouth, like I was hiding a yawn. “Half-Ax won’t come nowhere near us,” I said, “after we took their guns and half their fighters. What would they bring? Rakes and shovels? We’re not scared of Half-Ax.”
Morrez laughed hard like I had made a joke, but it seemed to me he had to force it out. “Half our fighters! You’re as stupid as a post, girl. You fought one wing of one column. We got five columns with ten wings each – all of them carrying weapons of the before-times that can kill you before you even see them. Weapons that can rip your fence up out of the ground or snatch away your air so you can’t breathe. Or make your thoughts bleed out of your brain so you don’t even remember who you are any more.”
“It’s not weapons that win a war,” I said, still pretending to be bored. Behind Morrez’s back, I could see the horror on Jon’s face, and Jarter’s and Shirew’s, but I didn’t let any show on mine. “A weapon’s only as good as the hands it’s held in, and Half-Ax fighters is known to be weak. It’s said they’re hard to fight, but only because they run away as soon as you come at them. You got to race them before you can drub them.”
Morrez took one quick step towards me. Only the one though. Jon and Jarter come in quicker and blocked him with their outstretched arms. “You dirty liar!” Morrez shouted. “You dog-sucking turd! Our army tore Temenstow in pieces. Lilboro broke on us like water, and – and –” He was falling over his words, they were coming out of him so quick and hot. “– and we went through Wittenworth like a wire goes through cheese. The Peacemaker’s own cousin is our general, and she never run from a fight in her whole life. Berrobis don’t know what backwards is.”
“Oh,” I says. “Well, then I guess we’ll have to teach her.”
My heart was sinking though. I had caught what I was fishing for, and more besides. If I had asked Morrez straight out what Half-Ax’s strength was, I doubt he would have told me. Now I knew how many fighters they had, and some of the tech they carried, and who would be most like to lead them if they came back. I just had the one question left, and I asked it in the same way, by making it seem like I already knew the answer.
“It don’t matter anyway,” I said. “Half-Ax isn’t like to come so far on such a small quarrel. Not when they already lost a whole… wing, was it? They’ll sit and lick their wounds, and then they’ll look round for some peas that’s easier to shell.”