The Two of Swords: Part 14 Read Online Free PDF Page B

knock him down, but his ears rang and his vision blurred for a moment, and the pain made everything else irrelevant. Then the stick caught him under the ribs. He staggered backwards and sat down hard, unable to breathe. He realised he was waiting for the third blow, but it didn’t come.
    And they kept on shouting, whoever they were; angry, urgent, insistent; they were furious about something, but the words made no sense. A man came up to him, stopped a few inches from him; he was big, huge, with a broad, flat face and a black beard, and he was holding an axe in one hand and a knife in the other. He yelled; Chanso realised he was yelling at him, demanding the answer to a question, very angry because he wasn’t getting an answer. “I don’t understand,” Chanso said, and that got him the poll of the axe on his collarbone. He screamed and the man kicked his head.
    Two men were holding Folha’s arms. The man who’d just kicked Chanso went over to Folha in two giant strides and put the blade of his knife under his chin. Then he looked round – at Chanso, and Clar and Trahidour, who were lying on the ground with men standing over them – and started shouting again; a question, definitely that, but still completely incomprehensible. He waited, then shouted it again, only louder. Trahidour said, “We can’t understand you” in a faint, weak voice. Somebody kicked him. The man with the knife bellowed out his question a third time. Then he said three words, evenly spaced with gaps, like a man counting. Then he cut Folha’s throat.
    The men who’d been holding Folha came forward and pulled Clar to his feet. The shouting man rested the knife on his throat and asked the same meaningless question. Then the count – something, then Chanso thought the second syllable might have been
dui
, then the third word, and then he cut Clar’s throat, too. Trahidour tried to jump up, he was yelling now; one of the men kicked him, probably missed, because the kick landed on the ball of his shoulder, and Trahidour ignored it; “We don’t know your language, you stupid fucking—” A man behind him hit the back of his head with an axe handle and he dropped flat on his face. They hauled him up and put the knife to his throat. The man with the knife turned and looked straight at Chanso. This time he spoke rather than shouted, in the voice you use when your anger is beyond mere yelling. He repeated the question, slowly and clearly. He repeated it again. He began the count;
ang
,
dui
. “Please,” Chanso shouted, “we can’t understand.”
Tin
, said the man with the beard, and killed Trahidour.
    Up to that moment, Chanso had been frozen stiff. But when they tried to grab him, he sprang backwards, landed badly, picked himself up; he saw two men dart to either side, while two more came straight at him. He spun round and started to run; he managed four long strides, then something caught his ankle and he went down. The impact knocked him breathless; he kicked wildly to free his leg, connected with something, two, three times and then his foot was free. He scrambled up again and a man loomed in front of him. He jumped like a cat, grabbing for the man’s throat with both hands; the man sidestepped. Chanso landed on his outstretched hands, pushed with his legs, ran himself upright. Five strides, and something impossibly hard and heavy slammed into the side of his head. He felt the ground hit his face. He tried to get up, but there was a weight on his back he couldn’t shift, so heavy it was going to snap his spine. He twisted sideways, shifted the weight; a man fell across him, he scrabbled with both hands, found a face, ripped at it with his nails. The man shrank back, enough for him to slither free, dig his feet into the ground, get up again. Two hands clamped on his arm; he tugged, trying to dislodge the hands or rip his arm out of the socket. Someone had got his other arm; they were both pulling, stretching him. He kicked sideways,